Artworks by Arno Breker

Part I

Adolf Hitler

 Bereitschaft (Readiness)

Richard Wagner

Der Künder (The Prophet)

Anmut (Gracefulness)

Der Fahnenträger (The Standard Bearer)

Psyche

Die Vergeltung (The Revenge)

Flora

Apollo und Daphne

Postcards Collection – Reich Party Congress in Nuremberg

Part III

The Reich in Photos - Pictures from Reichsparteitag der Arbeit, 6 - 13 September 1937

The 9th Party Congress of the NSDAP, called the “Rally of Labour” (Reichsparteitag der Arbeit, September 6–13, 1937).

 

 

Die Deutsche Wochenschau – Newsreel No. 621 – 29 July 1942

- Fall of Sevastopol;

- Crossing of the Don;

- Capture of the Rostov;

SS Mate Selection and Race

Source: http://www.renegadetribune.com/ss-mate-selection-race/

This excerpt is translated from the SS original.

First, safeguard your health and, as long as you are at the age of development, be above all abstinent in regards to pleasure poisons (alcohol, nicotine) and sexual activity. (In this regard it should be remembered that precisely the Nordic person in general only reaches full maturity late.)

Second, marry as early as possible. Only then will you and your wife fully enjoy family joy.

Third, do not marry a breed-alien wife. You are responsible to your folk and your offspring for the purity of the blood.

Fourth, do not marry a genetically ill woman. You otherwise bear guilt for the suffering of your own children and grandchildren.

Fifth, choose a completely health woman for yourself. The true picture of the health condition and of the characteristics of your future wife are shown you by her clan.

Sixth, your wife should be racially at least as valuable as you.

Seventh, strive to get yourself and your children back to the land.

Eighth, avoid marriage with a relative, for unfavourable genetic traits almost always remain hidden to you and then manifest themselves twice as strong in your children.

Ninth, you must preserve your gene pool for your folk in the largest possible number of children. In your children you live on.

$10 on Third Reich Books

The Code of Honour of the SS - Regarding the Behaviour of the Soldier Towards Foreign Women

You are an SS Man. That means you are not a mercenary who is recruited to fight for something simply for a salary, even if it’s of no other concern to you. As an SS Man, you represent your own people, your own blood. Aside from that, you also represent the SS, a community, an order within your people, whose special tasks are the keeping pure of the blood, the elevation of the worth of the race. When you stand in a foreign land, with a weapon in your hand, you thus have a double duty: you must represent your people and you must be worthy of the SS.

However, you behave unworthy when you - wearing the uniform of the Führer with the badges of the Waffen SS - run around in taverns and restaurants with those girls and women who do not share the pain and concern of their own people, who do not notice the pain of their people, simply because they lack any feeling. These are not the decent women and girls of these foreign people. That’s something you can take for granted. For those girls whose brothers, and those women whose husbands, have been defeated by you and your comrades would certainly not want to throw their arms around you. You also know what typo of harm can befall you from such careless association.

How can you claim the right of unavoidable hardness, if you let yourself go? How can you maintain a clear view and a proper bearing, if you lose your self-respect? Many of you had opportunity in this war to assume more responsibility that you would have ever been able to have in peace time. You must all prove yourselves worthy of this responsibility. We know that you are brave in war. But you also have to learn to be calm, disciplined, and moderate, even when you are not standing in formation. That is what we hope for the sake of our people’s future.

What should you do after you have read these lines? I’ll tell you. You have to have clear eyes and an honest heart. You know what I mean. You know how I mean this. Perhaps you also know that one or another of your comrades has not behaved like he should have. Until now, you just looked away and figured it didn’t concern you. Believe me, it does concern you. It concerns all of us. First try the way of true comradeship: take your friend to the side and speak with him clearly and reasonably. Tell him what it means. Tell him of the fatal hour our people find themselves in. Impress upon him, that the Führer cannot relinquish a single ran.

