by Andrew Hamilton

Houston Peterson, compiler of A Treasury of the World’s Great Speeches (1965),

believed that “eloquent speech” (oratory) originated deep in the prehistoric

past among men “who cast spells over their fellows with the magic of words.

 

At first it was not words so much as the rhythm, the sounds, the incantation that was a part of ritual. Chiefs, priests, medicine men, millenniums before the heroes of Homer, must have risen to power through skill in speech as well as skill in arms.”

 

Adolf Hitler believed the magic of the spoken word was the primary propaganda weapon. Historian David Irving called Hitler’s power of elemental oratory “his greatest gift.”

 

In the Beginning Was the Word

 

In 1941, Raoul de Roussy Sales, the compiler of a book of extracts of Hitler’s speeches, wrote, “He is essentially a speechmaker, and although today it is his deeds and his conquests that most impress the world, it should not be forgotten that he started as a soap-box orator and spoke his way to power.”

 

Post-WWI Germany suffered from disintegrative social and political tendencies.

 

Jews briefly succeeded in establishing embryonic Communist dictatorships, nearly pitching the entire country into a totalitarian bloodbath of Russian-style proportions. Historian John Toland described the German capital as without electricity, its trolley cars and subways stopped, garbage rotting in the streets, and shops and offices closed.

 

Only Berlin’s night life went on unimpeded, in darkness or candlelight. It was corruption out of an overdone movie with heavily rouged girl prostitutes of eleven competing with whip-toting Amazons in high lacquered boots. There were cafes for every taste and perversion — homosexuals, lesbians, exhibitionists, sadists, masochists. Nudity had become boring and art itself was plumbing the nadir of obscenity, disillusionment and cynicism. (Adolf Hitler, 1976, p. 100)

 

If I didn’t live in the United States of America I might think he was exaggerating.

 

Upon joining the miniscule German Workers’ Party (DAP; Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) in 1919, Hitler quickly became its dominant figure and main speaker.

 

The first “large” meeting he addressed was held in the smoky basement of the Hofbräuhaus in Munich on October 16, 1919. There he spoke from behind a crude lectern atop a table for half an hour to an audience of seventy.

 

According to biographer John Toland, “Abandoning all restraint, he let emotion take over and by the time he sat down to loud applause sweat covered his face. He was exhausted but elated ‘and what before I had simply felt deep down in my heart, without being able to put it to the test, proved to be true; I could speak!’” (quoting Mein Kampf).

 

Toland characterized this event as “a turning point” in Hitler’s career and in the historical trajectory of the German Workers’ Party, soon to be renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP).

 

Hitler later wrote in the party newspaper the Völkischer Beobachter, “When I closed the meeting, I was not alone in thinking that now a wolf had been born, destined to burst in upon the herd of seducers of the people.”

 

The name Adolf, derived from Old High German, literally meant “noble wolf.” From that day forward “wolf” had a special meaning for him, as a nickname among close friends, his pseudonym, and the name for most of his military headquarters.

 

A month later Hitler spoke to 130 students, shopkeepers, and army officers in another Munich beer hall, the Eberlbräu.

 

Inasmuch as the speech was only the unknown Hitler’s second public address for the tiny party, two points are worth noting.

 

First, a government spy was present. Incorrectly identifying Hitler as a merchant, he reported that the orator “held forth in an outstanding manner” and was destined to become “a professional propaganda speaker.”

 

Second, Jews, Leftists, and Communists were well-organized in advance to use violence to suppress a speech targeting only 130 people, the content of which would not be circulated to a larger audience via newspapers or magazines (the mass media of the day). Their intention was to stop the meeting and intimidate the participants so that even a tiny audience could not hear Hitler’s message, knowing few would risk doing so ever again.

 

This pattern persists today.

 

Currently, for example, World War II historian David Irving is in the midst of a speaking tour of the US, one of the few remaining European countries where free speech has not (yet) been formally outlawed as “hate,” “terrorism,” “Holocaust denial,” or “defaming the memory of the dead.”

 

A few days ago he spoke to a handful of people at a hotel in Oklahoma City. Irving and his listeners are forced to meet furtively in private, indeed, under conditions of utmost secrecy, otherwise armed, Leftist “antifa” thugs who stalk the writer across the United States will criminally break up the meetings.

 

Even so, elsewhere in the hotel that evening “thirty men dressed in black with bandanas and masks,” wielding illegal weapons, stormed in, “found a birthday party for a Dr. Kunz’s family, and mistakenly smashed into that.” The crime, Irving says, was planned and led by the owner of a Tulsa wholesale computer firm.

 

But these masked stalkers and domestic terrorists will receive little more than a slap on the wrist from the System, if that. In essence, police, prosecutors, and courts smirk about it, as they have done for more than half a century now.

 

There is no great mystery about why our race is in the peril it’s in. It is not a mysterious puzzle. It is a lie to say that “we did it to ourselves.” The real reason is plain: violence, hatred, force, power, and government-approved criminality designed to suppress civil liberties.

 

But at the Eberlbräu in 1919, Hitler had alerted his military contingent in advance, and within minutes after hecklers began interrupting, the Leftists “flew down the stairs with gashed heads.” (Mein Kampf )

 

After a few more meetings speaking to similar-sized crowds, Hitler insisted that the German Workers’ Party transform itself from a small ideological discussion and writing group into a true political party.

 

During the final days of December 1919 he and party founder Anton Drexler drafted a 25-point program that Hitler presented to the “public” for ratification.

 

This important meeting took place on February 24, 1920 in the Festsaal, or Festival Room, of Munich’s Hofbräuhaus, a great hall on the third floor jammed with hundreds of people.

 

Hitler was “particularly pleased” that more than half the crowd consisted of Communists or Independent Socialist Party members. He was convinced he could win over the “true idealists” among them while making short work of the hard core disruptors.

 

Unaccustomed to speaking to such a large audience, his voice was loud one moment and weak the next. But he spoke so simply and clearly that even those at the farthest tables could hear him.

 

Hitler began quietly, outlining the history of the previous ten years. But as his narrative reached the post-WWI Communist revolutions, his eyes flashed, passion crept into his voice, and he began to gesture.

 

Soon, angry shouts erupted from all corners of the great hall as thugs hurled heavy beer mugs at Hitler. Immediately his army supporters, forerunners of the SA, armed with whips and rubber truncheons, sprang into action, hustling the troublemakers outside.

 

Throughout 1920, at weekly or two-week intervals, Hitler continued to deliver speeches in Munich beer halls. Summaries of many of these speeches survive in lengthy secret police reports which contain accurate head counts. The audiences ranged in size from 1,200 to 3,500 people.

 

According to hostile German biographer Joachim Fest, by 1922 “he began holding series of eight, ten, or twelve rallies on a single evening, at each of which he would appear as the principal speaker.” (Hitler, 1973, p. 158) Though these numbers seem difficult to credit, they are what Fest reports.

 

On August 16, 1922 Hitler addressed his largest audience to date, a crowd of 40,000 in Munich’s great central square.

 

By Hitler’s own account, it took him two full years of hectic speaking to perfect his craft and become master of the art of oratory.

 

He could speak with spellbinding force both extemporaneously and from personally drafted scripts that he revised two, three, four, or even five times late into the night, occupying three secretaries taking dictation directly onto typewriters.

 

Like many expert public speakers, Hitler practiced tirelessly. He carefully rehearsed gestures, often in front of a mirror, designed to generate particular responses from his audiences.

 

He also experimented with his own image, asking his personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann to take photographs for him to review. Then he’d examine them, deciding, “No, that looks silly” or “I’m never going to do that again.”

 

A handful of these photos exist showing Hitler practicing gestures to one of his speeches. He never intended for them to be published.

 

The Crowd

 

A psychic and emotional synthesis occurs between orators and their listeners. The orator’s stream of speech fuses individual members of the audience into Gustave Le Bon’s crowd. It is this crowd that the orator actually interacts with.

 

“Hitler was an actor of prodigious talents who could raise the temperature of the audience to flash-point, and at this point they were no longer separate individuals; they were all fused into the mass.” (Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, 1973, p. 156) The bigger the audience, the easier it was to manipulate it in such a manner.

 

Hitler paid close attention to his audiences.

 

At the time, Communism, socialism, and the class struggle were fundamental to political discourse everywhere.

 

So, in his early days, Hitler’s primary appeal was to the working and lower middle classes. He actively discouraged attendance or participation by the middle class (the bourgeoisie).

 

“The political attitude of that class is marked by the sign of cowardice. It exclusively concerns itself with order and tranquility. [He might better have said “conformity” and “blind obedience to authority.”] I aimed, instead, to awaken the enthusiasm of the working-class world to my ideas.” (Table Talk, April 8, 1942.)

 

Contempt for the middle class was a recurring theme in Hitler’s writing, thinking, and private remarks.

 

The trappings of his meetings were carefully calculated to exert certain effects upon the audience.

 

Hitler personally tested the acoustics of the important Munich meeting halls, determining the best places to stand, how loudly or softly he could speak and still be heard, the atmosphere, ventilation, and tactical layout of the rooms.

 

Detailed party guidelines were drawn up pertaining to such matters, specifying among other things that a hall should always be too small, and that a third of the audience should consist of party followers.

 

The atmosphere in the halls — impressively adorned with dramatic red, white and black swastika banners — was made genial with free beer, sausages, pretzels, folk singing, and music.

 

Such measures created receptive listeners.

 

At the appropriate psychological moment, Hitler would make a dramatic entrance — sometimes late, to intensify anticipation. He would silently survey the audience for a full minute or more before beginning to speak, further heightening tension.

 

After he’d carefully gauged the mood of the crowd he started talking slowly and quietly, feeling out the audience the way an actor would, adapting his manner and speech to its needs, building emotion slowly. People sat motionless, eyes riveted upon him.

 

He possessed an actor’s ability to suddenly throw on the extra generators and become absolutely charged with energy. Before the end of his talk he had roused the people to a pitch of almost uncontrollable excitement.

 

Organized anti-White opposition, including loud heckling, hurling of heavy beer mugs stockpiled under tables as weapons, and the use of table and chair legs as clubs to beat pro-German speakers and attendees, was frequent.

 

Hitler handled this life-and-death problem for the movement by forming a protective service and, whenever possible, roughly chucking disruptors unceremoniously from the hall.

 

At a November 4, 1921 speech at the Hofbräuhaus, there were about 700 Communists in a crowd of 2,200. At a prearranged signal they attacked with fists, a hail of flying beer mugs, and chair legs. After a fierce hand-to-hand battle, Hitler’s 42 security men expelled all 700 of them from the hall, which looked as if it had been hit by a bomb.

 

The meeting organizer then leaped onto a table, shouting, “The meeting continues! The speaker has the floor!”

 

The result of this process seems to have been a sort of culling or winnowing. Hitler was not simply speaking to the choir. In contrast to the tens of thousands who came to the mass meetings, at the beginning of 1922 there were still only 6,000 registered party members.

 

Many Communists and socialists unsympathetic to the movement remained. But the organized hardcore were physically ejected as soon as they began disrupting proceedings.

 

The remaining Leftists were often hostile and continued heckling. But Hitler drew energy from such public hostility — the very social rejection that causes most Whites to shrink in fear. His powerful oratory ultimately won many Leftists to his side.

 

Hitler also sent his own people to enroll in courses in public speaking at schools organized by opposition groups. “Thanks to this,” he said, “we obtained a good insight into the arguments which would be used by those sent to heckle at our meetings, and we were thus in a position to silence them the moment they opened their mouths.” (Table Talk, April 8, 1942)

 

He scattered party members throughout his audiences with orders to interrupt his speeches along prearranged lines to suggest spontaneous public (group) approval, “and these interruptions greatly strengthened the force of my own arguments.” (Table Talk, April 8, 1942)

 

By way of analogy, consider laugh tracks on TV, or the carefully-rehearsed tone of voice and facial expressions used by newscasters to elicit specific instinctive reactions of approval or disapproval from the passive viewing audience.

 

Impassioned Oratory

 

Early on, Hitler attended the meetings of his main rivals to study their techniques. His critical judgment was that the speakers delivered their speeches “in the style of a witty newspaper article or of a scientific treatise, avoided all strong words, and here and there threw in some feeble professional joke.” (Mein Kampf)

 

Hitler, in contrast, spoke with a primitive force and unabashed emotion that set him apart from intellectuals who appealed to reason. Underlying his rhetorical theory was the Ciceronian maxim that man is moved more by passion than by reason.

 

Hitler was a daring and original speaker, according to biographer Joachim Fest. “His courage in voicing ‘forbidden’ opinions was extraordinary. Precisely that gave him the aura of manliness, of fierceness, and sovereign contempt, which befitted the image of the Great Leader.” (Hitler, 1973, p. 159)

 

“They say we’re a bunch of anti-Semitic rowdies,” Hitler proclaimed in one speech. “So we are, we want to stir up a storm! We don’t want people to sleep, but to know a thunderstorm is brewing!”

 

Oratory is characterized by a gravitational force extending beyond the ideas expressed or the specific words used to articulate them.

 

Of Hitler it has been said, “It wasn’t as though he were using words, it was as though the emotions came direct without words. There was a rawness about it, a power.” (The Fatal Attraction of Hitler, BBC TV, 1989) Such speeches are, in a sense, a form of magical art.

 

Perhaps that is why one reader of translations of portions of Hitler’s speeches said that it was “like reading lyrics from songs without the music.”

 

Fest described religious-style “awakenings” and “conversions” experienced by his listeners.

 

Kurt Luedecke, a 32-year-old businessman who later became a leading member of Hitler’s entourage, described the spell cast by Hitler’s oratory: “The intense will of the man, the passion of his sincerity seemed to flow from him into me. I experienced an exaltation that could be likened only to religious conversion.” (Fest, p. 162)

 

On Hitler’s part, the “violent physical effort” required for speaking engendered “profuse perspiration” and even weight loss.

 

His half-German, half-American WASP foreign press secretary Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl recalled his first meeting with Hitler after one such speech. Hitler’s exhaustion resembled that of “a great artist at the end of a grueling concert”; his face and hair were soaked and his starched collar wilted.

 

Hitler himself said,

 

Whenever I have to make a speech of great importance I am always soaking wet at the end, and I find I have lost four or six pounds in weight. And in Bavaria [southern Germany, including Munich, his initial political base during the early years discussed here], where, in addition to my usual mineral water, local custom insists that I drink two or three bottles of beer, I lose as much as eight pounds. (Table Talk, July 8, 1942)

 

As Scottish philosopher David Hume noted in his essay “Of Eloquence” (1742), great oratory entails unleashing restraints and taking great risks — letting go — in front of an audience. The speaker taps into something deep and true within, and lets it explode.

 

Hitler did this. As Egon Hanfstaengl, son of Ernst, who had known Hitler intimately when he was a little boy in Germany in the early 1920s, explained in 1989,

He had that ability which is needed to make people stop thinking critically and just emote. The ability derived from his readiness to throw himself totally open, to appear as it were bare and naked before his audience, to tear open his heart and display it. (Interview in The Fatal Attraction of Hitler)

 

Selected Sources

The Fatal Attraction of Hitler, BBC TV documentary, 1989.

Joachim C. Fest, Hitler, trans. from German by Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973).

Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler (New York: Praeger, 1973; pbk., Popular Library, 1973). References to the paperback edition.

Table Talk. References to the paperback edition of Hitler’s Secret Conversations, 1941–1944 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1953; pbk., New York: Signet Books, 1961).

John Toland, Adolf Hitler (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1976).

 

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Click on this text to hear Hitler explain why he took action against the JEWS - True then, True now

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. https://d1gy5epzn1e47f.cloudfront.net/file/pic/comment/2021/12/1135_1a28d0c18dc4dbe4f2d2fb2e686455b85df12791e917931739b8984b1c7d7cc5.jpg

 

“It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war in 1939. It was wanted and 

provoked solely by international statesmen either of Jewish origin or working for Jewish interests.

 Nor had I ever wished that after the appalling first World War, there would ever

be a second against either England or America.” - Adolf Hitler (April 1945). 


 

Click on this text to hear what Hitler Said On The Outbreak Of World War 2

 

 

 

Click on this text to examine SOME KEY SPEECHES OF ADOLF HITLER - COMPLETE TEXT IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN

 
 
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Hitler’s 1932 Election Campaign 'Stump Speech'
How the National Socialists Won Broad Support in Hard-Fought Contests for Votes

Foreword by Mark Weber


For Germans 1932 was a year of mass unemployment, economic paralysis, and a broken, unresponsive political system. The world economic downturn, known in the US as the Great Depression, had shattered production and business life. This was also a year of intense campaigning in four fiercely fought nationwide elections – two for the Reichstag or parliament, and a two-part presidential contest.

 

The most pressing issue in these campaigns was, of course, the economic calamity that had brought widespread misery and put millions out of work. Because the “establishment” political parties were utterly unable to get a grip on the nation’s economic ills, growing numbers of citizens turned with hope to the radical Communists or National Socialists.

 

During this final year of Germany’s liberal democratic “Weimar Republic” system, one inept administration after another tried to tackle the nation’s daunting problems. Lacking popular support or backing from a majority in the Reichstag, each President-appointed Chancellor governed only by authority of the constitution’s “emergency decree” clause.

 

In the 1932 presidential election campaign, Germany’s “establishment” parties, including the leftist Social Democrats and several “centrist” parties, supported Paul von Hindenburg – the 84-year-old incumbent who had served as Reichspräsident since 1925. His most formidable challenger was Adolf Hitler, the 43-year-old leader of the National Socialists. No candidate in the March 13 election received an outright majority, although 30 percent voted for Hitler, and 13 percent for the Communist Party leader. This set off a new round of feverish campaigning for the April 10 run-off election, in which von Hindenburg garnered 53 percent of the votes, thereby remaining President. Hitler increased his share of votes, gaining 37 percent of the total.

 

Adding to the year’s fatiguing round of electioneering were contests for provincial legislatures. In the April 24 elections in several German regions or states, the National Socialists emerged as the most popular party. The victory of Hitler’s movement was most significant in Prussia – by far the largest German Land or state, with three–fifths of the nation’s population.

 

In the fiercely contested Reichstag election of July 31, in which 84 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, the National Socialists emerged as the largest party, by far, with 37 percent of the total. In second place came the Social Democrats, with 22 percent, followed by the Communist Party with 15 percent. In the hard-fought November 6 Reichstag election, the National Socialists once again came out as Germany’s most popular party, with 33 percent of the total. The Social Democrats trailed in second place with 20 percent, followed by the Communists with 17 percent.

 

The most dedicated activists in these decisive election contests were unquestionably the supporters of Hitler’s National Socialist Party (NSDAP). In countless well organized meetings, through production and distribution of millions of posters, flyers and brochures, and in a wide range of daily, weekly and monthly Party newspapers and magazines, the movement’s legions of speakers, artists, writers and other volunteers reached out to voters in cities, towns and villages across the country. “Thanks to the extraordinary talents of its leader, the wide appeal of its propaganda, and the success of its tactics in dealing with the Mittelstand [middle class] organizations,” wrote American historian Gordon Craig, “the National Socialist party exuded strength and confidence ...”

 

A crucial factor in the party’s appeal was its emphatic call for national unity and unselfish devotion to the common good. This was unusual at the time. “In contrast to almost all of the other parties in the Weimar period,” noted Prof. Craig, “the National Socialist party did not direct its propaganda towards a single social or economic class or grouping of interests.” By conscientiously reaching out to all Germans – regardless of class, region or religious outlook – the Hitler movement became the country’s first “modern” political party.

 

Hitler also worked harder than any other political leader. He crisscrossed the country by airplane (the first politician anywhere to do so) to address large meetings, sometimes several in a single day. During 1932 he gave a total of 209 public speeches. On one day, July 27, Hitler addressed a rally of 60,000 people in Brandenburg, and then to nearly as many in Potsdam, and in the evening he spoke to 120,000 gathered in a large stadium in Berlin, while an additional 100,000 heard his voice outside on loudspeakers. On July 20 poor weather delayed his arrival by airplane and auto to address a mass rally in Stralsund, which was to begin at 9:00 in the evening. At midnight the outdoor gathering of some 20,000 people was told that Hitler would arrive at 1:30 a.m. Still they waited. It wasn’t until 2:15 in the morning that he was finally able to address the large crowd.

 

Hitler’s rare ability to present his views clearly and convincingly to both individuals and large audiences, and to win the confidence and loyalty of exceptionally talented men as devoted colleagues, were crucial to his success in building and maintaining a vast, professionally run national organization. “Among all of the prominent figures in the Weimar period,” wrote Prof. Craig of Stanford University, “he [Hitler] is the only one of whom it can be said unequivocally that he possessed political genius.”

 

Hitler has often been portrayed as a ranting demagogue who won support with simplistic slogans, empty promises and crude appeals to feelings of resentment, fear and envy. That image is not accurate. If it had corresponded to reality, the National Socialists would not have won the support of so many German voters – who were among the best informed, best educated and most discerning in the world.

 

In fact, the message of Hitler’s movement was more substantive and self-consistent than that of any other German political formation. Of the many parties that competed for votes in the 1932 elections, only the National Socialists presented a comprehensive program to tackle the economic crisis that laid out specific measures (which were later implemented after taking power).

 

The National Socialists stressed that only a new outlook that rejected narrow, sectarian self-interest and put the needs of the entire nation first would enable the German people to build a healthy new order of social stability, economic security, prosperity, and enduring well-being for all.

 

Two weeks before the July 1932 Reichstag elections, the National Socialist Party issued a phonograph record with a recorded address by its leader. Some 50,000 discs with this Hitler “stump speech,” titled “Appeal to the Nation,” were made and widely distributed. This effort was all the more needed because Germany’s government-controlled broadcasting system took care to ban Hitler’s voice from the radio.

 

This talk, which is a little more than eight minutes in length, is the only recorded address made by Hitler for the 1932 election campaign. In it he speaks emphatically but clearly, re-emphasizing points he made in many other speeches that year. He sharply criticizes the other political parties for their failure to deal with the nation’s economic woes, as well as for their narrow focus and divisive goals. Only the National Socialists, he emphasizes, are committed body and soul to the well-being of all Germans.

 

Here is my translation of the full text of Hitler’s 1932 election campaign “Appeal to the Nation”:

*   *   *   *   *   

More than 13 years have been allotted by fate to test and evaluate those who are in power today. But they themselves have handed down the most severe verdict possible by acknowledging in their own propaganda the failure of their efforts. At one time they wanted to govern Germany better in the future than in the past. Today, however, the only real result of their style of governing is for them merely to observe that Germany and the German people still live. During the days of November 1918 [when a liberal democratic republic replaced the monarchy], they solemnly pledged to lead our people, and especially the German worker, into a better economic future. Today – after they have had nearly 14 years to fulfill their promises – they are not able to cite the well-being of a single German occupational class as witness to the quality of their efforts.

 

The German farmer is impoverished. The middle class is ruined. The social hopes of many millions have been destroyed. One third of all German men and women of working age is unemployed, and thus without income. The national government, the municipalities, and the states are heavily in debt, finances across the board are in disorder, and all the treasuries are empty.

 

What more could they possibly have destroyed? The worse thing, though, is the destruction of faith in our nation, the elimination of all hope and all confidence. In 13 years they have had no success at all in mobilizing the strengths that slumber in our people. To the contrary! Because they fear an awakened nation, they have played off one group of people against another: the city against the countryside, the salaried workers against the government employees, those who work with their hands against those who work with their heads, the Bavarians against the Prussians, the Catholics against the Protestants, and so forth and vice versa.

 

The activism of our people has been used up only domestically. With regard to the outside world, all that’s left are fantasies: fantastic hopes in a conscience of cultured humanity, international law, a world conscience, ambassadorial conferences, the League of Nations, the Second International, the Third International, proletarian solidarity, and so forth – and the world has treated us accordingly.

 

Thus Germany has slowly declined, and only a lunatic can hope that the forces that brought about this decline in the first place could now bring about a resurrection. If the established political parties seriously want to save Germany, why have they not done so already? If they really wanted to save Germany, why has that not happened? If the leaders of those parties had honest intentions, then their programs must have been deficient. If, however, their programs were correct, then either their intentions were not sincere, or they were too ignorant or too weak.

 

Now, after 13 years, during which period they have destroyed everything in Germany, the time has finally arrived for their own elimination. Whether or not today’s parliamentary political parties survive is not important. What is essential, though, is to make sure that the German nation is not completely destroyed.

 

To remove these parties is therefore a duty – for in order to secure their own existence, they must again and again tear the nation apart. For years they have tried to persuade the German worker that he alone could save himself. For years the farmer was told that only his organization would help him. The middle class was to be snatched from the jaws of ruin by the middle class parties, and the economy by the parties of business. The Catholic was to seek his refuge with the Center party, and the Protestant in the Christian Socialist People’s Service. In the end even the house owners had their own political representation, just as did the tenants, the salaried workers, and the civil servants. These efforts to split up the nation into classes, walks of life, occupational groups, and religious beliefs, leading in that way, bit by bit, to a future of economic happiness have now, however, failed completely.

 

Even on the day our National Socialist movement was founded, we were already governed by the conviction that the destiny of the German individual is inseparably bound up with the destiny of the entire nation. When Germany declines, the worker will not flourish in social well-being, and neither will the entrepreneur. Nor will the farmers or the middle class be able to save themselves.

 

No, the ruin of the Reich, the decline of the nation, means the ruin and the decline of all! And no religious faction and no single German ethnic group will be able to escape sharing the same general fate.

 

Even on the day our National Socialist movement was founded, it had already long been clear to us that the proletariat would not be the victor over the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie would not be the victor over the proletariat, but rather that [in such a clash] international high finance would then ultimately be the sole victor over both. And that is what has come to pass!

 

Recognizing this decline, 13 years ago a handful of people and I organized a new movement which, in its very name [National Socialist] proclaims the new national community. There is no such thing as a socialism that does not have the power of the spirit at its disposal; and no such thing as social well-being that is not protected by, and even finds its prerequisite in, the power of a nation. And there is no such thing as a nation – and thus no such thing as nationalism – unless the army of millions who work with their brains are joined by the army of millions who work with their fists, along with the army of millions of farmers.

 

As long as nationalism and socialism march as separate ideas, they will be defeated by their united opponents. On the day when both ideas are fused together into one, they will be invincible!

 

And who will deny that, during a time when everything in Germany is breaking apart and going bad, when everything in the business world and political life is coming to a standstill or even to an end, a single organization has experienced a tremendous and wonderful upturn? With seven men I began this task of German unification 13 years ago, and today more than 13 million are standing in our ranks. However, it is not the number that counts, but their inner worth!

 

Thirteen million people of all professions and occupational groups – 13 million workers, farmers, and intellectuals; 13 million Catholics and Protestants; members of all German regions and ethnic groups – have formed an unbreakable alliance. And 13 million have recognized that the future of all lies only in the shared struggle and in the shared successes of all.

 

Millions of farmers have now realized that the important thing is not that they recognize the necessity of their own existence, but rather that it is necessary to enlighten people in other walks of life and occupational groups about the German farmer, and to win them over for him.

 

And today millions of workers likewise realize that, in spite of all the theories, their future lies not in some [Marxist] Internationale, but rather in the realization on the part of their compatriots that, without German farmers and German workers, there simply is no German strength. And millions of bourgeois intellectuals have likewise come to realize the insignificance of their own views if the masses of millions comprising the rest of the nation do not finally comprehend the importance of the German intellectual strata.

 

Thirteen years ago we National Socialists were mocked and derided. Today our opponents are no longer laughing. A faithful community of people has arisen that will gradually overcome the prejudices of class madness and the snobbery of social standing. A faithful community of people that is resolved to take up the fight for the preservation of our people, not because it is made up of Bavarians or Prussians, or people from Württemberg or Saxony, or because they are Catholics or Protestants, workers or civil servants, middle class or salaried workers, and so forth, but because they are all Germans.

 

Together with this feeling of unbreakable solidarity, mutual respect has grown, and from this respect has come understanding, and from that understanding the tremendous power that moves us all. We National Socialists therefore march into every election campaign with the single commitment that we will, the following day, once again take up our work for the inner reorganization of our national community. For we are not fighting for elective posts or ministerial positions, but rather for the German man and woman, whom we want to, and will, join together once again into an indivisible community of destiny.

 

The Almighty, Who so far has allowed us to rise from seven men to 13 million in 13 years, will further allow these 13 million to once again become a German folk. It is in this people that we believe, for this people we fight; and it is to this people that we are willing, as thousands of comrades before us, if necessary, to commit ourselves body and soul.

 

If the nation does its duty, then the day must inevitably come that restores to us a Reich in honor and freedom, work and bread!



Notes

The original text of this speech is posted at:
https://ia801006.us.archive.org/4/items/AdolfHitlerAppellAnDieNationRedeDeutsch1932/AdolfHitlerAppellAnDieNationBeforeElectionSpeech.pdf


https://archive.org/stream/AdolfHitlerAppellAnDieNationRedeDeutsch1932/AdolfHitlerAppellAnDieNationBeforeElectionSpeech_djvu.txt

 

An audio recording is posted at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCV0WJ4iwUk


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYhLt6WgEM8

 

 


 

 
 
________________________________________________________________
 
 

The battle in the midst of which Germany finds itself today is the second act of the great,

decisive struggle which will determine the future of our race, of our Reich.

 

You often hear the term balance of power these days: the balance of power in Europe. In particular of late, you will have had occasion to read that the cause for this battle lies with the threatened disruption of this balance of power in Europe.

 

Now what is the meaning of this thesis? Germany’s racial core consists of a mass of Volk of over eighty million men. Throughout the centuries, albeit in lesser numbers, this mass of Volk formed the center of gravity in Europe.

 

Over the past 300 years, this center of gravity in terms of the Volk’s mass has lost its significance in power politics.

 

At the end of the Thirty Years’ War, the political unity of this mass began to disintegrate and to evolve into a conglomerate of small, individual states.

 

With this, it lost its inner value-and, in particular, the impact in terms of power normally attributed to the center of gravity in Europe. The Peace of Munster- it established at least the vision of the political divisiveness of the German nation. Hence, it created the prerequisites for the rise of other powers to hegemony on the world stage-to a degree far beyond the numeric significance and value of these other races. Without this fragmentation of Germany, this political atomization, the rise of England as a world power over the past three hundred years would not have been conceivable. Without this, France would never have become what it became later, after overcoming its political, internal multifariousness, and what it would still like to be today. Broadly speaking, these two world powers are nothing other than the result of the elimination of the German nation as a factor in power politics. By the same token, the political impotence of the German nation remains a prerequisite to their continued existence in the future, as well. Hence, a balance of power has established itself in Europe devoid of a foundation in terms of the masses. The strongest European nation by far has rendered this exaggerated significance possible through its political fragmentation. Without this fragmentation, Germany undoubtedly would still constitute the determining factor in Europe as was the case earlier. And thus came about a state of affairs called the balance of power in Europe. Its mission is to eliminate the strongest European force as a factor in power politics by fostering its internal fragmentation.

 

For us Germans, the question arises: is a modification of this state of affairs necessary? Today, we need not reply to this any more. Its answer lies in the natural drive of all living beings. Its political answer goes back to the time when at the moment of collapse, or rather when the collapse of the Old Reich was imminent, a rebirth already became evident in the creation of a new cell, that of the Brandenburg-Prussia of the day.

 

Yet, beyond this, there is another compelling reason to seek a modification in this balance of power in Europe. The problem presents itself in the following manner to us Germans. There are two decisive elements in the life of a Volk. One the one hand, there is a variable: the Volk’s numbers; and, on the other hand, there is the Lebensraum as a given-a fact which does not change by itself. The Volk’s numbers and the Lebensraum exist interdependently and this interdependence is of fateful significance in the lives of peoples. Man lives not by theories alone. He lives not by phrases, nor does he live by programs. Man lives by what the Lebensraum at his disposal affords him in terms of foodstuffs and raw material, and by what he is then able, thanks to his industriousness, to reap from it through his work. Nonetheless, the Lebensraum is of primary importance, of course. For while a Volk of great industry may be able to fashion a bearable existence from even the most modest of Lebensraums, there will come a time when the discrepancy between the Volk’s numbers and the Lebensraum becomes too great. This then leads to a restriction of life, even to an ending of life.

 

And thus, ever since there has been a history of man, this history has consisted of nothing other than the attempt to bring into harmony the naturally increasing numbers of a Volk with the Lebensraum. This meant either to adapt the Lebensraum to the Volk’s numbers or to adapt the Volk’s numbers to the Lebensraum. These are the two ways of establishing a tolerable relationship here.

 

I will begin with the first alternative: people adapt to the Lebensraum. This can occur naturally as the insufficient Lebensraum cannot provide for people.

 

Weak peoples then begin to capitulate in the face of necessity and to abandon the foundation of their existence. This means that they start to reduce their numbers, primarily due to need.

 

There is yet another way of adapting the Volk’s numbers to the Lebensraum. It is called emigration. In both ways, Germany has lost human material of immense value throughout the centuries. In centuries past already, need had been great in the German lands. Often this has led to a virtual decimation of men. The second way robbed us of yet more German blood.

 

Throughout centuries, pressured by insufficient Lebensraum of their own, German men left their homeland and helped to build up those foreign states which now face us as enemies.

 

Another, third way was found of adapting the Volk’s numbers to the given Lebensraum. It is called: voluntary reduction of birth rates. After the first way-that of hunger-no longer appeared tolerable and the second way-that of emigration-was blockaded by the Peace Treaties of Versailles, people turned to the third way in increasing numbers. It was even hailed as a virtue to voluntarily limit the strength of one’s own Volk, to reduce the Volk’s numbers. I need not tell you where this led. In the end, the result of all these attempts was that the potential for natural selection in a people was severely curtailed.

 

And, in the end, it begins to surrender its forces to better peoples. For it is emigration above all which, like a magnet, draws the active element out of a race, a Volk, and leaves behind only the weak, the cowardly, the meek. And if such a state of affairs is allowed to persist over the centuries, then a formerly important people will slowly but surely lose its steel and turn into a weak, a cowardly mass of men, willing to accept any fate.

 

This is the first way of establishing balance between a Volk’s numbers and the Lebensraum. This way, no matter what the circumstances, will always lead to the destruction of a Volk. In the future, this will lead to a reduction of such a Volk in comparison to those peoples who choose the second way, namely, not to adapt the Volk’s numbers to the Lebensraum, but rather to adapt the Lebensraum to the Volk’s numbers. This is the way chosen by all vigorous nations of this earth. It is the natural way since Providence has placed man upon this earth and has given him this earth as his playground, as the basis for his existence. Providence has not initiated man in its designs. It has not assigned peoples certain Lebensraume. Instead Nature has placed these beings on this earth and has given them freedom. He who wants to live asserts himself.

 

He who cannot assert himself does not deserve to live. He will perish. This is an iron, yet also a just principle. The earth is not there for cowardly peoples, not for weak ones, not for lazy ones. The earth is there for him who takes it and who industriously labors upon it and thereby fashions his life. That is the will of Providence. That is why it has placed man upon this earth, along with the other beings, and has paved the way for him, has freed him to make his own decisions, to lead his own struggle for survival.

 

And should he fail in this struggle, should he become weak in asserting his existence, then Providence will not rush to his aid. Instead, it will sentence him to death. And rightly so. Other men will come. The space will not remain empty. What the one man loses, another will take. And life continues in accordance with its own eternal rhythm without consideration for the weakling.

 

The earth is a challenge cup. It is a challenge cup which passes into the hands of those peoples who deserve it, who prove themselves strong enough in their struggle for existence, who secure the basis for their own existence. It is a challenge cup which is taken from those peoples who become weak, who are not willing, at the risk of the life of one generation, to secure the life of later generations. The right to this soil is given equally to all these peoples. On this earth, no Englishman has more rights than a Frenchman, no Frenchman has more rights than a Russian, no Russian has more rights than a German, no German has more rights than an Italian, and so on. Strength (Kraft) determines right on this soil. And strength is nothing other than an expression of a healthy sense of self-assertion. Peoples who start to lose this strength are no longer healthy and therefore lose their right to this earth. And to be able to exercise this strength, which is first of all a question of will, it is necessary to create certain organizational prerequisites. Foremost amongst these is the inner unity of a Volk. In Germany, we have witnessed the long, almost tragic evolution which was necessary to lead us from inner political conflicts once more to the core not of a new philosophy of state, but to the creation of a new state.

