The Beginning of the Crusade Against Bolshevism

1. Germany.

 

The Reich Chancellery.

 

– Early morning, 22 June 1941: deserted streets; a milkman and a postman are walking along.

 

– The Radio Building.

 

– Preparations are underway for a broadcast of the Führer’s address. 5.30 am.

 

– The Reich Ministry of Propaganda.

 

– Reichsminister Dr. Joseph Goebbels reads out the Führer’s statement regarding the conspiracy between the USSR and Britain and Germany’s decision to commence military operations against Russia.

 

– Everyone is listening to the radio.

 

– Joachim von Ribbentrop’s speech at a press conference, reading out Germany’s note to the Soviet Union.

 

– Map of military operations by Germany and its allies against the USSR.

 

2. Invasion of the USSR by the European armies. Early morning, 22 June.

 

German artillery begins shelling Soviet positions.

 

– Fires, explosions.

 

– A German gun fires.

 

– East Prussia, Eidtkau (on the border with Lithuania).

 

– Destruction of Soviet border markers.

 

– German artillerymen roll out camouflaged guns.

 

– German soldiers in the streets of a Soviet settlement.

 

Lithuania.

 

– The first skirmishes on the Lithuanian-German border.

 

– German military vehicles in the street of a Lithuanian village; an exchange of fire.

 

– Burning buildings.

 

– The first Soviet prisoners; a German leads a wounded Soviet prisoner.

 

– A group of prisoners, many half-dressed, in their underwear.

 

– Germans crossing a river via footbridges.

 

– German infantry on the attack.

 

– A German gun on a railway platform firing.

 

– A montage of fighting at various sections of the Soviet border.

 

– German infantrymen and vehicles.

 

– Germans crossing a bridge.

 

– German troops advancing towards Kaunas.

 

The Germans cross the San River; the bridge is being cleared of mines.

 

– Lorries are driving along, and German soldiers are marching.

 

– German tanks on the offensive.

 

– Germans in a village, a firefight with Soviet troops.

 

– Soviet soldiers surrender.

 

– Large-calibre bombs are being loaded onto aircraft.

 

– German aircraft in the air.

 

– The first air raids on Soviet towns and villages.

 

– A pilot in the cockpit; bombs are being dropped.

 

– Explosions and fires on the ground.

 

– Burning buildings on Soviet territory.

 

– A squadron in flight.

 

– German soldiers are marching past.

Adolf Hitler – Proclamation to the German Folk, 22 June 1941

 

German folk!

 

National Socialists!

 

Distressed by heavy cares, condemned to months of silence, the hour has now come in which I can finally speak openly.

 

When the German Reich received the English declaration of war on September 3, 1939, the British attempt repeated itself again to thwart the beginning of a consolidation and hence ascent of Europe through the fight against the continent’s presently strongest power.

 

So did England once ruin Spain in many wars.

 

So did it wage its wars against Holland.

 

So did it later, with the help of all of Europe, combat France.

 

And so began, around the turn of the century, the encirclement of Germany back then and in the year 1914 the World War.

 

Only due to its internal disunity did Germany succumb in the year 1918. The consequences were terrible. After one first hypocritically declared to have fought solely against the Kaiser and his regime, one began with the disarming of the German army and with the systematic destruction of the German Reich. While the prophecies of a French statesman that there were 20 million people too many in Germany, this means, had to be eliminated through hunger, illnesses and emigration, apparently fulfilled themselves literally, the National Socialist movement began to initiate its unification work of the German folk and thus the Reich’s resurrection.

 

This new rise by our folk out of distress, misery and shameful disrespect stood under the sign of a purely internal rebirth. Especially England was not touched or even threatened by it.

 

Nonetheless, the new, hate-filled encirclement policy against Germany momentarily set in again. Internally and externally, it came to that plot, known to us, between Jews and democrats, Bolsheviks and reactionaries, with the sole goals to prevent the erection of a new folk state, to plunge the Reich anew into impotence and misery.

