Fuhrer Headquarters, February 24, 1945
National Socialists! Party Comrades!
A sense of duty and my work
prohibit my leaving headquarters at this time, on the twenty-fifth anniversary
of the day on which the principal program of our movement was proclaimed and
accepted in Munich. The evening of February 24 was marked by the anticipation
of a development whose terrible significance is perhaps clear to many people in
its full extent only today.
At the time, the same
coalition of irreconcilable enemies as today had already joined forces in the
fight against the German Volk. The unnatural alliance of exploiting capitalism
and misanthropic Bolshevism that today attempts to suffocate the world was the
enemy to whom we sounded the battle cry on February 24, 1920, for the
preservation of the nation. Just as today, the apparent contradiction of terms
in the cooperation of extremist forces was only an expression of the unified
will of a joint agitator and beneficiary. For a long time already,
international Jewry has made use of both forms in the destruction of the
freedom and social happiness of the nations.
When we met for the first time
in Munich on February 24, 1920, we already had a clear idea of the tendencies
and consequences of the strategy of both attackers. Capitalism and Bolshevism
once divided our Volk internally and disarmed it, in order to exploit and
destroy it in the end. In contrast to the lesson which history teaches us
today, that was only a preliminary exercise.
This vilest conspiracy and
bloodiest tyranny of all times against the freedom of all people tries to rise
up to strike down the thousands of years of development of civilization in
Europe.
There is a tremendous
difference between the Germany of 1920 and that of 1945. Back then, it was a
nation completely paralyzed-today, it is a military Volk fighting with the
utmost fanaticism. Back then, it had an antiquated, disintegrating social
order-today, it has an unshakable Volksgemeinschaft which is in the process of
building things up. Had the old Germany had only a fraction of the power of
resistance of the present one, then it would never have collapsed. Had the
Germany of today had only a fraction of the weaknesses of back then, it would
have died long ago! It is because of this that February 24, 1920, will one day
go down in history as one of the great turning points in the evolution of
mankind. Nameless and unknown men-with myself at their head-turned to a nation
in the process of disintegration, and proclaimed a program whose theses were
not understood by countless others and whose tendencies were rejected by the
overwhelming majority. Today, we know the following: without this program, a new
socialist German Volk and state would never have happened. Without this
creation of the National Socialist German state, neither a German Reich nor a
German Volk would exist today! After all, the substance of states, that is, the
people themselves, are not eternal; they are born, they grow, and they pass
away, according to what they are worth.
Providence does not show
mercy to the weak. Instead, it only recognizes the right to live for the
healthy and strong! That the National Socialist movement, which came out of
nothing, was, after a long struggle, able to seize power in the year 1933 by
legal means was the result of a dogged and fanatical struggle which at times
almost appeared hopeless. Whoever admires the miracle of today’s resistance or
fails to understand it, should consider what it meant for me at the time to
begin as an unknown and nameless man to wage the struggle for an idea and,
thereby, the struggle for power, facing a united world of enemies. Who among
our later critics would have been able, under similar conditions and starting
out from nothing, to begin and complete such a work? What an incredible amount
of work, will to fight, and strength of faith characterized those years of the
struggle for power! What hurdles and setbacks had to be overcome! Only our
doggedness and our unshakable will gained the victory in the end. Even though
the framework of the struggle at the time may appear limited to us today, the
objective in this fight and its course were the same as they are today. The
stake was and is the existence of our German Volk! And that is why this fight
was as sacred for us at the time as it is today. After all, on its success
depended and still depends our race’s existence or nonexistence in the future.
Who can still doubt today that, without the National Socialist revolution and
its reorganization of the German Volkskorper-seen only in domestic
terms-Germany would never have been in a position to face the present crisis?