 

The core which gave us not only political unity, but above all the foundation of ethnic unity. Hereby it created the prerequisites for the inner unity of the German nation. What has come to pass in this realm within these seven years is the greatest of chapters in German history. Not only have countless political forms, old, no longer viable structures, been broken down, but also, in the realm of society, the birth of a new Volksgemeinschaft and hence of a new German Volk became apparent. In the course of the last years, we were able to observe how the toughness and the power of resistance of this new formation passed the test. I do not doubt that it will hold its own in emerging victoriously from this greatest trial in German history. And hence out of this social and moral revolution grew the new German Volksstaat.

 

Since 1933, this new German Volksstaat has undergone change, strengthened its inner formation, through numerous acts of a lawgiving nature.

 

And thus, this Volksstaat has now begun to create the elements necessary for its external liberation. What has been attained in this area within these seven years, is one of the greatest chapters in German history. In these seven years-I feel free to avow this openly before history-we have not wasted a single month in securing that power, without possession of which a people is doomed in its search for justice on this earth.

 

Its lack has shown us how helpless a Volk is when it depends upon the insight or mercy, the compassion or goodwill of other peoples whom it must implore and for which it must beg. And thus the Greater German Reich has fashioned its own arms. And with the increases in its arms and its power, the Greater German Reich itself has been strengthened. And today, we find ourselves in the midst of a great historic conflict, the second phase in a gigantic struggle. The initial phase we once lost not because our arms were bad by themselves, rather we lost it because the leadership failed and the German Volk in its inner formation was not yet prepared to see through such a struggle, as it lacked inner cohesion and strength. I have striven to make up for this within twenty years’ time. And, so I believe, I succeeded. Whereas once the German soldier fought a lonely battle at the front, today he knows behind him the united force of a uniformly led and orientated Volk. This Volk today expects of the German soldier that he fulfill the mission of his life. The German soldier today can rest assured that the Volk standing behind him will recognize his needs and fulfill his wants.

 

And then comes the question which will plague every small skeptic, every apprehensive man, one time or another, and which might well make you ill-atease also in the most trying of hours: “Is it actually possible to win this fight?” And, from the depths of my convictions, I would like to give you the following reply. I give it to you not as a pale theoretician, not as a man who is a stranger to the demands facing you at present. I face them myself. I am acquainted with all the needs, all the worries, all the cares, and all the hardships, which you will encounter and which some of you have already encountered.

 

I have experienced them all myself. And in spite of this, after the greatest of collapses then suffered, I already immediately knew the answer to this question.

 

I found it for myself. At no moment was there any doubt in my heart that Germany would survive and that it would win this most difficult of struggles in its history.

 

Reasons for this belief lie not with some sort of fanatical hope, rather they are founded in recognition. For one, the numbers of the Volk. Even the most expert and most worthy of peoples can fail in their struggle for survival if the discrepancy of their numbers is too great and too obvious in view of the tasks faced and especially, of the forces of the environment. Antiquity furnishes us with two great, tragic examples: Sparta and Hellas. They were both doomed to failure in the end because the world in which they lived was numerically so superior to them that even the most successful of struggles was bound to tax their forces beyond measure.

 

When we look at today’s Germany in light of this consideration, then, my young friends, we recognize a fact which occasions great joy: certainly, there is a British Empire, but there are only forty-six million Englishmen in the motherland. There is a huge American state, but amongst its 130 million inhabitants, there are barely sixty-five million true Anglo-Saxons, and that’s that. The rest are Negroes, Jews, Latins, Irishmen, and Germans, and so on.


There is a huge Russian state. However, it has not even sixty million true Great Russians as its bearers. The rest consists of, in part, greatly inferior races.

 

There is also France, spanning over nine million square kilometers of earth and with more than 100 million men, but amongst them are perhaps at most thirtyseven million true Frenchmen who must uphold this structure.

 

Well, here we stand, my young friends, a state of a total of 82 million German Teutons (deutsche Germanen). At present, we are the ethnically most numerous political structure of one race which exists on this earth, with the exception of China. This fact is not new. In former times as well, the German Volk determined, thanks to the force of its numbers, Europe’s destiny.

 

And now there arises a second question, one of equal decisiveness, namely, that of the value of the Volk. For all of us know that numbers by themselves are not in the final instance decisive. And here, my young friends, we are able these days to proudly acknowledge: there is no Volk better on this earth than the German one. Believe me, in the days and months of the collapse of 1918, one thought uplifted me, put me back on my feet again, and returned to me my faith in Germany. It made me strong internally to begin and to take up this gigantic struggle. It was the conviction that even the World War had not proven us to be second class. On the contrary, it had proved us to be undoubtedly the best Volk, especially insofar as this was a question of soldierly virtues. And this is apparent again these days. Here is a Volk which in terms of numbers is the strongest state people on this earth. And beyond this, it is also the best Volk in terms of value, for this value in the end becomes apparent in the soldier. A Volk which does not cherish soldierly virtues is like straw on this earth; it will be blown away by the wind. However, a Volk which possesses as much metal as the German one needs only to develop its values and to apply these subsequently. Then no one can take its future from it.

 

There is yet another factor which must give all of us internal confidence: it is the ability of our Volk, also its economic ability. Here as well, great feats have been accomplished. The German Volk has wrought a miracle economically within these barely seven years. You all know of our great plans. They were inspired but by one thought.

 

Above all reigned the thought of the resurrection of the German Wehrmacht, the increasing independence of our economy, its freedom from exterior influences, its stability in the event of a blockade. These were the principles which moved us from day one to implement all these plans, which in the final instance found their realization in the Four-Year Plan. We have an economy in Germany today which ranks at the top of the world economy in particular as far as production in realms of vital importance to the war is concerned.

 

There is something else, too: the German organization. It is today’s organization of our Volkswesen, of our Volksgemeinschaft. Said organization which today encompasses the entire German Volk, which reaches into every home, into every village, and there again into every farmstead, into every factory, into every craftsman’s shop. There is no German who is not integrated into this gigantic organization. We have created a miracle instrument which enables us to issue a single directive and to drive it home into even the most remote hut within a few hours.

 

No Volk in the world today possesses a better form of organization than the German Volk; most do not even possess one nearly as good. A state of affairs which is accepted as a matter of course in other countries even today, we have long overcome. You need only think of the parliamentarian theatrics in these states and, as soldiers, apply this mentally to a company or a battalion.

 

You will laugh at the idea of being able to hold your own in battle with such a lot. With such peoples, you cannot score successes in the long run. And this is better, too: we are the state which has created the most profound harmony between political organization and its military implementation; the state in which soldierly principles have been applied in the buildup of the Wehrmacht and which, in turn, have already found their political translation therein. And thus we can say that between the Wehrmacht and its principles on the one hand, and the political organization and the constructive elements therein on the other hand, there exists complete harmony. To this we must add the German soldier as a warrior. His equipment-today we have the best-equipped soldier of the world in our Army and in our Luftwaffe.

 

And secondly, the German soldier and his training. When today we hear of so low-relatively low216-losses across the board, which stand in no relation to the losses which I myself had the opportunity to witness in the World War, then we owe this to the improved training of the individual soldier. But also we owe it to the leadership experienced in war, the more thorough training. Surely, today we have the best Wehrmacht there is in the world at this time.

 

And finally, and this ought to be almost at the top of the list, there is one more thing which ought to reinforce us in our belief in victory: trust in the German leadership; in the leadership on top and way down. Trust in a leadership that knows only the thought of winning this battle, which subordinates all other concerns to this, which is suffused with the fanatical will to do everything and to risk everything for success in this battle, which unlike the pitiful leadership of the World War does not stumble over threads or is unable to step across lines drawn in crayon.

 

Instead the German Volk and above all you, as soldiers and future officers, must know that at the helm of the Reich there stands a leadership which night and day knows only the one thought: to force the victory under all circumstances! And to risk everything for it. And beyond this, you must know that this leadership naturally can only accomplish what is provided for by the highest echelons of leadership. And that you yourselves form part of this total leadership. Every one of you will have to struggle with the same problems which are not spared the supreme leadership of today either. For when I look back upon the war myself, then I have not forgotten those difficult hours full of worries, the gnawing fear of death, and all those other sentiments which man experiences in face of these most horrendous stresses placed upon nerves and willpower, of physical strain. I have not forgotten these-yet, still, how easy do all the decisions of the soldier then appear to me as opposed to the decisions which one later has to take upon oneself in positions of responsible leadership.

 

How easy all of this is when it is merely a question of one’s own life as opposed to holding, in the final instance, the nation’s life and destiny in one’s hands.

 

Whatever situation you may encounter individually, never forget one thing: Every decision you make, every action you order, every stand you occupy, all this will not be any more difficult than the same decisions, the same stands, the same willpower asked of those who in other places have to bear the responsibility, and have to bear it overall. In this respect, a great community of leadership must take hold in which every one occupies his place, is ready to fulfill his mission, is ready to rejoice in taking on responsibility in the one thought: It is of no import whether the individual among us lives-what must live is our Volk! We now stand in the midst of the most decisive struggle for Germany’s entire future. Of what importance is it should the individual amongst us, every individual included, leave the stage? What is decisive is that our Volk can assert itself. And it will only then be able to assert itself when its leadership, at every instance, is willing to fanatically do everything for the one goal: To win this struggle. And believe me, my young friends, the individual man is always brave and valiant; the musketeer, he is always decent basically, he looks up to his leaders, he sees his company commander before him, his platoon leader. And let no one forget: The German is no such scoundrel (Hundsfott) that he will ever abandon his company commander. He would never do such a thing. He will follow his leader, but his leader must make it easy for him through his dedication, his daring, his courage. Such a leader will then always find a following and will chain it to himself-whatever his position may be, at the top or at the head of a group or platoon, or company. It will always be the same.

 

The result: he will love him who leads him! And even if life is wonderful and the sacrifice of life ever so hard, my young friends, many generations lived before us. That we are here today we do not owe to their peaceful existence, but to their placing at risk their own lives in the struggle. For the soil upon which we stand today was not given us by the Good Lord as a gift. It had to be gained in battle. And time and time again, there were Germans to be found who were willing to place their lives at risk in the past so that life might be given to later generations. And it is not as though placing one’s life at risk was any easier then than it is today. It was just as bitter and just as difficult.

 

When we speak of the dead of the World War, then we should never forget that every single one of these two million gave his life for the future of the nation just as this may be asked of us and of you individually at one point.

 

Another thing yet is certain: the more determined a Volk is in taking up a fight, the more ruthlessly it acts, the less the sacrifices will be! And thus, I expect of you in this era of an approaching great, world-historic decision that you shall first be valiant, courageous, and exemplary officers, that you shall be comradely and loyal not only amongst yourselves, but also with the men placed in your care. Today you have a Volk-not mercenaries, not vagrants caught along country roads. Rather Volksgenossen are entrusted to your leadership. And this you may never forget. These Volksgenossen will all the more attach themselves to you, the more they feel they can see in you true leaders of the German Volk, of the Volk in arms. Expand your horizon, for the soldier needs-beyond heroics and courage and enthusiasm-the true foundations of knowledge. Here, too, knowledge is power. Above all, apply this expertise and knowledge in the care for the Volksgenossen entrusted to you. It is because of the absolute authority this state grants you that you are obligated to carefully attend to this authority in the service of the leadership of the men entrusted to you. To be a leader means to truly care for all those with whose care one has been entrusted. Above all, be a man in the hours of great trial. Persevere and above all be persistent.

 

The great victories of world history were accorded to that party which commanded the last battalion on the battlefield, i.e. the men who knew how to carry their heads high to the last minute. It is not as though the dice fell during the first minute of any battle. It is not as though one could say in the first minute already: naturally there will be success for the one side, it will carry the victory, no one can deny it, while on the other side, there will be only destruction. Great world-historic decisions seldom look like successes from the start. Many times the struggle is a difficult one and victory appears elusive. In the end, it will bestow its favors upon him whose persistence, whose fanatical, indestructible stand makes him the more deserving one. And here we Germans can look with pride to one soldier who has entered the halls of history as an immortal.

 

If there are men who doubt success or the possibility of success, then all we can say to them is: today Germany fights as the strongest military state against a front of enemies inferior to it in terms of numbers and value. Once a man, with a state of 2.7 million, dared to attack the monarchy in the Reich of the day and, after three wars against a European coalition of over forty million men, he carried the victory in the end. His were not only victories. What was so wonderful in all this was his attitude in the most critical of situations, his attitude when he faced defeat. Everyone can suffer a defeat now and then. What is decisive is his character, how he takes it, and immediately goes on the offensive again. This, my young friends, must be instilled in your flesh and blood, and this you must instill in your soldiers: we may be defeated once perhaps, but vanquished-never! And in the end, the victory will be ours-one way or another!

 

I can look back upon a most eventful life. It was not as though this struggle for power in Germany, for the new Movement, had consisted of only victories.

 

You need only read the prophecies of my opponents. Who believed in my carrying the victory? Who believed in the certainty of the outcome of this struggle? It was a question of a great deal of persistence to overcome all these defeats, these blows, to emerge from them only to take power in the end. And in these last years as well-there have been many worries in countless realms.

 

Many setbacks. The mass of the people may well not even have realized all of this, for the leadership has learned to come to terms with these [setbacks].

 

It is one of the most uplifting tasks of leadership to allow one’s followers to mark only the victory; and to take upon oneself the entire responsibility at critical moments; to step in front of one’s followers to shield them against this responsibility.

 

And now I ask of you to be aware at every hour that in your hand lies the honor of a great Volk, the honor not only of your generation but that of generations past. At every hour, not only the eyes of millions of your living contemporaries follow you, but also the eyes of those who closed them before us upon this earth. They look upon you through the past and hence through immortality and they will seek to determine whether and to what extent you are fulfilling those duties which other men before us so gloriously fulfilled. They expect of us that posterity should have no more cause to be ashamed of us than we have cause to be ashamed of the great eras of our past. When we hold up this sacred banner of honor and hence of a sense of duty, and when we with faithful hearts follow this flag, then the goal we all pursue can be nothing other than the victory of Greater Germany!

 

_________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

 
 
 
_______________________________________________________________________
 
 
Hitler's Normal Speaking Voice
Explaining His Decision to Attack the USSR
Video

Recording, with English text translation, of Hitler speaking during a luncheon with Finnish leaders.
This is the only recording of the German leader talking at length in his normal,
conversational voice. Hitler visited Finland on June 4, 1942, to meet with that country’s
military commander, Marshal Mannerheim, President Ryti, and Prime Minister Rangell.
(Finland and Germany were World War II allies against the Soviet Union.) An engineer
of the Finnish broadcasting company YLE had placed a microphone near where the
men shared a meal in a railroad dining car, and thereby recorded a portion of their
lengthy conversation. This is the only known recording of Hitler speaking in his “normal,”
conversational voice. Here’s a portion, along with an English translation.
Hitler talks about his fateful decision to strike against the USSR. Runtime: 11:22 mins.
 
____________________________________________________________________
 

 
 
 
Hitler Answers Roosevelt

The German Leader’s Reply to the American President’s Public Challenge


Of the many speeches made by Adolf Hitler during his lifetime, certainly one of the most important

was his address of April 28, 1939. It was also very probably the most eagerly anticipated and closely

followed speech of the time, with many millions of people around the world

listening to it live on radio or reading of it the next day in newspapers.

 

American journalist and historian William L. Shirer, a harsh critic of the Third Reich who was

reporting from Europe for CBS radio at the time, later described this Hitler speech as “probably

the most brilliant oration he ever gave, certainly the greatest this writer ever heard from him.”

The address is also important as a detailed, well-organized presentation of the German leader’s

view of his country’s place in the world, and as a lucid review of his government’s foreign

policy objectives and achievements during the first six years of his administration.

 

The speech was a response to a much-publicized message to Hitler – with a similar one to Italian

leader Benito Mussolini – issued two weeks earlier by President Franklin Roosevelt. In it, the

American leader issued a provocative challenge, calling on Hitler to promise that he would no

attack 31 countries, which he named.


Franklin Roosevelt

Made public on the evening of April 14, the president’s message was given wide attention in

newspapers around the globe. Roosevelt and his inner circle anticipated that the American

public would be pleased with his seeming concern for world peace, and expected that this

much-publicized challenge would embarrass the German leader. Harold Ickes, a high-level

official in the Roosevelt administration, praised the president’s message

as “a brilliant move” that “has put both Hitler and Mussolini in a hole.”

 

Along with many other newspapers across the country, the daily Evening Star of Washington, DC,

praised Roosevelt’s initiative, declaring in an editorial that “the overwhelming majority” of

“Americans rejoice in their President’s constructive move for peace.” But not everyone was so

impressed. Many regarded the message as arrogant and potentially dangerous meddling in

foreign issues that did not involve any vital American interest, and which Roosevelt did not

adequately understand. As US historian Robert Dallek has observed, the message strengthened

the concerns of those who believed that the President was seeking to

deflect attention from persistent problems at home by meddling abroad.

 


Adolf Hitler

 

The influential Protestant journal, Christian Century, remarked that, in issuing his challenge, President Roosevelt “had taken his stand before the axis dictators like some frontier sheriff at the head of a posse.” An important Roman Catholic journal, Commonweal, regarded the message as one-sided, noting that it had ignored “the wrongs committed by post-war England and France, what they had contributed to the impoverishment of the Axis powers ...” British historian Leonard Mosley later characterized it as “ham-handed,” while German historian Joachim Fest called the message a piece of “naïve demagoguery.”

 

Because Roosevelt’s challenge had generated such broad international attention, the announcement a few days later that the German leader would respond to it in an address to a specially summoned session of the Reichstag in Berlin understandably increased interest in Hitler’s reply. Especially in the US and Europe, many people keenly anticipated the “second round” in this duel of words between two major world leaders.

 

Dramatic recent developments in Europe and growing fear of a war involving the major European powers naturally heightened interest in what Hitler would say. Some months earlier, the ethnically German “Sudetenland” region of Czechoslovakia had been incorporated into the German Reich – which now also included Austria – in accord with the Munich Agreement of the “Four Power” leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy. Then, just a few weeks before Roosevelt sent his message to Hitler, Germany had surprised the world by suddenly taking control of the Czech lands, adding them to the Reich as the “Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia.” Especially in the US, influential newspapers, magazines and radio commentators portrayed Hitler’s takeover of Prague as an act of brazen aggression, one that proved that the German leader was so untrustworthy and insatiable that he must be regarded as a grave threat to peace and security. The German government’s recent demand that Poland permit Danzig to return to the Reich was widely cited as further evidence that Hitler threatened world peace.

 

Under these circumstances, Hitler naturally devoted considerable attention in his address to those topical issues and fears. But while it was meant for a global audience and readership, the German leader directed his speech above all to his own people.

 

Unlike Franklin Roosevelt, Hitler did not rely on speechwriters. The words he spoke were his own. To be sure, in preparing this address and similarly detailed speeches, he turned to various government officials and agencies for the statistics and other specific data he intended to cite. However, the ideas, arguments, turns of phrase, tone and structure of this address were entirely Hitler’s. In preparing the text of an important address, he would typically dictate a first draft to one or more secretaries, and then make revisions and changes until a satisfactory final text was produced – a process that could require considerable time and attention.

 

Broadcast on radio stations around the world, Hitler’s two-hour Reichstag address of Friday afternoon, April 28, was heard by millions of listeners. In the US, all three major radio networks broadcast it live, with running English-language translation. The next day, Hitler’s speech was the leading news item on the front page of every major American daily newspaper, and many published lengthy excerpts from it. “Interest in the speech surpasses anything so far known,” the German embassy in Washington reported to Berlin.

 

Astute observers realized that Roosevelt had greatly underestimated the shrewdness and rhetorical skill of the German leader. “Hitler had all the better of the argument,” remarked US Senator Hiram Johnson of California, a prominent “progressive” lawmaker. “Roosevelt put his chin out and got a resounding whack.” US Senator Gerald Nye commented simply, “He asked for it.”

 

James MacGregor Burns, a prominent American historian and an ardent admirer of Franklin Roosevelt, later wrote of the exchange: “While neither the President nor [US Secretary of State] Hull had been optimistic about the outcome, in his first widely publicized encounter with Hitler, Roosevelt had come off a clear second best.” John Toland, another well-regarded US historian, called Hitler’s response “a remarkable display of mental gymnastics.” The German leader “took up the President’s message point by point, demolishing each like a schoolmaster.”

 

In his carefully prepared address, the German leader largely succeeded in portraying the American president’s initiative as a pretentious and impertinent maneuver – one that, moreover, demonstrated a simplistic and superficial view of geopolitical realities, a skewed sense of justice, and a deficient understanding of history.

 

Although it was given prominent play in the US media, the attitude of the American press toward Hitler’s speech was generally dismissive and disparaging. Typical was the view of the Evening Star of Washington, DC. In an editorial, the influential daily denigrated the address as “crafty and cunning,” while New York City’s Brooklyn Eagle called it “rambling, confused.” Along with most US newspapers, the two dailies ignored the German leader’s plea for justice, equity and even-handedness, and the specifics of his detailed critique of Roosevelt’s message. Even more unfriendly than the attitude expressed in the editorial columns of the country’s newspapers was the snide, belittling and often viciously hostile portrayal of Hitler in editorial cartoons. By early 1939, most of the American media had adopted a scathing and belligerent attitude toward National Socialist Germany and its leader. Hitler was routinely portrayed as so malign and duplicitous that anything he said was simply not worthy of respectful or serious consideration.

 

This attitude was noted, for example, by the Polish ambassador in Washington, Jerzy Potocki. In a confidential dispatch of January 12, 1939, he reported to the Foreign Ministry in Warsaw:

“The feeling now prevailing in the United States is marked by a growing hatred of fascism and, above all, of Chancellor Hitler and everything connected with Nazism. Propaganda is mostly in the hands of the Jews who control almost 100 percent radio, film, daily and periodical press. Although this propaganda is extremely coarse and presents Germany as black as possible ... this propaganda is nevertheless extremely effective since the public here is completely ignorant and knows nothing of the situation in Europe. Right now, most Americans regard Chancellor Hitler and Nazism as the greatest evil and greatest danger threatening the world ... Besides this propaganda, a war psychosis is being artificially created. The American people are told that peace in Europe is hanging only by a thread and that war is unavoidable. At the same time the American people are unequivocally told that in case of a world war, America must also take an active part in order to defend the slogans of freedom and democracy in the world.”

 

To most discerning observers, it was obvious that the American president’s message was more a publicity stunt than a serious initiative for peace. For one thing, he addressed this appeal only to the leaders of Germany and Italy. He made no similar request to leaders in any other country. And given America’s own record of military intervention in foreign countries, it’s difficult to accept that Roosevelt himself actually believed his assertion that the only valid or justifiable reason why any country should go to war would be in “the cause of self-evident home defense.” Over the years, US forces have attacked numerous countries that presented no clear or present danger to the US, or any threat to vital American interests.

 

Roosevelt’s listing of countries that supposedly might be threatened by Germany is all the more remarkable given how events unfolded over the next few years. Finland, the first country on the President’s list, was in fact attacked seven months later – not by Germany, but rather by the Soviet Union. During World War II, Finland was an ally of Hitler’s Germany, while the Soviet Union was an important military partner of the US. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were the next countries on the President’s list. These three Baltic nations were subjugated by force in 1940 – not by German troops, but by the Red Army. Later during World War II, President Roosevelt accepted Stalin’s brutal incorporation of those three countries into the USSR.

 

Poland was also on the President’s list. But when Soviet troops attacked Poland from the East in September 1939, neither Britain, France nor the US did anything to counter the aggression. After Soviet forces took control of all of Poland in 1944-1945, the US accepted the Soviet subjugation of the country.

 

Britain and France were naturally also on Roosevelt’s list. But just a few months after his message to Hitler, those two countries went to war against Germany – with the leaders in London and Paris citing the German attack against Poland as their reason for the move. At least two countries on Roosevelt’s list – Syria and Palestine – were hardly in danger of attack by Germany, especially given that, as Hitler pointed out, they were already under military subjugation by “democratic” countries.

 

The President’s mention of Palestine in his message prompted a particularly sharp rejoinder by Hitler about British oppression of that country. Palestinians were enraged not only by Britain’s uninvited rule, he noted, but also by the support given by British leaders to the Jewish “interlopers” who were trying to impose Zionist control in their country. Roosevelt either knew nothing about the actual status of Palestine, or his supposed concern for its freedom was a sham. He was, of course, hardly the only American politician to support Zionist subjugation of Palestine while at the same time proclaiming his love of freedom and democracy.

 

Iran, the final country listed in the President’s message, was later invaded – but not by Germany. When British and Soviet forces attacked and occupied that neutral country in August 1941, President Roosevelt not only rejected a plea for help from Iran’s government, he justified and supported the brutal takeover of that country.

 

The cause of world peace, Roosevelt said in his message to Hitler, would be “greatly advanced” if world leaders were to provide “a frank statement relating to the present and future policy of governments.” This was sheer hypocrisy. During this period – months before the outbreak of war in Europe in September 1939 – the President was himself covertly pressing for conflict against Germany.

 

At a secret meeting seven months earlier, he had told the British ambassador, Ronald Lindsay, that if Britain and France “would find themselves forced to war” against Germany, the United States would ultimately also join. Roosevelt went on to explain during their White House meeting on September 19, 1938, that it would require some clever maneuvering to make good on this pledge. The President went on to urge the envoy to persuade his government in London to impose an economic embargo against Germany with the hope and expectation that the German leadership would respond by openly going to war against Britain, which would then enable the US to join the anticipated war against Germany with a minimum of protest from the American public.

 

In November 1938, the Polish ambassador to Washington reported to Warsaw that William Bullitt, a high-level US diplomat and a particularly trusted colleague of President Roosevelt, had assured him that the US would “undoubtedly” enter a war against Germany, “but only after Great Britain and France had made the first move.” In January 1939, Polish ambassador Potocki reported on another confidential conversation with Bullitt, who assured him that the United States would be prepared “to intervene actively on the side of Britain and France in case of war” against Germany. Bullitt went on to confide that the US was ready to “place its whole wealth of money and raw materials at their disposal.”

 

A few weeks later, the Polish ambassador in Paris, Jules Lukasiewicz, confidentially informed Warsaw of a talk with William Bullitt, the US ambassador to France. The American envoy had assured him that if hostilities should break out, one could “foresee right from the beginning the participation of the United States in the war on the side of France and Britain.”

 

These pledges were kept secret because the President and his close advisors knew that American public opinion strongly opposed US involvement in another war in Europe. In that more trusting era, Americans believed their president to be sincere in his public assurances of the government’s peaceful intentions, and trusted his promise to keep their country out of any war that might break out in Europe.

 

The historic April 1939 exchange between Roosevelt and Hitler is important in helping to better understand the foreign policy outlook and goals of those two influential twentieth-century leaders, and how very differently each viewed recent history and his own country’s role in the world.

 

Their exchange was highlighted in the US government’s widely-viewed World War II “Why We Fight” film series. It showed Hitler reading the list of countries that allegedly were threatened with attack or invasion by Germany, to which the Reichstag audience responded – at first with silence and then with laughter. The narrator told viewers that Hitler treated the President’s public challenge as a “huge joke.” In fact, the audience laughed because they quite understandably regarded as ludicrous the notion that German forces might attack or invade such countries as Spain, Ireland, Syria or Iran.

 

Far from regarding it as a “huge joke,” Hitler made an effort to respond to every point of the President’s telegram. Roosevelt, for his part, declined to reply to Hitler’s detailed address, much less respond to the German leader’s specific points. Roosevelt ignored even Hitler’s appeal to the US government to fulfill the solemn pledges it had made twenty years earlier to Germany and the world.

 

In the months that followed, American policy toward Germany became increasingly hostile. In 1940 and 1941 the President sought ever more openly to persuade the skeptical American public to support Britain and Soviet Russia in war against Germany. The worsening US-German relations culminated in Hitler’s Reichstag address of December 11, 1941 – four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the mutual declarations of war of those two countries – in which he reviewed the record of America’s increasingly overt acts of aggression against Germany. After stating that his patience with US belligerency and lawlessness had finally reached an end, Hitler announced that his nation was now joining Japan in war against the United States.

 

Here below is the full text of President Roosevelt’s April 1939 message to Hitler, followed by a specially prepared translation of the complete text of the Reichstag address by the German leader in response. Endnotes have been added to provide context and to help to clarify unfamiliar references. A list of items for suggested further reading is also provided.

-- Mark Weber, October 2020


President Roosevelt’s Message

The following is the text of the message sent by President Roosevelt to Chancellor Adolf Hitler on April 14, 1939

 

You realize, I am sure, that throughout the world hundreds of millions of human beings are living today in constant fear of a new war or even a series of wars.

 

The existence of this fear — and the possibility of such a conflict-are of definite concern to the people of the United States for whom I speak, as they must also be to the peoples of the other nations of the entire Western Hemisphere. All of them know that any major war, even if it were to be confined to other continents, must bear heavily on them during its continuance and also for generations to come.

 

Because of the fact that after the acute tension in which the world has been living during the past few weeks there would seem to be at least a momentary relaxation — because no troops are at this moment on the march — this may be an opportune moment for me to send you this message.

 

On a previous occasion I have addressed you in behalf of the settlement of political, economic, and social problems by peaceful methods and without resort to arms.

 

But the tide of events seems to have reverted to the threat of arms. If such threats continue, it seems inevitable that much of the world must become involved in common ruin. All the world, victor nations, vanquished nations, and neutral nations, will suffer.

 

I refuse to believe that the world is, of necessity, such a prisoner of destiny. On the contrary, it is clear that the leaders of great nations have it in their power to liberate their peoples from the disaster that impends. It is equally clear that in their own minds and in their own hearts the peoples themselves desire that their fears be ended.

 

It is, however, unfortunately necessary to take cognizance of recent facts.

 

Three nations in Europe and one in Africa have seen their independent existence terminated. A vast territory in another independent Nation of the Far East has been occupied by a neighboring State. Reports, which we trust are not true, insist that further acts of aggression are contemplated against still other independent nations. Plainly the world is moving toward the moment when this situation must end in catastrophe unless a more rational way of guiding events is found.

 

You have repeatedly asserted that you and the German people have no desire for war. If this is true there need be no war.

 

Nothing can persuade the peoples of the earth that any governing power has any right or need to inflict the consequences of war on its own or any other people save in the cause of self-evident home defense.

 

In making this statement we as Americans speak not through selfishness or fear or weakness. If we speak now it is with the voice of strength and with friendship for mankind. It is still clear to me that international problems can be solved at the council table.

 

It is therefore no answer to the plea for peaceful discussion for one side to plead that unless they receive assurances beforehand that the verdict will be theirs, they will not lay aside their arms. In conference rooms, as in courts, it is necessary that both sides enter upon the discussion in good faith, assuming that substantial justice will accrue to both; and it is customary and necessary that they leave their arms outside the room where they confer.

 

I am convinced that the cause of world peace would be greatly advanced if the nations of the world were to obtain a frank statement relating to the present and future policy of governments.

 

Because the United States, as one of the Nations of the Western Hemisphere, is not involved in the immediate controversies which have arisen in Europe, I trust that you may be willing to make such a statement of policy to me as head of a Nation far removed from Europe in order that I, acting only with the responsibility and obligation of a friendly intermediary, may communicate such declaration to other nations now apprehensive as to the course which the policy of your government may take.

 

Are you willing to give assurance that your armed forces will not attack or invade the territory or possessions of the following independent nations: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain and Ireland, France, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Russia, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, Iraq, the Arabias, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Iran.

 

Such an assurance clearly must apply not only to the present day but also to a future sufficiently long to give every opportunity to work by peaceful methods for a more permanent peace. I therefore suggest that you construe the word “future” to apply to a minimum period of assured non-aggression – ten years at the least, a quarter of a century, if we dare look that far ahead.

 

If such assurance is given by your government, I shall immediately transmit it to the governments of the nations I have named and I shall simultaneously inquire whether, as I am reasonably sure, each of the nations enumerated will in turn give like assurance for transmission to you.

 

Reciprocal assurances such as I have outlined will bring to the world an immediate measure of relief.

 

I propose that if it is given, two essential problems shall promptly be discussed in the resulting peaceful surroundings, and in those discussions the government of the United States will gladly take part.

 

The discussions which I have in mind relate to the most effective and immediate manner through which the peoples of the world can obtain progressive relief from the crushing burden of armament which is each day bringing them more closely to the brink of economic disaster.

 

Simultaneously the government of the United States would be prepared to take part in discussions looking toward the most practical manner of opening up avenues of international trade to the end that every Nation of the earth may be enabled to buy and sell on equal terms in the world market as well as to possess assurance of obtaining the materials and products of peaceful economic life.

At the same time, those governments other than the United States which are directly interested could undertake such political discussions as they may consider necessary or desirable.

 

We recognize complex world problems which affect all humanity but we know that study and discussion of them must be held in an atmosphere of peace. Such an atmosphere of peace cannot exist if negotiations are overshadowed by the threat of force or by the fear of war.

 

I think you will not misunderstand the spirit of frankness in which I send you this message. Heads of great governments in this hour are literally responsible for the fate of humanity in the coming years. They cannot fail to hear the prayers of their peoples to be protected from the foreseeable chaos of war. History will hold them accountable for the lives and the happiness of all – even unto the least.

 

I hope that your answer will make it possible for humanity to lose fear and regain security for many years to come.

 

A similar message is being addressed to the Chief of the Italian government.

 


Chancellor Hitler’s Speech

The following is the text of the address delivered by Chancellor Hitler on April 28, 1939,

at a specially summoned session of the German Reichstag.

 

Members of the German Reichstag!

 

The President of the United States of America has addressed a telegram to me, the curious contents of which you are already familiar. Before I, the addressee, actually received this document, the rest of the world had already been informed of it by radio and newspaper reports. Numerous commentaries in the organs of the democratic world press had already happily enlightened us as to the fact that this telegram was a tactically clever document, designed to impose upon the states, in which the people govern, the responsibility for the warlike measures adopted by the plutocratic countries.

 

Therefore I decided to summon the German Reichstag so that you, as Reichstag deputies, would have the opportunity to be the first to hear my answer, and of either confirming or rejecting it. In addition, I also considered it appropriate to act in accord with the method of procedure chosen by President Roosevelt and, for my part, to inform the rest of the world of my answer in our own way. I also wish to use this occasion to give expression to the feelings with which the tremendous historical happenings of the month of March inspire me. I can express my deepest feelings only in the form of humble thanks to Providence which called upon me, and permitted me, once an unknown soldier of the [world] war [of 1914-1918], to rise to be the Leader of my people, so dear to me.

 

Providence showed me the way to free our people from the depths of its misery without bloodshed and to lead it upward once again. Providence granted that I might fulfill my life’s task to raise my German people from of the depths of defeat and to liberate it from the bonds of the most outrageous dictate of all times. That alone has been the goal of my efforts.

 

Since the day on which I entered political life, I have lived for no other idea than that of winning back the freedom of the German nation, restoring the power and strength of the Reich, overcoming the internal discord of our people, repairing its isolation from the rest of the world, and safeguarding the maintenance of its independent economic and political life.

 

I have intended only to restore that which others once broke by force. I have desired only to make good that which satanic malice or human stupidity destroyed or ruined.  I have, therefore, taken no step that violated the rights of others, but have only restored the right that was violated twenty years ago.

 

The Greater German Reich today contains no territory that was not from the earliest times a part of this Reich, bound up with it, or subject to its sovereignty. Long before an American continent had been discovered – not to say settled – by white people, this Reich existed, not merely with its present extent, but with many additional regions and provinces that have since been lost.

 

Twenty-one years ago, when the bloodshed of the [First World] war came to an end, millions of minds were filled with the ardent hope that a peace of reason and justice would reward and bless the nations that were hostages of the fearful scourge of the [First] World War. I say “reward,” for all those men and women – whatever the conclusions arrived at by historians – bore no responsibility for these fearful happenings. In some countries there may still be politicians who even at that time might be considered responsible for that most horrible slaughter of all times, but the great mass of fighting soldiers of every country and nation were by no means guilty, but rather deserving of pity.