 

Aside from us, the hatred of this international world conspiracy struck those folks, which, likewise overlooked by good fortune, were forced to earn their daily bread in the most difficult struggle for existence. Above all, Italy and Japan were contested, yes, literally forbidden their share in the goods of this world. The union of these nations was hence just an act of selfdefense against the egotistic world coalition of wealth and power threatening them.

 

Just that already in 1936, Churchill, according to the testimony of the American General Wood before a committee of the American House of Representatives, declared that Germany was again becoming too powerful and hence had to be destroyed.

 

In the summer of 1939, the time seemed to England to have come to be able to begin anew the intended destruction with the repetition of an extensive encirclement policy against Germany. The system of the campaign of lies initiated for this purpose consisted of declaring other folks threatened, first ensnaring them with English guarantees and assistance promises and then, like before the World War, having them march against Germany.

 

So England managed, from May to August 1939, to fling into the world the claim that Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Fin-land, Bessarabia as well as the Ukraine were directly threatened by Germany. A portion of these states let themselves to be thereby misguided to accept with these claims the offered guarantee promises and hence joined the new encirclement front against Germany.

 

Under these circumstances, I believed I could take responsibility before my conscience and before the history of the German folk to assure not only these lands and their government of the untruthfulness of the presented British claims, rather, beyond that, to calm the strongest power in the east, especially through solemn declarations, about the limits of our interests.

 

National Socialists!

 

You probably all once felt how this step was a bitter and difficult one for me. The German folk have never harbored hostile feelings toward Russia’s ethnic groups. Just that for over two decades, the Jewish-Bolshevik leadership has endeavored from Moscow to put not only Germany, rather all of Europe, on fire. Not Germany has ever tried to bring its National Socialist worldview to Russia, rather the Jewish-Bolshevik rulers in Moscow have incessantly undertaken to force their rule upon ours and the other European folks, and this not only intellectually, rather, above all, also in terms of military power.

 

The consequences of the activity of this regime, however, were in all lands only chaos, misery and hunger.

 

Conversely, I have endeavored for two decades, with a minimum of intervention and without any destruction of our production, to come to a social order in Germany that not only eliminates unemployment, rather also lets the profit of work flow increasingly to the working people themselves.

 

The successes of this policy of the economic and social new order of our folk, which, in the systematic overcoming of professional and class contradictions, as final goal strives for a genuine folk community, are unique in the whole world.

 

It was hence a difficult decision for me, in August 1939, to send my minister to Moscow in order to try there to work against the British encirclement policy against Germany. I did it only out of an awareness of responsibility toward the German folk, above all, however, in the hope to, in the end, nonetheless come to a permanent relaxation and to perhaps be able to reduce the sacrifices otherwise demanded from us.

 

In that Germany now solemnly assured in Moscow the listed regions and lands - aside from Lithuania - as lying outside all German political interests, an additional special agreement was made for the event that England should manage to actually incite Poland into war against Germany. But here as well, a limitation of German claims took place, which stood in no ratio to the accomplishments of German arms.

 

National Socialists!

 

The consequences of this treaty, wished for by me myself and concluded in the interest of the German folk, were very difficult, especially for the Germans living in the affected lands.

 

Far more than half a million German folk comrades - all small peasants, tradesmen and workers - were forced almost overnight to leave their previous homeland in order to escape a new regime that initially threatened them with boundless misery, sooner or later, however, with total extermination.

 

Nonetheless, thousands of Germans disappeared! It was impossible to ever discover their fate or even their location. Among them are more than 160 men of German Reich citizenship alone.

 

1 was silent about all this; because I had to be silent! For it was my wish, after all, to bring about a final relaxation and, if possible, a permanent settlement with this state.

 

Already during our advance in Poland, however, the Soviet rulers suddenly claimed, against the treaty, Lithuania as well.

 

The German Reich has never had the intention to occupy Lithuania and also not only never put such a proposal to the Lithuanian government, rather, quite the opposite, rejected the request by the Lithuanian government back then to send German troops to Lithuania in this sense as not corresponding to the goals of German policy.

 

Nonetheless, I submitted to this new Russian demand as well. But it was only the beginning of continuous new extortion, which has since then always repeated itself...