Who can deny that, without the material armament of the German Volk achieved by
the National Socialist revolution, even the strongest will would not have
sufficed to defy the devilish coalition which threatens us today! Only a
bourgeois blockhead can delude himself into thinking that the flood from the
east would not have come, had Germany opposed it with international laws on
paper instead of with cannons, panzers, and airplanes! This century and our own
age will weigh us in accordance with whether we were steadfast enough to oppose
this invasion by Central Asia, the like of which the world has repeatedly
witnessed since the turn of the era. As the invasion of the Huns was not
repelled with pious wishes and admonitions, as the century-long invasions of
our Reich from the southeast were not thwarted by diplomatic artistry, as the
Mongol invasion did not stop at the borders of ancient cultures, so this danger
cannot be eliminated by right alone, but by the strength which stands behind
this right. Right means the duty to defend the life given to us by the Creator.
It is the sacred right of self-preservation. The success of this
self-preservation depends exclusively on the greatness of our risk and the
willingness to take on every sacrifice in order to preserve this life for the
future.
By so doing, we are not doing
anything different from what the Germanic and Latin races had to do in the age
of the migration of the people; it is no different from what our ancestors had
to do in the long years of the Turkish Wars and what eventually kept the Mongol
invasion from transforming our continent into a desert. No League of Nations’
assembly but the Battle on the Catalaunian Fields broke Attila the Hun’s power.
No chatter at Geneva or any type of convention will drive back Asian Bolshevism
but only the will to win of our resistance and the force of our arms.
We all know how difficult the
fight is. Whatever we may lose in it stands in no relation to what we will lose
if it is not now nearing its victorious end.
Individual areas in the east
of our Reich are now experiencing what Bolshevism is in reality. What this
Jewish plague does to our women, children, and men in these areas represents
the cruelest fate that a human brain is capable of concocting. There is only
one way of opposing these Jewish-Bolshevik annihilators of mankind and their
west European and American pimps: the deployment with utmost zeal and dogged
steadfastness of all the strength a merciful God allows man to find in the most
difficult times in the defense of his life. Whatever becomes weak in this will
fall, must and will fade away. Just as the cowardly bourgeois parties of
compromise first were cornered by the Bolshevik wave and then swept away, so
today those bourgeois states disappear whose narrow-minded representatives
believed they could enter into an alliance with the devil in the hope of being
more cunning than he is satanic. A horrifying repetition of the domestic events
is taking place today in the mighty international political sphere of the
present events. But just as in the end we struck the Bolshevik enemy to the
ground by defeating the narrow-minded small-party particularism and founded the
National Socialist Volksstaat, so we will today achieve victory by defeating
the jumble of bourgeois-democratic views of the state, and we will crown it
with the annihilation of Bolshevism.
When Rome faced its most
difficult hour after the Battle of Cannae, it won not through the attempt of a
cowardly compromise but through the uncompromising decision to continue the
struggle for its existence by summoning the remaining strength of its people.
Even though the Second Punic War failed to arrest the African advances once and
for all, the Third [Punic War] put an end to them! When the greatest king in
our history, Frederick II, seemed likely to succumb to an overwhelming world
coalition in his Seven Years War, it was likewise only because of his heroic
soul that the germ cell and the core of a coming Reich remained victorious in
the end.
What we have so often preached
at home about the essence of the enemy coalition has now been confirmed: it is
a devilish pact between democratic capitalism and Jewish Bolshevism. All
nations whose statesmen have signed this pact will sooner or later become the
victims of the demonic spirits they have summoned. Let there be no doubt that
National Socialist Germany will wage this fight for as long as it takes for
this historic turn of events to come about here, too, and this will happen
still this year.