 


Hitler is saluted at this special session of the German Reichstag on April 28, 1939. On this occasion, the Chancellor delivered a widely anticipated address in response to a much-publicized challenge by American president Franklin Roosevelt. Millions around the world listened on radio to Hitler’s two hour speech as he delivered it. In the US, all three major radio networks broadcast it live, with running English-language translation. The next day, it was the leading news item on the front page of every major American daily newspaper.


As you know, I myself had never played a part in politics before the war. Like millions of others, I only carried out such duties as I was called upon to fulfill as a decent citizen and soldier. It was therefore with an absolutely clear conscience that I was able to take up the cause of the freedom and future of my people, both during and after the war. And I can therefore speak in the name of millions and millions of others who are equally blameless when I declare that all those, who had only fought for their nation in loyal fulfillment of their duty, were entitled to a peace of reason and justice, so that humanity might at last set to work to make good by joint effort the losses which all had suffered.

 

But those millions were cheated of that peace; for not only did the German people, and the other peoples fighting on our side suffer through the peace treaties, but these treaties had a destructive impact on the victors as well.

 

That politics should be controlled by men who had not themselves fought in the war was recognized for the first time as a misfortune. Hatred was unknown to the soldiers, but not to those elderly politicians who had carefully preserved their own precious lives from the horrors of war, and who now descended upon humanity in the guise of insane spirits of revenge.

 

Hatred, malice and unreason were the intellectual forebears of the dictated Treaty of Versailles. / 1  Territories and states with a history going back a thousand years were arbitrarily broken up and dissolved. People who have belonged together since time immemorial were torn asunder; economic conditions of life were ignored, while the peoples themselves were dealt with as victors and vanquished, as masters possessing all rights or as slaves possessing none.

 

That document of Versailles has fortunately been set down in black and white for generations to come, for otherwise it would have been regarded in the future as the grotesque product of a wild and corrupt imagination. Nearly 115 million people were robbed of their right of self-determination, not by victorious soldiers, but by mad politicians, and were arbitrarily removed from ancient communities and made part of new ones without any consideration of blood, ancestry, common sense, or the economic conditions of life.

 

The results were appalling. Though at that time the statesmen were able to destroy a great many things, there was one factor which could not be eliminated; the gigantic mass of people living in Central Europe, crowded together in a confined area, can only secure their daily bread by the maximum of labor and resultant order.

 

But what did these statesmen of the so-called democratic empires know of these problems? A flock of utterly stupid and ignorant people was let loose on humanity. In areas in which about 140 people per square kilometer have to gain a livelihood, they simply destroyed the order that had been built up over nearly two thousand years of historical development, and created disorder, without themselves being capable or desirous of solving the problems confronting the communal life of these people – for which, moreover, as dictators of the new world order, they had at that time assumed responsibility.

 

However, when this new world order turned out to be a catastrophe, the democratic peace dictators, both American and European, were so cowardly that none of them ventured to take the responsibility for what occurred. Each put the blame on the others, thus endeavoring to save himself from the judgment of history. However, the people who were mistreated by their hatred and lack of reason were, unfortunately, not in a position to join them in that exit.

 

It is impossible to enumerate the stages of our own people’s sufferings. Robbed of the whole of its colonial possessions, / 2  deprived of all its financial resources, plundered by so-called reparations, and thus impoverished, our nation was driven into the darkest period of its national misfortune. And it should be noted that this was not National Socialist Germany, but democratic Germany / 3  – the Germany which was weak enough to trust even for a single moment the promises of democratic statesmen.

 

The resulting misery and continuing impoverishment began to bring our nation to political despair. Even decent and industrious people of Central Europe looked to the possibility of deliverance in the complete destruction of the old order, which to them represented a curse.

Jewish parasites, on the one hand, plundered the nation ruthlessly and, on the other hand, incited the people, reduced as it was to misery. As the misfortune of our nation became the aim and object of that race, it was possible to breed among the growing army of unemployed suitable elements for the Bolshevik revolution.

 

The decay of political order and the confusion of public opinion by an irresponsible Jewish press led to ever stronger shocks to economic life, and consequently to increasing misery and to greater readiness to accept subversive Bolshevik ideas. The army of the Jewish world revolution, as the army of unemployed was called, finally rose to almost seven million.

 

Germany had never before known such conditions. In the area in which this great people and the old Habsburg states belonging to it lived, economic life, despite all the difficulties of the struggle for existence involved by the excessive density of population, had not become more uncertain in the course of time but, on the contrary, more and more secure.

 

Industriousness and diligence, great thrift, and a love of scrupulous order, though they did not enable the people in this territory to accumulate excessive riches, did at any rate insure them against abject misery. The results of the wretched peace forced upon them by the democratic dictators were thus all the more terrible for these people, who were condemned at Versailles. Today we know the reason for this frightful outcome of the [First] World War.

 

Primarily, it was the greed for spoils. That which seldom pays in private life, could, they believed, when enlarged a million-fold, be represented to mankind as a profitable experiment. If large nations were plundered and the utmost squeezed out of them, it would then be possible to live a life of carefree idleness. Such was the opinion of these economic dilettantes.

 

To that end, first of all, the states themselves had to be dismembered. Germany had to be deprived of her colonial possessions, although, they were without any value to the imperial democracies; the most important [German] regions of natural resources had to be invaded and – if necessary – placed under the influence of the democracies; and above all, the  unfortunate victims of that democratic mistreatment of nations and people had to be prevented from ever recovering, let alone rising against their oppressors.

 

Thus was concocted the satanic plan to burden generations with the curse of those dictates. For 60, 70, or 100 years, Germany was to pay sums so exorbitant that the question of how they were actually to be raised must forever remain a mystery. To raise such sums in gold, in foreign currency, or by way of regular payments in kind, would have been absolutely impossible without the bedazzled collectors of this tribute being ruined as well.

 

As a matter of fact, these democratic peace dictators basically destroyed the world economy with their Versailles madness. / 4  Their senseless dismemberment of peoples and states led to the destruction of common production and trade interests which had become well established in the course of hundreds of years, thereby forcing the development of autarchic tendencies, and with it the destruction of the previous general conditions of the world economy.

 

Twenty years ago, when I signed my name in the book of political life as the seventh member of the then German Workers Party / 5  in Munich, I saw the impact of those signs of decay all around me. The worst of it – as I have already emphasized – was the utter despair of the masses that resulted therefrom, the disappearance among the educated classes of all confidence in human reason, let alone in a sense of justice, and a predominance of brutal selfishness among all such egotistically inclined creatures.

 

The extent to which, in the course of what is now twenty years, I have been able to mold a nation from such chaotic disorganization into an organic whole and to establish a new order, is already part of German history.

 

What I wish to make clear today, by way of introduction, is above all the goals of my political outlook and their realization with regard to foreign policy.

 

One of the most shameful acts of oppression ever committed is the dismemberment of the German nation and the political disintegration, provided for in the Dictate of Versailles, of the area in which it had, after all, lived for thousands of years.

 

I have never, my Reichstag deputies, left any doubt that in point of fact it is scarcely possible anywhere in Europe to arrive at an entirely satisfactory harmony of state and ethnic boundaries that would be satisfactory to everyone concerned. On the one hand, the migration of peoples that gradually came to a standstill during the last few centuries, and on the other, the development of large communities, have brought about a situation which, whatever way they look at it, will necessarily be considered unsatisfactory in in some way or other by those concerned. It was, however, precisely the way in which these ethnic-national and political developments were gradually stabilized in the last century that led many to cling to the hope that in the end a compromise would be found between respect for the national life of the various European peoples and the recognition of established political structures – a compromise by which, without destroying the political order in Europe and with it the existing economic basis, nationalities could nevertheless be preserved.

 

Those hopes were destroyed by the [First] World War. The peace dictate of Versailles did justice neither to the one principle nor to the other. Neither the right of self-determination was respected, nor was consideration given to the political, let alone the economic necessities and conditions, for European development. Nevertheless, I have never denied that – as I have already emphasized – there would have to be limits even to a revision of the Treaty of Versailles. And I have always said so with the utmost frankness – not for any tactical reasons, but from my innermost conviction. As the national leader of the German people, I have never left any doubt that, wherever the higher interests of the European community are at stake, specific national interests must, if necessary, be relegated to second place.

 

And – as I have already emphasized – this is not for tactical reasons, for I have never left any doubt that I am absolutely in earnest in this attitude. With regard to many territories that might possibly be disputed, I have, therefore, come to final decisions, which I have proclaimed not only to the outside world, but also to my own people, and I have seen to it that those decisions are respected.

 

I have not, as France did in 1870-1871, / 6  described the cession of Alsace-Lorraine as intolerable for the future. Instead, I here made a distinction between the Saar territory and these two former Reich provinces. And I have never changed my attitude, nor will I ever do so. I have not allowed this attitude to be modified or prejudiced inside the country on any occasion, either in the press or in any other way. The return of the Saar territory / 7  has done away with all territorial problems in Europe between France and Germany. I have, however, always regarded it as regrettable that French statesmen have taken that attitude for granted. That’s not the way to look at the matter. It was not because of fear of France that I expressed this attitude. As a former soldier, I see no reason whatsoever for any such fear. Moreover, as regards the Saar territory I made it quite clear that we would not countenance any refusal to return it to Germany.

 

No, I have confirmed this attitude toward France as an expression of appreciation of the need to attain peace in Europe, instead of sowing the seed of continual uncertainty and even tension by making unlimited demands and continually asking for revision. If this tension has nevertheless now arisen, the responsibility does not lie with Germany but with those international elements that systematically promote such tension in order to serve their capitalist interests.

 

I have made binding declarations to a large number of states. None of those states can complain that even a trace of a demand contrary thereto has ever been made of them by Germany. No Scandinavian statesman, for example, can claim that a request has ever been put to him by the German government or by German public opinion that is incompatible with the sovereignty or integrity of his country. 

 

I was pleased that a number of European states availed themselves of these declarations by the German government to express and emphasize their desire, as well, for absolute neutrality. This applies to Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, and so forth. I have already mentioned France. I need not mention Italy, with which we are united in the deepest and closest friendship, nor Hungary and Yugoslavia, with whom, as neighbors, our relations are fortunately of the friendliest.

 

Furthermore, I have left no doubt from the first moment of my political activity that there existed other circumstances that represent so mean and gross an outrage of the right of self-determination of our people that we can never accept or endorse them. I have never written a single line or made a single speech displaying a different attitude towards the states just mentioned. Moreover, with reference to the other cases, I have never written a single line or made a single speech in which I have expressed any attitude contrary to my actions.

 

One. Austria, the oldest eastern march [Ostmark] of the German people, was once the buttress of the German Nation on the south-east of the Reich. The Germans of that country are descended from settlers from all the German tribes, even though the Bavarian tribe contributed the major portion. Later this Ostmark became the foundation of a centuries-old imperial realm, with Vienna as the capital of the German Reich of that period.

 

That German Reich was finally broken up in the course of a gradual dissolution by Napoleon, the Corsican, but continued to exist as a German federation, and not so long ago fought and suffered in the greatest war of all time as a political entity that was the expression of the national feelings of the people, even if it was no longer one united state. I myself am a child of that Ostmark.

 

Not only was the German Reich beaten down and Austria broken up into its component parts by the criminals of Versailles, but Germans were also forbidden to acknowledge that community to which they had declared their adherence for more than a thousand years. I have always regarded the elimination of this state of affairs as the greatest and most sacred task of my life. I have never failed to proclaim this determination, and I have always been resolved to realize these ideas that haunted me day and night.

 

I would have sinned against my call by Providence had I failed in my own endeavor to lead my native country and my German people of the Ostmark back to the Reich, / 8  and thus to the national community of the German people. In doing so, moreover, I have erased the most disgraceful page of the Treaty of Versailles. I have established the right of self-determination once again, and have done away with the democratic countries’ oppression of seven and a half million Germans. I have lifted the ban that prevented them from voting on their own fate, and carried through the historic referendum. The result was not only what I had expected, but also precisely what had been anticipated by the Versailles democratic oppressors of nations. For why else had they forbidden a referendum on the question of Union [Anschluss

 

Two. Bohemia and Moravia. When in the course of the migrations of peoples Germanic tribes began, for reasons inexplicable to us, to migrate out of the territory that today is Bohemia and Moravia, a foreign Slavic people made its way into this territory, and made a place for itself amongst the remaining Germans. Since that time the area occupied by this Slavic people has been enclosed in the form of a horseshoe by Germans.

 

From an economic point of view an independent existence is, in the long run, impossible for these lands except in the context of a close relationship with the German nation and the German economy. But apart from that, nearly four million Germans lived in this territory of Bohemia and Moravia. A policy of national annihilation that set in, particularly after the Treaty of Versailles, under pressure of the Czech majority, combined, too, with economic conditions and the rising tide of distress, led to some emigration of those German, so that the Germans left in the territory were reduced to approximately 3,700,000. The population of the fringe of the territory is uniformly German, but there are also large German linguistic enclaves in the interior.

 

The Czech nation is in its origin foreign to us, but in the thousand years in which the two peoples have lived side by side, Czech culture has been significantly formed and molded by German influences. The Czech economy is the result of its connection with the greater German economic system. The capital of this country [Prague] was for a time a German imperial city, and it has the oldest German university. / 9   Numerous cathedrals, city halls, and residences of nobles and citizens alike bear witness to the German cultural influence.

 

The Czech people itself has in the course of centuries alternated between close and more distant relations with the German people. Every close contact resulted in a period in which both the German and the Czech nations flourished; every estrangement was calamitous in its consequences.

 

We are familiar with the merits and values of the German nation, but the Czech nation, with the sum total of its skill and ability, its industry, its diligence, its love of its native soil, and of its own national heritage, also deserves our respect. In fact, there were periods when this mutual respect for the qualities of the other nation was a matter of course.

 

The democratic peacemakers of Versailles can take the credit for having assigned to the Czech people the special role of a satellite state, which could be used against Germany. For this purpose they arbitrarily adjudicated foreign national property to the Czech state, which was utterly incapable of survival on the strength of the Czech national unit alone. That is, they did violence to other nationalities in order to secure a basis for a state that was to be a latent threat to the German nation in Central Europe.

 

For this state [Czechoslovakia], in which the so-called predominant national element was actually in the minority, could be maintained only by means of a brutal violation of the national units that made up the majority of the population. / 10  This violation was possible only in so far as protection and assistance were granted by the European democracies. This assistance could naturally be expected only on condition that this state was prepared loyally to adopt and play the role which had been assigned to at birth. But the purpose of this role was none other than to prevent the consolidation of Central Europe, to provide a bridge into Europe for Bolshevik aggression, and above all to act as a mercenary of the European democracies against Germany.

 

Everything then followed automatically. The more this state tried to fulfill the task it had been set, the greater was the resistance put up by the national minorities. And the greater the resistance, the more necessary it became to resort to oppression. This inevitable heightening of the inner contradictions led in its turn to an increased dependence on the European democratic founders and benefactors of the state, for they alone were in a position to maintain in the long run the economic existence of this unnatural and artificial creation. Germany was primarily interested in one thing only, namely, to liberate the nearly four million Germans in this country from their intolerable situation, and to make it possible for their return to their home country and to the thousand-year-old Reich.

 

It was only natural that this problem immediately brought up all the other aspects of the nationalities problem. It was also natural that the withdrawal of the different national groups would deprive what was left of the state of all capacity to survive – a fact of which the founders of the state had been well aware when they planned it at Versailles. It was for this very reason that they had decided to do violence on the other minorities, and forced these against their will to become part of this amateurishly constructed state.

 

I have, moreover, never left any doubt about my opinion and attitude on this matter. It is true that, as long as Germany herself was powerless and defenseless, this oppression of almost four million Germans could be carried out without the Reich offering any practical resistance. However, only a child in politics could have believed that the German nation would remain forever in the condition that it was in 1919. Only as long as the international traitors, supported from abroad, held the control of the German state, could one be sure of these disgraceful conditions being patiently tolerated. From the moment when, after the victory of National Socialism, these traitors had to transfer their domicile to the place from where they had received their subsidies, the solution of this problem was only a question of time. Moreover, this was exclusively a matter involving the nationalities concerned, and not one concerning Western Europe.

 

It was certainly understandable that Western Europe was interested in the artificial state that had been created for its interests. But that the nations surrounding this state should regard those interests as a determining factor for them was a false conclusion, which some may perhaps have regretted. In so far as those interests involved only the financial establishment of that state, Germany would have had no objection. But those financial interests were, in the final analysis, also entirely subordinate to the power-political goals of the democracies.

 

The financial assistance given too this state was guided by a single consideration, namely creation of a state armed to the teeth that could be a valuable bastion extending into the German Reich, which could constitute a basis for military operations in connection with invasions of the Reich from the west, or at any rate serve as an air base.

 

What was expected from this state is shown most clearly by the observation of the French Air Minister, M. Pierre Cot, who calmly stated / 11  that the function of this state in case of any conflict was to be an air base for the landing and taking off of bombers, from which it would be possible to destroy the most important German industrial centers in a few hours. It is, therefore, understandable that the German government for its part decided to destroy this air base for bombers. It did not come to this decision out of hatred of the Czech people. Quite the contrary. For in the course of the thousand years during which the German and Czech peoples have lived together, there were often periods of close cooperation lasting hundreds of years, interrupted, to be sure, by only short periods of tension. In such periods of tension the passions of the people struggling with each other on their ethnic front lines can very easily dim the sense of justice, and thus give a false general picture. That’s a feature of every war. Only during the long epochs of living together in harmony did the two peoples agree that they were both entitled to make a sacred claim for regard and respect for their nationality.

 

In these years of struggle my own attitude towards the Czech people has been solely confined to the guardianship of national and Reich interests, combined with feelings of respect for the Czech people. One thing is certain however. Even if the democratic midwives of this state had succeeded in attaining their ultimate goal, the German Reich would certainly not have been destroyed, although we might have sustained heavy losses. No, the Czech people, by reason of its limited size and its position, would presumably have had to endure much more terrible, and indeed – I am convinced – catastrophic consequences.

 

I am happy that it has proved possible, even if to the annoyance of democratic interests, to prevent such a catastrophe in Central Europe, thanks to our own moderation and also to the good judgment of the Czech people. That which the best and wisest Czechs have struggled for decades to attain, is as a matter of course granted to this people in the National Socialist German Reich – namely, the right to their own nationality and the right to foster this nationality and to revive it. National Socialist Germany has no notion of ever betraying the ethnic-racial principles of which we are proud. They are beneficial not only to the German nation, but to the Czech people as well. What we demand is the recognition of a historical necessity and of an economic exigency in which we all find ourselves. When I announced the solution of this problem in the Reichstag on February 22, 1938, I was convinced that I was obeying the necessity of a Central European situation.

 

Even in March 1938, I still believed that by means of a gradual evolution it might prove possible to solve the problem of minorities in this state and, at one time or another, by means of mutual cooperation to arrive at a common understanding that would be advantageous to all interests concerned, politically as well as economically.

 

It was only after Mr. Benes, who was completely in the hands of his democratic international financiers, turned the problem into a military one and unleashed a wave of suppression over the Germans, while at the same time attempting by that mobilization of which you all know, / 12  to inflict an international defeat on the German state, and to damage its prestige, that it became clear to me that a solution by those means was no longer possible. For the false report at that time of a German mobilization was quite obviously inspired from abroad and suggested to the Czechs in order to cause the German Reich such a loss of prestige.

 

I do not need to repeat again that in May of the past year Germany had not mobilized one single man, although we were all of the opinion that the very fate of Mr. Schuschnigg / 13  should have shown all others the advisability of working for mutual understanding by means of a more just treatment of national minorities.

 

I for my part was at any rate prepared to attempt this kind of peaceful development with patience, though, if need be, the process might last some years. However, it was exactly such a peaceful solution that was a thorn in the flesh of the agitators in the democracies.

 

They hate us Germans and would prefer to eradicate us completely. What do the Czechs mean to them? They are nothing but means to an end. And what do they care for the fate of that small and valiant nation? What concern to they have for the lives of hundreds of thousands of brave soldiers who would have been sacrificed for their policy?

 

These Western European peace-mongers were not concerned to work for peace but to cause bloodshed so as in that way to set the nations against one another and thus cause still more blood to flow. For this reason they invented the story of German mobilization and misled Prague public opinion with it. It was intended to provide an excuse for the Czech mobilization; and then by this means they hoped to be able to exert the desired military pressure on the elections in Sudeten Germany / 14  which could no longer be avoided.

 

In their view there remained only two alternatives for Germany: Either to accept this Czech mobilization and with it a  disgraceful blow to her prestige, or to settle accounts with Czechoslovakia. This would have meant a bloody war, perhaps entailing the mobilization of the peoples of Western Europe, who had no interest in these matters, thereby involving them in the inevitable bloodlust and immersing humanity in a new catastrophe in which some would have the honor of losing their lives and others the pleasure of making war profits.

 

You are acquainted, gentlemen, with the decisions I quickly made at the time:

 

1. To solve this question and, what’s more, by October 2, 1938, at the latest.

 

2. To prepare this solution by all the means required to leave no doubt that any attempt at intervention would be met by the united force of the whole nation.

 

It was then that I decreed and ordered the strengthening of our western fortifications. / 15  By September 25, 1938, they were already in such a condition that their defensive strength was thirty to forty times greater than that of the old “Siegfried Line” of the [First World] War. They are now mostly completed, and right now are being extended with new defense lines outside of Aachen and Saarbrücken, which I ordered later. These, too, are very largely ready for defense. Considering the scale of these, the greatest fortifications ever constructed, the German nation can feel perfectly assured that no power in this world will ever succeed in breaking through that front.

 

When the first provocative attempt at utilizing the Czech mobilization had failed to produce the desired result, the second phase began, in which the motives underlying a question that really concerned Central Europe alone, became all the more obvious.

 

If the cry of “Never another Munich” is raised in the world today, this simply confirms the fact that those  warmongers regarded the peaceful solution of the problem to be the most pernicious thing that ever happened. They are sorry no blood was shed – not their blood, to be sure – for these agitators are, of course, never to be found where shots are being fired, but rather where money is being made. No, it would be the blood of many nameless soldiers!

 

Moreover, there would have been no need for the Munich Conference, / 16  for that conference was only made possible by the fact that the countries which had at first incited those concerned to resist at all costs, were compelled later on, when the situation pressed for a solution in one way or another, to try to secure for themselves a more or less respectable retreat; for without Munich – that is to say, without the interference of the countries of Western Europe – a solution of the entire problem, if it had grown so acute at all, would very likely have been the easiest thing in the world.

 

The Munich decision led to the following results:

 

One. The return to the Reich of the most essential parts of the [ethnic] German border settlements in Bohemia and Moravia. / 17

 

Two. The keeping open of the possibility of a solution of the other problems of that state – that is, a return and separation, respectively, of the existing Hungarian and Slovak [ethnic] minorities;

 

Three. The guarantee question still remained open. As far as Germany and Italy were concerned, a guarantee of [the continued existence of] that state [Czechoslovakia] had, from the outset, been made dependent upon the consent of all interested parties bordering on that state – that is to say, contingent on the actual solution of problems concerning the parties mentioned, which were still unsolved.

 

The following problems were still left open:

 

1. The return of the Magyar [ethnically Hungarian] districts to Hungary;
2. The return of the [ethnically] Polish districts to Poland;
3. The solution of the Slovak question;
4. The solution of the [ethnic] Ukrainian question.

 

As you know, the negotiations between Hungary and Czechoslovakia had scarcely begun when both the Czechoslovakian and the Hungarian negotiators made a request to Germany and Italy, a country that stands side by side with Germany, to act as arbitrators in determining the new borders between Slovakia, the Carpatho-Ukraine and Hungary. / 18  The countries concerned did not avail themselves of the opportunity of appealing to the Four Powers. On the contrary, they expressly renounced that opportunity – that is, they declined it. And that was quite understandable. All the people living in this area desired peace and quiet. Italy and Germany were prepared to answer the call. Neither Britain nor France raised any objection to this arrangement, even though it constituted a formal departure from the Munich Agreement. Nor could they have done so. It would have been madness for Paris or London to have protested against an action on the part of Germany or Italy, which had been undertaken solely at the request of the countries concerned.

 

The arbitration decision arrived at by Germany and Italy proved – as always happens in such cases – entirely satisfactory to neither party. From the outset the difficulty was that it had to be accepted voluntarily by both [affected] parties. As the arbitration decision was being put into effect, the two states quickly raised strong objections after having accepted it. Hungary, prompted by both general and specific interests, demanded the Carpatho-Ukraine region, / 19  while Poland demanded a common border with Hungary. It was clear that, under such circumstances, even the remnant of the state that Versailles had brought into being was doomed.

 

In fact, perhaps only a single country was interested in the preservation of the earlier situation, and that was Romania. The man best authorized to speak on behalf of that country told me personally how desirable it would be to have a direct connection with Germany, perhaps by way of Ukraine and Slovakia. I mention this as an indication of the feeling of being menaced by Germany that the Romanian government – according to American clairvoyants – was supposed to be suffering.

 

It was now clear that Germany could not undertake the task of permanently opposing a development, much less to fight to maintain a state of affairs, for which we would never have made ourselves responsible. Thus, the stage had been reached at which I decided to make a declaration in the name of the German government, to the effect that we had no intention of any longer incurring any further reproach by opposing the common wishes of Poland and Hungary with regard to their borders, simply in order to keep open a road of approach for Germany to Romania.

 

Since, moreover, the Czech government resorted once more to its old methods, and Slovakia also gave expression to its desire for independence, / 20  the further maintenance of the state was now out of the question. Czechoslovakia as constructed at Versailles had had its day. It collapsed not because Germany desired its breakup, but because in the long run it is impossible to create and sustain artificial states at the conference table, for they are incapable of survival. / 21  A few days before the dissolution of that state, in response to an inquiry by Britain and France regarding a guarantee [of the existence of Czechoslovakia], Germany therefore refused to give such a guarantee, because all the conditions for it laid down at Munich no longer existed.

 

On the contrary, after the entire structure of the state had begun to break up and had already practically dissolved, the German government also finally decided to intervene. It did so only in fulfillment of an obvious duty. In that regard, the following should be noted: On the occasion of the first visit to Munich of the Czech Foreign Minister, Mr. Chvalkovsky, / 22  the German government plainly expressed its views on the future of Czechoslovakia. I myself assured Mr. Chvalkovsky on that occasion that provided that the large [ethnic] German minority remaining in Czechia was fairly treated, and provided that a general settlement throughout the state were achieved, we would pledge a supportive attitude on Germany’s part, and would assuredly place no obstacles in the way of the state.

 

But I also made it clear beyond all doubt that if Czechia was to take any steps in line with the policies of the former president, Dr. Benes, Germany would not put up with any developments along such lines, but would nip them in the bud. I also pointed out at the same time that the maintenance of such a tremendous military arsenal in Central Europe for no reason or purpose could only be regarded is a source of danger.

 

Later developments proved how justified my warning had been. A continually rising tide of underground propaganda and a gradual tendency of Czech newspapers to relapse into their old ways made it obvious even to a simpleton that the old state of affairs would soon be restored. The danger of a military conflict was all the greater as there was always the possibility that some madman might gain control of those vast stores of war material. This involved the danger of explosions of unforeseeable extent.

 

As a proof of this, I am constrained, gentlemen, to give you an idea of the truly gigantic extent of this international storehouse of explosives in Central Europe.

 

Since the occupation of this territory, / 23   the following items have been taken over and secured: Air Force: airplanes, 1582; anti-aircraft guns, 501. Army: guns, light and heavy, 2175; trench mortars, 785; tanks, 469; machine guns, 43,876; pistols, 114,000; rifles, 1,090,000. Infantry munitions: more than 1,000,000,000 rounds; Artillery and gas munitions: more than 3,000,000 rounds; All kinds of other war implements, such as, bridge-building equipment, aircraft detectors, searchlights, distance measuring instruments, motor vehicles and special motor vehicles – in large quantities.

 

I believe that it’s a blessing for millions and millions that, thanks to the last-minute insight of responsible men on the other side, I succeeded in averting such an explosion, and found a solution that, I am convinced, has finally eliminated this problem as a source of danger in Central Europe. The contention that this solution is contrary to the Munich Agreement can neither be justified not supported. Under no circumstances could that Agreement be regarded as final, because it referred itself to other problems that required solution, and which would have to be solved.

 

We cannot justly be reproached for the fact that the parties concerned – and this is the key point – did not turn to the Four Powers, but only to Italy and Germany, / 24   nor for the fact that the state as such finally collapsed of its own accord, and that consequently Czechoslovakia ceased to exist. It was, however, entirely understandable that, long after ethnographic principles had been violated, Germany should take its own measures to protect her thousand-year-old interests, which are not only political but also economic in their nature.

 

The future will show whether the solution that Germany has found is right or wrong. One thing is certain, however, namely that this solution is not subject to British supervision or criticism. For Bohemia and Moravia, as the remnants of former Czechoslovakia, have nothing more to do with the Munich Agreement. Just as British measures, say in Ireland, / 25  whether they be right or wrong, are not subject to German supervision or criticism, the same principle holds good as well for these old German Electorates.

 

I entirely fail to understand how the agreement reached between Mr. Chamberlain and myself at Munich  / 26   can apply in this case, for the case of Czechoslovakia was dealt with at the Munich Four Power Conference as far as it could be settled at all at that time. Beyond that, it was only provided that if the interested parties should fail to come to an agreement, they would be entitled to appeal to the Four Powers, who had agreed that in such an eventuality to meet for further consultation after the expiration of three months. However, those interested parties did not appeal to the Four Powers at all, but only to Germany and Italy. That this was fully justified, moreover, is proven by the fact that neither Britain nor France have raised any objections to it, but rather they themselves accepted the arbitration decision made by Germany and Italy.

 

No, the agreement reached between Mr. Chamberlain and myself had nothing to do with this problem, but solely with questions concerning relations between Britain and Germany. This is clearly shown by the fact that such questions are to be dealt with in the future in the spirit of the Munich Agreement and of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement / 27   – that is, in a friendly spirit by way of consultation. If, however, that agreement were to be applied to every future German activity of a political nature, Britain, too, should not take any step – whether in Palestine or elsewhere – without first consulting Germany. It is obvious that we do not expect that; likewise, we reject any similar expectation of us. If Mr. Chamberlain now concludes from this that the Munich Agreement has become invalid because we have broken it, I will note that view and draw the necessary conclusions.

 

During the whole of my political activity I have always stood for the idea of a close friendship and cooperation between Germany and Britain. In my movement I found countless others of like mind. Perhaps they joined me because of my attitude in this regard. This desire for Anglo-German friendship and cooperation conforms not merely to sentiments based on the [similar] heritage of our two peoples, but also on my realization of the importance of the existence of the British Empire for the whole of humankind.

 

I have never left any doubt of my belief that the existence of this empire is an inestimable factor of value for the whole of human culture and economic life. By whatever means Great Britain has acquired her colonial territories – and I know that they were those of force and often brutality – nevertheless I am well aware that no other empire has ever come into being in any other way, and that, in the final analysis and from a historical perspective, it is not so much the methods that are taken into account as success, and not the success of the methods as such, but rather the general good that those methods produce.

 

Now, there is no doubt that the Anglo-Saxon people has accomplished immense colonizing work in the world. For this work I have sincere admiration. The thought of destroying that labor seemed and still seems to me, from the higher point of view of humanity, as nothing but a manifestation of human wanton destructiveness. Yet, my sincere respect for this achievement does not mean that I will neglect to secure the life of my own people.

 

I regard it as impossible to achieve a lasting friendship between the German and the Anglo-Saxon peoples if the other side does not recognize that just as the preservation of the global British empire is regarded by Britons as a vital purpose and goal, so likewise do Germans regard the freedom and preservation of the German Reich. A genuine lasting friendship between these two nations is conceivable only on a basis of mutual respect.

 

The British people rule a great global empire. They built up this empire at a time when the German people were internally weak. Germany had once been a great empire. At one time she ruled the Occident. In bloody wars and religious conflicts, and as a result of internal political divisions, that empire declined in power and greatness and finally fell into a deep sleep. But when that old Reich appeared to have reached its end, the seeds of its rebirth were springing up. From Brandenburg and Prussia there arose a new Germany, the Second Reich, and out of it has at last grown the German People’s Reich.

 

I also hope that all the British understand that we do not possess the slightest feeling of inferiority to Britons. Our historical past is too tremendous for that Britain has given the world many great men, and Germany no less. The severe struggle to maintain the life of our people has, in the course of three centuries, cost a sacrifice in lives that far exceeds that which other peoples have had to make to maintain their existence.

 

If Germany, a country that was forever being attacked, was not able to hold on to her possessions, but was compelled to sacrifice many of her provinces, that was due solely to her political maldevelopment and the impotence that resulted from it. That condition has now been overcome. Therefore, we Germans do not feel in the least inferior to the British nation. Our self-esteem is just as great as that of an Englishman. The history of our people over almost two thousand years provides events and accomplishments enough to fill us with justifiable pride.

 

Now, if Britain cannot understand our point of view, thinking perchance that she may regard Germany as a vassal state, then our affection and friendship have indeed been offered in vain. We shall not despair or lose heart on that account, but – relying on the consciousness of our own strength and on the strength of our friends – we shall find ways and means to secure our independence without impairing our dignity.

 

I have noted the statement of the British Prime Minister to the effect that he is unable to put any trust in German assurances. / 28   Under these circumstances I regard it as a matter of course that we should no longer expect him or the British people to accept a situation that has become onerous to them and which is sustainable only on the basis of mutual confidence.

 

When Germany became National Socialist / 29  and thus paved the way for her national resurrection, in pursuance of my unswerving policy of friendship with Britain, of my own accord I made a proposal for a voluntary restriction of German naval armaments. / 30  That restriction was, however, based on one condition, namely the will and the conviction that a war between Britain and Germany would never again be possible. That will and that conviction I still hold today.

 

Now, however, I am compelled to state that the policy of Britain, both unofficially and officially, permits no doubt that such a conviction is no longer shared in London, and that, on the contrary, the opinion prevails there that no matter in what conflict Germany might one day be entangled, Great Britain will always have to stand against Germany. Thus war against Germany is more or less taken for granted there.

 

I most profoundly regret such a development, for the only claim I have ever made and shall continue to make of Britain is for the return of our colonies. But I always made it very clear that this would never become a cause of military conflict. I have always held that the British, for whom those colonies are of no value, would one day understand the German situation, and would then value German friendship higher than the possession of territories that, while yielding no real profit whatever to them, are of vital importance for Germany.

Apart from that, however, I have never advanced a claim that might in any way have interfered with British interests, or that might become a danger to the Empire, and thus might mean any harm for Britain. I have always made sure that such demands as have been made have always been closely connected with Germany’s vital territory, and with the inalienable property of the German nation.

 

Now that Britain, both in the press and officially, now expresses the view that Germany should be opposed under all circumstances, and confirms this through the well-known policy of encirclement, the basis for the [1935] Naval Treaty has been removed. I have therefore resolved to send today a communication to that effect to the British government.

 

This is to us not a matter of practical material importance – for I still hope that we shall be able to avoid an armaments race with Britain – but rather a matter of self-respect. If the British government, however, wishes to enter once more into negotiations with Germany on this problem, no one would be happier than I at the prospect of being able, after all, to come to a clear and straightforward understanding. Moreover, I know my people, and I rely on them. We do not want anything that did not formerly belong to us, and no state will ever be robbed by us of its property; but anyone who believes that he is able to attack Germany will find himself confronted with a measure of power and resistance compared with which that of 1914 was negligible.

 

In connection with that I wish to speak here and now of that matter that was chosen as the starting-point for the new campaign against the Reich by those same circles that caused the mobilization of Czechoslovakia. I have already assured you, gentlemen, at the beginning of my speech, that never, either in the case of Austria or in the case of Czechoslovakia, have I adopted any attitude in my political life that is not compatible with events that have now happened. I therefore pointed out in connection with the problem of the Memel Germans that this question, if it was not solved by Lithuania itself in a dignified and generous manner, would one day have to be raised by Germany.