 

The victory in Poland, which had been won exclusively by German troops, caused me to direct a peace offer to the western powers anew. It fell to rejection by the international and Jewish war agitators.

 

The reason for this rejection, however, was that, already back then, England still had the hope to be able to mobilize a European coalition against Germany with the inclusion of the Balkans and of Soviet-Russia.

 

So one decided in London to send Mister Cripps to Moscow as ambassador. He received the clear assignment under all circumstances to resume anew the relations between England and Soviet Russia and to develop them in the English sense. The English press reported about the progress of this mission as long as tactical reasons did not cause it to be silent.

 

In the autumn of 1939 and spring of 1940, the first consequences also actually already showed themselves. While Russia prepared to militarily subjugate not only Finland, rather also the Baltic states, it suddenly based this process with the equally deceitful as ridiculous claim that it had to protect the lands against a foreign threat and preempt it. But only Germany could be meant by that. For another power could neither penetrate into the Baltic Sea region nor, say, wage war there. Nonetheless, I had to remain silent. But the rulers in the Kremlin immediately went farther.

 

While Germany in the spring of 1940, in the sense of the so-called friendship pact, pulled its combat forces far back from the eastern border, yes, to a large extent totally denuded these regions of German troops, the assembly of Russian force began already in this period to an extent that could only be viewed as an intentional threat against Germany.

 

According to Molotov’s personally made statement back then, already in the spring of 1940, there were 22 Russian divisions in the Baltic states alone.

 

Since the Russian government itself always claimed that it had been called by the populace there, the purpose of its presence there could only be a demonstration against Germany.

 

While our soldiers now, from May 10, 1940 onward, had broken French-British power in the west, the Russian assembly on our eastern front was continued in a gradually ever more threatening magnitude.

 

From August 1940 onward, I hence believed, in the interest of the Reich, to no longer be able to be responsible for leaving our already so often devastated eastern provinces unprotected against his mighty assembly of forces of Bolshevik divisions.

 

What the British-Soviet Russian cooperation intended, thereby set in, however, namely: the binding of such strong German forces in the east, that, especially in the air, the German leadership could no longer be responsible for a radical ending of the war in the west.

 

But this corresponded not only to the goal of British, rather also of Soviet Russian, policy. For both England as well as Soviet Russia have the intention to make this war last as long as possible in order to weaken all of Europe and to put it into ever greater impotence.

 

Russia’s ominous attack against Romania was likewise supposed, in the final analysis, to only serve the task of getting hands on, or, under circumstances, at least destroying, an important basis of not only German economic life, rather that of all of Europe.

 

But precisely the German Reich has endeavored since the year 1933 with infinite patience to win the southeastern European states as trade partners. We hence also possessed the greatest interest in their governmental consolidation and order. Russia’s invasion into Romania, the Greek tie to England threatened to transform these regions as well in the shortest time into a general theater of war.

 

Contrary to our principles and practices, on the urgent request of the Romanian government of back then, itself at fault for this development, for the sake of peace, I gave it the advice to give in to the Soviet Russian extortion and cede Bessarabia.

 

But the Roman government believed it could present this to its own folk only under the condition that Germany and Italy, as compensation for this, would at least give the guarantee that Romania’s still remaining territory would no longer be touched. I did this with a heavy heart, Above all, already because: If the German Reich gives a guarantee, this means that it also lives up to it. We are neither Englishmen nor Jews.

 

So I believed, still at the last hour, to have served the peace in this region, even though under the acceptance of a heavy obligation of ours. But in order to finally solve these problems and likewise obtain clarity about the Russian position on the Reich as well as under the pressure of the every escalating mobilization on our eastern order, I invited Mr. Molotov to come to Berlin.

 

The Soviet foreign minister now demanded Germany’s clarification or consent in the following four questions.

 

Molotov’s first question:

 

Should the German guarantee for Romania, in the event of an attack by Soviet Russia against Romania, also be directed against Soviet Russia?