No power on earth will make us
weak at heart. They have destroyed so many of our beautiful, magnificent, and
sacred things that there remains only one mission in our lives: to create a
state that will rebuild what they have destroyed. Therefore, it is our duty to
preserve the freedom of the German nation for the future and not allow German
manpower to be abducted to Siberia, but to deploy it for the rebuilding and
dedicate it to the service of our own Volk. They have taught us so many
horrible things that there is no more horror for us. What the homeland must
endure is dreadful, what the front must accomplish is superhuman. Yet when, in
the face of such pain, a whole nation proves itself as reliable as the German
Volk, then Providence cannot and will not deny its right to live in the end. As
always in history, it will reward its steadfastness with the prize of earthly
existence. Since so many of our possessions have been destroyed, this can only
reinforce us in our fanatical determination to see our enemies a thousand times
over as what they truly are: destroyers of an eternal civilization and
annihilators of mankind! And out of this hatred will grow a sacred will: to
oppose these annihilators of our existence with all the strength God has given
us and defeat them in the end.
Our Volk has survived so many
terrible times in its two-thousand-year-old history that we have no right to
doubt that we shall also overcome the present times of need! If the homeland
continues to do its duty as it does now, even increases its will to do its
utmost, if the frontline soldier follows the example of the brave homeland and
risks his life for his homeland, then the whole world will be shattered when it
runs up against us! If front and homeland continue in their joint determination
to destroy him who dares to fail when he confronts the commandment of
preservation, who reveals himself to be cowardly, or who sabotages the fight,
then they will jointly prevent the destruction of the nation.
Then the German victory will
stand at the end of this confrontation! And here we feel pride and joy: when
the World War was nearing its end what we feared most was the corruption of our
youth. When this war is over, we will place the victory in the hands of a young
generation that has been steeled by thousandfold suffering and fire and is the
best Germany has ever called its own.
It will set an example in the
cities and in the countryside for countless coming generations. This, too, is
an accomplishment of the National Socialist education and a result of the
challenge to fight which came out of Munich twenty-five years ago.
My own life is given value
only by what it means for the nation. I therefore work incessantly for the
resurrection and strengthening of our fronts for the defensive and the offensive,
the production of old and new weapons, their deployment, the reinforcement of
the spirit of our resistance, and if necessary- as in former times-for the
elimination of the vermin that does not wish to join the preservation of our
Volk but wish to oppose it.
My dear party comrades! These
days I read in British papers that there is a plan to destroy my Berghof. I
almost regret that this has not yet happened.
After all, whatever I call my
own is not worth more than what belongs to my Volksgenossen. I would be happy
to bear everything, down to the last detail and as far as humanly possible,
that others must bear. The only thing that I would not be able to bear right
now would be a sign of weakness from my Volk. What therefore makes me the
happiest and the proudest man is the belief that the German Volk demonstrates
its strong character precisely in the hour of greatest despair. May every
German in the coming weeks and months remember that he is obliged to place
everything into the service of our joint preservation for the coming millennia.
Whoever is in a bad situation should and must know that many Germans have lost
far more than he has. The life which remains for us can be dedicated to only
one commandment, namely, to make up for what the international Jewish criminals
and their helpers have done to our Volk.
Just as twenty-five years ago
we set out, as a community, to obtain compensation for the injustice done to
our Volk, so today we again fight as a community to obtain compensation for the
suffering which they once more inflicted upon us, the oppression which they
brought to us, the damage which they caused here. Therefore, it must be our
unshakable will to think of Germany even when we draw our last breath. We must
do so at a time when men and women in the cities and in the countryside, down
to our youth, live in compliance with the commandment to risk everything in
order to free our Volk from this misery, to restore after the war its culture
in the cities and in the countryside, and its National Socialist communal life.
Above all, they must never again abandon the path to the establishment of a
true Volksstaat, one far away from every ideology and [all] classes; a state
which rises above the conceit of the individual social strata, which is inspired
by the conviction that the eternal values of a people find expression in its
best sons and daughters, who must be searched for, educated, and deployed as a
merciful God gave them to us, regardless of their birth or origin.
My party comrades! Twenty-five
years ago I announced the victory of the movement. Today, I prophesy-as always
inspired by my faith in our Volk- the final victory of the German Reich!
Adolf
Hitler
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