The source: This was printed in most
remaining German newspapers on 20 April 1945.
German citizens!
At the moment of the war when -
so it seems - all forces of hate and destruction have been gathered once again,
perhaps for the final time, in the west, the east, the southeast, and the
south, seeking to break through our front and give the death blow to the Reich,
I once again speak to the German people on the eve of 20 April about the
Führer, just as I have done every year since 1933. That has happened at good
and bad times in the past. But never before did things stand on such a knife’s
edge, never before did the German people have to defend their very lives under
such enormous danger, never before did the Reich have to draw on its last
strength to protect its threatened self.
Times such as these are rare
in history. They are unique and unparalleled for the fighting generation that
must survive them. Historical events of similar nature and extent fade in our
memory under the pain that we bear, under the sorrows that almost overwhelm us,
under tortured questions about our own future and that of our brave,
sorely-tested people...
This is not the time to speak
of the Führer’s birthday in the usual way or to present him with the usual best
wishes. More must be said today, and by one who was won the right both from the
Führer and the people. I have been at the Führer’s side for more than twenty
years. I have seen his rise and that of his movement from the smallest and most
improbable beginnings up to the seizure of power, and gave my best efforts to
them as well. I have shared joy and sorrow with the Führer, from unprecedented
historic victories to the terrible setbacks in the remarkable years from 1939
until now. I stand beside him today as fate challenges him and his people with
its last, most severe test. I am confident that fate will give him and his
people the laurel wreath of victory. The fact that Germany yet lives, that
Europe and the civilized world have not yet fallen into the dark abyss that
looms before us, is thanks to him alone.
He will be the man of this
century - who was sure of himself despite terrible pain and suffering - who
showed the way to victory. He is the only one who remained true to himself, who
did not cheaply sell his faith and his ideals, who always and without doubt
followed his straight path toward his goal. That goal may today be hidden
behind the piles of rubble that our hate-filled enemies have wrought across our
once-proud continent, but which will once again shine before our burning eyes
once the rubble has been cleared.
Times like those we experience
today demand more of a leader than insight, wisdom, and drive. They demand a
toughness and endurance, a steadfastness of heart and soul, that appear only
rarely in history, but that when they do appear produce the most admirable
achievements of human genius. Burkhardt said in his Observations on World
History: “The fates of people and of states, of entire civilizations, can
depend on whether an extraordinary person can bring forth the proper strength
of soul and action. Normal minds and spirits, no matter how numerous, cannot
replace such a person.”
Who can deny that only the
Führer has the right to feel these words apply to him and his deeds in our and
many coming generations? What can enemy statesmen say in response? They have
nothing but superior numbers, their stupid and insane destructiveness and their
diabolical lust for annihilation, behind which lurk the chaos of the collapse
of civilized humanity. What has come of their loud and emotional theses of
happiness, what of their Atlantic Charter and their Four Freedoms? Only hunger,
misery, pestilence, and mass death. A whole raped part of the earth cries out
against them. Once flourishing cities and villages in every nation of Europe
have been transformed into fields of craters, and hundreds of thousands, even
millions of women and children in the north, east, and southeast of the
continent sigh and weep under the raging scourge of Bolshevism.
The most shining culture the
earth has ever seen sinks in ruins and leaves only memories of the greatness of
an age destroyed by satanic powers. The peoples are shaken by the most severe
economic and social crises, which are but foretastes of the terrible events to
come. Our enemies claim that the Führer’s soldiers marched as conquerors
through the lands of Europe - but wherever they came, they brought prosperity
and happiness, peace, order, reliable conditions, a plenitude of work, and
therefore a decent life. Our enemies claim their soldiers came to the same
lands as liberators - but wherever they come there is poverty and misery,
chaos, devastation and destruction, unemployment, hunger and mass death. And
what remains of their so-called freedom is a life that no one would dare call
decent even in the darkest corners of Africa.
Here is a clear broad outline
of a program of construction that has proved itself useful, humane and
beneficial, positive and forward-looking, in its own as well as in all the
other lands of Europe. It stands against the fantasies of
Jewish-Plutocratic-Bolshevist destruction. Here stands a man, sure of himself,
having a clear and firm will, against the unnatural coalition of enemy
statesmen who are only the lackeys and tools of this world conspiracy. Europe
once had the choice between these two. It chose concealed anarchy, and must
today pay for its mistake with million-fold agony. It will not have much time
any more to choose its fate a second time. It is a matter of life or death!