 

My reply:

 

The German guarantee is a general one and one that unconditionally binds us. But Russia has never told us that, outside of Bessarabia, it still has any other interests at all in Romania. Already the occupation of Northern Bukowina was a violation of the assurance. I hence did not believe that Russia could now suddenly have more far-ranging intentions against Romania.

 

Molotov’s second question:

 

Russia feels itself threatened anew by Finland, Russia is determined not to tolerate this. Is Germany willing to give Finland no assistance whatsoever and, above all, to immediately withdraw the German troops marching through to Kirkenes as relief?

 

My reply:

 

Germany, now as well as before, has no political interests in Finland. A new war by Russia against the small Finnish folk, however, could no longer be viewed by the German Reich government as bearable, all the more so, as we could never believe in a threat against Russia by Finland. But we also do not want at all that a war region could again emerge in the Baltic Sea.

 

Molotov’s third question:

 

Is Germany willing to agree that Soviet Russian, for its part, give Bulgaria a guarantee and for this purpose sends Soviet Russian troops to Bulgaria, whereby he - Molotov - wants to declare that they do not have the intention, for example, to eliminate the king for this reason.

 

My reply:

 

Bulgaria is a sovereign state and I do not know that, similar to how Romania asked Germany, Bulgaria had ever asked Soviet Russia for a guarantee at all. I would have to discuss this with my allies.

 

Molotov’s fourth question:

 

Soviet Russia needs under all circumstances free passage through the Dardanelles and demands as well for its protection the occupation of a few important strong points on the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. Does Germany agree to this or not?

 

My reply:

 

Germany is willing to give its consent at any time to a change of the Statute of Montreux in favor of the Black Sea states. Germany is not willing to agree to the seizure of Russian strong points on the straits.

 

National Socialists!

 

I have taken that stance here, which I could alone take as responsible leader of the German Reich, but also as responsible representative of European culture and civilization.

 

The result was an escalation of Soviet Russian activity directed against the Reich, above all, however, the immediate beginning of the inner hollowing out of the new Romanian state and the attempt, through propaganda, to eliminate the Bulgarian government.

 

With the help of confused, immature heads in the Romanian Legion, it was possible to instigate in Romania a coup d’état, whose goal it was to overthrow chief of state General Antonescu, produce chaos in the land, in order, through the elimination of a legal authority, to remove the prerequisite for the taking effect of the German guarantee promise.

 

Nonetheless, I still believed it best to continue my silence.

 

Immediately after the failure of this enterprise, another reinforcement of Russian troop concentrations on the German eastern border took place. Tank formations and paratroopers were moved in ever increasing number into an ominous proximity to the German border. The German Wehrmacht and the German homeland know that, still up to a new weeks ago, there was not a single German panzer or motorized division on our eastern border.

 

But if final proof were still required for the, despite all diversion and camouflage, meanwhile arisen coalition between England and Soviet Russia, then the Yugoslavian conflict provided it. While I endeavored to undertake a final attempt for the Balkan’s pacification and, in understanding cooperation with Il Duce, invited Yugoslavia to join the Axis Pact, England and Soviet Russia, in joint work, organized that coup d’état, which in one night eliminated the government back then ready for agreement.

 

For the German folk can today be informed: the Serbian coup d’état against Germany took place not only, say, under English, rather essentially under Soviet Russian flag. Since we kept silent about this as well, the Soviet Russian leadership, however, went still another step farther. It organized not only the revolt, a few days later it concluded with the new creatures subservient to it the known friendship treaty, which was designed to strengthen the Serbs in their will for resistance against the Balkan’s pacification and to incite them against Germany. And this was no Platonic intention.

 

Moscow demanded the mobilization of the Serbian army.

 

Since even now I still believed it better not to talk, the Kremlin’s rulers went still another step farther:

 

The German Reich government possesses today the documents from which it is proven that Russia, in order to finally bring Serbia into the fight, gave the assurance to deliver via Salonika weapons, airplanes, ammunition and other war material against Germany.

 

And this happened almost at the same moment, when I myself still gave to the Japanese Foreign Minster Dr. Matsoka the advice to bring about a relaxation with Russia, always in the hope to thereby serve peace.