Always remember that the months and years you wear the uniform with the SS Runes will remain unforgettable for the rest of your life. For a German, these are the most decisive years in life. Not only because the young SS volunteer matures into a man, or because his chest becomes broader, or his step more certain, or his sight more keen. His spirit is a so formed. And he learns in the SS community something that will always remain with him: order, discipline, conscientiousness, punctuality, sacrifice and a sense of duty towards the community. Do not spoil this memory by not doing your duties the way your people expect from you. If you disregard this, you hurt yourself more than anyone else.

There was once a time which pronounced “the right of one’s own body.” That was the period that gave its blessing if a black man married a white woman or if a German married a Jew - the time that also protected those who killed the unborn child in its mother’s body if its arrival would inconvenience the parents. The champions of that time, whom we have already overcome through the struggle of the Führer in Germany, now stubbornly stand on all fronts against us.

If you believe that you can do what you want with your own body and your own blood, whatever your desires wish, then you help the enemies of our people and of our worldview. You’re only the master of yourself, in reality, when you can bring up enough strength and pride to live within the laws under which your people, your SS, and you yourself are assembled.

Whoever spoils his blood,

Ruins his people.

*****

The most private things of the individual are the most public things of the community. For the most important thing is decided in them: the physical existence and future of our people.

- Wilhelm Pleyer

Richard Wagner – Tannhäuser – Festmarsch

Bayreuther Festspiele, 1978

Chor der Bayreuther Festspiele

Chorus Master: Norbert Balatsch

Orchester der Bayreuther Festspiele

Conductor: Sir Colin Davis

Staged by: Gütz Friedrich

Landgraf: Hans Sotin

Tannhäuser: Spas Wenkoff

Wolfram von Eschenbach: Bernd Weikl

Walther von der Vogelweide: Robert Schunk

Biterolf: Franz Mazura

Heinrich der Schreiber: John Pickering

Reinmar von Zweier: Heinz Felohoff

Venus / Elisabeth: Gwyneth Jones

Die Deutsche Wochenschau – Newsreel No. 619 – 15 July 1942

- Munich Art Exhibit;

- Advance Toward the Don;

- U-Boat Homecomings;

- Capture of Voronezh.

Adolf Hitler – speeches at the NSDAP congress in Nuremberg – 6 - 13 September 1937

Adolf Hitler – proclamation read by Gauleiter Adolf Wagner

(Excerptions)

Nuremberg, September 06, 1937

Since then, this city has represented in miniature both how our Movement and Germany have evolved as well as the evolution of this city. A gigantic forum is in the process of emerging. Its parade grounds are the most extensive in the world. As of tomorrow, the cornerstone will be laid for the erection of a stadium the likes of which have never before been seen on earth.

Within a mere two years’ time, the shell of the colossal Congress Hall will have risen to constitute the first granite monument to bear witness to the magnitude of the idea to which it owes its design, and to the magnitude of the entire facility. A parade ground and rally site worthy of the demonstrations- initiated by National Socialism-of the greatest transformation in our German history!

How can the peasant in his village, the laborer in his workshop or factory, the employee in his office-how can they all grasp the extent of the total result of their innumerable personal sacrifices and their struggle? But once a year, on the occasion of the general display of the Party, they will stride forth as one from the modesty of their narrow existence to gaze upon and acknowledge the glory of the fight and the triumph! Then many of them will perhaps experience for the first time the overwhelming certainty that their small-scale troubles and efforts have not been in vain, but that they have been the basis for this tremendous success, and that the many minor setbacks they have experienced were pale in significance when compared to the overall outcome of the fight of the Movement and-today-of their entire Volk.

And when, during these few days, hundreds of thousands march once again to Nuremberg, and hence from all of Germany’s Gaus an endless stream of warm life flows into this city, all of them-looking back and around from this elevated site-will be able to come to the same conclusion: we are truly the witnesses of a transformation more tremendous than any the German nation has ever experienced. Collectively, socially, economically, politically, culturally, and racially, we are living in the midst of a gigantic metamorphosis of time.