 

You know that the Memel territory was also once torn from the Reich quite arbitrarily by the Dictate of Versailles and that finally, in the year 1923 – that is to say, in the midst of a period of complete peace –  that territory was occupied by Lithuania, and thus more or less confiscated. The fate of the Germans has since then been sheer martyrdom.

 

In the course of reincorporating Bohemia and Moravia within the framework of the German Reich it was also possible for me to come to an agreement with the Lithuanian government that allowed the return of that territory to Germany without any act of violence and without shedding blood. / 31   In this instance as well, I have not demanded one square mile more than we formerly possessed, but which had been stolen from us.

 

This means, therefore, only that a territory has returned to the German Reich which had been torn from us by the madmen who dictated peace at Versailles. But this solution, I am convinced, will only prove advantageous with regard to relations between Germany and Lithuania. That’s because Germany, as our attitude has proved, has no other interest than to live in peace and friendship with that country, and to establish and foster economic relations with it.

 

In that connection I wish to make one point perfectly clear. The significance of economic agreements with Germany lies not only in the fact that Germany is able as an exporter to meet almost all industrial needs, but also that, being a very large consumer, it is at the same time also a purchaser of numerous products which alone enables other countries to participate in international trade at all.

 

We are interested not only in maintaining those economic markets, but even more in fostering them, because the existence of our people is to a large extent dependent on them. So-called democratic statesmen regard it as a great political achievement to exclude a nation from its markets, for example, by boycott, presumably in order to starve it out. I need not tell you that any nation would assuredly rather fight than starve under such circumstances.

 

As far as Germany is concerned, it is in any case determined not to allow certain economically important markets to be stolen from it by threats or brutal intervention. And that’s not only for our own sake, but it’s also in the interest of our trading partners. Here, as in every business relationship, dependence is not one-sided but mutual.

 

How often do we have the pleasure of reading in amateurish articles on economic affairs in the newspapers of the democracies that Germany, because it maintains close economic relations with a country, makes that country dependent upon her. This is utterly absurd Jewish nonsense. For if Germany supplies an agrarian country today with machines and receives foodstuffs in payment, the Reich as a consumer of foodstuffs is at least as dependent, if not more dependent, on the agrarian country as the latter is dependent on us, from whom it receives industrial products in payment.

 

Germany regards the Baltic states as among its most important trade partners. For that reason it is in our interest that these countries should lead an independent, orderly national life of their own. In our view, that’s a prerequisite for the internal economic development that is in turn the condition upon which the exchange of goods depends. I am, therefore, happy that we have been able to dispose also of the point of dispute between Lithuania and Germany. That removes the only obstacle in the way of a policy of friendship, which can prove its worth – as I am convinced it will – not in mere political phrases but in practical economic measures.

 

It was assuredly once more quite a blow to the democratic world that there was no bloodshed – that 175,000 Germans were able to return to the homeland which they loved above all else without a few hundred thousand others having to be shot for it. This deeply grieved the apostles of humanitarianism. It was, therefore, no wonder that they immediately began to look for new possibilities for once again bringing about a thorough disturbance of the European atmosphere. And so, as in the case of Czechoslovakia, they again resorted to the assertion that Germany was taking military measures, and that it was supposed to be mobilizing. That mobilization was said to be directed against Poland.

 

I want to say something about German-Polish relations. In this case as well, the Peace Treaty of Versailles – of course, intentionally – wounded Germany most severely. The peculiar way in which the Corridor, giving Poland access to the sea, was marked out, was meant above all to prevent for all time the establishment of an understanding between Poland and Germany. This, as I have already emphasized, is perhaps the most troublesome of all Germany’s problems.

 

Nevertheless, I have never ceased to uphold the view that the necessity of a free access to the [Baltic] sea for the Polish state cannot be ignored. That is a general principle, equally valid for this case. Nations that Providence has destined or, if you will, condemned, to live side by side, would be well advised not to make life still harder for each other by artificial and unnecessary means. The late Marshal Pilsudski, who was of the same opinion, was therefore prepared to go into the question of clarifying the atmosphere of German-Polish relations and finally to conclude an agreement / 32   whereby Germany and Poland expressed their intention of renouncing war altogether as a means of settling the questions which concerned them both.

 

That agreement contained one single exception, which was in effect a concession to Poland. It was laid down that the pacts of mutual assistance already entered into by Poland – this applied to a pact with France – should not be affected by the agreement. But it was obvious that this could apply only to the pact of mutual assistance already concluded beforehand, and not to whatever new pacts might be concluded in the future. It is a fact that the German-Polish agreement resulted in a remarkable lessening of tension in Europe. Nevertheless, there remained one question open between Germany and Poland which sooner or later, quite naturally, would have to be solved – the question of the German city of Danzig. / 33 

 

Danzig is a German city and wishes to belong to Germany. On the other hand this city has contracts with Poland that, admittedly, were forced upon it by the dictators of the Peace of Versailles. Moreover, since the League of Nations, formerly the greatest trouble maker, is now represented by a High Commissioner – incidentally a man of extraordinary tact – the problem of Danzig must in any case come up for discussion, at any rate before that calamitous League gradually reaches its end.

 

I regarded the peaceful settlement of this problem as a further contribution to the ultimate easing of tension in Europe. For the easing of tensions cannot be achieved through the agitation of insane warmongers, but only through the removal of the real elements of danger. After the problem of Danzig had already been discussed several times some months ago, I made a concrete offer to the Polish government. I now make this offer known to you, gentlemen, and you yourselves may judge whether this offer did not represent the greatest concession imaginable in the interests of European peace.

 

As I have already pointed out, I have always seen the necessity of an access to the sea for that country and have consequently taken that necessity into consideration. I am not a democratic statesman, but a National Socialist and a realist. I considered it necessary, however, to make it clear to the government in Warsaw that, just as they desire access to the sea, so Germany needs access to her province in the East. / 34

 

Now these are all difficult problems. It is not Germany that is responsible for them, however, but rather the jugglers of Versailles who, either in their malice or their thoughtlessness, placed a hundred explosive charges round about in Europe, all equipped with lighted fuses that would be difficult to extinguish.

 

These problems cannot be solved with old-fashioned ideas. I think rather that we should adopt new methods. Poland’s access to the sea by way of the Corridor on the one hand, and a German route through the Corridor on the other, have no military importance whatsoever. Their importance is exclusively psychological and economic. To attach military importance to a traffic route of this kind, would be to show oneself completely ignorant of military affairs.

 

Consequently, I have caused the following proposals to be submitted to the Polish government:

 

1. Danzig to return as a Free State into the framework of the German Reich.

2. Germany to obtain a route through the Corridor and a railway line for herself with

the same extra-territorial status for Germany as the Corridor itself has for Poland.

 

In return, Germany is prepared:

1 . To recognize all Polish economic rights in Danzig.

2. To insure Poland of a free harbor in Danzig of any size desired, with completely free access.

3. To accept at the same time the present boundaries between Germany and Poland, and to regard them as final.

4. To conclude a twenty-five-year non-aggression treaty with Poland, a treaty

therefore which would extend far beyond the duration of my own life; and

5. To enter into a guarantee of the independence of the Slovak state by Germany, Poland and

Hungary jointly – which means in practice, renunciation of any exclusive German hegemony in this territory.

 

The Polish government has rejected my offer and has declared itself prepared only

1. To negotiate concerning the question of a substitute for the Commissioner of the League of Nations, and

2. To consider easing restrictions on [German non-stop] transit traffic through the Corridor.

 

This incomprehensible attitude of the Polish government was a matter of deep regret to me. But that’s not all. The worst is that Poland, like Czechoslovakia a year ago, under the pressure of an international campaign of lies, now believes that it must call up troops, even though Germany has not called up a single man, and had no thought of taking any measures against Poland.

 

As I have said, this is highly regrettable. Posterity will one day decide whether it was really right to refuse this proposal of mine. As I have also said, it was an endeavor on my part to solve, by a compromise that is truly unique, a question intimately affecting the German people – and to solve it to the advantage of both countries. I am convinced that this solution would not have meant any giving, but only getting, on the part of Poland, for there should be no shadow of doubt that Danzig never will become Polish.

 

Germany’s intention to attack was a sheer invention of the international press. This, as you know, led to an offer of so-called guarantees and to an obligation of the Polish government for mutual assistance. Under certain circumstances Poland would also be compelled by this to take military action against Germany in the event of a conflict between Germany and any other power, if such conflict in turn involved Britain.

 

This obligation is contrary to the agreement I made some time ago with Marshal Pilsudski, considering that in that agreement reference is made exclusively to existing obligations, which meant at that time the obligations of Poland towards France, of which we were aware. The subsequent extension of these obligations is contrary to the terms of the German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact.

 

Under these circumstances I would not have entered into that pact. For what can be the value of concluding non-aggression pacts if one partner makes a number of exceptions in the execution of them? The alternatives are either collective security, which is nothing but collective insecurity and continuous danger of war, or clear cut agreements that exclude fundamentally any use of arms between the contracting parties. I, therefore, regard the agreement that Marshal Pilsudski and I once concluded as having been unilaterally infringed by Poland and therefore voided.

 

I have sent a communication to that effect to the Polish government. However, I can only repeat at this point that my decision does not constitute a modification in principle of my attitude with regard to the problems I have just mentioned. Should the Polish government wish to make fresh contractual arrangement determining its relations with Germany, I can  only welcome such an idea, provided, of course, that such an arrangement is based on absolutely clear obligations binding both parties equally. Germany is perfectly willing at any time to undertake such obligations, and also to fulfill them.

 

If these things have brought about the outbreak of fresh unrest in Europe during the last few weeks, it is the well-known propaganda of international warmongers that is solely responsible for it. This propaganda conducted by numerous organs of the democratic states endeavors, by constantly building up nervous tension, and by inventing continual rumors, to make Europe ripe for a catastrophe – a catastrophe by which it is hoped to bring about what has not yet been achieved, namely, the Bolshevik destruction of European civilization.

 

The hate of these mischief makers is all the more readily understandable because they were deprived of one of the most critical danger spots in Europe, thanks to the heroism of one man and his nation, and – I may say – thanks also to Italian and German volunteers. In recent weeks Germany has witnessed the victory of Nationalist Spain with the most fervent sympathy and rejoicing. When I resolved to answer the plea of General Franco to approve assistance from National Socialist Germany in countering the international support of the Bolshevik incendiaries, that step of Germany’s was outrageously misrepresented and vilified by those same international agitators.

 

At the time it was claimed that Germany intended to establish herself in Spain, and that we were considering seizing Spanish colonies; they even invented the infamous lie of the landing of 20,000 soldiers in Morocco. In short, nothing was left undone to cast doubt on the idealism of our support and the support of Italy in an effort to find material for renewed warmongering.

In a few weeks from now, the victorious hero of Nationalist Spain will celebrate his festive entry into the capital of his country. The Spanish people will acclaim him as their deliverer from unspeakable horrors and as the liberator from bands of incendiaries, of whom it is estimated that they have more than 775,000 human lives on their conscience, by executions and murders alone. The inhabitants of whole villages and towns were literally butchered while their benevolent patrons, the democratic humanitarian apostles of Western Europe and America, remained silent.

 

In this, his triumphal procession, the volunteers of our German legion will march, together with their Italian comrades, in the ranks of the valiant Spanish soldiers. It is our hope to welcome them home soon afterwards. The German nation will then know how bravely its own sons too have played their part on that soil, in the struggle for the freedom of a noble people. It was a struggle for the salvation of European civilization, for if the subhuman forces of Bolshevism had proven victorious in Spain, they might well have spread across the whole of Europe.

 

Hence the hatred of those who are disappointed that Europe did not once more go up in fire and flames. For this very reason they are doubly anxious to miss no opportunity of sowing the seeds of mistrust among the nations and stirring up elsewhere the war atmosphere that they so much desire. Some of the lying statements fabricated in the past few weeks by these international warmongers and published in numerous newspapers are just as childish as they are malicious. The first result  – apart from serving the internal political purposes of the democratic governments – is the spreading of a nervous hysteria which even makes the landing of Martians seem possible in the land of unlimited possibilities. / 35  The real purpose, however, is to prepare public opinion to regard the British encirclement policy as necessary and, consequently, to support it, should the worst come to the worst.

 

The German people, on the other hand, can go about their business with perfect tranquility. Their frontiers are guarded by the best army in the history of Germany. The sky is protected by the most powerful air fleet, and our coasts are rendered unassailable by any enemy power. In the west, the strongest defensive work of all times has been built.

 

But the decisive factors are the unity of the German nation as a whole, the confidence of all Germans in one another, and in their fighting forces and – if I may say so – the faith of all in their leadership.

 

But the trust of the people and their leadership in our friends is no less. Foremost among these is the state which is closest to us in every respect as a result of the common destinies that unite us. This year Fascist Italy has once again shown the fullest understanding for Germany’s just interests. No one should be surprised if we, for our part, have the same feelings for Italy’s vital needs. The bond that unites these two peoples cannot be severed. All attempts to cast doubt on this are laughable. In any case, this is best confirmed by an article that appeared a few days ago in a leading democratic newspaper, which stated that it should no longer be considered possible to separate Italy and Germany in order to destroy them separately.

Thus the German government fully understands and appreciates the justice of the action taken by its Italian friend in Albania and has, therefore, welcomed it. Yes, it is not only the right, but also the duty of Fascism to secure for Italy, in the area unquestionably allotted to her by nature and history, the maintenance of an order that is obviously the only basis and security for a really flourishing human civilization.

 

After all, there can be just as little room for doubt in the rest of the world concerning the civilizing work of Fascism as there is about that of National Socialism. In both instances indisputable facts stand in contradistinction to the unfounded fibbing and unproved claims of the other side. Fostering ever closer ties between Germany, Italy and Japan is the constant aim of the German government. We regard the existence and maintenance of the freedom and independence of these three great powers as the strongest factor for the future, making for the preservation of a truly human culture, a practical civilization and a just order in the world.

 

As I mentioned at the beginning, on April 15, 1939, the world was informed of the contents of a telegram that I myself did not see until later. It is difficult to classify this document or to place it in any known category. I will, therefore attempt, gentlemen, to present to you – and so to the whole German people – an analysis of the contents of this remarkable piece of writing, and in your name and in the name of the German people, to give appropriate answers to it.

 

1. Mr. Roosevelt is of the opinion that I, too, must realize that throughout the world hundreds of millions of human beings are living in constant fear of a new war or even a series of wars. This, he says, is of concern to the people of the United States, for whom he speaks, as it must also be to the peoples of the other nations of the entire Western Hemisphere.

 

Answer: In reply to this it must be said in the first place that this fear of war has undoubtedly existed among humankind from time immemorial, and justifiably so.

 

For instance, after the Peace Treaty of Versailles, 14 wars were waged between 1919 and 1938 alone, in none of which Germany was involved, but in which states of the “Western Hemisphere,” in whose name President Roosevelt also speaks, were certainly involved. In addition there were in that same period 26 violent interventions and sanctions carried through by means of bloodshed and force. Germany played no part whatever in those either. Since 1918 the United States alone has carried out military interventions in six cases. Since 1918 Soviet Russia has engaged in ten wars and military actions involving force and bloodshed. Again, Germany was involved in none of those, nor was it responsible for any of them.

 

In my view, it would therefore be a mistake to assume that the fear of war that concerns European and non-European nations can at this moment be traced back to actual wars for which Germany could be considered responsible.  The reason for this fear lies entirely in an unbridled agitation on the part of the press, an agitation as mendacious as it is base – in the circulation of vile pamphlets against the heads of foreign states, and in the artificial spreading of panic, which finally goes so far that interventions from another planet are believed possible, leading to scenes of desperate fear. / 36 

 

I believe that as soon as the governments responsible impose upon themselves and their organs of mass media the necessary restraint and concern for the truth with regard to the relations of the various nations to one another, and in particular with regard to the internal happenings in other countries, the fear of war will disappear at once, and the tranquility which we all so much desire will become possible.

 

2. In his telegram Mr. Roosevelt expresses the belief that every major war, even if it were confined to other continents, must have serious consequences not only while it lasts, but for generations to come.

Answer: No one knows this better than the German people. For the Peace Treaty of Versailles imposed burdens on the German people that could not have been paid off in a hundred years, although it has been proven conclusively by American scholars of international law, historians and professors of history that Germany was no more to blame for the outbreak of the war than any other nation. / 37 

But I do not believe that every conflict must necessarily have disastrous consequences for the whole world, that is for the entire planet, provided that it is not artificially and systematically drawn into such conflicts through a network of pacts with nebulous obligations.

Given that in past centuries and – as I pointed out earlier in my response – in the course of the recent decades as well, the world has experienced a continuous series of wars, if Mr. Roosevelt’s view is correct, the sum total of the impact of all these wars would have already imposed a burden on humanity that it would have to bear for millions of years to come.

 

3. Mr. Roosevelt declared that he had already appealed to me on a former occasion / 38  for a peaceful settlement of political, economic and social problems, without resort to arms.

 

Answer: I myself have always been an exponent of this view / 39   and, as history proves, have settled requisite political, economic and social problems without force of arms – without even resorting to arms.  Unfortunately, however, this peaceful method of settlement has been made more difficult by the agitation of politicians, statesmen and people in the press who were neither directly concerned nor even affected by the problems in question.

 

4. Mr. Roosevelt believes that the “tide of events” is once more bringing the threat of arms with it, and that if this threat continues, a large part of the world is seemingly condemned to common ruin.

 

Answer: As far as Germany is concerned, I know nothing of this kind of threat to other nations, although every day I read lies about such a threat in the democratic newspapers. Every day I read of German mobilizations, of the landing of troops, of extortions – all this in connection with countries with which we are not only living absolutely peacefully, but with whom we are also, in many cases, the closest of friends.

 

5. Mr. Roosevelt believes further that in case of war, victorious, vanquished and neutral nations will all suffer alike.

 

Answer: In the course of my political career over a period of twenty years, I have been an exponent of this conviction, at a time when responsible statesmen in America, unfortunately, could not bring themselves to show the same understanding with regard to their role in the [First] World War and its consequences.

 

6. Mr. Roosevelt believes that in the end it lies with the leaders of the great nations to protect their peoples from the impending disaster.

 

Answer: If that is true, then it is culpable neglect, not to use a stronger word, if the leaders of nations in authority fail to control their mass media that agitates for war, and thereby save the world from the threatening calamity of an armed conflict. Moreover, I cannot understand why these responsible leaders, instead of cultivating diplomatic relations between nations, make them more difficult and indeed disturb them by such actions as the recall of ambassadors without any reason. / 40

 

7. Mr. Roosevelt declares that the independent existence of three nations in Europe and one in Africa has been terminated.

 

Answer: I do not know which three nations in Europe are meant. Should it refer to the provinces reincorporated in the German Reich, I must draw the attention of Mr. Roosevelt to a mistake on his part about history. 

 

These nations have not now sacrificed their independent existence in Europe, but rather in 1918. At that time, in violation of solemn promises, their logical ties were torn asunder and they were made into “nations” that they never wished to be and never had been. They were forced into an independence that was no independence, but at most could only mean dependence upon an international foreign world that they detested. / 41

 

Moreover, with regard to the assertion that one nation in Africa has lost its freedom –  that, too, is a mistake. It is not a question of one nation in Africa having lost its freedom. / 42  On the contrary, nearly all the original inhabitants of that continent have lost their freedom through being made subject to the sovereignty of other nations by bloodshed and force. Moroccans, Berbers, Arabs, Negroes, and so forth, have all fallen victim to the swords of foreign might, which, however, were not marked “Made in Germany”" but “Made by Democracies.”

 

8. Mr. Roosevelt then speaks of reports, which he admittedly does not believe to be correct, but which state that still further acts of aggression are contemplated against other independent nations.

 

Answer: I consider every such unfounded insinuation as an attempt against the tranquility and peace of the world. I also see in them an effort calculated to alarm smaller nations, or at least to put them on edge. In that regard, if Mr. Roosevelt really has any specific instances in mind, I would ask him to name the states that are threatened with aggression and to name the aggressor in question. It will then be a simple matter to quickly refute these preposterous general charges.

 

9. Mr. Roosevelt states that the world is plainly moving towards the moment when this situation must end in catastrophe unless a rational way of guiding events is found. He also declares that I have repeatedly asserted that I and the German people have no desire for war, and that if that is true there need be no war.

 

My Answer: I would like to once again point out, first of all, that I have not waged any war, and, secondly, that for years I have expressed my abhorrence of war and, no less, of agitation for war, and, thirdly, that I do not know for what purpose I would wage a war at all. I would appreciate it if Mr. Roosevelt would provide an explanation in this regard.

 

10. Mr. Roosevelt is further of the opinion that the peoples of the world cannot be persuaded that any governing power has any right or need to inflict the consequences of war on its own or any other people, except in the cause of self-evident home defense.

 

Answer: I should think that every reasonable human being is of this opinion, but it seems to me that in almost every war both sides claim that theirs is a case of unquestionable home defense. I do not believe there is an authority in this world, including President Roosevelt himself, who could decide this question unequivocally.

 

There is hardly any doubt, for example, that America’s entry into the [First] World War was not a case of “self-evident home defense.” / 43 To the contrary, an investigative committee supported by President Roosevelt himself examined the causes of America’s entry into the World War, and concluded that the entry came about chiefly for reasons that were exclusively capitalistic. / 44  Nevertheless, no practical conclusions have been drawn from that.

 

Let us hope, then, that at least the United States will in the future act according to this noble principle itself, and will not go to war against any country except in the cause of indisputable self-defense.

 

11. Mr. Roosevelt says further that he does not speak from selfishness, weakness or fear, but with the voice of strength and friendship for mankind.

 

Answer: If this voice of strength and friendship for mankind had been raised by America at the proper time, and particularly if it had had any practical value, then at least that treaty which was to become the source of the greatest disruption of humanity in history, the Dictate of Versailles, could have been prevented.

 

12. Mr. Roosevelt declares further that it is clear to him that all international problems can be solved at the conference table.

 

My answer: Theoretically one ought to believe in this possibility, for common sense would in many cases easily determine the justice of demands, on the one side, and the compelling need for accommodation, on the other.

 

For example: on the basis of common sense and the general principles of a higher human justice, indeed, according to the laws of a divine will, all peoples ought to all have an equal share of the world’s goods. It ought not then to happen that one people needs so much space to live in that it cannot get along with 15 inhabitants to the square kilometer, while others are forced to sustain 140, 150 or even 200 on the same area. But in any event these fortunate peoples should not curtail the existing space allotted to those who are already suffering, by robbing them of their colonies for instance. I would therefore be more than happy if these problems could really find their solution at the conference table.

 

My skepticism, however, is based on the fact that it was America herself that gave the sharpest expression of her distrust with regard to the effectiveness of conferences. For the greatest conference of all time was without doubt the League of Nations. This authoritative body, representing all the peoples of the world, and created in accordance with the intentions of an American President, was supposed to solve the problems of humanity at the conference table.  / 45  The first state, however, that shrank from this endeavor was the United States – the reason being that President Wilson himself even then had the greatest doubts about the possibility of really being able to solve decisive international problems at such a conference table.

 

We honor your well-meant expression of opinion, Mr. Roosevelt, but contrary to your opinion stands the actual fact that in almost twenty years of the activity of the greatest conference in the world, the League of Nations, it has proven impossible to solve even a single really decisive international problem.

 

Contrary to [President] Wilson’s promise, Germany was prevented for many years by the Peace Treaty of Versailles from participating in this great world conference. In spite of the most bitter experience there was one German government that believed that there was no need to follow the example of the United States, and that it should therefore take a seat at this conference table. / 46

 

It was not until after years of pointless participation that I resolved to follow the example of America and likewise leave the largest conference in the world. Since then I have solved my people’s problems, which, like all others, were, unfortunately not solved at the conference table of the League of Nations – and I solved them without recourse to war in even a single instance. Apart from that, however, and as already mentioned, numerous other problems have been brought before world conferences in recent years without any solution having been found.

 

If, however, Mr. Roosevelt, your belief that every problem can be solved at the conference table is true, then all nations, including the United States, have been led over the past seven or eight hundred years either by blind men or by criminals.

 

For no statesmen, including those of the United States and especially her greatest, / 47  significantly shaped history at the conference table, but rather through applying the strength of his nation’s people. The freedom of North America was not achieved at the conference table any more than was the conflict between the Northern and Southern states decided there. I will not mention the innumerable conflicts that finally led to the subjugation of the North American continent as a whole. I cite all this only to point out that your view, Mr. Roosevelt, although undoubtedly deserving of all respect, is not confirmed by the history either of your own country or of the rest of the world.

 

13. Mr. Roosevelt also states that it is no answer to the appeal for peaceful discussion for one side to assert that, unless they receive assurances beforehand that the outcome will be theirs, they will not set aside their arms.

 

My answer: Do you believe, Mr. Roosevelt, that if the ultimate fate of nations is in the balance, a government or the leaders of a people will lay down their arms or surrender them before a conference, simply in the blind hope that the other members of the conference will be wise enough, or clear-sighted enough, to reach the right decision?

 

Mr. Roosevelt, there has been only one country and one government that has acted in accordance with the recipe you extol in such glowing terms: Germany. The German nation, trusting the solemn assurances of the American President Wilson, and in the confirmation of those assurances by the Allies, once laid down its weapons and went unarmed to the conference table.  However, as soon as the German nation laid down its arms, there was no question of an invitation to a conference table, but rather, and in violation of the assurances, it was made the victim of the worst breach of a promise ever known. Instead of the greatest discord known to history being repaired around the conference table, the result was the world’s most cruelly dictated treaty, which brought about even more terrible discord.

 

But the representatives of the German nation, who had laid down their arms, trusting in the solemn assurances of an American President, and who thus came unarmed, were not received, even though they had come to accept the terms of the dictated treaty. After all, they were the representatives of a nation that for four years had held out with immeasurable heroism against a whole world in the struggle for its freedom and independence.

 

They were treated degradingly, similar to treatment that might have been accorded to chiefs of Sioux tribes. The German delegates were insulted by the mob, stones were thrown at them, and they were taken like prisoners, not to the conference table of the world, but rather before the tribunal of the victors; and there, at pistol point, were forced to accept the most shameful subjection and plundering in history.

 

I can assure you, Mr. Roosevelt, that I am steadfastly determined to see to it that not only now, but for all time to come, no German shall ever again enter a conference defenseless, but that now and forever every representative of Germany must and shall have behind him the united strength of the German nation, so help me God.

 

14. Mr. Roosevelt believes that in a conference room, as in a court, both sides must enter in good faith, with the assumption that justice will in fact be rendered to both sides.

 

Answer: German representatives will never again enter a conference that for them is a tribunal. For who is to be the judge there? At a conference there is no accused and no prosecutor, but two contending parties. If their own good sense does not bring about a settlement between the two parties, they will never surrender themselves to the verdict of other powers whose interests are wholly foreign to theirs.

 

Incidentally, the United States itself declined to enter the League of Nations and to become the victim of a court that was able, merely by a majority vote, to hand down a decision contrary to the interests of one side or the other. I would be grateful if Mr. Roosevelt would explain just how the new World Court is to be organized. Who would be the judges?  According to what procedure would they be selected? On what responsibility would they act? And above all, to what authority could they held accountable?

 

15. Mr. Roosevelt believes that the cause of world peace would be greatly advanced if the nations of the world were to give a frank statement relating to the present and future policy of their governments.

 

Answer: I have already done this, Mr. Roosevelt, in countless public speeches. And in the course of this session of the German Reichstag, I have again – as far as that’s possible in the space of two hours – made a statement of this kind.

 

I must, however, decline to give such an explanation to anyone other than to the people for whose existence and life I am responsible, and who, in their turn, alone have the right to demand that I account to them. In any case, I explain Germany’s policy publicly, so that the entire world can also hear it. But these explanations are without significance for the outside world as long as it is possible for the press to falsify and cast suspicion on every statement, to call them into question, or to drown them with new lies.

 

16. Mr. Roosevelt believes that, because the United States, as one of the nations of the Western Hemisphere, is not directly involved in the controversies that have arisen in Europe, I should therefore be willing to make such a statement of policy to him. as the head of a nation so far removed from Europe.

 

Answer: Mr. Roosevelt therefore seriously believes that the cause of international peace would really be furthered if the nations of the world were to make public statements on the current policies of their governments. But how is it that President Roosevelt was moved to single out the German head of state to make a statement, without inviting the other governments to make such a statement of their policy?

 

I believe that it is not appropriate to make such a statement to the head of any foreign state, but rather that such statements should be made preferably to the entire world, in accordance with President Wilson’s proposal for the abolition of secret diplomacy. / 48  Not only I have always been prepared to do that, but, as I have already said, I have quite often done so. Unfortunately, it has been precisely the most important statements concerning the aims and intentions of German policy that, in many so-called democratic states, have either been withheld from the people or have been distorted by the press.

 

If however, President Roosevelt believes that he is called upon to address such a request specifically to Germany or Italy because America is so far removed from Europe, we for our part could, by the same right, address to the President of the American Republic a query regarding the goals of American foreign policy, and the aims on which this policy is based – with regard, for example, to the countries of Central and South America. In such a case, Mr. Roosevelt would most likely refer to the Monroe Doctrine, and reject such a request as an interference in the internal affairs of the American continent. / 49  We Germans support a similar doctrine for Europe – and, above all, for the territory and interests of the Greater German Reich. In any case, I would of course never presume to address such a challenge to the President of the United States of America, because I assume that such presumptuousness would rightly be considered tactless.

 

17. Mr. Roosevelt further declares that he would then communicate information received by him concerning the political aims of Germany to other nations that are now apprehensive regarding the course of our policy.

 

Answer: How has Mr. Roosevelt determined which nations consider themselves threatened by German policy, and which do not? Or is Mr. Roosevelt in a position, with the enormous amount of work that certainly he must have to handle in his own country, to recognize all the inner-most  thoughts and feelings of other nations and their governments?

 

18. Finally, Mr. Roosevelt asks that assurances be given him that the German armed forces will not attack, and above all, will not invade, the territory or possessions of the following independent nations. He then names those to which he refers: Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, Ireland, France, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Russia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iraq, Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Iran.

 

My answer: I have taken the trouble to ascertain from the states mentioned, firstly, whether they feel themselves threatened, and, what is more important, secondly, whether this inquiry of Mr. Roosevelt was addressed to us at their suggestion, or at least with their consent.

 

The reply was in all cases negative, in some instances strongly so. It is true that among the states and nations mentioned there were some to which these inquiries could not be made – Syria, for example – because they are at present not in possession of their freedom, but are held under occupation by the military forces of democratic states, and consequently are deprived of their rights.

 

Apart from this fact, however, all states bordering on Germany have received much more binding assurances and, more importantly, more binding proposals than Mr. Roosevelt asked from me in his curious telegram.

 

Should there be any doubt as to the value of those general and specific statements which I have so often made, then any further statement of that kind, even if addressed to Mr. Roosevelt, would be equally worthless. For in the final analysis it is not the value that  Mr. Roosevelt gives to such statements which is decisive, but the value given to such statements by the countries in question.

 

But I must also draw Mr. Roosevelt’s attention to one or two mistakes in history. He mentions Ireland, for instance, and asks for a statement to the effect that Germany will not attack Ireland. Now, I have just read a speech given by the Irish prime minister, de Valera, in which oddly enough, and contrary to Mr. Roosevelt’s opinion, he does not charge Germany with oppressing Ireland, but reproaches Britain with subjecting Ireland to continuous aggression. / 50

 

With all due respect to Mr. Roosevelt’s insight into the needs and cares of other countries, it may nevertheless be assumed that the Irish prime minister would certainly be more familiar with the dangers that threaten his country than would the President of the American Republic.

 

Similarly the fact has obviously escaped Mr. Roosevelt’s notice that Palestine is at present occupied not by German troops but by the British; and that the country’s freedom is being restricted by the most brutal use of force, is being robbed of its independence, and is suffering the cruelest mistreatment for the benefit of Jewish interlopers. The Arabs living in that country would therefore certainly not have complained to Mr. Roosevelt of German aggression, but they are voicing a constant appeal to the world, deploring the barbarous methods with which Britain is attempting to suppress a people that loves its freedom and is merely trying to defend it.

 

This, too, is perhaps a problem that in Mr. Roosevelt’s view should be solved at the conference table, that is, before a fair judge, and not by brutal force, military methods, mass executions, burning down villages, blowing up houses, and so on. For one fact is surely certain. In this case Britain is not defending herself against a threatened Arab attack, but as an uninvited interloper is endeavoring to establish her power in a foreign territory that does not belong to her. / 51

 

A number of similar errors made by Mr. Roosevelt could be pointed out, quite aside from the difficulty of military operations on the part of Germany in states and countries, some of which are two or five thousand kilometers away from us.

 

Finally, I want to state the following:

The German government is, in spite of everything, prepared to give to each of the states named an assurance of the kind desired by Mr. Roosevelt, on condition of absolute reciprocity, provided that such state wishes it, and itself addresses to Germany a request for such an assurance, together with correspondingly acceptable proposals.

 

In the case of a number of the states mentioned by Mr. Roosevelt, this question can probably be regarded as already settled, because we are already either allied with them or at least united by close ties of friendship. As for the duration of these agreements, Germany is happily willing to reach agreement with each individual state in accord with its wishes.

 

But I don’t want to let this opportunity pass without above all giving to the President of the United States an assurance regarding those territories that, after all, would give him most cause for apprehension, namely the United States itself and the other states of the American continent.

 

And I here solemnly declare that all the assertions that have in any way been circulated about an intended German attack against or intervention in American territory are rank frauds or gross falsehoods, quite apart from the fact that such assertions, from a military perspective, could only be the product of silly fantasy. / 52



19. Mr. Roosevelt then goes on to declare in this connection that he regards the discussion of the most effective and immediate manner in which the peoples of the world can obtain relief from the crushing burden of armaments, as the most important issue of all.

 

Answer: Mr. Roosevelt perhaps does not know that this problem, in so far as it concerns Germany, was once already completely solved. Between 1919 and 1923 the German Reich had already fully disarmed, as the Allied commissions expressly confirmed. This was the extent of the disarmament:

 

The following military equipment was destroyed:

59,000 artillery pieces,

130,000 machine guns,
31,000 trench-mortars
6,000,000 rifles and carbines,
243,000 machine gun barrels,

28,000 gun carriages,

4,390 mortar carriages,

38,750,000 shells,

16,550,000 hand and rifle grenades,
60,400.000 rounds of live ammunition,
491,000.000 rounds of small caliber ammunition,
335,000 metric tons shell jackets,
23,515 metric tons of cartridge cases,
37.600 metric tons of gunpowder,
79,000 unfilled rounds of ammunition,
212,000 telephone sets,

1,072 flame throwers,

And so forth.

 

There were further destroyed: Sleds, mobile workshops, anti-aircraft carriages, special occasion carriages, steel helmets, gas masks, munitions industry machinery, and rifle barrels.

The following air force equipment was destroyed:

 

15,714 fighter planes and bombers,
27,757 airplane engines.

 

With regard to the navy, the following was destroyed:

26 capital battle ships,
4 coastal defense vessels,
4 armored cruisers,
19 small cruisers,
21 training and other special ships,
83 torpedo boats,
315 submarines.

 

In addition, the following were destroyed: Vehicles of all kinds, poison gas and some anti-gas protective equipment, fuel and explosives, searchlights, gun sights, range finders, distance- and sound-measuring devices, optical instruments of all kinds, harnesses and saddles, and so forth; all military air facilities and airship hangars, and so forth.

 

According to the solemn pledges given at one time to Germany, pledges that were even confirmed in the Peace Treaty of Versailles, all that was supposed to be an advance measure that would then make it possible for the rest of the world to likewise disarm without danger. / 53

 

In this case, as in all others when Germany believed that promises would be kept, it was disgracefully deceived. As is well known, all attempts to induce the other states to disarm, pursued in negotiations at the conference table over many years, came to nothing. That disarmament would have been sensible and just, and furthermore would have fulfilled pledges already made.

 

I myself, Mr. Roosevelt, have made a number of practical proposals for discussion, and in addition have tried to initiate discussions to at least make possible a general limitation of armaments at the lowest possible level. / 54

 

I proposed a maximum strength of 200,000 men for all armies, as well as the abolition of all weapons of offense, of bombing planes, of poison gas, and so forth and so on. Unfortunately, it proved impossible to make headway on these proposals with the rest of the world, even though Germany herself was at the time completely disarmed.