 

Only the swift breakthrough by our incomparable divisions to Skoplje as well as the capture of Salonika itself thwarted the intentions of this Soviet Russian-Anglo-Saxon plot. The Serbian pilot officers, however, fled to Russia and were immediately taken in there as allies.

 

The victory by the Axis powers in the Balkans alone has initially thwarted the plan to entangle Germany this summer in months of fighting in the southeast and meanwhile complete ever more the assembly of Soviet Russian armies, to strengthen their war readiness, and then, together with England and supported by the hoped for American deliveries, to be able to suffocate and crush the German Reich and Italy.

 

Moscow has thereby not only broken the agreements of our friendship pact, rather betrayed them in a wretched manner!

 

And all this, while the Kremlin’s rulers, down to the last minute, just like in the case of Finland or Romania, feigned peace and friendship and composed apparently harmless denials.

 

But just as I was previously compelled by circumstances to again and again remain silent, so the moment has now nonetheless come, when continued looking on would not only be a sin of omission, rather a crime against the German folk, yes, against all of Europe.

 

Today around 100 Russian divisions stand on our border. For weeks, constant violations of this border have been occurring, not by us, rather likewise in the far north, as well as in Romania. Russian fliers have fun to simply overlook our border unconcerned, probably in order to thereby prove to us that they already feel themselves the masters of these regions.

 

In the night of June 17/18th, Russian patrols again probed into German Reich territory and could be driven back only after a prolonged firefight.

 

But now the hour has thereby come in which it becomes necessary to confront this plot by the Jewish-Anglo-Saxon war agitators and the equally Jewish rulers of the Bolshevik Moscow central.

 

German folk!

 

At this moment, an assembly takes place, which in expanse and extent is the greatest that the world has previously seen. In union with Finnish comrades, the warriors of the victor of Narvik stand on the Arctic Ocean. German divisions under the command of the conqueror of Norway, with the Finnish freedom heroes under their marshal, jointly protect Finnish soil. The formations of the German eastern front stretch from East Prussia to the Carpathians. On the banks of the Pruth, on the lower course of the Danube to the shores of the Black Sea, German and Romanian soldiers unite under chief of state Antonescu.

 

The task of this front is hence no longer the protection of individual lands, rather Europe’s security and hence the salvation all.

 

I have hence decided today to again put the fate and the future of the German Reich and of our folk into the hands of our soldiers.

 

May the Lord help us precisely in this struggle!

 

Berlin, June 22, 1941

Adolf Hitler

85 Years Since the German and European Crusade Against the Bolshevism!

The Awakening of Our Race

 

 

Source: SS Leitheft, No. 9, 1944

 

written by a Dutchman

 

The mission entrusted by history to the Germanic peoples is now inflexible. The Western world of ideas, in which we have lived for so long, has collapsed. New forces are at work. Europe is now being challenged by powers that want to reduce it to a colony. This Europe can only assert its autonomy, its space and its high culture if it fights together. It was from this continental thinking, from this awareness of the common character of the Germanic communities, that the first political alliances were born. The political consequences followed the awakening of the race. All the Germanic countries brought together a selection of their youth in the SS Order.

 

That Germany is ahead of us in fulfilling her mission of restoring political vigour to the Nordic race and spirit is due to the fact that we Germanic peoples have too long slumbered in the shadow of England.

 