[…]

My Party Comrades! We are living at an incredibly great time in history.

Admittedly, every century has had its wars or revolutions, by virtue of which people have risen or fallen and states been built up or torn down.

However, it is only seldom that a people’s life is shaken up by tremors which penetrate as far as the deepest foundations of the structure of the societal order and threaten or even destroy them!

Building up a new leadership elite in our nation without the devastating chaotic destruction of existing conditions is one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of our Volk.

[…]

There is one comforting certainty the German nation can then call its own: even if the whole world around us catches on fire, the National Socialist State will rise forth from the Bolshevist flames like platinum.

It is a fact that Germany has solved its most pressing social problem, and solved it absolutely: there are no longer any real unemployed in our country.

On the contrary: today there are already shortages in countless areas, particularly of skilled workers. I believe this is a greater social accomplishment than what other countries succeed in doing-just as was also done here in the past-to undermine and destroy production until finally the so-called liberated proletariat has been relieved not so much of its troubles, but of its work and thus of its daily bread.

May no one deceive himself: a Volksgemeinschaft that succeeds in building up an enormous army, mobilizing a huge labor service running the mammoth organization of the German Reichsbahn, etc., will also be capable of bringing German steel and iron production up to the requisite level! We have been capable of mastering quite different tasks from those laid down in the Four-Year Plan! And today I would already like to assure you, my Party Comrades, that this work will progress under the direction of Party Comrade Goring at exactly the prescribed speed!

Therefore the demand for colonial possessions belonging to the Reich is a demand grounded in our financial need, and the position of other powers as regards this demand is simply beyond comprehension.

Germany neither robbed nor stole its colonies from these powers in the past. In a world such as ours today, where people are so saturated with moralistic phrases, it would be only appropriate to take this fact into consideration as well!

I would like to cite three facts in closing one chapter of German history today.

First: The Treaty of Versailles is dead! Second: Germany is free! Third: The guarantor of our freedom is our own Wehrmacht! Yet at the same time Germany is not isolated today, but bound in friendship to powerful states. The natural community of interests of National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy has increasingly grown in the past few months to prove itself a factor in safeguarding Europe from the madness of chaos.

In the future, it will be impossible to ignore this community of will in any particular instance, and to simply carry on as usual. Our agreement with Japan serves the same purpose: to join forces in warding off an attack upon the civilized world that might today take place in Spain, tomorrow in the east or the day after perhaps somewhere else.

However, the greatest revolution Germany has undergone was that of the purification of the Volk and thus of the races which was launched systematically in this country for the first time ever.

The consequences of this German racial policy will be more significant for the future of our Volk than the effects of all the other laws together. For they are what is creating the new man. They will preserve our Volk from doing as so many historically tragic past prototypes of other races have done: lose their earthly existence forever because of their ignorance as regards a single question.

For what is the sense of all our work and all our efforts if they do not serve the putpose of preserving the German being? And what good is any effort on behalf of this being if we omit the most important thing to preserve it pure and unadulterated in its blood? Any other mistake can be rectified, any other error can be corrected, but what one fails to do in this area can often never again be amended. Whether our work in this area of purifying our race and thus our Volk has been fruitful is something you can best judge for yourselves here during these few days. For what you are encountering in this city is the German being. Come and see for yourselves whether he has become worse under National Socialist leadership or whether he has not indeed become better. Do not gauge only the increasing number of children being born-gauge above all the appearance of our youth.

How lovely are our girls and our boys, how bright is their gaze, how healthy and fresh their posture, how splendid are the bodies of the hundreds of thousands and millions who have been trained and cared for by our organizations! Where are there better men to be found today than those who can be seen here? It is truly the rebirth of a nation, brought about by the deliberate breeding of a new being (bewusste Zuchtung eines neuen Menschen).