 

I then proposed that armies have a maximum strength of 300,000 men. That proposal met with the same negative result. I then made a number of detailed proposals for disarmament, in each case before the German Reichstag and thereby to the entire world. It never occurred to anyone even to mention them. Instead, the rest of the world began still further increases in their already enormous armaments.

 

It was only in 1934, after the rejection of the last of my wide-ranging German proposals that armies be restricted to no more than 300,000 men, that I gave the order for German rearmament, and this time on a comprehensive scale. Nevertheless, I do not want to be an obstacle to any disarmament discussions in which you, Mr. Roosevelt, intend to participate. I would ask you, however, not to appeal first to me and Germany but rather to the others. I have the benefit of actual experience behind me, and therefore will tend to be skeptical until reality teaches me otherwise.

 

20. Mr. Roosevelt assures us further that he is prepared to take part in discussions to consider the most practical way of opening avenues of international trade with the goal of enabling every nation of the world to buy and sell on equal terms in the world market, as well as to be assured of access to raw materials and the products of peaceful economic life.

 

Answer: It is my belief, Mr. Roosevelt, that it is not so much a question of discussing these problems theoretically as of removing with deeds the real barriers that exist in international trade. / 55  The worst barriers, however, lie with the individual states themselves.

 

Experience shows, at any rate thus far, that the most important world economic conferences have failed simply because the various countries have been unable to maintain order in their internal economic systems; or else because they brought uncertainty into the international financial market through currency manipulations, and especially by causing continual fluctuations in the value of their currencies in relation to one another.

 

It is likewise an intolerable burden for world economic relations that it should be possible in some countries, for one ideological reason or another, to let loose a wild boycott agitation against other countries and their goods, and thereby to practically eliminate them from the market. / 56

 

It is my belief, Mr. Roosevelt, that it would be most commendable on your part, if you, with your great influence, would begin in the United States with the removal of these barriers to a genuinely free world trade. For it is my conviction that if the leaders of nations are not even able to bring order to production in their own countries, or of removing boycotts organized for ideological reasons, which can do so much damage to international trade relations, there is much less prospect of achieving any really fruitful step toward the improvement of economic relations by means of international agreements. There is no other way to secure the equal right of all to buy and sell in the world market.

 

Further, the German nation has made very concrete proposals in this regard, and I would appreciate it if you, Mr. Roosevelt, as one of the successors of the late President Wilson, would use your efforts to seeing that the promises, on the basis of which Germany once laid down her arms and placed herself in the hands of the so-called victors, will at last be redeemed.

 

I am thinking less of the countless millions extorted from Germany as so-called reparations than of the return of the territories stolen from Germany. Germany lost approximately three million square kilometers of territory in and outside of Europe, even though the entire German colonial empire, in contrast to the colonies of other nations, was not acquired by means of war but solely through treaties or purchase.

 

President Wilson solemnly pledged his word that Germany’s colonial claims would receive the same just consideration as those of all others. / 57  Instead of that, however, the German possessions were given to nations that already have the largest colonial empires in history, while our people were subjected to great misery, today as well in the future.

 

It would be a noble act if President Franklin Roosevelt were to redeem the promises made by President Woodrow Wilson. That, above all, would be a practical contribution to the moral consolidation of the world and thereby to improving its economic conditions.

 

21. Mr. Roosevelt also stated in conclusion that the heads of all the great governments are in this hour responsible for the fate of humanity, and that they cannot fail to hear the prayers of their peoples to be protected from the foreseeable chaos of war. And I, too, would be held accountable for this.

 

Mr. President! I fully understand that the vastness of your nation and the immense wealth of your country allows you to feel responsible for the fate of the entire world and for the fate of all nations. My sphere, Mr. President, is considerably smaller and more modest. You have 135 million people on nine and half million square kilometers. You have a country with enormous riches, and all natural resources, fertile enough to feed half a billion people, and to provide them with every necessity.

 

I took on the leadership of a state that was faced with complete ruin thanks to its trust in the promises of the outside world and to the poor governance of its own democratic regime. In this state there are about 140 people per square kilometer – not 15, as in America. The fertility of our country cannot be compared with that of yours. We lack countless natural resources, which nature has bestowed on you in unlimited amounts.

 

Billions in German savings in gold and foreign exchange that had been accumulated during many years of peace were extorted and taken from us. We lost our colonies. In 1933 I had in my country seven million unemployed, several million part-time workers, millions of impoverished farmers, trade destroyed, and commerce ruined; in short, general chaos.

 

Since then, Mr. Roosevelt, I have only been able to fully accomplish one single task. I cannot feel myself responsible for the fate of the world, for that world took no interest in the pitiful fate of my own people.

 

I have regarded myself as called upon by Providence to serve my own people alone, and to deliver them from their awful misery. Thus, for the past six-and-a-half years, I have lived day and night for the single task of awakening the powers of my people in face of our desertion by the rest of the world, of developing these powers to the utmost and of utilizing them for the salvation of our community.

 

I have conquered chaos in Germany, re-established order, immensely increased production in all fields of our national economy, by strenuous efforts produced substitutes for numerous materials that we lack, prepared the way for new inventions, developed transportation, caused magnificent roads to be built, canals to be dug, and created gigantic new factories. I have striven no less to translate into practice the ideals of the social community, and to promote the education and culture of my people.

 

I have succeeded in finding useful work once more for all the seven million unemployed, who are so close to our hearts; in keeping the German farmer on his soil in spite of all difficulties, and to save it for him; in causing German commerce to flourish once again; and in promoting transportation to the utmost.

 

To protect them against the threats of the outside world, I have not only united the German people politically, but have also rearmed them. I have likewise endeavored to rid them of that Treaty, page by page, which in its 448 articles contains the vilest oppression that has ever been inflicted on men and nations.

 

I have brought back to the Reich the provinces stolen from us in 1919; I have led back to their native country millions of Germans who were torn away from us and were in abject misery; I have reunited the territories that have been German throughout a thousand years of history –   and, Mr. Roosevelt, I have endeavored to accomplish all that without bloodshed and without bringing to my people, or to others, the misery of war.

 

This I have done, Mr. President, through my own efforts, even though 21 years ago, I was an unknown worker and soldier of my people – and can therefore claim a place in history among those men who have done the utmost that can fairly and justly be asked of a single individual.

 

You, Mr. Roosevelt, have an immeasurably easier task in comparison. You became President of the United States in 1933 when I became Chancellor of the Reich. Thus, from the very outset, you became head of one of the largest and wealthiest countries in the world.

 

It is your good fortune to have to sustain scarcely 15 people per square kilometer in your country. At your disposal are the most abundant natural resources in the world. Your country is so vast and your fields so fertile, that you can insure for each individual American at least ten times more of the good things of life than is possible in Germany. Nature at least has given you the opportunity to do that.

 

Although the population of your country is scarcely one-third larger than that of Greater Germany, you have more than fifteen times as much room. And so you have time and leisure – on the same huge scale as you have everything else – to devote your attention to universal problems. Consequently the world is undoubtedly so small for you that you perhaps believe that your intervention can be valuable and effective everywhere. In this way, therefore, your concerns and your initiatives cover a much larger and wider field than mine.

 

For my world, Mr. President, is the one to which Providence has assigned me, and for which it is my duty to work. Its area is much smaller. It comprises my people alone. But I believe I can thereby best serve that which is in the hearts of all of us – justice, well-being, progress and peace for the entire human community.

 

 

Endnotes

1. The Versailles Treaty, signed in France on June 28, 1919 (“The Treaty of Peace Between the Allied and Associated Powers and Germany”)

2. Germany’s colonial holdings in 1914, at the outbreak of the First World War, comprised a total area of 1,340,000 square miles, with 12 million people. In accord with the Versailles Treaty, all those lands were taken from Germany without compensation. They were turned over to various countries, which were to administer them as “mandates” on behalf of the new League of Nations.

 

The colonies and the countries to which they were assigned were as follows:

 

German East Africa, 384,000 square miles. Most of this large area was assigned to Britain, and today is the country of Tanzania. A smaller portion, assigned to Belgium, is today where two countries, Rwanda and Burundi, are located;

 

German South-West Africa, 322,000 square miles. This was assigned to the Union of South Africa, and today is the country of Namibia; Cameroon, 305,000 square miles. Part of this territory was assigned to France, and part to Britain. Today most of the territory is the country of Cameroon, while a small portion is now part of Nigeria;

 

Togo, 34,000 square miles. Assigned to France and Britain. The portion of this territory that was assigned to France is today the country of Togo, while a portion that was assigned to Britain is today part of Ghana.

 

In the Pacific Ocean area: German New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomon Islands, 93,000 square miles, were assigned to Australia; Samoa, 1000 square miles, was assigned to New Zealand; The Caroline, Marianne, and Marshall Islands, 1000 square miles, were assigned to Japan. The former German Pacific Ocean possessions are today part of Papau New Guinea, Palau, Nauru, Samoa, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, and Northern Mariana Islands.

 

In Asia, Germany’s only possession was the Kiautschou Bay concession, 213 square miles, in the Shandong peninsula in China. It included the city of Qingdao (Tsingtao).

 

3. The “Weimar Republic,” 1918-1933.

 

4. The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), by the British economist John M. Keynes, is the best known and most influential critique of the economic impact of the Versailles Treaty.

 

5. German Workers Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), founded Jan. 5, 1919, in Munich. On Feb. 24, 1920, became the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP)

 

6. Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871.

 

7. In the aftermath of the First World War, the coal-rich Saar territory was separated from the rest of the German Reich and put under administration of the new League of Nations. In accord with the Versailles Treaty, a plebiscite to determine the region’s future was held under League auspices on Jan. 13, 1935. The population voted 90.4 percent to return to Germany. The region accordingly returned to the Reich on March 1, 1935.

 

8. The Union or “Anschluss” of Austria with the German Reich, March 13, 1938. In Austria, as well as in the rest of the German Reich, approval of the Anschluss – as reflected in a national referendum – was nearly unanimous. Even foreign observers acknowledged that the 99 percent “Yes” vote reflected popular sentiment.

9. Founded in Prague in 1348, Charles University is one of the oldest universities in Europe.

10. In 1938 the population of “Czechoslovakia” (sometimes “Czecho-Slovakia”) was 14,800,000 million. In this multi-ethnic state, Czechs were largest single group, with about 46 percent of the total population. The 3,200,000 Germans were about 28 percent, outnumbering the two million Slovaks, who were 13 percent. There were also smaller Hungarian, Ruthenian/Ukrainian, Jewish and Polish minorities.

11. News Chronicle (London), July 14, 1938. The newspaper quoted French Air Minister Pierre Cot as saying that in the case of any conflict with Germany, Czechoslovakia would serve as “an aerodrome for the landing and taking-off of bombers, from which it would be possible to destroy the most important German industrial centres in a few hours.” (Alfred M. de Zayas, The German Expellees [St. Martin’s Press, 1993], pp. 20-21.)

12. May 21, 1938.

13. Kurt Schuschnigg (1897-1977), was Chancellor of Austria from July 30, 1934, to March 11, 1938.

14. In the 1935 parliamentary election, the Sudeten German Party won 68 percent of the votes of the country’s ethnic German population, and became the single largest party in Czechoslovakia’s parliament. Support for the Party increased thereafter. In local elections in the Sudetenland region in May and June 1938, the Party garnered between 80 and nearly 100 percent of the vote.

15. Known in Germany as the “Westwall,” this extensive defense fortification has often been called the “Siegfried Line” in Britain and the US.

16. Taking part in the Munich “Four Power” Conference, Sept. 29, 1938, were German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, Italian premier Benito Mussolini, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and French premier Edouard Daladier.

17. Ethnically the population of the “Sudetenland” region was overwhelmingly German. After the end of the Second World War, some three million of the region’s population was forcibly expelled. The population of the area is now almost entirely Czech.

 

18. Taking part in the Vienna Conference, Nov. 2, 1938, were the foreign ministers of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Germany and Italy. At the request of Czechoslovakia and Hungary, the German and Italian representatives acted as arbiters in determining the boundary between Czechoslovakia and Hungary, based on ethnographic principles.

 

19. Until the end of the First World War, the Carpatho-Ukraine region in the east of the Czechoslovak Republic had been part of the Kingdom of Hungary. The population was ethnically Ukrainian or “Ruthenian.” With the disintegration of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, the region was reincorporated into Hungary. At the end of the Second World War, the region was annexed by the Soviet Union. Today it is part of Ukraine.

 

20. On March 14, 1939, the Slovak parliament in Bratislava approved the independence of Slovakia.

 

21. At the end of the Second World War, some three million Germans were forcibly expelled from the territory of restored Czechoslovakia. The country’s Hungarian population was also expelled, and the ethnically Ukrainian eastern region of Carpatho-Ukraine was annexed by the Soviet Union. As a result, the population of Czechoslovakia after 1950 was overwhelmingly Czech and Slovak. After the end of Soviet domination of the country in 1989, separatist feelings grew. In 1992 the two nationalities agreed to a “divorce.” On Jan. 1, 1993, “Czechoslovakia” disappeared, and two new countries emerged: the Czech Republic (Czechia) and Slovakia.

 

22. October 14, 1938

 

23. The Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia became a Protectorate of the Reich on March 15, 1939.

 

24. See endnote 18.

25. During the 1920s and 1930s, there was ongoing discord between the Irish and British governments. A particularly contentious issue involved the largely Protestant region of Northern Ireland. The Irish government in Dublin regarded continued British control of that region as an illicit occupation.

 

26. On September 30, 1938, the day after the Munich Conference, German Chancellor Hitler and British Prime Minister Chamberlain signed and issued a joint statement. It declared:

 

“We, the German Führer and Chancellor and the British Prime Minister, have had a further meeting today and are agreed in recognising that the question of Anglo-German relations is of the first importance for the two countries and for Europe. We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again. We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be the method adopted to deal with any other questions that may concern our two countries, and we are determined to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference and thus contribute to assure the peace of Europe.”

 

27. The Anglo-German Naval Treaty was signed in London on June 18, 1935. It put into effect a proposal by Germany to limit the strength of the German fleet to 35 percent of that of the British fleet. This agreement abrogated the provision of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles that forbid Germany from any having any significant naval force. It was therefore a clear recognition by the British government that the Treaty of Versailles, or at least that portion of it, was no longer valid or binding. With this 1935 agreement, Britain in effect repudiated and “violated” the Versailles Treaty. Categories of ships and armaments were defined by the 1935 Treaty, which were more specifically specified in a follow-up agreement in London on July 17, 1937. The German Note to the British government of April 28, 1939, declared Germany’s intention no longer to maintain the quantitative conditions of the treaty, but also stated that it would continue to observe the qualitative clauses, in order to avoid an international naval armaments race.

 

28. Speech by Chamberlain in Birmingham, March 17, 1939. In this address, the Prime Minister said that Germany now seemed bent on domination of Europe and was seeking to dominate the world by force. Reliance on German assurances was no longer possible, he also suggested.

 

   Minutes of a British cabinet meeting the next day were more explicit: “The Prime Minister said that up till a week ago we had proceeded on the assumption that we should be able to continue with our policy of getting on to better terms with the Dictator Powers, and that although those powers had aims, those aims were limited … He had now come definitely to the conclusion that Herr Hitler's attitude made it impossible to continue on the old basis … No reliance could be placed on any of the assurances given by the Nazi leaders … he regarded his speech [in Birmingham of March 17] as a challenge to Germany on the issue whether or not Germany intended to dominate Europe by force. It followed that if Germany took another step in the direction of dominating Europe, she would be accepting the challenge.”

 

    In an address of March 31, 1939, the Prime Minister further pledged that if any military action “threatened Polish independence,” and which Poland “felt obliged to resist” militarily, Britain would “at once lend the Polish government all support in their power.” This meant that Britain’s ability to influence Poland to act prudently had all but vanished, and that however unreasonably Poland might act toward Germany over the Danzig issue, or in any other dispute, and which led to armed conflict, Britain was obliged to go to war on Poland’s side. This pledge was hardened on August 25, 1939, with a formal agreement of mutual assistance.

29. After Hitler became Chancellor on January 30, 1933.

 

30. See endnote 27.

 

31. Agreement of March 22, 1939, between Germany and Lithuania on the Memel territory.

 

32. German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact, Jan. 26, 1934.

 

33. The Danzig “Free City” territory had an area of 731 square miles. Its population in 1939 of about 415,000 was 95 percent German. Danzig was separated from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. Details of its status were later defined by the Treaty of Paris, Nov. 9, 1920. The territory was placed under the supervision of the League of Nations, which was represented in Danzig by a High Commissioner. The foreign affairs of the “Free City” were handled by Poland, subject to certain restrictions, and the veto of the High Commissioner. Poland had the use of the port, which – along with the waterways – were managed by a board made up equally of Poles and citizens of Danzig. Poland controlled the railways. After 1933, the Danzig government was controlled by the National Socialist Party. As a result of the 1933 election there, 38 of the 72 seats in the Danzig parliament, the Volkstag, were held by National Socialists. By June 1938, the National Socialists held 70 of the 72 seats, with the remaining two seats held by Poles. (Incidentally, the High Commissioner referred to here by Hitler as a diplomat of “extraordinary tact” was Carl J. Burckhardt, who wrote a revealing memoir about his role, Meine Danziger Mission.)

 

    With the advance of Soviet forces in late 1944 and early 1945, many fled from the city and the region. At the end of World War II, the remaining Germans were forcibly expelled. Danzig and the surrounding area was incorporated into the new Polish state, and the city has since been known as Gdansk

 

34. The “Corridor” gave the Polish state access to the Baltic Sea, but also cut off the province of East Prussia from the rest of Germany

 

35. This is a reference to reports of widespread panic among the American public generated by a radio broadcast on Oct. 30, 1938, of an adaptation of the novel “The War of the Worlds.” The hour-long presentation was directed and narrated by Orson Welles. Many alarmed listeners reportedly believed that hostile space ships from Mars were actually landing and ravaging the United States.

 

36. Another reference to the panic set off in the US by the Welles’ “War of The Worlds” broadcast. See endnote 35.

 

37. Among the most prominent and influential of these American scholars were Sidney Bradshaw Fay, Harry Elmer Barnes, Charles Beard, and Charles C. Tansill.

 

38. This is a reference to a telegram by President Roosevelt to Chancellor Hitler of Sept. 26, 1938. The German leader responded immediately with a lengthy message, to which Roosevelt replied with another telegram, dated Sept. 27, 1938.

 

39. A useful review of Hitler’s numerous proposals for peace, reductions of armaments, and so forth, is: Friedrich Stieve. What the World Rejected: Hitler's Peace Offers 1933-1939
( http://ihr.org/other/what-the-world-rejected.html

 

40. This is a reference to President’s Roosevelt’s recall of the US ambassador from Berlin on Nov. 14, 1938, supposedly “with a view to gaining a first-hand picture of the situation in Germany.” Thereafter, the US had no ambassador-level diplomatic relations in Germany.

 

41. This is a reference particularly to Austria and Czechoslovakia.

 

42. This is a reference to Ethiopia. In a military campaign from October 1935 to February 1937, Italian forces took control of the country and incorporated it into “Italian East Africa.” During World War II, Allied forces ousted the Italians and restored the Ethiopian “empire.”

 

43. President Wilson called on the US Congress to declare war against Germany on April 2, 1917. In his address to the Congress, he did not claim that the US was going to war to defend the country against German aggression, or to protect vital American interests. Instead, he said that the US would be joining the global conflict to “fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy.”

 

44. The Nye Committee, officially the “Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry,” was a U.S. Senate committee (1934-1936), chaired by Senator Gerald Nye. The committee, which President Franklin Roosevelt publicly supported, carried out extensive investigation of the role of American financial, banking, and business interests in the country’s involvement in World War I. It documented enormous profits made by American armaments manufacturers during the war. It found that the arms industry wielded major influence on US foreign policy leading up to and during World War I. It found that New York bankers had pressured President Wilson to intervene in the war to protect their loans abroad.

 

45. President Wilson called for a “general association of nations” as Point 14 of his “Fourteen Points,” laid out in an address to a joint session of the US Congress on Jan. 8, 1918. The “Fourteen Points” program was accepted by the British and French governments, and it was on the basis of its solemn assurances that Germany agreed in November 1918 to an armistice. Accordingly, the League of Nations was established as part of the Versailles Treaty.

 

46. When the League of Nations was established in 1919-20, Germany was not permitted to join. That ban was later dropped, and Germany joined the League in 1926. After Hitler took power, Germany remained a member for some months. He and his government hoped that the other member countries would deal with Germany on a basis of equity and reciprocity. Specifically, Hitler’s government called on the League, and especially Britain and France as member states, either to agree to reduce their nation’s armaments and military forces, thereby fulfilling earlier pledges, or to permit disarmed Germany to build its own military for national defense. It was only after this request was rejected, and the British and French governments made clear their refusal to treat Germany on an equal basis, that the German government announced, on Oct. 14, 1933, its withdrawal from the League.

 

47. An apparent reference to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

 

48. Point 1 of President Wilson’s “Fourteen Points.”

 

49. According to the “Monroe Doctrine,” which has long been an important feature of US foreign policy, the United States opposes any interference by any European power in the affairs of any country in the Western hemisphere. During the late 1900s and the first decades of the 20th century, the United States cited the Monroe Doctrine to also justify US hegemony and outright military intervention in the Caribbean, Central America, and northern South America, all of which was regarded as American “sphere of influence.”

 

50. See endnote 25.

 

51. Before World War I, the land known as Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. In 1916 British and French officials worked out the “Sykes Picot” agreement whereby those two imperial powers would divide up the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire. In accord with that secret treaty, Britain took control of Palestine at the end of the war, and remained in control until 1948.

 

52. During this period, much of the American media, including major newspapers, magazines, radio commentators, and newsreel companies, carried out a well-organized campaign portraying Hitler’s Germany as an evil, oppressive state that posed a grave threat to America and the world, and its leader as a madman driven by lust for war and destruction. For example, several months before Hitler’s speech, the country’s most influential illustrated weekly, Life magazine (Oct. 31, 1938), published a major article headlined “America Gets Ready to Fight Germany, Italy, Japan.” Readers were told that Germany and Italy “covet … the rich resources of South America,” and warned that “fascist fleets and legions may swarm across the Atlantic.”

 

53. Point 4 of President Wilson’s “Fourteen Points.”

 

54. See endnote 39.

 

55. Point 3 of President Wilson’s “Fourteen Points.”

 

56. After Hitler and the National Socialist Party took power, major Jewish organizations in the US and other countries acted quickly to organize an international boycott of German goods, with the goal of crippling the German economy and thereby pressuring the German government to repeal or modify its discriminatory measures against Jews, and perhaps encouraging “regime change” in Germany. In New York City, a series of Jewish-organized rallies drew large crowds and support from prominent non-Jews. Newspapers in the US, Britain and other countries made clear the scale and earnestness of this ambitious effort. In London, the large-circulation Daily Express, for example, reported on the international campaign in a large front-page article headlined “Judea Declares War on Germany.” In Germany, the National Socialists responded with a one-day boycott against Jewish businesses. In the following years, the anti-German boycott campaign gained increasing support, not only from Jews, but also from many non-Jews who disliked or opposed National Socialist Germany. In the US, Jewish groups pressed this campaign until December 1941, when he US and Germany officially went to war.

 

57. Point 5 of President Wilson’s “Fourteen Points.”

 


For Further Reading

Michael C. C. Adams, The Best War Ever: America and World War II. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1994

Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008

Harry Elmer Barnes, ed., Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. Institute for Historical Review, 1993

Charles A. Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War 1941. Yale University, 1948.

Patrick J. Buchanan, Churchill, Hitler and 'The Unnecessary War': How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World. New York: Crown, 2008

William H. Chamberlin, America's Second Crusade. Chicago: 1950.

John Charmley, Chamberlain and the Lost Peace. Chicago: 1990

Benjamin Colby, 'Twas a Famous Victory. New Rochelle: 1979.

Norman Davies, No Simple Victory: World War II in Europe, 1939-1945. New York: Viking, 2007

Hamilton Fish, Tragic Deception: FDR and America’s Involvement in World War II.  Devin-Adair, 1983. Esp. page 80.

Thomas Fleming, The New Dealers' War: Franklin Roosevelt and the War Within World War II. New York: Basic Books, 2001.

J. F. C. Fuller, A Military History of the Western World. New York: 1987. Vol. 3, esp. pp. 372-375, 411-419.

Germany, Auswärtiges Amt [German Foreign Office]. Documents on the Events Preceding the Outbreak of the War. New York: 1940.

Robert Higgs, “Truncating the Antecedents: How Americans Have Been Misled About World War II.” March 18, 2008
( http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs77.html )

Adolf Hitler. Reichstag speech of Dec. 11, 1941. (Declaration of war against the USA)
( http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v08/v08p389_Hitler.html )

David L. Hoggan, The Forced War: When Peaceful Revision Failed. IHR, 1989.

David L. Hoggan, “President Roosevelt and The Origins of the 1939 War.” The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1983.
( http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v04/v04p205_Hoggan.html )

Herbert C. Hoover, Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War and its Aftermath (George H. Nash, ed.). Stanford Univ., 2011.

Joseph P. Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, 1939-1941. New York: W. W. Norton, 1976.

Bruce M. Russett, No Clear and Present Danger: A Skeptical View of the U.S. Entry into World War II. New York: Harper & Row, 1972

Friedrich Stieve. What the World Rejected: Hitler's Peace Offers 1933-1939
( http://ihr.org/other/what-the-world-rejected.html )

Michel Sturdza, The Suicide of Europe. Boston: 1968

Charles C. Tansill, Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy, 1933-1941. Chicago: 1952

A.J.P. Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809-1918. Chicago: 1976

A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War. New York: 1983.

Studs Terkel, "The Good War": An Oral History of World War Two. New York: Pantheon, 1984

John Toland, Adolf Hitler. Doubleday & Co., 1976.

F.J.P. Veale, Advance to Barbarism. Institute for Historical Review, 1993

Mark Weber, “Collusion: Franklin Roosevelt, British Intelligence, and the Secret Campaign to Push the US into War.” February 2020
( http://ihr.org/other/RooseveltBritishCollusion )

Mark Weber, “The 'Good War' Myth of World War Two.” May 2008.
( http://www.ihr.org/news/weber_ww2_may08.html )

Mark Weber, “How Hitler Tackled Unemployment and Revived Germany’s Economy.” Nov. 2011, Feb. 2012
( http://www.ihr.org/other/economyhitler2011.html )

Mark Weber, “President Roosevelt’s Campaign to Incite War in Europe: The Secret Polish Documents,” The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1983
( http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v04/v04p135_Weber.html )

Alfred M. de Zayas, The German Expellees: Victims in War and Peace. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993

Alfred M. de Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam: The Expulsion of the Germans from the East .University of Nebraska, 1989

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

 


 

 
 
 
 Hitler's Reichstag Speech July 19, 1940 ...
Hitlers Speech in the Lustgarten, May 1939
 

THE SETTING

By July of 1940, Germany is in complete control of the war which had been imposed upon it. The Polish aggressor has been defeated, peace with France has been established, and Hitler has graciously allowed the British to evacuate the continent (at Dunkirk), leaving their equipment behind. Furthermore, the Soviet Union and the United States are not even in the war. So then, with Germany 'holding all the cards', and Churchill now bombing German civilians, what does Hitler do? He continues to plea for an end to the sensless war - with no strings attached.

 

Most students of real history already know this. But did you know that Hitler went so far as to airdrop mass quantities of 'peace leaflets' over London? It's true. The 4-page leaflets were English-language copies of his recent speech before the German nation, a speech which the Germans arranged to have broadcast on hundreds of radio stations across Europe. The July 19th speech was entitled: "A Last Appeal to Reason".

 

Dropped over London the day after, the leaflet summarizes the injustices inflicted upon Germany after the Great War of 1914-1918, warns of the machinations of the Jewish warmongers and their henchmen, and finally closes with Hitler’s plea to call off the war...

 
 
 
 
 
The Speech of the Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, in the Reichstag, Berlin, 19. July 1940
Declaration of Victory over France and the British Forces in the Western Campaign

EDITOR'S NOTE: The session opened with a very moving speech by the Deputy Fuehrer, Reichsmarschall
Hermann Goering, paying tribute to fallen of both the German and then the Italians. He also spoke again
following the speech by Adolf Hitler, the text of his speech are not available, but both speeches are included in
the original German audio archive.

I have provided some definitions and annotations within the body of the text of Hitler's speech for clarity..
 
Adolf Hitler:

Deputies, Men of the German Reichstag!

In the midst of the mighty struggle for the freedom and future of the German nation, I have
called on you to gather for this session today. The grounds for it are: to give our Volk insight
into the historic uniqueness of the events we have lived through; to express our thanks to the
deserving soldiers; and to direct, once again and for the last time, an appeal to general
reason.

(Das Volk = the united German people, as a single entity, with a distinct culture, language, heritage,
customs, beliefs and traditions, etc and not synonymous with simple translation as Folk or “the people” in
general)

Whoever contrasts the factors which triggered this historic conflict with the extent, the
greatness, and consequence of the military occurrences, must realize that the events and
sacrifices of this struggle stand in no relation to the alleged causes, unless these causes
themselves were but pretexts for intentions yet concealed.

The program of the National Socialist Revolution, insofar as it concerned the future
development of the Reich’s relations with the surrounding world, was an attempt to
obtain a revision of the Treaty of Versailles under all circumstances-and as far as this
was possible-by peaceful means.

This revision was by nature a necessity. The untenability of the provisions of Versailles lay not
only in the humiliating discrimination, the disarmament of the German Volk secured with the
result that they lost their rights, but above all in the resultant material destruction of the
present and the intended destruction of the future of one of the greatest civilized peoples in
the world, in the completely senseless accumulation of vast terrains under the mastery of a
few states, in the depriving of the losers of irreplaceable foundations for life and indispensable
vital goods.

The fact that insightful men on the side of the adversary, even while this Diktat was being
composed, warned against the conclusive realization of the terms of this work of lunacy, is
proof of the persuasion prevalent even in these ranks that it would be impossible to maintain
this Diktat in the future. Their misgivings and their protests were silenced by the
assurance that the statutes of the newly created League of Nations secured the
possibility of a revision of these provisions, indeed that it was authorized for such a
revision.
 
At no time was hope for a revision regarded as something improper, butalways as something quite natural.
Regrettably, contrary to the will of the men responsible for the Versailles Diktat, the
institution in Geneva never regarded itself as an agency for procuring sensible
revisions, but rather, from the beginning, as the custodian of the ruthless
implementation and maintenance of the provisions of Versailles. All endeavors of
democratic Germany failed to obtain, by means of revision, an equality of rights for the
German Volk.
 
_________________________
Diktat noun:
1. a harsh, punitive settlement or decree imposed unilaterally on a defeated nation, political party, etc.
2. any decree or authoritative statement: The Board of Education issued a diktat that all employees must
report an hour earlier.

Origin: 1930–35; < German: literally, something dictated < Latin dictātus, past participle of dictāre to
dictate http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/diktat
_________________________________________
 

It lies in the interest of the victor to portray as universally sanctified those conditions
that benefit him, while the essence of the instinct of self-preservation compels the
vanquished to strive for a restoration of his general human rights. For him this Diktat
penned by an arrogant enemy has even less force of law insofar as the victory of this
enemy was a dishonest one. It was a rare misfortune that the German Reich was led
exceedingly badly in the years 1914 to 18 ! To this, and to the not otherwise instructed
trust and faith of the German Volk in the word of democratic statesmen, must our fall
be ascribed.

It was thus that the joint British-French endeavor to portray the Versailles Treaty as
some type of international or higher justice must have appeared to every honest
German as nothing other than an insolent usurpation. The supposition that British or
French statesmen of all people were custodians of justice itself, or even of human
culture, was a stupid effrontery. It was an affront which is sufficiently elucidated by
their own inferior performances in these fields. For rarely has this world been
governed with a greater deficit of cleverness, morality, and culture than in that part of it
which is presently at the mercy of the fury of certain democratic statesmen.

The National Socialist Movement has, besides its delivery from the Jewish-capitalist
shackles imposed by a plutocratic-democratic, dwindling class of exploiters at home,
pronounced its resolve to free the Reich from the shackles of the Diktat of Versailles
abroad. The German demands for a revision were an absolute necessity, a matter of
course for the existence and the honor of any great people. Posterity will some day
come to regard them as exceedingly modest.

All these demands had to be carried through, in practice against the will of the British-
French potentates! Now more than ever we all see it as a success of the leadership of
the Third Reich that the realization of these revisions was possible for years without
resort to war. This was not the case-as the British and French demagogues would have
it - because we were not then in a position to wage war. When it finally appeared as
though, thanks to a gradually awakening common sense, a peaceful resolution of the
remaining problems could be reached through international cooperation, the
agreement concluded in this spirit on September 29, 1938, at Munich by the four great
states, predominantly involved, was not welcomed by public opinion in
London and Paris, but was condemned as a despicable sign of weakness.

The Jewish-capitalist warmongers, their hands covered with blood, saw in the possible
success of such a peaceful revision the vanishing of plausible grounds for the
realization of their insane plans. Once again that conspiracy of pitiful, corrupt political
creatures and greedy financial magnates made its appearance, for whom war is a
welcome means to bolster business. The International Jewish poison of the peoples
began to agitate against and to corrode healthy minds. Men of letters [authors, writers
of letters to editors] set out to portray decent men who desired peace as weaklings and
traitors, to denounce opposition parties as a “fifth column,” in order to eliminate
internal resistance to their criminal policy of war. Jews and Freemasons, armament
industrialists and war profiteers, international traders and stock-jobbers [market
speculators] , found political blackguards: desperados and glory seekers who
represented war as something to be yearned for and hence wished for.

It is to be ascribed to these criminal elements that the Polish State was incited to
assume a posture which stood in no relation to the German demands and even less to
the consequences that resulted. The German Reich, in particular with regard to Poland,
has shown restraint ever since the National Socialist rise to power. One of the basest
and stupidest provisions of the Versailles Diktat, namely the tearing away of an old
German province from the Reich, already cried for a revision in and of itself.
But what was it that I demanded at the time?

I must in this context refer to my own person. No other statesman could have afforded to
propose a solution to the German nation in the way I did. It comprised merely the return of
Danzig - that is to say of an ancient, purely German city - to the Reich as well as the
creation of a connection of the Reich to its severed province. And this only pursuant to
plebiscites conducted, in turn, under the auspices of an international forum.
If Mr. Churchill or any other warmongers had but a fraction of the sense of
responsibility I felt toward Europe, they could not have played so perfidious a game.

For it need be ascribed solely to these vested interests in war, both within Europe and
beyond, that Poland rejected the proposals which neither compromised its existence
nor its honor, and instead resorted to terror and arms. And it was truly superhuman
restraint, without precedent, which for months led us, in spite of persistent
assassination attempts on ethnic Germans-yes, indeed, in spite of the slaughter of
tens of thousands of German Volksgenossen [our people], to continue to search for a
path toward peaceful understanding.

For what was the situation like?

One of the creations of the Diktat of Versailles, the most divorced from reality, a bogy
[Poland], inflated militarily and politically, insulted a state [Germany] for many months,
threatening to beat it, to fight battles before [at] Berlin, to smash the German Army to
pieces, to transfer the border to the Oder or the Elbe [rivers] ; it went on and on. And
this other state, Germany, watched the goingson patiently for months, although one
good swipe would have sufficed for us to burst this bubble, that was inflated by
stupidity and arrogance!
 
On September 2, this struggle could yet have been avoided. Mussolini made a proposal to put
an immediate end to the hostilities and to negotiate peacefully. Though Germany saw its
armies advancing victoriously, I accepted this nonetheless. But the Anglo-French
warmongers needed war, not peace.

And they needed a long war, as Mr. Chamberlain put the matter at the time. It was to
last for at least three years, since they had in the meantime invested their capital in the
armament industry, bought the necessary machinery, and now needed the
precondition of time for the thriving of their business and for the amortization of their
investments. And besides: what are Poles, Czechs, or other such nationalities to these
citizens of the world?
 