Norway has its fleet, the Netherlands has its colonies, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, liberated with the help of Germany and England, are swinging between the two. Now, for all of us, the matter is serious. It is often said too easily that we are living through one of the greatest revolutions in the history of the world, a time at the end of many centuries. Generally speaking, people are not at all aware of the dimension of this era, which is not simply a change of governmental regime. The upheaval spans a century and what we are experiencing today is the succession of the French Revolution by the National Socialist Revolution. It is the beginning of an era in which the ideals of a so-called democracy dominated by international big business no longer prevail, but a turning point in history in which the renewal of our blood, the revolt of our race, influences our lives. Only in this way can we understand the superhuman performance of the German blood soldiers over the last four or five years. The men and women would not have endured the frightful bombardment of the cities with such greatness of spirit if they did not know that their very existence was at stake. All these millions of human beings act, fight, and die in a new religious upsurge. From their blood is born a new faith that enriches the natural and healthy forces of life. This law of blood is at the same time the law of the same race. He who betrays his blood betrays himself. All mixing leads to destruction. If a race is to survive, men must fight for the preservation of the species and women must be prepared to ensure the survival of the species for generations through their children. We fight as National Socialists and SS men for a life in keeping with our species, against all foreign psychic intrusion and against race mixing. We seek to return to the sources of our life and our species. The law that the bloods of related peoples attract each other demands a fight against all the powers that want to bastardize and fragment us. These are the same powers for whom, in their plan for world domination, peoples and races are merely targets to be exploited. They are also the ones who want to prevent people of the same blood from coming together. It is the Bolshevik-Plutocratic power with its new agents throughout the world, international big capital, the power of Judaism, international Freemasonry and as a third power, the politicised Christian Church with its thirst for political power. At the other end of the spectrum is the slogan for the reunification of the Germanic world: the fight for the Great German Empire.

 

We are fighting today, often misunderstood by our own people and branded as traitors to our homeland. It seems as if these people have taken over the role of the Jews and the Freemasons in the 1930s and are acting in their place. Peoples and races do not die out in wars if they remain true to their blood, but through internal decomposition, in the course of a long peace.

 

Wars are always nothing more than trials that history imposes on people. In Adolf Hitler we honour the leader of all Germans, and when we Germanic volunteers speak of Germania, it is because we believe that in the future our own survival is guaranteed only in the interests of the Germanic world as a whole.

 

The small Germanic countries on the periphery of the Great German Empire wanted to work towards a general European goal. Blood calls for blood. We must contribute our strength and will to a great German Empire because, more than Germany, we have fallen into disunity and foreign domination. Even if there had been no German Empire in history, there would still be time to build one. Not only would we then be following a law of nature, but our survival and freedom threatened by the Soviet Union, the United States and the British would be assured.

 

We must join this future community of all Germanic peoples with equal rights, but one can only speak of equal rights if one has fulfilled equal duties. This is a National Socialist principle for the common life of the peoples. Equality of rights presupposes equality of duties and benefits. We are convinced that in ten, twenty or thirty years’ time this great Germanic community will become a reality and that in the government of this great Germania there will sit men from the various Germanic regions who today fight in the SS. Just as today men from the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Sweden fight together, so they will work in the new community of peoples, supported by the loyalty of their fellow citizens, for the whole nation. The small disagreements that have arisen from time to time cannot destroy this great picture, this hopeful opening to the future. Adolf Hitler is its guide and guarantor.

 

Let’s open an important parenthesis about the German Empire. My father served in the Dutch army but never had to risk his life, nor did my grandfather or great-grandfather. And then, suddenly, I myself am a soldier in the front line and this peaceful, middle-class clan life is interrupted for the first time by my going to the front. This act is an important contribution to the formation of the future German Empire. Moreover, for the first time in our clan, my son will have a father who was a soldier at the front. In this way we are entering the heroic tradition as it lives in Germany.

 

This new emerging tradition also includes a proud generation of soldiers’ wives. Thus we are assured of the future, for National Socialism, in its warlike expression, can only be based on front-line soldiers.

 

In one of his last speeches, the Führer said: “No bourgeois state will survive this war”. This was of great importance to many workers, but it must also be important to us. No bourgeois state will survive this war; this means that a totally revolutionary society will arise. The struggle will not end with our victory, and the men at the front in all the German-speaking countries must also set to work after the war to make National Socialism a reality. The SS must be the driving force behind the National Socialist Revolution. The SS is not the Party, but only the storm troop of National Socialist ideology.

 

It is, moreover, a community of the Order whose aim, after the battle, is to transmit the ideological heritage seamlessly from generation to generation.