A British newspaper wrote a
few days ago that the result of the insane policies of the enemy powers would
surely be a revolution of the European peoples against the Anglo-American
plutocracy, and that Hitler was the man who was hindered by the same plutocracy
through an unholy alliance with Asiatic Bolshevism as he began to bring Europe
political and economic happiness. That is how it is, and nothing can whitewash
our plutocratic enemies of their crimes.
Opposing this apparently
all-powerful coalition of destructive satanic forces brings with it tests and
burdens of superhuman nature, but that is not dishonorable - the opposite in
fact! To bravely accept a battle that is unavoidable and inescapable, to wage
it in the name of divine providence, to have confidence in it and its eventual
blessing, to stand before fate with a pure conscience and clean hands, to bear
all suffering and every test, never even thinking of being untrue to one’s
historic mission, never wavering even in the most difficult hours of the final
battle - that is not only manly, it is also German in the best sense of the
word! Would our people not accept this task and not fight for it as if it were
the word of god, it would not deserve to live any longer, and would lose any
possibility of further life.
What we experience today is
the last act of a powerful drama that began on 1 August 1914 and which we
Germans gave up on on 9 November 1918 just before the end. That is why we had
to begin again on 1 September 1939. What we hoped to spare ourselves in
November 1918 we have paid for two- or threefold today. There is no escape -
unless the German people surrenders any kind of decent human life and is ready
to forever live in a way that would shame even the most primitive African
tribes.
If it is manly and German as
Führer of a great and brave people to depend wholly on oneself in this
struggle, relying on one’s own own strength and certainty as well as the help
of god in the face of an enemy who threatens with overwhelming numbers, to
fight rather than to capitulate, then it is just as manly and German for a
people to follow such a Führer, unconditionally and loyally, without excuse or
reservation, to shake off all feelings of weakness and uncertainty, to trust in
the good star that is above him and us all. This is all the more true when that
star at times is covered by a black cloud. Misfortune must not make us
cowardly, but rather resistant, never giving a mocking watching world the
appearance of wavering. Rather than hoisting the white flag of surrender that
the enemy expects, raise the old swastika banner of a fanatic and wild
resistance, renewing the oath that we swore so often in the happy and safe days
of peace, thanking god again and again that he gave us a true leader for these
terrible times, feeling bound in our hearts to his sorrows and trials, thus
showing the enemy world that they can wound but not kill us, that they can beat
us bloody but not force us down, torture us, but not demoralize us!
Is there a single German who
disagrees? After six years of battle, could our people debase itself so low as
to forget honor and duty, surrendering in the turmoil of the moment its holy
and inalienable right to its great future for a pot of soup? Who would dare
suggest that? Who holds us in such contempt that he believes that now, just as
we stand before the final and decisive round of the war, we would be untrue to
all our sworn ideals, that we would throw all our hopes for the future of our
Reich overboard, giving up in the midst of the confusion of misfortune that has
overcome us on ourselves, our land and people, and the lives of our children
and children’s children?
The world speaks of loyalty as
a German virtue. How could our people have withstood the tests of this war
without it, and how could it survive the war’s coming end without it? For it is
ending! The war is nearing its end. The insanity that the enemy powers of unleashed
on humanity has gone beyond all bounds. The whole world feels only shame and
disgust. The perverse coalition between plutocracy and Bolshevism is
collapsing! Fate has taken the head of the enemy conspiracy [U.S. President Roosevelt had died the week before].
It is the same fate that the Führer escaped on 20 July 1944 [the date of an assassination attempt on Hitler],
amidst the dead, the wounded and the ruins, so that he could finish his work -
through pain and trials it is true, but nonetheless as providence ordained.
Once more the armies of the
enemy powers storm against our defensive fronts. Behind them is the slavering
force of International Jewry that wants no peace until it has reached its
satanic goal of world destruction. But its hopes are in vain! As he has done so
often before, god will throw Lucifer back into the abyss even as he stands
before the gates of power over all the peoples. A man of truly timeless
greatness, of unique courage, of a steadfastness that elevates the hearts of
some and shakes those of others, will be his tool. Who will maintain that this
man can be found in the leadership of Bolshevism or plutocracy? No, the German
people bore him. It chose him, it by free election made him Führer. It knows
his works of peace and now wants to bear and fight the war that was forced upon
him until its successful end.