 
 
SECRET DOCUMENTS:

A German soldier found a curious document while rummaging through train wagons at
the La Charite station on June 19, 1940. He immediately handed over the document-which
bore a particular remark-to his superiors at departmental headquarters. From there the paper
passed to agencies. It became clear that what had been discovered constituted evidence in a
most important investigation. The train station was once more thoroughly searched. And it
was thus that the High Command of the Wehrmacht came into possession of a collection of
documents of unique historical significance.

What was found were the secret files of the Allied High War Council, including the
protocols of all sessions of this illustrious association. And this time it shall not be
possible for Mr. Churchill to simply deny or to lie about the authenticity of these
documents, as he had attempted to do at the time in the case of documents found in
Warsaw. For these documents feature handwritten notes in the margins penned by
Gamelin, Daladier, Weygand, and so on. Hence these gentlemen are free either to admit
to these or to disown them at any time. And these documents enlighten us as to the
dealings of these gentlemen who have an interest in the war and in its expansion.

They will above all demonstrate how these cold-blooded politicians and military men
have used all these small peoples as a means to an end; how they tried to subject
Finland to their interests; how they determined to make Norway and Sweden the
theater of war; how they planned to set fire to the Balkans to procure the assistance of
100 divisions from there; how they prepared to bomb Batum and Baku under the cover
of a shrewd as well as unscrupulous reading of the Turkish neutrality in favor of their
own interests; how they spun their web around the Netherlands and Belgium, pulling
its strings constantly tighter, and finally engaging them in general staff agreements; as
well as many other things.

The documents afford us, moreover, a good picture of the entire amateurish method
which these policy-making warmongers employed in an attempt to contain the fire they
had kindled. These speak of their military pseudo-democracy which is jointly
responsible for the gruesome fate which they have inflicted on hundreds of thousands
and millions of soldiers of their own countries; of their barbaric lack of conscience
which led them to drive their own peoples from their homes in cold blood and
deliberately, in a mass evacuation whose military consequences were not necessarilyfavorable to them,
while the general human results were shockingly gruesome.
 
The same criminals are at the same time responsible for whipping up the Poles and inciting
them to war. Eighteen days later this campaign ended-for all practical purposes.
For a second time in the war, I spoke to the German Volk from this stand on October 6, 1939.
I was then able to report to it the glorious military defeat of the Polish State. I then also
directed an appeal to reason to the men responsible in the enemy states and to their
peoples. I warned against further pursuit of the war, the consequences of which could
only be devastating. I warned the French especially not to start a war which, by
necessity, would eat its way inward from the frontier and which, irrespective of its
outcome, would have dire consequences.

At this time, I directed an appeal to the rest of the world as well. However, as I said
then, I did so with the apprehension that not only might I not be heard, but that thereby
I might only elicit the wrath of the warmongers interested. And this is precisely what
came to pass.

The responsible elements in England and France smelt a rat, seeing my appeal as a
dangerous assault on their lucrative profiteering in the war.

Thus they hurriedly and eagerly declared that any thought of an understanding was a
waste of time - yes, that this would even have to be regarded as a crime. The war had to be
pursued in the name of culture, humanity, good fortune, progress, civilization, and - Good
God!- even in the name of sacred religion, and in subservience to this end, even Negroes and
Bushmen (Buschmenschen) had to be mobilized. And then, of course, victory would come
about of its own accord, so to speak. It would then be within grasp; one need only reach out
for it, so they said. I was very well aware of all this myself, and indeed had known it for a
long time, and it was only because of this, that I had laid before the world my appeal
for peace. For, if I were in a position to believe in victory, I would not have approached
England and France with an understanding without any conditions attached. In a few
days these agitators succeeded in portraying me as a coward before the eyes of the
world.

I was scolded for my peace proposal, even personally insulted. Mr. Chamberlain
virtually spat in my face before the world public and declined to even talk of peace,
according to the directives of the warmongers and agitators backing him: Churchill,
Duff Cooper, Eden, Hore-Belisha, and so on. Not to mention negotiating a peace.
And it was thus that the big capitalist clique of war profiteers cried for a continuation
of the war. And this continuation has now begun.

I have already asserted, and all of you, my Volksgenossen, know this: that if I do not speak
for some time, or nothing much happens, then this does not mean that I am doing nothing.
With us it is not necessary to multiply by a factor of five or twelve every airplane built, and
then to proclaim it loudly to the world. Besides, hens would be ill-advised to cry out to the
world every egg just laid. It would be all the more ill-considered of statesmen to announce
projects barely beyond the planning stage, in nervous chatter, to the surrounding world, so as
to inform it in a timely manner.To the excited garrulousness of two of these great democratic state leaders we owe
ever-current information on the plans for an expansion of the war by our adversaries,
and especially on the concentration of the war effort in Norway and Sweden.
 
 
 ___________________________________________________________
Volksgenossen = fellow people of the German community
garrulousness
1. Given to excessive and often trivial or rambling talk; tiresomely talkative.
2. Wordy and rambling: a garrulous speech.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/garrulousness
_____________________________________________________________
 
 
 
While the Anglo-French clique of warmongers was on the lookout for new
opportunities to expand the war, and trying to trap new victims, I have labored to bring
to a conclusion the organizational buildup of the Wehrmacht, to set up new units, to
start up production for the war, to get material to flow, as well as to order training of
the entire Wehrmacht for its new missions. Beyond this, however, the bad weather of the
late autumn and winter forced a postponement of military operations.

In the course of the month of March, we gained knowledge of British- French ambitions to
intervene in the Russo-Finnish conflict; which was less to help the Finns and more to
damage Russia, the latter being seen as a power cooperating with Germany. This
ambition grew into the determination to intervene actively in Finland itself and, if
possible, to gain a base for carrying the war to the Baltic Sea. And, at this time also,
suggestions of the Allied High War Council appeared with ever greater insistence
either to set afire the Balkans or Asia Minor in an effort to bar the Reich from its
Russian and Romanian oil imports, or to gain possession of Swedish iron ore.
Landings in Norway were to serve this end with the goal of occupying all ore railroads
leading from Narvik across Sweden to the port of Lulea.

The Russo-Finnish peace accords prevented, at the last minute, the carrying out of the
already envisioned action in the Nordic States. Yet, merely a few days later, similar
ambitions surfaced anew and precipitated a clear decision.

England and France had agreed to move, in one sudden strike, to occupy numerous
important locations in Norway under the pretext of preventing further support for the
German war effort with Swedish ore.

To secure access completely to the Swedish ore, they intended to march into Sweden
themselves and to push aside the few forces Sweden could muster, either, if possible,
in a friendly manner or, if necessary, by force.

Of the imminence of this danger we were informed personally by the untameable
garrulousness of the First Lord of the British Admiralty. Moreover, we received
confirmation through a hint made by the French Premier Reynaud in a talk with a
foreign diplomat. That the date had been postponed twice before the eighth of April,
and that the occupation was scheduled for the eighth, that the eighth, therefore, was
the third and final day - of this we gained knowledge only recently. It was conclusively
established only with the discovery of the protocols of the High Allied War Council. I
then ordered the Wehrmacht, as soon as the danger of dragging the North into the war
was becoming apparent, to take the appropriate measures.
 
The case of the Altmark already demonstrated that the Norwegian Government was not
willing to uphold its neutrality. Beyond this, reports of secret agents also revealed that,
at least insofar as the leading heads of the Norwegian Government and the Allies were
concerned, there was already full agreement. Finally, Norway’s reaction to the violation
of its territory by British minelayers dispelled all remaining doubts.
 
 
 ___________________________________________________
Altmark = a German tanker ship. The “Altmark Incident” was a naval skirmish of World War II between the
United Kingdom and Nazi Germany, which happened on 16 February 1940. It took place in what were, at that
time, neutral Norwegian waters.
________________________________________________

The German operation, prepared down to the last detail, was launched. In fact the situation
was a bit different from what we perceived it to be on April 9. While we then believed, we had
anticipated the British occupation by a few hours, we know today that the landing of
the English troops had been scheduled for the eighth. The deployment of the British
contingents had already begun on the fifth and sixth. However, the moment the first news
reached the British Admiralty of the German steps, i.e. that a German fleet had put to sea,
this development so impressed Mr. Churchill that he decided to have the contingents already
embarked disembark once again, so that the British fleet would first be able to search for and
attack German ships. This attempt ended in failure.

Only a single English destroyer came into contact with the German naval forces and was shot
out of the water. This vessel could not relay any sort of message to the British Admiralty or to
the fleet of the English naval combat contingents. And thus, on the ninth, the landing of
German forward units was carried out along a coastal front stretching from Oslo north
to Narvik. When news of this reached London, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Churchill,
had already been on the lookout for many hours-eagerly awaiting first reports of the
successes of his fleet.

And this strike, my Deputies, was the most daring undertaking in the history of German
warfare!

Its successful implementation was possible only thanks to the leadership and the behavior of
all German soldiers involved. What our three arms, the Army, the Navy, and the Luftwaffe,
have accomplished in the struggle for Norway assures them mention in the records of the
highest soldiership.
______________________________
Luftwaffe = German Airforce
________________________________________________

The Navy conducted its operations, and later handled the troop transports, faced by an
enemy who, all in all, possessed an almost tenfold superiority. All units of our young Reich
War Navy have covered themselves with eternal glory in this venture. Only after the war will it
be appropriate to discuss the difficulties faced especially in this campaign: the numerous
unexpected setbacks, losses, and accidents suffered. To have overcome all this in the end
goes to the credit of the behavior, the leadership, and the troops.

The Luftwaffe, which often was the only means of transport and communications in so
gigantically vast a terrain, outdid itself in all respects. Death-defying attacks on the enemy, on
his ships and landing troops, are hardly more impressive than the tenacious heroics of the
transport plane pilots, who in spite of unimaginably adverse weather started time and time
again on their way to the land of the midnight sun, only to unload soldiers or freight in the
midst of a snow storm. Norway’s fjords have become the graveyard of many a British warship.

Because of the uninterrupted wild attacks of German bombers and Stukas, the British fleet
was forced to retreat from and to evacuate the very arena of which a few weeks earlier an
English newspaper had so tastefully stated “that it would be a pleasure for England to oblige
the German invitation to do battle there.” The Army. The crossing already constituted a great
challenge for the soldiers of the Army. In a few cases, airborne troops had opened up the
area where they first set foot. Then division after division flooded the land which, due to its
natural characteristics, already possessed considerable defenses, and which - as far as the
Norwegian units were concerned - was very valiantly defended.

Of the Englishmen who had landed in Norway, one can say that the only remarkable
thing was the unscrupulousness with which such badly trained, insufficiently
equipped, and miserably led soldiers had been put ashore as an expeditionary corps.
From the beginning, they were certain to lose. By contrast, what our German infantry,
the pioneers, what our artillery, our communications and construction units, have
achieved in Norway can only be termed the proud heroism of struggle and labor.
The word Narvik will enter our history as glorious evidence of the spirit of the
Wehrmacht of the National Socialist Greater German Reich.

The gentlemen Churchill, Chamberlain, Daladier, and so on, have, until recently, been
exceedingly ill-informed as to the essence of the Greater German unification process.
At the time, I announced that the future would probably teach them better. And I may
well assume that in particular the deployment of mountain troops from the Ostmark at
this front furthest north in our battle for freedom has enlightened them sufficiently as
far as the Greater German Reich and its sons are concerned.

It is lamentable that the grenadiers of Mr. Chamberlain did not pay sufficient and,
above all, persistent attention to this conflict, and instead preferred to be satisfied with
the first test of the inner disposition of the tribes of our Volk which have newly come to
the Reich.

General von Falkenhorst led operations in Norway. Lieutenant General Dietl was the hero
of Narvik.

Operations at sea were conducted under the leadership of Admiral General Saalwachter
and the Admirals Carls and Boehm, and Vice Admiral Lutjens.

Operations of the Luftwaffe were under the leadership of Colonel General Milch and
Lieutenant General Geissler.

The High Command of the Wehrmacht, Colonel General Keitel, as the Chief of the High
Command, and General Jodl, as the Chief of the Wehrmacht leadership staff, were
responsible for implementing my directives for the entire undertaking.

Even before the conclusion of the campaign in Norway, news in the West took on anever more
threatening character. While, in fact, preparations had been made before the
war to break through the Maginot Line in the event of a necessary conflict with France
or England, an undertaking for which the German troops had been trained and had
been equipped with the weaponry required, the course of events in the first months of
the war compelled us to contemplate the possibility of moving against Holland and
Belgium. While Germany had positioned hardly any units against Belgium or the
Netherlands, other than those necessary for security reasons, as well as beginning to
expand upon its fortification system, a visible mass of French units began to array
itself along the French-Belgian border. In particular, the concentration of tanks and
motorized divisions in this sector revealed that it was intended - at any rate it was
possible-for these to be hurled at lighting speed through Belgium at the German
border.

Decisive in this context was the following observation:

While, in the case of a loyal reading of the Belgian-Dutch neutrality, these two
countries would have been forced, by the concentration of strong Anglo-French forces
at their border, to focus their attention on the West, both began to reduce their troop
strengths along this border to the same degree they began to build up the units
stationed along the border with Germany. News of ongoing talks at the general staff
-level, also shed a peculiar light on [this interpretation of] Belgian-Dutch neutrality. I
need not emphasize that these talks, had they been conducted in the spirit of true
neutrality, would have had to be held with both sides. Besides this, such an
intensification of signs indicating that a move of the Anglo-French troops across
Holland and Belgium against the German industrial area was taking place required that
we should regard this threat as a serious danger.

Hence I took the German Wehrmacht into my confidence, informing it of the possibility
of such a development and entrusting it with the appropriate, detailed directives. In
numerous conferences at the High Command of the Wehrmacht with the Commanders
in Chief of the three branches of the Wehrmacht, the leaders of the Army groups and of
the armies, down to the leaders of important, individual undertakings, the tasks facing
us were enumerated and thoroughly discussed. Among the troops these were taken up
with great understanding, as the basis for a special type of training.

Correspondingly, the entire German deployment underwent the necessary
adjustments.

The thorough observations which had been conducted everywhere gradually led to the
compelling recognition that, from the beginning of May on, an Anglo-French advance
had to be expected at any moment.

In the days of May 6 and 7, telephone conversations between London and Paris took
place, of which we gained intelligence and which reinforced suspicions that an
invasion of the Netherlands and Belgium by the so-called Allies had to be expected at
any moment. Thus on the following day, May 8, I ordered an immediate attack for May
10, at 5:35 in the morning.

The basic thought behind this operation was to deploy, without worrying aboutperipheral successes,
the entire Wehrmacht - especially the Army and the Luftwaffe -
in so decisive a manner, that the envisioned operations had to attain the complete
annihilation of the Anglo-French forces.

In contrast to the Schlieffen Plan of the year 1914, I ordered the main thrust of the
operation along the left flank of the breakthrough front, while, however, keeping up
appearances of a reversed version. This deception was successful. Conduct of the
entire operation was made easy for me by measures our adversaries themselves took.
For the concentration of the entire Anglo-French motorized combat forces against
Belgium revealed as certain that the High Command of the Allied armies had arrived at
the decision to advance most speedily into this area.

We relied on the steadfastness of all German infantry divisions deployed in the thrust
against the right flank of the Anglo-French motorized Army Group. Such a drive had to
lead to its complete shattering and dissolution - yes, perhaps even to its encirclement.
As a second operation, I had planned the taking of the Seine up to Le Havre, as well as
securing bases at the Somme and Aisne for a third assault. This was intended to break
through, with strong forces across the plateau at Langres, to the Swiss border.

Reaching the coast south of Bordeaux was to conclude operations. Within this
framework and in this sequence, operations were in fact carried out.
The success of this mightiest sequence of battles in world history we owe first and
foremost to the German soldier himself. He held his own at all places he was deployed
to the highest degree. The German tribes all share equally in this glory.

The soldiers of the young, new Reichsgaus, added only since 1938, also fought in an
exemplary fashion and took a heavy toll of lives. The heroic risk of life by all Germans in this
war will make the emerging National Socialist Greater German Reich eternally sacred and
dear not only to the present generation, but to all that follow.

When I undertake to honor all those forces to whose activities we owe this most glorious of
victories, then first mention is due to a leadership which, in particular in this campaign, has
met the highest of requirements.

The Army:

It has performed the tasks imposed upon it, under the leadership of Colonel General von
Brauchitsch and his Chief of Staff Halder, in a truly glorious fashion.

If the leadership of the German Army of long ago was regarded as the best in the world, then
it is deserving today of at least equal admiration. Yes, since success is decisive for passing
judgment, the leadership of the new German Army must be considered even better!

Subdivided into three Army Groups, the Army in the West was placed under the orders of
Colonel Generals Ritter von Leeb, von Rundstedt, and von Bock.

The Army Group of General Ritter von Leeb had the initial mission to maintain the left flank
of the German front in the West, stretching from the Swiss border up to the Moselle,
in a stateof highest defensive readiness. It was anticipated that, in the later course of the operation,
this front would also actively intervene in the battle of destruction with two armies under the
leadership of Colonel General von Witzleben and General Dollmann.

At 5:35 in the morning of May 10, the two Army Groups under Colonel Generals von
Rundstedt and von Bock launched the attack. It was their mission, along the entire front
from the river Moselle to the North Sea, to break through the enemy lines along the frontier; to
occupy the Netherlands; to move against Antwerp and the troops stationed at Dyle; to take
Liege; and, above all, to reach the left flank along the river Meuse with massive forces for the
attack, to force a crossing between Namur and Carignan with a main thrust of the tank and
motorized divisions at Sedan and, in the further course of operations, to assemble all
available tank and motorized divisions to push onward, along the system of canals and rivers
between the Aisne and the Somme, to the sea.

To Rundstedt’s southern Army Group fell also the important task of preventing a repetition of
the Miracle of the Marne of 1914. He was to accomplish this task by securing, according to
plan, the cover of the left flank in the course of the breakthrough.

This massive operation, which already decided the further course of the war, led, as
planned, to the annihilation of the main mass of the French Army as well as of the
entire British Expeditionary Force, and already added luster to the German leadership.
Besides the two leaders of the Army Groups and their Chiefs of Staff, Lieutenant General
von Sodenstern and Lieutenant General von Salmuth, the following leaders of the Army
are deserving of the highest of distinctions:

Colonel General von Kluge as leader of the Fourth Army;
Colonel General List as leader of the Twelfth Army;
Colonel General von Reichenau as leader of the Sixth Army;
General von Kuchler as leader of the Eighteenth Army;
General Busch as leader of the Sixteenth Army; and the
Generals von Kleist, Guderian, Hoth, and Hoeppner
as leaders of the tank and motorized troops.

Large additional numbers of generals and officers who distinguished themselves in these
operations are known to you already, my Deputies, because of the high distinctions granted
them.

The further conduct of the operation in the general direction of the Aisne and the Seine was
not intended to conquer Paris primarily, but rather to create, or better secure, a basis for a
breakthrough to the Swiss border. This massive offensive action, thanks to the outstanding
leadership of all grades, also went according to plan.

A change of personnel in the High Command of the French Army, which had meanwhile
taken place, was to revive its resistance and to bring about a change, much desired by the
Allies, in the fortunes of the battle so unhappily begun.

Indeed it was possible to get the German armies and their offensive actions going, at several
locations, only after overcoming the strongest of resistance.
 
Here, not only the courage, but also the training of the German soldier had the opportunity to
hold its own to a high degree. Inspired by the zeal of countless officers and non-
commissioned officers, as well as of individual men of valor, the infantry itself, time and time
again, was compelled onward even in the most difficult of situations.

Paris fell! The breaking of the enemy’s resistance at the Aisne opened the way to a
breakthrough to the Swiss border. In one gigantic envelopment the armies stormed to the
back of the Maginot Line. Now abandoning its reserve, the Army Group Leeb went on the
offensive in two locations west of Saarbrucken and Neubreisach. Under orders from Generals
von Witzleben and Dollmann, they achieved the breakthrough. And thus it was possible not
only to surround the gigantic front of the French resistance, but to dissolve it into little particles
and to force it to the well-known capitulation.

These operations were crowned by the now generally beginning advance of the German
armies. At their head moved the incomparable Panzer and motor divisions of the Army with
the goal of driving a left flank down the Rhone in the direction of Marseilles, and a right flank
across the Loire in the direction of Bordeaux and the Spanish border. This was to destroy the
dissolving remains of the French Army, or rather to occupy French territory. I will report in
detail at a later point on the intervention of our allies in this war.

When Marshal Petain offered France’s laying down of arms, he was not laying down a
weapon he still held. Rather he merely put an end to a situation completely untenable
in the eyes of every soldier. Only the bloody dilettantism of a Mr. Churchill either fails
to comprehend as much or lies about it in spite of better knowledge.

In the second, third, and last phase of this war, the following Army leaders distinguished
themselves as did the earlier mentioned generals: Colonel General von Witzleben; the
Generals von Weichs, Dollmann, Strauss. The valiant divisions and standards of the
Waffen SS also fought within the framework of these armies.

When I express my gratitude and that of the German Volk to the aforementioned generals, in
their capacity as leaders of the Army and Army Groups, this applies at the same time to all
other officers, all of whom it is not possible to mention by name, and especially to all the
nameless workers of the General Staff.

In this battle, my Deputies, the rank and file of Germany has proved itself to be what it has
always been: the best infantry in the world! And with it all other branches of the Army
compete: artillery and pioneers, and, above all, the young units of our tanks and motorized
troops. The German Panzer weapon, through this war, has made its entry into world history.

The men of the Waffen SS share in the glory. Yet the communications units, the construction
units of the pioneers, the railroad construction men, etc., are also worthy, in accordance with
their performance, of the highest praise we have to offer.

In the wake of the armies followed the commandos of the Todt Organization, of the Reich
Labor Service, and of the NSKK, and these also helped to repair roads, bridges, as well as to
restore order to traffic.

Within the framework of the Army, this time there also fought parts of the Flak artillery of our
Luftwaffe. At the foremost front, they helped to break the enemy’s power of resistance andattack.
A detailed account of their effectiveness can be rendered only at a later date.

The Luftwaffe itself:

At dawn on the morning of May 10, thousands of fighter planes and dive bombers, under the
cover of fighters and destroyers, descended on enemy airfields. Within a few days
uncontested air superiority was assured. And not for one minute in the further course of the
battle was it allowed to slip.

Only where temporarily no German airplanes were sighted, could enemy fighters and
bombers make short appearances. Besides this, their activities were restricted to night action.
The Field Marshal [Goering] had the Luftwaffe under his orders during this mission in the
war.

Its tasks were:

1. to destroy the enemy air forces, i.e. to remove these from the skies;

2. to support directly or indirectly the fighting troops by uninterrupted attacks;

3. to destroy the enemy’s means of command and movement;

4. to wear down and break the enemy’s morale and will to resist;

5. to land parachute troops as advance units.

The manner of their deployment in the operation in general, as well as their adjustment to the
tactical demands of the moment, was exceptional. Without the valor of the Army, the
successes attained should never have been possible.

Equally true is it that, without the heroic mission of the Luftwaffe, the valor of the Army should
have been for naught. Both Army and Luftwaffe are deserving of the greatest glory! The
deployment of the Luftwaffe in the West took place under the personal command of Field
Marshal Goering. His Chief of Staff: Major General Jeschonnek.

Both aerial fleets stood under orders of General der Flieger Sperrle and General der
Flieger Kesselring. The Aviation Corps subordinate to them stood under orders of Generals
der Flieger Grauert and Keller, Lieutenant General Loerzer, and Lieutenant General
Ritter von Greim, as well as of Major General Freiherr von Richthofen. Both Flak Corps
stood under orders of Flak Artillery General Weise and Major General Dessloch. The Ninth
Aerial Division under Major General Coeler deserves special mention. The Commander of
the Parachute Troops, General der Flieger Student, was severely wounded. The further
conduct of the battle in the air in Norway was orchestrated by General der Flieger Stumpff.

While millions of German soldiers of the Army, Luftwaffe, and Waffen SS took part in these
battles, others could not be spared at home as they were needed for the buildup of the local
reserve formations. Many of the most capable officers - as bitter as this was for them - were
forced to conduct and oversee the training of those soldiers who, as reserve units, or perhaps
in new formations, were to go to the front only later. Despite my sympathy for the inner
sentiments of those who felt at a disadvantage, the greater common interest, as a matter
of principle, was decisive. Party and State, Army, Navy, Luftwaffe, and SS sent every
man to the front whom they were able to spare somehow. Yet, without securing a
Replacement Army, a reserve air force, reserve SS formations, as well as Party and
State in general, the war at the front could not have been waged.

As the organizers of the Replacement Army at home and of the armament and supplies for
the Luftwaffe, the following have attained special merit: Artillery General Fromm and
General der Flieger Udet.

I cannot conclude the enumeration of all these meritorious generals and admirals without
paying tribute to those who are my closest co-workers in the Staff of the High Command of
the Wehrmacht:

Colonel General Keitel as Chief of the High Command of the Wehrmacht, and Major
General Jodl as his Chief of Staff. They have made the greatest of contributions to the
realization of my plans and ideas throughout long months of many cares and much work.

An appreciation of the accomplishments of our Navy and its leaders will only be possible, to a
full extent, at the end of the war.

When I now conclude these purely military reflections on events, truth compels me to
state the historic fact that none of this would have been possible without the
disposition of the home front-or without, at its fore, the foundation, the work, and the
activities of the National Socialist Party.

Already in 1919, in the age of great decline, it proclaimed its program for the
establishment of a German People’s Army and has stood up for it throughout the
decades with a zealous determination. Without its activities, the conditions necessary
for both the re-emergence of the German Reich and the creation of a German
Wehrmacht would not have existed. Above all, it lent the struggle its ideological
(weltanschaulich) world view foundation. To the senseless sacrifice of life of our
democratic opponents in the interests of their plutocracies, it opposes the defense of a
Volksgemeinschaft. Its activities have resulted in a solidarity between front and
homeland, which regrettably did not exist in the World War.
 
______________________________________________
Volksgemeinschaft = the community of the German Volk
_____________________________________________________________________________

From its ranks, therefore, I should like to name the men, who along with countless others,
attained great merit in securing the opportunity to celebrate victory in a new Germany: Party
comrade Reich Minister Hess, himself an old soldier of the World War, has been one of the
most loyal fighters for the erection of the present state and its Wehrmacht ever since the early
days of the foundation of the Movement.

Party comrade Chief of Staff of the SA Lutze has organized the mass of millions of SA men,
in the sense of supporting the state to the utmost, and has secured its pre- and post-military
training.

Party comrade Himmler has organized the entire security of our Reich as well as the units of
the Waffen SS.

Party comrade Hierl has been the founder and leader of the Reich Labor Service.
Party comrade Ley is the guarantor of the behavior of the German worker.
Party comrade and Reich Minister Major General Todt is the organizer of the production of
armament and ammunition and has gained eternal merit as a master builder in the
construction of our massive, strategic [!] road network as well as of the fortified front in the
West.

Party comrade Minister Goebbels is the leader of a propaganda apparatus whose
refinement is best ascertained [only] in comparison with that of the World War.
Among the numerous organizations of the home front, there remain to be mentioned the
organization of the Kriegswinterhilfswerk, and of the NS Volkswohlfahrt under the
leadership of Party comrade Hilgenfeldt, as well as the German Red Cross, and moreover
the Reich Air Defense Association under the leadership of Flak Artillery General von
Schroeder.
_______________________________________________________
Kriegswinterhilfswerk = Krieg means war. The Winterhilfswerk (WHW, English: Winter Relief—literally
"winter help work") was an annual drive by the Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt (the National
Socialist People’s Welfare Organization) to help finance charitable work. Its slogan was "None shall
starve nor freeze". It ran from 1933-1945 during the months of October through March, and was
designed to provide food, clothing, coal, and other items to less fortunate Germans during the inclement
months. It's goals and efforts were expanded and intensified during the war as a true demonstration of
solidarity of the German people on the home front/

NS Volkswohlfahrt = The Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt (NSV), meaning "National Socialist
People's Welfare" was a social welfare organization during the Third Reich. The NSV was established in
1933, shortly after the NSDAP took power in Germany. Its seat was in Berlin. The structure of the NSV
was based on the NSDAP Party model, with local, county (Kreis) and group administrations. During
World War II, the NSV took over more and more governmental responsibilities, especially in the fields of
child and youth care / support.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

I cannot conclude this tribute without thanking the one man who, for years, has engaged
himself in loyal, untiring, self-devouring work to realize my foreign policy directives. The name
of Party comrade von Ribbentrop as Reich Foreign Minister shall remain tied for all
eternity to the political rise of the German nation.

My Deputies!

I have determined, as Fuehrer and Supreme Commander of the German Wehrmacht, to
honor the most meritorious generals before the one forum which in truth represents
the entire German Volk. I must place at their forefront a man to whom I have difficulty in
expressing sufficient gratitude for the services which tie his name to the Movement, to the
State, and, above all, to the German Luftwaffe.

Since the days of the foundation of the SA, Party Comrade Goering has been bound up
in the development and rise of the Movement. Since we came to power, his capacity for
work and willingness to take responsibility have accomplished deeds in numerous
fields for the German Volk and the German Reich which cannot be excluded from the
history of our Volk and Reich.

Since the rebuilding of the German Wehrmacht, he has become the creator of the
German Luftwaffe. It is granted to only a few mortals to create in the course of their
lives a military instrument practically from nothing and to transform it into the
mightiest weapon of its kind in the world. Above all, he has lent it his spirit.

Field Marshal Goering as creator of the German Luftwaffe, and as an individual man,
has made the greatest contribution to the rebuilding of the German Wehrmacht. As the
leader of the German Luftwaffe he has, in the course of the war up to date, created the
prerequisites for victory. His merits are unequalled! I name him Reichsmarschall of the
Greater German Reich and award him the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross.
 
 
___________________________________________________
[SNIP: This section has been omitted in the audio version, with no disrespect intended to
these German heroes, but for the sake of flow, moving on to more essential information of
greater interest to the average reader]
____________________________________________________________________________________
 

For services rendered to the victory of German weaponry in the struggle for the
freedom and future of our Greater German Reich,
I hereby promote:

The Commander in Chief of the Army, Colonel General von Brauchitsch, to the rank of Field
Marshal;

Colonel General von Rundstedt, Commander in Chief of Army Group A, to the rank of Field
Marshal;

Colonel General Ritter von Leeb, Commander in Chief of Army Group C, to the rank of Field
Marshal;

Colonel General von Bock, Commander in Chief of Army Group B, to the rank of Field
Marshal;

Colonel General List, Commander in Chief of the Twelfth Army, to the rank of Field Marshal;
Colonel General von Kluge, Commander in Chief of the Fourth Army, to the rank of Field
Marshal;

Colonel General von Witzleben, Commander in Chief of the First Army, to the rank of Field
Marshal;

Colonel General von Reichenau, Commander in Chief of the Sixth Army, to the rank of Field
Marshal.

I promote:

General Halder, Chief of the General Staff of the Army, to the rank of Colonel General;
 
General Dollmann, Commander in Chief of the Seventh Army, to the rank of Colonel General;

General Freiherr von Weichs, Commander in Chief of the Second Army, to the rank of
Colonel General;

General von Kuchler, Commander in Chief of the Eighteenth Army, to the rank of Colonel
General;

General Busch, Commander in Chief of the Sixteenth Army, to the rank of Colonel General;

General Strauss, Commander in Chief of the Ninth Army, to the rank of Colonel General;

General von Falkenhorst, Military Commander in Norway, to the rank of Colonel General;

General von Kleist, Commanding General of the Twenty-Second Army Corps, to the rank of
Colonel General;

General Ritter von Schobert, Commanding General of the Seventh Army Corps, to the rank of
Colonel General;

General Guderian, Commanding General of the Nineteenth Army Corps, to the rank of
Colonel General;

General Hoth, Commanding General of the Fifteenth Army Corps, to the rank of Colonel
General;

General Haase, Commanding General of the Third Army Corps, to the rank of Colonel
General;

General Hoeppner, Commanding General of the Sixteenth Army Corps, to the rank of Colonel
General;

General Fromm, Chief of Military Armament and Commander in Chief of the Replacement
Army, to the rank of Colonel General.

In consideration of unequaled services rendered
I promote:

Lieutenant General Dietl, Commanding General of the Mountain Corps in Norway, to the rank
of Infantry General.
As the first officer with the German Wehrmacht, I award him the Oak
Leaves of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross.

Pending a later recognition of all the leaders and officers of the Reich Navy,
I promote:

Admiral Carls, the Commanding Admiral of the Naval Station Baltic Sea and Commander in
Chief of the Naval Troops East, to the rank of Admiral General.
 
In appreciation of the unequaled accomplishments of the German Luftwaffe,
I promote:

Colonel General Milch to the rank of Field Marshal;

General der Flieger Sperrle to the rank of Field Marshal;

General der Flieger Kesselring to the rank of Field Marshal.

I promote:

General der Flieger Stumpff to the rank of Colonel General;

General der Flieger Grauert to the rank of Colonel General;

General der Flieger Keller to the rank of Colonel General;

General of the Flak Artillery Weise to the rank of Colonel General;

General der Flieger Udet to the rank of Colonel General.

Furthermore,

I promote to the rank of General der Flieger:

Lieutenant General Geissler;
Major General Jeschonnek;
Lieutenant General Loerzer;
Lieutenant General Ritter von Greim;
and Major General Freiherr von Richthofen.

In my High Command of the Wehrmacht I promote:

Colonel General Keitel to the rank of Field Marshal;

Major General Jodl to the rank of Artillery General.

In announcing these promotions on the occasion of the most successful campaign in
our history, before this forum and so before the entire nation, I thereby honor the entire
Wehrmacht of the National Socialist Greater German Reich.
 
[END SNIP: Audio narration resumes here]

I cannot conclude my reflections on this battle without thinking of our ally here.

Ever since there has been a National Socialist regime, its foreign policy has embraced
two goals:

1. bringing about a true understanding and friendship with Italy and,
2. bringing about the same relationship with England.

My Party Comrades, you know that I was as driven by these conceptions twenty years ago as
I was later. I have dealt with and defended these ideas as a journalist and in my speeches
countless times, as long as I myself was a mere opposition leader in the democratic republic.

I immediately undertook, as soon as the German Volk entrusted me with its leadership,
to realize these oldest goals of National Socialist foreign policy in practical terms. It
still saddens me today that, in spite of all my endeavors, I have not succeeded in
obtaining this friendship with England which, I believe, should have been a blessing
for both peoples; and especially because I was not able to do so despite my persistent,
sincere efforts. However, I am all the more happy that at least the first point in this program
of my foreign policy was in fact realized.

This I owe, above all, to the genius who today stands at the head of the Italian people.
For it was possible only owing to his epoch-making activities for the two intellectually
related revolutions to find each other, to finally seal in jointly-shed blood the alliance
which is destined to procure a new life for Europe. That I myself have the honor to be a
friend of this man gladdens me all the more, in view of the unique story of his life, which bears
evidence of as many similarities to my own as our two revolutions do to each other, and,
beyond this, as does the history of the unification and rise of our two nations.

Ever since the resurrection of the German Volk, we have heard many voices of
understanding from Italy. On the foundation of this mutual understanding grew a living
community of interests. And finally this was set down in treaties. And when, last year,
contrary to my expressed will and desire, this war was forced on the German Reich, a
consultation on the further conduct of our two states involved Mussolini and myself.
The benefit derived for the Reich from the behavior of Italy was extraordinary. Not only
economically did we profit from the situation and the stance of Italy, but also militarily.

From the beginning, Italy tied down strong forces of our enemies and curtailed above
all their freedom of strategic disposition. And when the Duce determined that the time
had come to take a stand with the weapon in his fist against the unbearable and
persistent violation of Italy, damage done in particular by French and British
transgression, and the King issued the declaration of war, then this was done with
complete freedom of decision. All the greater must our gratitude be.

The intercession of Italy has sped up and assisted in opening France’s eyes to the
utter hopelessness of continued resistance.