 

As we can see, there is hardly anything that separates the Dutch from the German or the Norwegian. The greatness that we all share is the sublime heritage of the Nordic race and National Socialism as an ideology in keeping with our species. We consider the combination of these two things to be the most important, and we will overcome the small differences. In faith in our historic mission, we want to build the new Europe together with all Germanic people. We are not only soldiers, but also pioneers and as such the guarantors of the race and the future of Europe.

 

The reality of the heroic commitment of an elite of Germanic peoples on all the fronts of Europe is a striking proof of the value of Nordic blood in general.

To Arms for Europe!

 

Speech given in Paris on 5 March 1944 at the Palais de Chaillot by SS-Sturmbannführer Leon Degrelle.

 

The health of the people

 

Unity there is made, and it is the only unity that will triumph. Europe is made not only because it is in danger, but because it has a soul. We are not only united by something negative, like saving our skin. What matters on earth is not so much to live as to live well. It is not to have dragged on fifty years of inactivity, it is, for one year, for eight days to have led a proud and triumphant life.

 

Intellectuals can develop their theories. They have to. These are innocent games, often games of decadence. How many French people take pleasure in these subtleties! How many French people believe that they have made the revolution when they have written a fine article on the revolution! Europe is the old country of intelligence, and the great laws of reason are indispensable to European harmony. But all the same, our century means something more than the awakening of the forces of intelligence alone. There have been so many intelligent people who were sterile beings. By awakening all the instinctive and rumbling forces of the human being, by recalling that there is a beauty of the body and a harmony, that one does not lead people with dwarfs, gringos and deformed beings, by reminding us that there is no action without joy, nor joy without health, racism, awakening those great forces that come from the depths of the world, brings back to the leadership of Europe a healthy and indomitable youth, a youth that loves, a youth that has an appetite. So, when we look at the world, it is no longer to analyse it... but to take it!

 

Germany will have done a priceless service to a decadent Europe by bringing it health. When we looked at pre-war Europe, when we went to the menageries that were the parliamentary assemblies, when we saw all those grinning faces, all those old, stultified gentlemen, their bellies falling out as if they had had too many pregnancies, their tired faces, their stained eyes, we wondered: “Is this our people? The French people still knew how to be witty, which was basically a form of sneer and revolt, but they no longer had this great innocent joy of strength, whereas Germany had this reservoir of limitless strength. What surprised you, men and women of France, when you saw them arrive in 1940? It was that they were beautiful as gods, with harmonious and supple bodies, that they were clean. You have never seen a young warrior, you don’t see him yet in Russia, with a democratic beard. All of this is clean, all of this has allure, race, mouth.

 

With racism, with this awakening of healthy strength, Germany restored health to her people first, and then to the whole of Europe. When we left for Russia, we were told: “Ah, you will suffer over there, you will be prematurely aged men”. When we came back from the front and looked at the others, we found them all to be old coils, while we felt in our veins a strength that nothing would stop.

 

People’s revolution

 

Everywhere in Europe the people were unhappy, everywhere happiness was monopolised by a few dozen anonymous monsters – material happiness locked up in bank vaults, spiritual happiness smothered by all forms of corruption. Europe was old because it was not happy; the people were no longer smiling because they no longer felt alive.

 

At this very moment, what else is going on? Whether you look at Paris or Brussels, you find the same humiliated people in the suburbs, with starvation wages, with leper supplies. You arrive on the boulevards and find these big indolent pashas, larded with beefsteak and thousand-dollar notes, and who say to you: "It’s practical, the war: before the war we were winning, during the war we are winning, after the war we will win. Oh, let them count in the end, they will win our machine-gun discharges, they will win the rope of the hangmen!

 

For what interests us most in the war is the revolution that will follow, it is to give back to these millions of working-class families the joy of living, it is that the millions of European workers should feel free, proud, respected beings, it is that throughout Europe capital should cease to be an instrument of domination of the peoples, to become an instrument in the service of the happiness of the peoples.