Within a few years after the
war, Germany will flourish as never before. Its ruined landscapes and provinces
will be filled with new, more beautiful cities and villages in which happy
people dwell. All of Europe will share in this prosperity. We will again be
friends of all peoples of good will, and will work together with them to repair
the grave wounds that scar the face of our noble continent. Our daily bread
will grow on rich fields of grain, stilling the hunger of the millions who
today suffer and starve. There will be jobs in plenitude, the deepest source of
human happiness, from which will come blessing and strength for all. Chaos will
vanish. The underworld will not rule this part of the world, but rather order,
peace, and prosperity.
That was always our goal! It
is our goal today. If the enemy powers had their way, humanity would drown in a
sea of blood and tears. War would follow war and revolution would follow
revolution, finally destroying the last remnants of a world that was once
beautiful and lovely, and that will be so again.
But if we achieve our goals,
the project of social construction begun in Germany in 1933 and was rudely
interrupted in 1939 will be taken up again with renewed strength. Other peoples
will join in - not because we force them to, but rather of their own free will -
because there is no other way out of the world crisis. Who could show the way
save the Führer! His work is the work of order. His enemies have only a devil’s
work of anarchy and devastation to set against his work.
German history is not rich in
great statesmen. But where one has appeared he usually had something to say and
give not only to his own people, but to the world. What would there be European
about Europe had not German kaisers and kings, counts and generals and their
armies repeatedly withstood the onslaughts from the east! Usually only a
disunited continent stood behind them that either did not understood or even
fell upon Germany in the midst of its saving work for Europe. Why should it be
any different today? At the present state of things, which the war is just
before, or perhaps even in the midst of, a peripeteia, it is difficult to
understand this great battle between peoples. One thing, however, can no longer
be disputed: If there had been no Adolf Hitler, if Germany had been led by a
government like those in Finland, Bulgaria, or Rumania, it would long since
have become the prey of Bolshevism. Lenin once said the path to world
revolution leads though Poland and the Reich. Poland is already in the
possession of the Kremlin, despite all the attempts of the Anglo-Americans to
conceal it. If Germany had followed, or would follow, what would become of the
rest of our continent?
To ask the question is to
answer it. The Soviets would probably already be at the Atlantic coast, and
England sooner or later would receive its just reward for its betrayal of
Europe that finds its most wretched expression in its marriage with Bolshevism.
In the United States too, one would soon think differently of the dreadful
world phenomenon that a Jewish press entirely and fully conceals from the
American public.
If the world still lives, and
not only our world but the rest of it as well, whom has it to thank other than
the Führer? It may defame and slander him today, persecuting him with its base
hatred, but it will have to revise this standpoint or bitterly regret it! He is
the core of resistance to the collapse of the world. He is Germany’s bravest
heart and our people’s most passionate will. I permit myself to make a judgment
that must be made today: If the nation still breaths, if it still has the
chance of victory, if there is still an escape from the deadly danger it faces -
it is thanks to him. He is steadfastness itself. I have never seen him fail or
falter, or weaken or tire. He will go his way to the end, and there awaits not
the end of his people, but rather a new and happy beginning to an era in which
Germandom will flourish as never before.
Listen, Germans! Millions of
people look to this man from every land on the earth, still doubting and
questioning whether he knows the way out of the great misfortune that has
befallen the world. He will show the peoples that way, but we look to him full
of hope and with a deep, unshakable faith. We stand behind him with fortitude
and courage: soldier and civilian, man, woman and child - a people determined
to do all to defend its life and honor. He may look his enemies in the eye, for
we promise him that he does not need to look behind him. We will not waver or
weaken. We will never desert him, no matter how desperate and dangerous the
hour. We stand with him, as he stands with us - in Germanic loyalty as we have
sworn, as we shall fulfill. We do not need to tell him, for he knows and must
know: Führer command! - We will follow! We feel him in us and around us. God
give him strength and health and preserve him from every danger. We will do the
rest.
Our misfortune has made us
mature, but not robbed us of our character. Germany is still the land of
loyalty. It will celebrate its greatest triumphs in the midst of danger. Never
will history record that in these days a people deserted its Führer or a Führer
deserted his people. And that is victory. We have often wished the Führer in
happy times our best on this evening. Today in the midst of suffering and
danger, our greeting is much deeper and more profound. May he remain what he is
to us and always was - Our Hitler!
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