And ever since, our ally has fought on the peaks and ridges of the Alps and now on the vast
plains encompassed in his sphere of interest. Especially his present air attacks and battles at
sea are being led with the spirit peculiar to the Fascist Revolution. Here they elicit the spirit
which binds National Socialism to Fascist Italy. Italy’s pain is Germany’s pain, as we have
experienced in recent days in view of the death of Balbo. Its joy is our joy.

And our cooperation in the political and military fields is a complete one. It will erase
the injustice done the German and Italian peoples throughout the centuries. For, at the
end of everything, stands the shared victory!

And when I now turn to speak of the future, my Deputies, I do so not to boast or brag. This I
can well leave up to others who are in greater need of it, as for example Mr. Churchill.

What I want to do is to paint a picture of the present situation, bare of exaggeration, as it is
and as I see it.

1. The course of events in the ten months of war now lying behind us has proved my
assessments correct and those of our adversaries incorrect:

When the British so-called statesmen assure us that their country emerges strengthened from
every defeat and failure, then it surely is no arrogance when I inform them that we emerge at
least equally strengthened from our successes.

On September 1 of the year now past, I already explained to you that, come what may,
neither the force of weapons nor time shall force Germany to the ground. The Reich
today stands stronger militarily than ever before.

We have seen the losses, individually surely heavy, though as a total relatively low, which the
German Wehrmacht has suffered in battle within the past three months. When you consider
that, within this time, we erected a front which reaches from the North Cape to the
Spanish border, then our losses are extraordinarily low, especially when compared with
those of the World War.

The cause lies - besides with the, on an average, excellent leadership-with the
outstanding tactical training of the individual soldier and of the units, as well as with
the cooperation among the branches of the service.

Another cause is to be found with the quality and efficiency of the new weaponry.
A third cause lies with the conscious refusal to pursue what is called prestige. I myself
have, on principle, labored to avoid any attack or operation which was not necessary in
the context of the actual annihilation of the adversary, but was instead to be carried
out for the sake of what was regarded as prestige.

In spite of all of this, naturally, we had anticipated far higher losses in many instances. The
manpower saved will benefit us in the further pursuit of the struggle for freedom forced
upon us. At present, many of our divisions in France are being withdrawn and reassigned to
their bases at home. Many men are able to take leaves of absence. Weaponry and equipment
are being either repaired or replaced by new material. All in all, the Wehrmacht today is
stronger than ever before.
 
2. Weaponry: The loss of weaponry in Norway, especially in the campaigns against
Holland, Belgium, and France, is void of any significance. It stands in no relation to
production. Army and Luftwaffe possess at this moment-as I am speaking to you-
equipment more complete and stronger than before we intervened in the West.

3. Ammunition: Provisions for ammunition were so well executed, the stocks are so
vast, that in many areas production must now be curtailed or rerouted since the
existing depots and warehouses, even given the greatest of efforts, in part are no
longer capable of absorbing further deliveries. As in Poland, the consumption of
ammunition was unexpectedly low. It stands in no relation to the stockpiles. The total
reserves of the Army and the Luftwaffe are higher at present, for all categories of
weapons, than before the attack in the West.

4. Raw materials essential to the war effort: Thanks to the Four-Year Plan, Germany
was prepared for the greatest of strains in an exemplary fashion. No armed forces in
the world, other than Germany’s Wehrmacht, have so benefited from a shift away from
imported raw materials essential to the war effort to such as can be found within the
country.

Thanks to the work of the Reichsmarschall, this transformation of the German
economy into a war economy characterized by self-sufficiency was already achieved in
peacetime. [!] We possess reserves of the two most important raw materials, coal and
iron, in what I may well term an unlimited quantity. Fuel supplies are more than enough
for consumption. The capacities of our production are increasing and, within a short
time, they will suffice - even should imports cease-to satisfy demand completely.

Our advance metal collections have so increased our metal reserves that we can face a
war of no matter what duration. We shall reign supreme no matter what happens.

Added to this are the enormous possibilities that come from a yet immeasurable loot
and including the development of the territories we have occupied. Germany and Italy
possess, within the confines of the area they regulate and control, an economic
potential of about 200 million people, of whom only 130 million are soldiers, with
seventy million free to be employed exclusively in different economic activities.
 
_____________________________________________________________________________-
[Editor's note – I found the above statement astonishing and perplexing, but it is in fact what he said.
On further reflection, however, Germany and Italy at this point did, for all intents and purposes, control
almost all of western Europe. The 130 Million soldiers must therefore have referred to, not only regular
forces, but reservists, and all those who had some military training, and would have to also have
included females. His vision, or presumption, it seems, would be that these would also fight with
Germany and Italy to defend all of continental Europe.]
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
 

I informed you on September 1, my Deputies, that for the further conduct of the war I had
ordered the initial implementation of a new Five-Year Plan. I can now assure you that all
measures to this end have been taken. Come what may, I now no longer regard time as a
threatening factor, not even in a general sense. This time, the measures taken in a timely
fashion have also secured foodstuffs for a war of no matter how long a duration.

5. The attitude of the German Volk: Thanks to National Socialist education, the German
Volk has not approached this war with the superficiality of a “hurrah” patriotism, but
with the zealous determination of a race which knows the fate awaiting it should it
suffer defeat. The endeavors to subvert this unity, launched by the propaganda of our
enemies, are as stupid as they are ineffective. Ten months of war have rendered this
zealousness all the more profound. And, in general, it is a great misfortune that the
world’s opinion is not formed by men who see things as they are, but by men who see
them as they want them to be!
 
 
 _______________________________________________________________________________________________
[NOTE approx. 60 seconds of inaudible, damaged content removed but the text is in
the pargaraph which follows, and is included in the English audio narration]
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
 
 
In the last days, I have seen through and studied countless documents from the Allied
Headquarters. Among other things, these contain reports on the atmosphere in
Germany, or memoranda on the disposition and inner attitude of the German Volk. The
authors of these reports were, in part, also diplomats. Reading through these reports,
one cannot help wondering whether their authors were blind, stupid, or simply vile
scoundrels. I will admit without further ado that, naturally, here in Germany also there
have been, and perhaps still are today, certain individuals who have watched the Third
Reich’s conquests with a feeling akin to regret. Incorrigible reactionaries or blind
nihilists may well be saddened in their hearts that things came out not as they had
willed them. But their numbers are ridiculously small and their significance is smaller
yet.

Regrettably, this scum of the nation appears to have been chosen by the outside world
as a measuring stick by which to assess the German Volk. And from this, the sick minds
of failed statesmen derive the last points of orientation to cling to for new hope. As needed,
the British warlords designate a “General Hunger” or an “imminent revolution” as their new
allies. There is no nonsense that these people would not dish up for their own nation in
order to cling to their positions for yet a few more weeks.

The German Volk has proved, above all, its inner attitude through its sons who are
fighting on the battlefield. Within weeks they have beaten Germany’s strongest military
adversary and have destroyed him. Their spirit was and remains the spirit of the
German homeland!

6. The surrounding world: In the eyes of English politicians, their last hopes, besides those
resting with the loyal and allied nations, lie with a series of propped-up heads of state without
thrones; statesmen without subjects; and generals without armies; as well as on renewed
complications they believe they can conjure up thanks to their well-proven deftness in such
matters. A true Ahasuerus amongst these hopes is the belief in a possible new
estrangement to separate Germany and Russia.
 
 
 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ahasuerus = a reference to the King of Persia in the Talmudic Book of Esther and reflects the king's
ever-changing positions. Initially, he is a benevolent leader entertaining the populace with banquets and
festivities. Quickly he is persuaded by Haman to support a genocidal massacre. And then, just as
quickly,, Esther turns him into an ally of the Jews, determined to execute vengeance on Haman and his
collaborators.
_____________________________________________________________
 
 
 
German-Russian relations have been established for good.
The reason for this was that England and France, with the support of certain smaller
states, incessantly attributed to Germany ambitions to conquer terrain which lay
completely outside the sphere of German interests. Suddenly it was said, that Germany
was eyeing the occupation of the Ukraine; then again it sought to invade Finland; at
another time it was claimed that Romania was threatened; then finally even Turkey was
endangered.

Given these circumstances, I held it to be proper to undertake, above all, with Russia, a
sober delineation of interests, to once and for all clarify what Germany believes it must
regard as its sphere of interest in securing its future, and what in turn Russia holds to
be vital to its existence.

Based on this clear delineation of mutual spheres of interest, the Russo- German
relationship was revised. It is childish to hope that in the course of this revision
tensions might arise anew between Germany and Russia.

Germany has not stepped outside its sphere of interest, and neither has Russia. England
is deceived in its hope of bringing about a new European crisis to reprieve its own
situation, insofar as the relationship of Germany to Russia is concerned. Though the
British statesmen are chronically slow in their comprehension of almost everything, they will
surely come to understand this in the course of time.

I fancy I (have) correctly forecast the future development of this war in my speech of October
6. I assure you, my Deputies, that not for a moment could I doubt victory. And, unless one
feels the need to see signs and guarantees for the final victory exclusively in defeats, then I
believe that the course of events up to this point has proved me right. As I was certain of
this course of events, I offered my hand to France and England at the time for an
understanding. You still recall the answer that I received. My arguments against the
nonsense of pursuing this war, on the certainty of gaining nothing, even under the
most favorable of circumstances, and of losing much, were mocked and scoffed at, or
passed over.

I promptly assured you then that I feared, because of my peace proposal, to be decried
as a cockerel who no longer wants to fight because he is no longer able to fight. And
this is exactly what happened. I now believe that France - less the guilty statesmen
than the people-thinks differently about this October 6 today. What nameless misery
has befallen this great country and people since then. I shall not even mention the toll
of suffering the war has placed on the soldier. For above this stands the suffering
caused by the recklessness of those who drove millions of people from their homes
without proper cause, who were compelled by the thought that this might somehow
hamper the German war effort. This premise defied comprehension: this evacuation
was mostly to the detriment of the Allied war effort and, moreover, it was the most
cruel experience for the unfortunate afflicted. The injury the gentlemen Churchill and
Reynaud have done millions of people, through their advice and commands-this they
can neither justify in this world nor in the next.

All of this - as I said - need not have happened. For peace was all I asked of France and
England in October. But the gentlemen war profiteers wanted a continuation of this war
at all cost. They have it now.

I myself am too much a soldier not to comprehend the tragedy of such a development.
Still all I hear from London are cries - not the cries of the masses, but of the politicians
- that this war must now, all the more, be pursued. I do not know if these politicians
have an inkling of just how this war is in fact to be pursued. They declare that they will
continue this war, and should England fall, then they will do so from Canada. I do not
believe this means that the English people will all emigrate to Canada, but rather that
the gentlemen war profiteers will all retreat to Canada by themselves. I fear the people
will have to remain behind in England. And, assuredly, they will see the war with
different eyes in London than their so-called leaders in Canada.

Believe me, my Deputies, I feel an inner disgust at this type of unscrupulous
parliamentarian annihilators of peoples and states. It is almost painful to me to have
been chosen by Providence to give a shove to what these men have brought to the
point of falling.

It was not my ambition to wage wars, but to build up a new social state of the highest
culture. And every year of war takes me away from my work. And the cause of this
robbery is those ludicrous zeroes whom one could at best call nature’s political run of
the mill, insofar as their corrupted vileness does not brand them as something out of
the ordinary.

Mr. Churchill has repeated the declaration that he wants war. About six weeks ago
now, he launched this war in an arena in which he apparently believes he is quite
strong: namely, in the air war against the civilian population, albeit beneath the
deceptive slogan of a so-called war against military objectives. Ever since Freiburg,
these objectives have turned out to be open cities, markets, villages, residential
housing, hospitals, schools, kindergartens, and whatever else happens to be hit.

Up to now I have given little by way of response. This is not intended to signal,
however, that this is the only response possible or that it shall remain this way!

I am fully aware that with our response, which one day will come, will also come the
nameless suffering and misfortune of many men. Naturally, this does not apply to Mr.
Churchill himself since by then he will surely be secure in Canada, where the money
and the children of the most distinguished of war profiteers have already been
brought. But there will be great tragedy for millions of other men!

And Mr. Churchill should make an exception and place trust in me when as a prophet I
now proclaim: A great world empire will be destroyed. A world empire which I never
had the ambition to destroy or as much as harm. Alas, I am fully aware that the
continuation of this war will end only in the complete shattering of one of the two
warring parties. Mr. Churchill may believe this to be Germany. I know it to be England!

In this hour I feel compelled, standing before my conscience, to direct yet another
appeal to reason in England. I believe I can do this as I am not asking for something as
the vanquished, but rather, as the victor! I am speaking in the name of reason! I see no
compelling reason which could force the continuation of this war!

I regret the sacrifices it will demand. I would like to spare my Volk. I know the hearts of
millions of men and boys aglow at the thought of finally being allowed to wage battle
against an enemy who has, without reasonable cause, declared war on us a second
time!

But I also know of the women and mothers at home whose hearts, despite their
willingness to sacrifice to the last, hang onto this last with all their might.

Mr. Churchill may well belittle my declaration again, crying that it was nothing other
than a symptom of my fear, or my doubts of the final victory.

Still I will have an easy conscience in view of things to come!

Deputies, Men of the German Reichstag!

In reflecting on the ten months lying behind us, all of us will surely feel overcome by
the grace of Providence which allowed us to accomplish so great a task. It has blessed
our resolves and stood by us on many a difficult path. I myself am touched in
recognition of the calling it imparted to me to restore freedom and honor to my Volk!

The disgrace we suffered for twenty-two years and which had its beginnings in the
Forest of Compiegne was erased forever at the very same site!

Today I have named the men who, before history, enabled me to accomplish this great
task. They have done their best, dedicating their talents and their industry to the
German Volk.

I now wish to conclude in mentioning all those nameless men who have no less done their
duty. Millions of them have risked life and liberty and, as brave German officers and soldiers,
have been ready at every hour to make the last sacrifice a man can make.

Today many of them rest in the same graves in which their fathers have rested since the
Great War. They bear evidence to silent heroism. They stand as a symbol for all those
hundreds of thousands of musketeers, anti-tank gunners and tank gunners, pioneers and
artillerymen, soldiers of the Navy and the Luftwaffe, men of the Waffen SS, and all those
other fighters who stood for the German Wehrmacht in the struggle for the freedom
and future of our Volk and for the eternal greatness of the National Socialist Greater
German Reich.

Deutschland-Sieg Heil!
 
 
 
 
____________________________________________________________________________________
 
 

BRITAIN'S RESPONSE

And what was JEW controlled Britain's response to Hitler's sincere "leaflet bombing?" Laughter, ridicule, insults, threats, and more bombs, that's what! Churchill could have ended this little regional skirmish long before it escalated into the intercontinental bloodbath now known as World War II, the "Good War" as court-historians like to say.

 

UK warmonger Sefton Delmer, the future head and mastermind of British black propaganda, was just about to make his debut broadcast to Germany on the BBC when he heard the Führer's "last appeal to reason." Delmer rejected any notion of a compromise peace. Bigmouth Delmer announced:

 

"Herr Hitler," you have in the past consulted me as to the mood of the British public. So permit me to render your Excellency this little service once again tonight. Let me tell you what we here in Britain think of this appeal of yours to what you are pleased to call our reason and common sense. Herr Führer, we hurl it right back at you, right in your evil smelling teeth."

 

Delmer's inflamatory statement upset a few peace-minded Members of Parliament, but undoubtedly pleased Churchill, his Jewish handlers, and other assorted "pariots" very much.

 

 

Sefton Delmer broadcasts to Germany

Black propagandist Delmer keeps the war-fires burning. Ignorant British soldier shown laughing as he reads Hitler's leaflet.

 

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/81/75/d7/8175d7510e9becac01c7efcb5fd78483--ww-posters-world-war-two-posters.jpg http://i.huffpost.com/gadgets/slideshows/351726/slide_351726_3800674_free.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/91/99/58/919958c3c97e5d011c10e20860fecca5--school-children-children-wear.jpg

During his July, 1940 speech, which Hitler later leafleted London with, he pleaded for peace. Meanwhile, the British government shamelessly frightened its own people with idiotic tales of imminent German gas attacks.
 
 
 
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
 
 

Adolf Hitler on National Socialism and World Relations in 1937

Adolf Hitler speaks to the Reichstag on January 30, 1937, noting that Germany was once again an equal among European nations, and had regained its strength by following his National Socialist programme .

 

By Carolyn Yeager

 

AS WE WATCH OUR NATIONS SUCCUMB to multiculturalism, globalism, rioting and unbridgeable racial divisions that threaten our peace and stymie our search for solutions, Adolf Hitler would tell us that we have broken the first law of Nature which is to preserve the race, and are thus reaping Nature's promised punishment.

 

No matter what subject Hitler was speaking on, or what the occasion, he seldom failed to include reminders of the necesssity to respect the separation of the races and nations. He delivered an important speech in the German Reichstag on January 30, 1937 as Führer and Chancellor. It was published under the title “On National Socialism and World Relations.” In reading it for the first time at Archive.org, I copied passages that struck me as particularly meaningful, and which powerfully express the unwavering essence of Hitler's idea. They are the following:

 

“The main plank in the National Socialist programme is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity and to substitute therefore the folk community, rooted in the soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood. A very simple statement; but it involves a principle that has tremendous consequences.” (P 10)

 

This very clear statement rules out that Adolf Hitler was any kind of a universalist when it comes to so-called white people and that he would not approve of the European Union as it has been set up. At the time he said this (1937) he had not visualized a war that would turn Germany into the occupier of large portions of Europe. He was only visualizing German people being brought home into an expanded German Reich.

 

“[…] of all the tasks which we have to face, the noblest and most sacred for mankind is that each racial species must preserve the purity of the blood which God has given it.” (P 10)

 

This shows that Hitler saw his revolution as an internal, German event, not including all of Europe at all. His position was that others would show interest in it for themselves if it were successful in Germany.

 

“...one error that cannot be remedied once men have made it … failure to recognize the importance of conserving the blood and the race free from intermixture …

 

It is not for men to discuss the question of why Providence created different races, but rather to recognize the fact that it punishes those who disregard its work of creation.” (P 10)

 

Hitler sees it as a law of Nature rather than as an idea of men of which the pros and cons can be discussed. It is not up for discussion because it is an iron law, the breaking of which contains the punishment within itself.

 

“It will prevent the Jewish people from intruding themselves among all the other nations as elements of internal disruption, under the mask of honest world citizens, and thus gaining power over these nations.” (P 11)

 

Jews are the greatest source of disruption of the unity of a people, as proven by the rejuvenation of the German nation during the past four years since 1933.

 

“The people—the race—is the primary thing. Party, State, Army, the national economic structure, Justice, etc, all these are only secondary and accidental. They are only the means to the end and the end is the preservation of this nation.”

 

“It is absolutely necessary that this principle should be practically recognized; for that is the only way in which men can be saved from becoming the victims of a devitalized set of dogmas in a matter where dogmas are entirely out of place.” (P 16)

 

Think about this. A nation is not an Idea, but a living, breathing body of folk bound by land, language and ancestry.

 

“For the folk-community does not exist on the fictitious value of money but on the results of productive labor, which is what gives money its value.

 

This production, and not a bank or gold reserve, is the first cover for a currency. And if I increase production, I increase the real income of my fellow-citizens. And if I reduce production, I reduce that income, no matter what wages are paid out.” (P 23)

 

The higher the ratio of citizens who are incapable of productive labor, the poorer a nation will be.

 

The whole body of our German education, including the press, the theatre, the cinema and literature, is being controlled and shaped today by men and women of our own race. Some time ago one often heard it said that if Jewry were expelled from these institutions they would collapse or become deserted. And now what has happened? In all those branches cultural and artistic activities are flourishing. Our films are better than ever before and our theatrical productions today in our leading theatres stand supreme and alone in comparison with the rest of the world. Our press has become a powerful instrument to help our people in bringing their innate faculties to self-expression and assertion, and by so doing it strengthens the nation. German science is active and is producing results which will one day bear testimony to the creative and constructive will of this epoch. (P 26)

 

The Third Reich did indeed prove that Jews are not better than Gentiles at certain tasks, and that they are certainly not essential for competing internationally.

 

“Mr. Eden declares that under no circumstances does the British Government wish to see Europe torn into two halves.” […]

 

“It is to be regretted that the British Government did not adopt its present attitude at an earlier date, … for then the Treaty of Versailles would not have been entered into. This Treaty brought in the first division of Europe, namely a division of the nations into victors on the one side and vanquished on the other, the latter nations being outlawed. Through this division of Europe nobody suffered more than the German people. That this division was wiped out, so far as concerns Germany, is essentially due to the National Socialist Revolution and this brings some credit to myself.” (P 34)

 

Hitler's first task was to undo the terrible and unfair damage of the Versailles Treaty which was forced upon the German people in 1919. He rightly takes credit for that accomplishment in the first years of his chancellorship, while also pointing out Britain's hypocrisy since it conducted a starvation naval blockade against Germany after the signing of the Armistice, and even continuing after the signing of the Versailles Treaty. Hundreds of thousands of German women, children and infants suffered needlessly and died.

 

"The teaching of Bolshevism is that there must be a world revolution, which would mean world-destruction. […] As far as Germany is concerned, let there be no doubts on the following points:—

 

  1. We look on Bolshevism as a world peril for which there must be no toleration.

  2. We use every means in our power to keep this peril away from our people.

  3. And we are trying to make the German people immune to this peril as far as possible." (P 35)


Germany, because of its central location in Europe and its wealth and competence, was a particularly desirable target of the Bolsheviks.

 

"I should like to state that, complete German sovereignty and equality having now been restored, Germany will never sign a treaty which is in any way incompatible with her honour; with the honour of the nation and of the Government which represents it; or which otherwise is incompatible with Germany's vital interest and therefore in the long run cannot be kept.

 

I believe that this statement will be understood by all." (P 42)

 

Indeed, Hitler was not willing to sign a treaty of unconditional surrender in 1944-45 and no such treaty was ever signed by a German Government until the Two Plus Four Agreement was signed in 1990 by the West and East occupation governments.


 
 

 
 
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
 
 
 

The foundations for the life of a people are not to be found in doctrines and theories, but in its Lebensraum, in what the earth affords it for sustenance.

 

(American National Socialist)

 

Hence, Lebensraum cannot be regarded separately from the Lebenshohe (peak of life) of a Volk. And this Lebensraum is not enough by itself — and this also is a truly revolutionary realization — it must be complemented by a Volk’s diligence, its energy, and its ability to manage to get the most out of its Lebensraum. And a still greater insight: this necessitates a Volksgemeinschaft, even if blood alone is insufficient for this. My Volksgenossen! No leader can command greater strength than that accorded to him by his followers. What am I without you?! If you refuse me your unanimous solidarity, what am I to do?! I am only one man. I can possess the greatest good-will possible — my will is of no greater worth to you than your will is worth to me!

 

How petty are all other vain differences in our lives in view of this! How easily is the individual deceived by vanity and notions of his own supreme importance, my Volksgenossen! One man thinks a great deal of himself for one reason, another for another reason. One prides himself on being ten centimeters taller than the other, yet another is happy simply because he considers himself better looking than the first. Yet another man thinks he looks even better because his ancestors already looked better — nothing is proven, of course. Yet another man holds himself to have an advantage because momentarily his purse is fuller than that of another. I say “momentarily” for experience has shown this phenomenon to mostly be short-lived.

 

Another man yet says: “I have graduated from more classes than you have.

 

Do you have degrees like those I have?”

 

 

“No.”

 

 

“Therefore I am worth more than you. My degrees prove this conclusively.”

So the story goes. So many men have extremely important degrees furnishing the basis for their own personal brand of arrogance.

 

How ludicrous is all this in view of the common fate we all share and which hangs so compellingly above all our heads! It is void of any significance before the one truth that all of us either unite in our struggle to survive or perish together. This applies just as much to the man with the so-called fatter purse as it does to the man with an older family name and his ancestors, and the man with the allegedly more thorough education. For better or for worse, we all depend on one another.

 

And to any man who fails to grasp this — I have no idea where he might be hiding out — the attitude of the outside world toward us should serve as ample proof. How do these people behave towards us? What can we expect of them? Are these not once again the very same advocates of a strategy of encirclement, the very same people who knew nothing but hatred in the year 1914? Yes, indeed, it is once more the same clique of warmongers which haunted us back then already. What can we expect of them, my Volksgenossen? I believe it is essential that all Germans throw overboard these ridiculous prejudices insofar as remnants of them exist yet today. It is imperative that we move closer together in the conviction that together and united we can face off any danger. United we stand, divided we fall.

 

Hence we wish to educate our Volk in this spirit. And if one of those stubborn old heads is driving me to despair, then all I need to do is look at his son to regain hope. Even if all hope is lost with some of these old troublemakers (alte Stankerer), the youth has already outgrown them — praise the Lord! This youth represents a new breed of man, the type we hope to introduce to the future.

 

We are doing everything that can be done in this educational undertaking.

 

True, at times, we do overlook the so-called freedom of the individual in the process. I can easily imagine one man or another saying: “It is beyond me why my son should have to serve with the labor service just now. He was born for something greater than that. Why should he now be running around with a spade in his hand? Would it not be better if he exercised the powers of his intellect instead?” For goodness sake, what is it precisely you understand as “intellect,” my dear friend?! If your boy spends six months in the West wielding his spade for the sake of Germany, it may well be that he is doing Germany a greater service than your “intellect” could in a lifetime. And, above all: he has contributed to the overcoming of the worst form of “intellectual” confusion possible, namely, the inner fractures within a Volk. Of course, we cannot simply say: “Oh, if he does not want to, he need not work.” Do you truly believe that work at a chemical factory in one of the democracies is something so infinitely more delightful? Do not come up to tell me: “Oh, truly, this is the magic of work which smells so enticingly.” Assuredly not! It stinks, my dear gentlemen! But a few hundred thousands of workers simply have to take this on themselves and take it on themselves they do. Therefore, another can assuredly take on himself to pick up the spade. And he will pick up this spade.

 

And this brings up the problematic topic of liberty. Liberty? Insofar as the interests of the Volksgemeinschaft permit the exercise of liberty by the individual, he shall be granted this liberty. The liberty of the individual ends where it starts to harm the interests of the collective. In this case the liberty of the Volk takes precedence over the liberty of the individual.

 

By the way, in no other state is intellectual work as highly esteemed as in ours. I believe this is evident already in its leadership. In Germany, we pride ourselves in having men head our state who can well withstand any type of “intellectual” comparison to the representatives of any other state. Above the liberty of the individual, however, there stands the liberty of our Volk. The liberty of the Reich takes precedence over both.

 

The commandment of the hour is the securing of German Lebensraum.

 

There is no need for me to stress that we love peace above all. I know that a certain international clique of journalists is spreading lies about us on a daily basis, placing us under suspicion and committing libel against us. This does not surprise me in the least. I know these creatures from back in the old days. They, too, are export articles for which the German nation has no use. In the American Union, a veritable campaign for boycotts against our German exports has been organized. It would have been more intelligent, so I believe, had they imported German goods instead of the most inferior German subjects.

 

Well, at least, we can rejoice in having rid ourselves of these. How the people there will handle them, that is truly their problem. We shall see to it that these subjects do not pose an actual threat to us. I have taken the necessary precautions. I still recall vividly my political “friends” from the days before our rise to power. These fellows always insisted they knew no Fatherland. And, indeed, this is true as they are Jews and have nothing to do with us. These fellows now are reaffirming their attitudes and their pledges of old: they have launched a campaign of hatred against Germany which they pursue with all their might.

 

And I? I arm with all my might! I love peace; my work perhaps best attests to this. And in this I differ from these warmongers. What is it I have wrought and what is it these elements are undertaking? There is a great Volk here for which I bear responsibility. I am attempting to make this Volk both great and happy. Enormous projects are being undertaken here: new industries are being born; enormous buildings are undergoing construction. They are to serve the uplifting of the Volk and to bear witness to our culture — not only here in Berlin, but also in a multitude of other German cities. The things we have created in the course of these years! The countless projects we have begun in these years! And so many of them will take ten to twenty years to be completed! Therefore, I have cause aplenty to desire peace. Yet, these warmongers need no peace. They neither advance peace nor do they labor for it.

 

There is no need for me to name names in this context. They are unknown international scribblers. They are ever so clever! They are truly omniscient.

 

There is only one thing that they failed to foresee, namely, my rise to power.

 

Even in January 1933, they could simply not believe it. They also failed to foresee that I was going to remain in power. Even in February 1934, they could simply not believe it. They failed to foresee that I was going to liberate Germany. Even in 1935 and 1936, they could simply not believe it. They failed to foresee that I was going to liberate our German Volksgenossen and to return them home. Even in 1937 and 1938, they could simply not believe it. They failed to foresee that I was determined to liberate and return home the rest of them, too. Even in February of this year, they could simply not believe it. They failed to foresee that I was going to eliminate the unemployment afflicting seven million. Even two, three years ago, they could simply not believe it. They failed to foresee that I was going to implement the Four-Year Plan in Germany with success. This they simply could not believe either. They foresaw nothing! And they know nothing even today! These people have always been parasites. Lately I do not know, but I have the feeling sometimes that they are a kind of cerebral parasite. They know only too well what is happening in my brain, for instance. Whatever I say today, as I stand before you, they knew of it yesterday already. And even if I myself did not know of it yesterday — they did, these most excellent receptacles of wisdom! Actually, these creatures know everything. And, even if facts prove their pronouncements blatant lies, they have the nerve to come up with new pronouncements immediately. This is an old Jewish trick. It keeps the people from having time for reflection. Should people truly reflect on all these various prophecies, compare them to reality, then these scribblers would not get a penny for their false reports. Therefore their tactic and trick is, once one prophecy has been disproved, to come up with three new ones in its stead. And so they keep on lying, according to a type of snowball-tactics, from today until tomorrow, from tomorrow until the next day.

 

The current version of this is the claim that 20,000 Germans have failed to land in Morocco, although their imminent arrival had been reported earlier.

 

Instead of landing in Morocco, they have landed in Liberia. Considering the initial report’s assertion that these landings were supposed to be carried out by the Luftwaffe, it seems as though these planes have been floating about in midair ever since and have now unwittingly gone down over Liberia. Should no German be found in all of Liberia eight days hence, they will no doubt maintain: “It was not Liberia, after all, but Madagascar where they were heading.” And if this turns out to be wrong also — well, then it must have been another place — I already have enumerated all the locations allegedly threatened by us before the Reichstag.

 

The warmongers who do not do anything and, in any event, cannot step before the world to say: “I have created this or that!” — they are the men who are attempting to plunge the rest of the world into disaster once again. And you will understand, that I cannot possibly rely on assertions or declarations by people who themselves are paid servants of these warmongers. No, indeed, I rely exclusively on my German Volk — on you! Better safe than sorry. A declaration by the League of Nations is all very well, but I prefer our freedom to be guaranteed by the far more reliable fortifications protecting Germany in the West. And this, too, is the product of the diligent work wrought by Germans just as the inner attitude of our Volk is the product of the diligence and work of millions of its most active members. There is the German peasant who, loyally and bravely, assures bread for us by plowing his acres diligently and honestly. There is the German worker who, loyally and bravely, goes to work at the factory to assure other consumer goods for us earnestly and honestly. This is the basis of our existence.

 

As we reflect on the immense work done within these past six years, then I do believe we have a right to appoint a day once a year on which we shall join together to celebrate what we call the German Volksgemeinschaft. For this conveys the meaning of the First of May: a day to celebrate the work of Germans in the cities and in the countryside; a day to celebrate the creative man; a day to celebrate our Volksgemeinschaft. My Movement vouches for the proper education of our Volk! The German Wehrmacht vouches for its brave defense! And, all of you whom I greet at this moment, you millions of Germans in the cities and in the countryside, you who constitute the German Volksgemeinschaft, you are the guarantors that it shall never again fall apart internally! To our Greater German Reich and to our Volk, in East and West, and in North and South:

 

Sieg Heil!

 

 

________________________________________________

 

 

Hitler's 1932 Election Campaign 'Stump' Speech
Institute for Historical Review
http://www.ihr.org/other/July1932Speech

This recorded address by Adolf Hitler was distributed on 50,000 phonograph discs during Germany's fiercely contested national parliament election campaign of July 1932, in which his National Socialist movement emerged as the country's largest party. This "Appeal to the Nation" is similar in content and tone to many other speeches he gave in 1932, which for Germans was a year of mass unemployment, economic paralysis, and a broken, unresponsive political system. Translation of the complete text, with a foreword by Mark Weber, who examines how and why Hitler and his party won such broad popular support.
 
 
 

 

 


Adolf Hitler made his final address to the nation in a radio broadcast on Jan. 30, 1945,
the twelfth anniversary of the National Socialist seizure of power. Here are the concluding
sentences of that historic address, with English-language subtitles. In this talk, delivered
three months before his death, he concludes with determined confidence that, in spite
of setbacks, Germany and Europe will ultimately prevail against the grave threat from
the East. This brief video clip, just 41 seconds in length, is from a 1997 BBC documentary
"The Nazis: A Warning From History."

 
 
 
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
 

Hitler’s Religious Views:

Excerpts from ‘Hitler’s Table Talk’

PUBLISHED ON TRUTHSEEKER

Introduced by Lasha Darkmoon

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)

We publish this important 5000-word article purely for reference purposes, not because we believe in Hitler’s religious ideas or wish to promote them.

It must be understood clearly that we are  sympathetic to Christianity and the traditional moral values of our ancestors. This we are not ashamed to admit, though it is trendy nowadays to find Christianity out of date, if not repugnant, and to look for salvation in other directions.  It follows from this  that Hitler’s fascinating anti-Christian rants as set out below, though of immense interest to us psychologically, do not in any way reflect our own views or elicit our uncritical admiration.

Hitler’s religious views are uniquely his own and he is welcome to them.

Hitler’s religious ideas are revealed in his private conversations, not in his speeches which are meant for public consumption. Here he is speaking strictly for the public, as any politician would—to win popularity and shore up support—not because  he actually believes in what  he says.  Anyone who believes that Hitler was a pious Christian, based on his public pronouncements, is barking up the wrong tree. What Hitler said in public and what he believed in private are two entirely different things. Among his closest friends and associates, especially in his recorded after-dinner conversations, Hitler reveals his true attitude to religion and especially to Christianity: one of scathing  contempt.

The quotations below are all taken from Hitler’s Table Talk, a series of private conversations between Hitler and his close associates, as recorded by Martin Bormann. These informal conversations took place mostly during the early stages of World War II, especially 1941-1942, when Germany was  still doing quite well militarily against the Allies.  They took place at the dinner table in the late evening hours  and often went on until the crack of dawn. Mostly long monologues by Hitler, with his interlocutors doing their best to stifle their yawns and stay awake, the conversations  were  taken down in shorthand by his secretaries and typed out later. The typescript  was then edited meticulously by Bormann, one of Hitler’s closest friends and confidants, who had no reason whatever to distort or misrepresent the views of his admired Führer.

After  retiring to bed as the cock was crowing and the servants were rising to face the new day,  Hitler would be up again in a few hours, propped up on pillows and enjoying an austere vegetarian breakfast in bed.  A dynamo of uncanny energy, the  Führer needed no more than 3-4 hours of sleep a night.    

Renowned British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper as well as his controversial opponent David Irving both had no doubts that in  Table Talk the  authentic voice of Adolf Hitler could be heard ringing out loud and clear. Indeed, no reputable historian has ever questioned the book’s authenticity.      

Full quotation  . . . here

 


EXCERPTS  FROM  ‘HITLER’S  TABLE  TALK’

I think the man who contemplates the universe with his eyes wide open is the man with the greatest amount of natural piety: not in the religious sense, but in the sense of an intimate harmony with things.

At the end of the last century the progress of science and technics led liberalism astray into proclaiming man’s mastery of nature, and announcing that he would soon have dominion over space. But a simple storm is enough — and everything collapses like a pack of cards!

In any case, we shall learn to become familiar with the laws by which life is governed, and acquaintance with the laws of nature will guide us on the path of progress. As for the ‘why’ of these laws, we shall never know anything about it. A thing is so, and our understanding cannot conceive of other schemes.

Man has discovered in nature the wonderful notion of that almighty being whose law he worships.