 

The war cannot end without the triumph of the socialist revolution, without the worker in the factories and the worker in the fields being saved by the revolutionary youth. It is the people who pay, it is the people who suffer. The great experience of the Russian front still proves this. The people have shown that they are capable of making their revolution without the intellectuals. In our ranks, eighty per cent of our volunteers are workers. They have shown that they have a clearer head and that they can see further than thousands of intellectuals who have nothing left but ink in their penholders, nothing left in their heads and above all nothing left in their hearts, intellectuals who claim to be the elite. That is all over.

 

The real elites are formed at the front, a chivalry is created at the front, young leaders are born at the front. The real elite of tomorrow is there, far from the gossip of the big cities, far from the hypocrisy and sterility of the masses who no longer understand. It is created during grandiose and tragic battles, like those of Cherkasy. It was a great joy for us to find ourselves there among young people from all corners of Europe. There were thousands of Germans from old Germany, men from the Baltic – and in particular the Narva Battalion with the Latvians – there were tall blond boys from the Scandinavian countries, the Danes, the Dutch, our brothers in arms the Flemings, Hungarians, Romanians. There were also a few Frenchmen, who represented you in this scrum, while so many of your compatriots were engaged in other sectors of the Eastern Front And there, between all of us, a complete fraternity was established, because everything has changed since the war. When we look at a slouching old bourgeois in our Fatherland, we do not consider that man to be of our race, but when we look at a young revolutionary from Germany, or from elsewhere, we consider him to be of our Fatherland, since we are with the youth and with the Revolution.

 

We are political soldiers, the SS badge shows Europe where the political truth is, where the social truth is, and, joining this political army of the Führer from everywhere, we are preparing the political frameworks of the post-war period. Tomorrow Europe will have elites such as it has never known before. An army of young apostles, of young mystical men, stirred up by a faith that nothing will stop, will one day emerge from this great seminary at the front. It is there too, Frenchmen, that we must be present

 

Every people must earn their place

 

In the national parties, there are now in France, men who have understood that it is necessary to work with the whole of Europe, who have understood above all that the revolutionary unity of Europe is the SS. The first, the SS, had the courage to go straight ahead, to hit hard and to want the real socialist revolution. For a year or two, at the front, we have seen France. And now inside, we see France: the France of the de Brinons, the Deats, the Doriots, the Darnands, and above all the France of the young. We see something other than little guys on the corner of bars, with a cigarette falling out and a Pernod ready to be swallowed. We see big, well-built boys, capable of making the revolution and then choosing a beautiful girl in France to give her vigorous children.

 

For years, you have had proportionally three times fewer children than the Russians, twice as few as the Germans. One wonders why in this country of love. Love cannot go without children! Aren't they the poetry and the resurrection of love?

 

This denatality was one of the symptoms of the general impotence of democratic peoples, impotence to think far ahead, impotence to be bold, impotence in the face of revolutionary fervour and impotence in the face of privations, in the face of suffering itself. You must be told, Frenchmen, that you have lost fifty years in a Europe of soldiers, which is fighting, which is showing its courage, which needs to be heroic, but which is preparing a social revolution and a moral foundation for each people. It is no longer possible for these hundreds of thousands of men to have died, borne by the most sublime virtues, only to return to the dunghill of mediocrity, baseness and spinelessness. The front has created not only forces of salvation on the military field, revolutionary forces which tomorrow will pass through everything, but it is preparing the revolution which is most necessary for Europe: the spiritual revolution. We need upright and pure men, who know that the highest joys of man are in the soul. We will no longer admit the mediocrity of souls, we will no longer admit that men live for sordid joys, for their egotism, in a narrow atmosphere. We want to elevate the people, to give them back their appetite, their grandeur. We want people to have the sovereign joy of rising above everyday life.

 

That is why, my dear comrades, we must be united. Europe, standing up against Communism, in defence of our civilisation, our spiritual heritage and our ancient cities, must be united, and each people must earn its place, not by adding up the past, but by giving the blood that washes and purifies. Europe must be united in order to carry out, under the sign of the SS, the National Socialist revolution, and to bring to souls, the revolution of souls.

 

You don’t beg for a right.

We fight for him.

 

Adolf Hitler