Fundamentally in everyone there is the feeling for this almighty, which we call ‘God’ (that is to say, the dominion of natural laws throughout the whole universe). The priests, who have always succeeded in exploiting this feeling, threaten punishments for the man who refuses to accept the creed they impose.

When one provokes in a child a fear of the dark, one awakens in him a feeling of atavistic dread. Thus this child will be ruled all his life by this dread, whereas another child, who has been intelligently brought up, will be free of it.

It is said that every man needs a refuge where he can find consolation and help in unhappiness. I do not believe it! If humanity follows that path, it is solely a matter of tradition and habit. That is a lesson, by the way, that can be drawn from the Bolshevik front. The Russians have no God, and that does not prevent them from being able to face death.

We do not want to educate anyone in atheism.

* * *

The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity.

Bolshevism practices a lie of the same nature, when it claims to bring liberty to men, whereas in reality it seeks only to enslave them. In the ancient world, the relations between men and gods were founded on an instinctive respect. It was a world enlightened by the idea of tolerance.

Christianity was the first creed in the world to exterminate its adversaries in the name of love. Its keynote is intolerance.

Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of human failure.

* * *

The Earth continues to go around, whether it’s the man who kills the tiger or the tiger who eats the man. The stronger asserts his will, it’s the law of nature. The world doesn’t change; its laws are eternal.

There are some who say the world is evil, and that they wish to depart from this life. For my part, I like the world! Unless the desire to die is due to a lover’s quarrel, I advise the desperate man to have patience for a year. The consolations will come. But if a human being has any other reason to wish to die than this, then let him die, I’m not stopping him. I merely call attention to the fact that one cannot escape this world entirely. The elements of which our body is made belong to the cycle of nature; and as for our soul, it’s possible that it might return to limbo, until it gets an opportunity to reincarnate itself. But it would vex me if everybody wanted to have done with life.

To make death easier for people, the Church holds out to them the bait of a better world. We, for our part, confine ourselves to asking man to fashion his life worthily. For this, it is sufficient for him to conform to the laws of nature. Let’s seek inspiration in these principles, and in the long run we’ll triumph over religion.

But there will never be any possibility of National Socialism’s setting out to ape religion by establishing a form of worship. Its one ambition must be scientifically to construct a doctrine that is nothing more than a homage to reason.

Our duty is to teach men to see whatever is lovely and truly wonderful in life, and not to become prematurely ill tempered and spiteful. We wish fully to enjoy what is beautiful, to cling to it — and to avoid, as far as possible, anything that might do harm to people like ourselves.

If today you do harm to the Russians, it is so as to avoid giving them the opportunity of doing harm to us.

God does not act differently. He suddenly hurls the masses of humanity on to the Earth, and he leaves it to each one to work out his own salvation. Men dispossess one another, and one perceives that, at the end of it all, it is always the stronger who triumphs. Is that not the most reasonable order of things?

If it were otherwise, nothing good would ever have existed. If we did not respect the laws of nature, imposing our will by the right of the stronger, a day would come when the wild animals would once again devour us — then the insects would eat the wild animals, and finally nothing would exist on Earth but the microbes.

* * *

Trying to take a long view of things, is it conceivable that one could found anything durable on falsehood? When I think of our Folk’s future, I must look further than immediate advantages, even if these advantages were to last three hundred, five hundred years or more. I’m convinced that any pact with the Church can offer only a provisional benefit, for sooner or later the scientific spirit will disclose the harmful character of such a compromise. Thus the State will have based its existence on a foundation that one day will collapse.

An educated man retains the sense of the mysteries of nature and bows before the unknowable. An uneducated man, on the other hand, runs the risk of going over to atheism (which is a return to the state of the animal) as soon as he perceives that the State, in sheer opportunism, is making use of false ideas in the matter of religion, whilst in other fields it bases everything on pure science.

That’s why I’ve always kept the Party aloof from religious questions. I’ve thus prevented my Catholic and Protestant supporters from forming groups against one another, and inadvertently knocking each other out with the bible and the sprinkler. So we never became involved with these churches’ forms of worship. And if that has momentarily made my task a little more difficult, at least I’ve never run the risk of carrying grist to my opponents’ mill. The help we would have provisionally obtained from a concordat [with the churches] would have quickly become a burden on us. In any case, the main thing is to be clever in this matter and not to look for a struggle where it can be avoided.

Being weighed down by a superstitious past, men are afraid of things that can’t, or can’t yet, be explained — that is to say, of the unknown. If anyone has needs of a metaphysical nature, I can’t satisfy them with the Party’s Program. Time will go by until the moment when science can answer all the questions.

So it’s not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. A slow death has something comforting about it. The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble.

All that’s left is to prove that in nature there is no frontier between the organic and the inorganic. When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the stars are not sources of light but worlds, perhaps inhabited worlds like ours, then the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.

Originally, religion was merely a prop for human communities. It was a means, not an end in itself. It’s only gradually that it became transformed in this direction, with the object of maintaining the rule of the priests, who can live only to the detriment of society collectively.

The instructions of a hygienic nature that most religions gave, contributed to the foundation of organized communities. The precepts ordering people to wash, to avoid certain drinks, to fast at appointed dates, to take exercise, to rise with the sun, to climb to the top of the minaret — all these were obligations invented by intelligent people. The exhortation to fight courageously is also self-explanatory. Observe, by the way, that, as a corollary, the Moslem was promised a paradise peopled with sensual girls, where wine flowed in streams — a real earthly paradise. The Christians, on the other hand, declare themselves satisfied if after their death they are allowed to sing hallelujahs! All these elements contributed to form human communities. It is to these private customs that Folks owe their present characters.

Christianity, of course, has reached the peak of absurdity in this respect. And that’s why one day its structure will collapse. Science has already impregnated humanity. Consequently, the more Christianity clings to its dogmas, the quicker it will decline.

But one must continue to pay attention to another aspect of the problem. It’s possible to satisfy the needs of the inner life by an intimate communion with nature, or by knowledge of the past. Only a minority, however, at the present stage of the mind’s development, can feel the respect inspired by the unknown, and thus satisfy the metaphysical needs of the soul. The average human being has the same needs, but can satisfy them only by elementary means. That’s particularly true of women, as also of peasants who impotently watch the destruction of their crops. The person whose life tends to simplification is thirsty for belief, and he dimly clings to it with all his strength.

Nobody has the right to deprive simple people of their childish certainties until they’ve acquired others that are more reasonable. Indeed, it’s most important that the higher belief should be well established in them before the lower belief has been removed. We must finally achieve this. But it would serve no purpose to replace an old belief by a new one that would merely fill the place left vacant by its predecessor.

It seems to me that nothing would be more foolish than to reestablish the worship of Wotan. Our old mythology had ceased to be viable when Christianity implanted itself. Nothing dies unless it is moribund. At that period the ancient world was divided between the systems of philosophy and the worship of idols. It’s not desirable that the whole of humanity should be stultified — and the only way of getting rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little.

A Movement like ours mustn’t let itself be drawn into metaphysical digressions. It must stick to the spirit of exact science. It’s not the Party’s function to be a counterfeit for religion.

If, in the course of a thousand or two thousand years, science arrives at the necessity of renewing its points of view, that will not mean that science is a liar.

Science cannot lie, for it’s always striving, according to the momentary state of knowledge, to deduce what is true. When it makes a mistake, it does so in good faith. It’s Christianity that’s the liar. It’s in perpetual conflict with itself.

One may ask whether the disappearance of Christianity would entail the disappearance of belief in God. That’s not to be desired. The notion of divinity gives most men the opportunity to concretize the feeling they have of supernatural realities. Why should we destroy this wonderful power they have of incarnating the feeling for the divine that is within them?

The man who lives in communion with nature necessarily finds himself in opposition to the Churches. And that’s why they’re heading for ruin — for science is bound to win.

I especially wouldn’t want our Movement to acquire a religious character and institute a form of worship. It would be appalling for me, and I would wish I’d never lived, if I were to end up in the skin of a Buddha!

If at this moment we were to eliminate the religions by force, the people would unanimously beseech us for a new form of worship. You can imagine our District Leaders giving up their pranks to play at being saints! As for our Minister For Religion, according to his own co-religionists, God himself would turn away from his family!

I envisage the future, therefore, as follows: First of all, to each man his private creed. Superstition shall not lose its rights. The Party is sheltered from the danger of competing with the religions. These latter must simply be forbidden from interfering in future with temporal matters. From the tenderest age, education will be imparted in such a way that each child will know all that is important to the maintenance of the State. As for the men close to me, who, like me, have escaped from the clutches of dogma, I’ve no reason to fear that the Church will get its hooks on them.

We’ll see to it that the churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State. We shall continue to preach the doctrine of National Socialism, and the young will no longer be taught anything but the truth.

* * *

On the whole Earth there’s no being, no substance, and probably no human institution that doesn’t end by growing old. But it’s in the logic of things that every human institution should be convinced of its everlastingness — unless it already carries the seed of its downfall. The hardest steel grows weary. Just as it is certain that one day the Earth will disappear, so it is certain that the works of men will be overthrown.

All these manifestations are cyclical. Religion is in perpetual conflict with the spirit of free research. The Church’s opposition to science was sometimes so violent that it struck off sparks. The Church, with a clear awareness of her interests, has made a strategic retreat, with the result that science has lost some of its aggressiveness.

The present system of teaching in schools permits the following absurdity: at 10 a.m. the pupils attend a lesson on the catechism, at which the creation of the world is presented to them in accordance with the teachings of the Bible; and at 11 a.m. they attend a lesson in natural science, at which they are taught the theory of evolution. Yet the two doctrines are in complete contradiction! As a child, I suffered from this contradiction, and ran my head against a wall. Often I complained to one or another of my teachers against what I had been taught an hour before — and I remember that I drove them to despair.

The Christian religion tries to get out of it by explaining that one must attach a symbolic value to the images of Holy Writ. Any man who made the same claim four hundred years ago would have ended his career at the stake, with an accompaniment of Hosannas. By joining in the game of tolerance, religion has won back ground by comparison with bygone centuries.

Religion draws all the profit that can be drawn from the fact that science postulates the search for, and not the certain knowledge of, the truth. Let’s compare science to a ladder. On every rung, one beholds a wider landscape. But science does not claim to know the essence of things. When science finds that it has to revise one or another notion that it had believed to be definitive, at once religion gloats and declares: We told you so! To say that is to forget that it’s in the nature of science to behave itself thus. For if it decided to assume a dogmatic air, it would itself become a church.

When one says that God provokes the lightning, that’s true in a sense; but what is certain is that God does not direct the thunderbolt, as the Church claims. The Church’s explanation of natural phenomena is an abuse, for the Church has ulterior interests. True piety is the characteristic of the being who is aware of his weakness and ignorance. Whoever sees God only in an oak or in a tabernacle, instead of seeing Him everywhere, is not truly pious. He remains attached to appearances — and when the sky thunders and the lightning strikes, he trembles simply from fear of being struck as a punishment for the sin he’s just committed.

* * *

I know nothing of the Other World, and I have the honesty to admit it. Other people know more about it than I do, and I’m incapable of proving that they’re mistaken. I don’t dream of imposing my philosophy on a village girl. Although religion does not aim at seeking for the truth, it is a kind of philosophy which can satisfy simple minds, and that does no harm to anyone. Everything is finally a matter of the feeling man has of his own impotence. In itself, this philosophy has nothing pernicious about it. The essential thing, really, is that man should know that salvation consists in the effort that each person makes to understand Providence and accept the laws of nature.

Since all violent upheavals are a calamity, I would prefer the adaptation to be made without shocks. What could be longest left undisturbed are women’s convents. The sense of the inner life brings people great enrichment. What we must do, then, is to extract from religions the poison they contain. In this respect, great progress has been made during recent centuries.

* * *

When I was younger, I thought it was necessary to set about matters with dynamite. I’ve since realized that there’s room for a little subtlety. The rotten branch falls of itself. The final state must be: in St. Peter’s Chair, a senile officiant; facing him, a few sinister old women, as gaga and as poor in spirit as anyone could wish. The young and healthy are on our side.

Against a Church that identifies itself with the State, as in England, I have nothing to say. But, even so, it’s impossible eternally to hold humanity in bondage with lies. After all, it was only between the sixth and eighth centuries that Christianity was imposed on our Folks by princes who had an alliance of interests with the shavelings [priesthood]. Our Folks had previously succeeded in living all right without this religion. I have six Divisions of SS composed of men absolutely indifferent in matters of religion. It doesn’t prevent them from going to their deaths with serenity in their souls.

* * *

What is this God who takes pleasure only in seeing men grovel before him? Try to picture to yourselves the meaning of the following, quite simple story: God creates the conditions for sin. Later on he succeeds, with the help of the Devil, in causing man to sin. Then he employs a virgin to bring into the world a son who, by his death, will redeem humanity!

I can imagine people being enthusiastic about the paradise of Mohammed, but as for the insipid paradise of the Christians! In your lifetime, you used to hear the music of Richard Wagner. After your death, it will be nothing but hallelujahs, the waving of palms, children of an age for the feeding bottle, and hoary old men.

The man of the isles pays homage to the forces of nature. But Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery. A nigger with his taboos is crushingly superior to the human being who seriously believes in transubstantiation.

I begin to lose all respect for humanity when I think that some people on our side, ministers or generals, are capable of believing that we cannot triumph without the blessing of the Church. Such a notion is excusable in little children who have learned nothing else.

For thirty years [i.e. 1618-1648] the Germans tore each other to pieces simply in order to know whether or not they should take communion in both kinds. There’s nothing lower than religious notions like that. From that point of view, one can envy the Japanese. They have a religion which is very simple and brings them into contact with nature. They’ve succeeded even in taking Christianity and turning it into a religion that’s less shocking to the intellect.

By what would you have me replace the Christians’ picture of the Beyond? What comes naturally to mankind is the sense of eternity, and that sense is at the bottom of every man. The soul and the mind migrate, just as the body returns to nature. Thus life is eternally reborn from life. As for the ‘why’ of all that, I feel no need to rack my brains on the subject. The soul is unplumbable.

If there is a God, at the same time as he gives man life he gives him intelligence. By regulating my life according to the understanding that is granted me, I may be mistaken, but I act in good faith.

Man judges everything in relation to himself. What is bigger than himself is big, what is smaller is small. Only one thing is certain, that one is part of the spectacle. Everyone finds his own role. Joy exists for everybody. I dream of a state of affairs in which every man would know that he lives and dies for the preservation of the species. It’s our duty to encourage that idea: let the man who distinguishes himself in the service of the species be thought worthy of the highest honors.

* * *

What a happy inspiration, to have kept the clergy out of the Party! On the 21st March, 1933, at Potsdam, the question was raised: with the Church, or without the Church? I conquered the State despite the malediction pronounced on us by both creeds. On that day, we went directly to the tomb of the kings whilst the others were visiting religious services. Supposing that at that period I’d made a pact with the Churches, I’d today be sharing the lot of The Duce [Mussolini].

By nature The Duce is a freethinker, but he decided to choose the path of concessions. For my part, in his place I’d have taken the path of revolution. I’d have entered the Vatican and thrown everybody out — reserving the right to apologize later: ‘Excuse me, it was a mistake!’

But the result would have been, they’d have been outside!

When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let’s be the only Folk who are immunized against the disease.

* * *

Kerrl, with the noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don’t believe the thing’s possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself.

I think I could have come to an understanding with the popes of the Renaissance. Obviously, their Christianity was a danger on the practical level — and, on the propaganda level, it continued to be a lie.

But a pope, even a criminal one, who protects great artists and spreads beauty around him, is nevertheless more sympathetic to me than the protestant minister who drinks from the poisoned spring.

Pure Christianity — the Christianity of the catacombs — is concerned with translating the Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics.

* * *

Man has been given his brain to think with. But if he has the misfortune to make use of it, he finds a swarm of black bugs [i.e. priests] on his heels. The mind is doomed to the auto-da-fé.

The observatory I’ll have built at Linz, on the Pöstlingberg, I can see it in my mind … In future, thousands of excursionists will make a pilgrimage there every Sunday. They’ll thus have access to the greatness of our universe. The pediment will bear this motto: ‘The heavens proclaim the glory of the everlasting.’ It will be our way of giving men a religious spirit, of teaching them humility — but without the priests.

Man seizes hold, here and there, of a few scraps of truth, but he couldn’t rule nature. He must know that, on the contrary, he is dependent on Creation. And this attitude leads further than the superstitions maintained by the Church.

Christianity is the worst of the regressions that mankind can ever have undergone, and it’s the Jew who, thanks to this diabolic invention, has thrown him back 15 centuries.

The only thing that would be still worse would be victory for the Jew through Bolshevism. If Bolshevism triumphed, mankind would lose the gift of laughter and joy. It would become merely a shapeless mass, doomed to grayness and despair.

The priests of antiquity were closer to nature, and they sought modestly for the meaning of things. Instead of that, Christianity promulgates its inconsistent dogmas and imposes them by force. Such a religion carries within it intolerance and persecution. It’s the bloodiest conceivable …

For Ptolemy, the Earth was the center of the world. That changed with Copernicus. Today we know that our solar system is merely a solar system amongst many others. What could we do better than allow the greatest possible number of people like us to become aware of these marvels?

In any case, we can be grateful to Providence, which causes us to live today rather than 300 years ago. At every street corner, in those days, there was a blazing stake. What a debt we owe to the men who had the courage — the first to do so — to rebel against lies and intolerance. The admirable thing is that amongst them were Jesuit Fathers.

In their fight against the Church, the Russians are purely negative. We, on the other hand, should practise the cult of the heroes who enabled humanity to pull itself out of the rut of error. Kepler lived at Linz, and that’s why I chose Linz as the place for our observatory. His mother was accused of witchcraft and was tortured several times by the Inquisition.

To open the eyes of simple people, there’s no better method of instruction than the picture. Put a small telescope in a village, and you destroy a world of superstitions. One must destroy the priest’s argument that science is changeable because faith does not change, since, when presented in this form, the statement is dishonest.

* * *

The book that contains the reflections of the Emperor Julian should be circulated in millions. What wonderful intelligence! What discernment, all the wisdom of antiquity! It’s extraordinary!

* * *

It is a great pity that this tendency towards religious thought can find no better outlet than the Jewish pettifoggery of the Old Testament, for a religious Folk who, in the solitude of winter, continually seek ultimate light on their religious problems with the assistance of the Bible, must eventually become spiritually deformed. The wretched Folk strive to extract truths from these Jewish chicaneries, where in fact no truths exist. As a result they become embedded in some rut of thought or other and, unless they possess an exceptionally commonsense mind, degenerate into religious maniacs.

It is deplorable that the Bible should have been translated into German, and that the whole of the German Folk should have thus become exposed to the whole of this Jewish mumbo jumbo. So long as the wisdom, particularly of the Old Testament, remained exclusively in the Latin of the Church, there was little danger that sensible people would become the victims of illusions as the result of studying the Bible. But since the Bible became common property, a whole heap of people have found opened to them lines of religious thought which — particularly in conjunction with the German characteristic of persistent and somewhat melancholy meditation — as often as not turned them into religious maniacs. When one recollects further that the Catholic Church has elevated to the status of Saints a whole number of madmen, one realizes why movements such as that of the Flagellants came inevitably into existence in the Middle Ages in Germany.

* * *

The Ten Commandments are a code of living to which there’s no refutation. These precepts correspond to irrefragable needs of the human soul; they’re inspired by the best religious spirit; and the Churches here support themselves on a solid foundation.

* * *

Is there a single religion that can exist without a dogma? No, for in that case it would belong to the order of science. Science cannot explain why natural objects are what they are. And that’s where religion comes in, with its comforting certainties. When incarnated in the Churches, religion always finds itself in opposition to life. So the Churches would be heading for disaster, and they know it, if they didn’t cling to a rigid truth.

What is contrary to the visible truth must change or disappear — that’s the law of life.

* * *

Research must remain free and unfettered by any State restriction. The facts which it establishes represent Truth, and Truth is never evil.

* * *

I shall never believe that what is founded on lies can endure for ever. I believe in Truth. I’m sure that, in the long run, Truth must be victorious.

 

___________________________

 

Hitler’s Duplicity Revealed: A Devout Christian in Public,

but the Total Opposite Behind Closed Doors

An addendum to a previous article on ‘Hitler’s Table Talk’
in which Hitler’s Religious Views were discussed 

Edited and Presented by Lasha Darkmoon
May 31, 2021

PUBLISHED  ON  TRUTHSEEKER

LD:  The authenticity of Hitler’s Table Talk is proved beyond

reasonable dispute here, revealing in the process Hitler’s implacable hatred of Christianity.

This is a follow-up article to Hitler’s Religious Views: Excerpts from Hitler’s Table Talk.

 

The present article consists of two very condensed mini-articles by and about

David Irving in connection with Hitler’s Table Talk. The first is a brief response by

Irving  to a correspondent on his website. It  validates the Table Talk book and

enthuses about its contents. The second mini-article, entitled ‘The Faking of Hitler’s

Last Testament’, relates to Irving’s dealings with the Swiss forger Francois Genoud.

This is followed by a fascinating 4-minute video which expands on Irving’s dealings

with the confidence trickster Genoud. It succeeds in  drawing a sharp line  between

the fraudulent material, now identified, and the authentic material, now fully available to

Hitler scholars.      

 

The upshot of these notes is to set the reader’s mind at rest on two important issues: 

(1) There is  no longer any reason to doubt the authenticity of Hitler’s Table Talk. 

(2) These informal dinner conversations between Hitler and his closest associates,

which took place between 1941 and 1944, clearly reveal Hitler’s contempt for

Christianity — “an evil invention of the Jews”.

 

People who continue to believe that Hitler was a devout Christian are in for a crushing

disappointment. Hitler was not an atheist, but neither was he the exemplary Christian

he pretended to be in his speeches and official pronouncements. All that was an act for

public consumption. The image of devout  religiosity Hitler needed to

project to the German people was a calculated exercise in duplicity.  (LD)


Eric Yankovich asks on Thursday, January 1, 2004

if it’s worth spending time reading Hitler’s Table Talk

 

How good is Hitler’s Table Talk?

 

I PURCHASED a book Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941 to 1944. It is about 1.5 inches thick.

It has an introduction by H.R. Trevor-Roper and translated by Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens.

 

Can you please tell me if you have read it and what your thoughts are. Assuming Hitler

did have these so called “Table Talks”, do you believe that it was faithfully translated?

 

The reason I ask you is that I do not trust much of anything, especially being burnt by

reading Albert Speer’s book. I briefly discussed this with you about four or five years

ago during a luncheon you had in Washington D.C.

 

I read a bit of the Table Talk and I am already turned off because H.R. Trevor Roper

engages in an anti-Hitler diatribe in the beginning of the book, so it is difficult for

me to trust the translation. H.R. Trevor Roper should have written a book “Why I hate Hitler, even though I never met him!”

 

I respect your opinion; I read five of your books already. The last one

was Dresden, a real crime and tragedy if there ever was one.

Eric Yankovich

 

David Irving responds:

Hitler’s Table Talk is the product of his lunch- and supper-time

conversations in his private circle from 1941 to 1944. The transcripts are genuine.

(Ignore the 1945 “transcripts” published by Trevor-Roper in the 1950s as Hitler’s

Last Testament — they are fake).

 

The table talk notes were originally taken by Heinrich Heim, the adjutant of Martin Bormann,

who attended these meals at an adjacent table and took notes. (Later Henry Picker took

over the job). Afterwards Heim immediately typed up these records, which Bormann signed as accurate.

 

François Genoud purchased the files of transcripts from Bormann’s widow just after

the war, along with the handwritten letters which she and the Reichsleiter had exchanged.

 

For forty thousand pounds—paid half to Genoud and half to Hitler’s sister Paula—George

Weidenfeld, an Austrian Jewish publisher who had emigrated to London,

bought the rights and issued an English translation in about 1949.

 

For forty years or more no German original was published, as Genoud told me

that he feared losing the copyright control that he exercised on them.

I have seen the original pages, and they are signed by Bormann.

 

They were expertly, and literately, translated by Norman Cameron and R.H.

Stevens, though with a few (a very few) odd interpolations of short sentences

which don’t exist in the original — the translator evidently felt justified in

such insertions, to make the context plain.

 

Translation is a difficult chore: I have translated four books, including Nikki Lauda’s

memoirs — one can either produce a clinical, wooden, illiterate version, like Richard

“Skunky” Evans’ courtroom translations of Third Reich documents, or one can produce

a readable, publishable text which properly conveys the sense and language of the original.

 

Try translating for publication the Joseph Goebbels diaries — written often in a Berlinese

vernacular — without running into trouble with the courts! Louis Lochner succeeded in

my view magnificently.

 

Weidenfeld’s translator also took liberties with translating words like Schrecken, which

he translated as “rumour” in the sense of “scare-story”. In my own view such translations

are acceptable, but they caused a lot of difficulty at the Lipstadt Trial where I found myself

accused of manipulating texts and distorting translations (because although I relied on

the Weidenfeld translation, I had had access to the original document, and should have

known that the actual word was Schrecken).

 

The Table Talks’ content is more important in my view than Hitler’s Mein Kampf,

and possibly even more than his Zweites Buch (1928). It is unadulterated Hitler.

He expatiates on virtually every subject under the sun, while his generals and

private staff sit patiently and listen, or pretend to listen, to the monologues.

 

Along with Sir Nevile Henderson’s gripping 1940 book Failure of a Mission, this

was one of the first books that I read, as a twelve year old: Table Talk makes for

excellent bedtime reading, as each “meal” occupies only two or three pages of

print. My original copy, purloined from my twin brother Nicholas,

was seized along with the rest of my research library in May 2002.

 

I have since managed to find a replacement, and I am glad to say that — notwithstanding

the perverse judgment of Mr. Justice Gray — Hitler’s Table Talk has

recently come back into print, unchanged: Schrecken and all.

 

First published on David Irving’s site (January 1, 2004)

 

Further Reading Recommended by Irving

 

[1] Hitler’s War, by David Irving

[2] Hitler’s Table Talk (1941-1944): His Private Conversations (746 pages)

[3] Hitler’s Table Talk July 24, 1942 (Hitler says he will ship all the Jews to Madagascar after the war)

[4]  Radical’s Diary, re the contract that Lord Weidenfeld signed with Genoud for Hitler’s Table Talk: what he paid Hitler’s sister Paula

[5] Michael Law asks Mr Irving about Genoud and Hitler’s Table Talk, and gets a full reply

[6]  Items on Henry Picker and Table Talk

[7]  Francois Genoud’s role in the composition of the fake 1945 Bunkergespräche

 (Table Talk,”testament”): The Faking of Hitler’s ‘Last Testament’.

 

—   §   —

 

THE  FAKING  OF  HITLER’S  LAST  TESTAMENT

 

Slightly abridged

 

Seeking to disprove David Irving’s assertion (1977) that there is no archival evidence

that Hitler even knew of the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem, let alone ordered

the liquidation of millions of Jews, some critics pointed to a passage in the book

edited by Hugh Trevor Roper, Hitler’s Last Testament, allegedly based on a typescript

record of Hitler’s informal mealtime remarks in 1945, analogous to the famous Hitler’s Table Talk.

 

There’s only one problem.

 

The document, first published in French in 1959 and in

English in 1961 as Hitler’s Last Testament,  is a FAKE.

 

Its owner, Swiss lawyer-activist François Genoud, now dead, first showed it to David Irving

at a meeting at the Hotel d’Angleterre in Geneva in 1971. At that time it was about fifty

pages of typescript, typed on a small-face non-German typewriter on American-size

legal paper. What was very surprising was that Genoud was willing to let German editor

Professor Eduard Baumgarten work only from a French text, which he insisted must be

retranslated into German.

 

David Irving continued to press Genoud, expressing to him strong doubts, after discussions

with Hitler’s private staff, especially one who stated categorically that he had

never seen Hitler’s secretary Martin Bormann taking down such notes in 1945.

 

There was a further difficulty. Mr Irving had a transcript of the 1945 diary, now in

Moscow, of Bormann (pictured); he also had a facsimile of the register of all the

guests at Hitler’s February 1945 meals, kept by Hitler’s manservant Heinz Linge.

These unquestionably genuine documents showed that Bormann was NOT

PRESENT  at several of the meals during which the “testament” showed he had

apparently taken notes; SOMETIMES HE WAS NOT EVEN IN BERLIN. (Emphasis added)

 

In 1979, Genoud phoned Mr Irving at his Paris hotel, and said: “I have a gift for you.” He

handed him a package. It contained a copy of the complete typescript of the Testament.

The package gift from Genoud raised a new problem. Every page was heavily amended

and expanded in somebody else’s hand-writing.

 

Mr Irving, astonished, asked Genoud whose was the writing.

 

Genoud then finally admitted it was his own.

 

Later still, he admitted in conversation with Mr Irving, that the entire typescript

was his own confection, saying: “But it is just what Hitler would have said.”

 

(The unabridged article can be read here)

 

 

 
__________________________________________________________________________
 
 

Official German NSDAP Govt Booklet (1933) “The New Germany desires Work and Peace”

 
Official German NSDAP Govt Booklet (1933) “The New Germany desires Work and Peace”

Posted on 10/21/2012 by justice4germans

This is booklet was an authorized English language translation and publication by the newly democratically elected NSDAP government, whereby Hitler had been duly and legally appointed as the Chancellor, by President von Hindenburg. It was also translated and published in French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and other European languages. The booklet contains various speeches by the new Leader, and was made available for the international media and to the governments of Europe and the western nations, that they might understand the agenda and policies of the new National Government of Germany and the basis for these policies, and be reassured of Germany’s peaceful intentions.

It should be noted that, at the time Hitler and the NSDAP came to power, roughly one third of the German work force was unemployed and people were starving. Post-WWI Weimar Germany, in addition to the world wide economic impact of the Great Depression, had suffered through years of hyper-inflation, was burdened with massive debt due to war reparation payments imposed on her by the allies, and was deeply divided socially and politically, and had been in a state of chronic chaos and despair. Hitler promised not only “change” and “hope”, but a real lasting recovery, with peace and prosperity, and to restore national pride and dignity to the long suffering German people, IF they would unite behind him. He then delivered it. The recovery was nothing short of a miracle, which made Germany the envy of her neighbours, and the enemy of the International Bankers and High-Finance elite, because Germany was no longer their debt slave.




“As regards to their foreign policy, the National Government considers their highest mission to be the securing of the right to live and the restoration of freedom to our nation. Their determination to bring to an end the chaotic state of affairs in Germany will assist in restoring to the community of nations a State of equal value and, above all, a State which must have equal rights. They are impressed with the importance of their duty to use this nation of equal rights as an instrument for the securing and maintenance of that peace which the world requires today more than ever before.
May the good will of all others assist in the fulfilment of this our earnest wish for the welfare of Europe and of the whole world.” ~ Chancellor Adolf Hitler

INTRODUCTION (by Dr. Joseph Goebbels)

“The New Germany Desires Work and Peace”


The above is the title given to this collection of the speeches which the German Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, has delivered since his entry into office on the 30* January 1933. That this Germany wishes for work needs no further demonstration. Nearly five million men and women are struggling to regain the positions they have lost in factories and offices. Unemployment, that terrible disease of our times, keeps them idle. The governments of the past, who, along with their system, have been superseded by National Socialism, were embarrassed and inactive when faced by this pressing problem. The Hitler Government have made their plans and declared war on unemployment. It is not with outside aid that they intend to overcome the evil; they are not going to the other nations of the world, as their predecessors did, to beg humbly for protection and assistance. They know that crises and despair are prevalent in every country, and for this reason they have determined to master the evil in their own way and on their own initiative.

The return of two million men and women to work bears witness to the fact that Hitler’s attempt to solve the problem of unemployment has not been without success.
But just as this New Germany desires work, it also desires peace. It has announced to the whole world, through the mouth of the Chancellor himself, speaking in the Reichstag, that it has no aggressive intentions whatever, that it does not wish to provoke anyone nor to stir up unrest. It wishes to pursue its work in peace and in a spirit of deep moral conviction, in order to make sure of its daily bread. It stands unarmed before the world, and has no other means of proving the genuineness of its intentions but its industry and assiduity. It is firmly convinced that the world cannot regard its claims with indifference.
When this Germany announces that it will not sign any treaties that cannot be observed, it only does so because it intends to observe faithfully all treaties that have once been signed. It is an orderly and disciplined Germany in which authority rules that has been awakened by Adolf Hitler and his movement, and is endeavouring to gain the confidence and understanding of the world.

The world is still suspicious; with the exception of a few men who have had the courage to look the facts in the face, the world has no understanding whatever, or at best a very poor one, for the meaning of the events that have taken place in Germany. Then only will it ready appreciate the overwhelming importance of the internal revolution in Germany when Europe’s need has become so great that people everywhere begin to realize that, without mutual understanding and respect between nations, peace cannot flourish and that the scourge of unemployment will continue to afflict the nations of the world.

The speeches delivered by Adolf Hitler since the 30th January 1933 are eloquent proofs of Germany’s desire for work and peace. May the world learn at least one thing from them, namely, that the German nation once more deserves to be respected by the other nations in the same way as it can now once more respect itself.
Dr. Joseph Goebbels

(*emphasis added)
CONTENTS

1. Proclamation by the Government of the Reich to the German People on 1 February 1933 ….page 5
2. Speech by President von Hindenburg on the occasion of the Opening of the Reichstag on 21 March 1933 ….. page 10
Speeches delivered by Chancellor Adolf Hitler:
1. on the occasion of the Opening of the Reichstag on 21 March 1933 . . . . . page 11
2. in the Reichstag on 23 March 1933 15
3. to the representatives of German Agriculture on 5 April 1933 …… page 27
4. on the Day of National Labour, 1 May 1933 …. .. page 31
5. at the Congress of the German Labour Front on 10 May 1933 …… page 38
6. in the Reichstag on 17 May 1933…….. page 53
7. to the Reich Commissioners on 6 July 1933 …… page 65

EXCERPT:




My German People,

When the German people, trusting to the assurances given in President Wilson’s Fourteen Points, laid down their arms in November 1918, that marks the end of a fateful warfare for which perhaps individual statesmen, but certainly not the peoples themselves can be held responsible. The German nation fought so heroically because it was fighting in the sacred conviction that it had been wrongfully attacked, and that therefore right was on its side. Of the magnitude of the sacrifices which the German people – having to rely almost entirely on its own resources – made during those years, other nations can scarcely have any conception. If, in the days following the armistice, the world had stretched out a hand to its vanquished opponent in the spirit of fairness, mankind would have been spared endless sorrow and countless disappointments.
It was the German people who suffered the deepest disappointment. Never has a conquered nation so earnestly striven to help heal the wounds of its former enemies, as did the German nation in the long years in which it fulfilled the conditions which had been imposed upon it. If all these sacrifices have not led to real, lasting peace between the nations, the cause of this is to be found in the very nature of a treaty which, by its attempt to perpetuate the discrimination between victors and vanquished, could not but perpetuate hatred and enmity. The nations could rightly have expected that out of this greatest war of all times, the lesson might have been learned that, especially for European nations, no possible gain could compare with the immensity of the sacrifice. As, therefore, in this treaty the German nation was charged to destroy its armaments in order to make world-disarmament possible, countless millions believed that this demand was the sign of growing enlightenment.

The German people destroyed their arms.

Believing that their former enemies would fulfil their part of the treaty obligations, the German people honoured their side of the bargain with almost fanatical sincerity. Land, naval and air material was destroyed in countless numbers. In place of an army which had once numbered a million, a small professional army, with utterly inadequate arms, was established in accordance with the demands of the victor powers. The political destinies of the nation were at this time in the hands of men whose outlook had its roots in the world of the victor states. The German nation had every right to expect that, if for this reason alone, the rest of the world would keep its word in the same way that the German people, by the sweat of their brows, in deep distress, and under terrible deprivations, were fulfilling their part of the agreement.

No war can freeze the stream of time, no peace can be the perpetuation of war. A time must come when victor and vanquished must find the way once more to common understanding and mutual trust.

One and a half decades the German nation has waited in the hope that the end of the war would at length lead to the end of hatred and enmity. The object of the Treaty of Versailles did not seem, however, to give mankind a lasting peace, but rather to perpetuate hatred forever.
~ Chancellor Adolf Hitler

(*emphasis added)

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