Adolf Hitler – speech about the culture

Nuremberg, September 7, 1937

The weapons of those bourgeois ballad-singers of freedom (Freiheitssanger) were, at worst, pen and ink. Yet the National Socialists were expected to bear a thousand privations. But their struggle gradually brought about genuine freedom. A freedom which is not the product of poetic contemplation, but the result of hard political battles compounded not of essays or leading articles, but of historically established events and hence accomplishments. Of course it was more difficult to arrive at a March 16, 1935, or to occupy the Rhineland than to concern oneself in newspapers or literary pamphlets with theoretical discussions on the true nature of genuine freedom.

In history, however, surely only the factual counts; that means that in history, neither political desire nor theoretical contemplation will be material, but political achievement, and that means the deed itself. It is the task of cultural policy-just as in the area of politics in general-to lead onwards to new and, in this case, cultural achievements!

[…]

Therefore the civilized nations have always constituted the counterpole to the nations without culture, just as within them the artist is, in turn, the solitary figure in contrast to the masses of the artistically indifferent, or to people even lacking any understanding whatsoever. This, however, is due to the following: the genius consistently stands out from the masses in that he unconsciously anticipates truths of which the population as a whole only later becomes conscious! [-] Of all the questionable concoctions of our so-called “Modern Art,” not even five percent would have been able to gain a place in the art collection of the German Volk had it not been that, by means of propaganda having nothing at all to do with art, but oriented along political and weltanschaulich lines, public opinion had been talked into them-indeed, even forced into them-by likeminded political factors. The Volk’s deep-seated aversion to the enrichment of its art by virtue of such products is something obvious to anyone from the impressions made upon the viewers of the “Entartete Kunst” exhibition in Munich.

However, a clever and indeed cunning Jewish cultural propaganda has nonetheless succeeded in talking at least his so-called “appointed art experts”- but not healthy individuals-into smuggling these supremely pitiful concoctions into our galleries and thus ultimately forcing them upon the German Volk after all.

The path from the sacred and serious work of our good old German masters to the great painters of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was certainly more difficult than the path from the average decent art of the nineteenth century to the primitive scrawlings of our so-called “Moderns,” whose products basically attract attention only because they are behind modern times by a few thousand years.

We have our litterateurs to thank for this ignominious retrogression. They have succeeded, by perpetually using the word “kitsch” to describe a wellmeant, 175 decent, average accomplishment, in breeding those exalted aberrations which, to a blase literary attitude, might perhaps seem to present an interesting and even phenomenal innovation, but in fact are nothing but a disgraceful reversion, a deterioration of culture which has never before taken place at any time in the past-and never could take place, either, because never before had litterateurs been accorded such an outrageous influence on the performing and visual arts.

In this context, it is now amusing to note that it is least of all the products of these so-called “Moderns” which can be judged as being, for example, “original” or possessing “originality.” On the contrary, all of these so-called modern artists are the most pathetic and inept copyists of all time. Naturally not copyists of what is decent, but of nonsense!

Never before in German history were greater and more noble edifices planned, commenced and completed than in our time.

[…]

The authority that is saving the German Volk from collapse in the twentieth century, that has snatched it away from the chaos of Bolshevism, is not the authority of an economic association, but that of the National Socialist Movement, of the National Socialist Party and thus of the National Socialist State! The opponents will sense it, but the adherents above all must know it: it is to fortify this authority that these structures are being built! Therefore these edifices are neither designed for the year 1940 nor for the year 2000; instead, they are to tower, like the cathedrals of our past, into the millenniums of the future. And if today God perhaps allows the poets and singers to be fighters, He has, in any case, given the fighters the architects who will ensure that the success of this fight finds an immortal substantiation in the documents of a unique and great art! That is something small minds perhaps cannot comprehend, but then again they have not understood our fight on the whole. It may embitter our opponents, but then again their hatred has never yet been capable of thwarting our success, either. One day, however, it will be understood with utmost clarity how very great the blessing is which shines forth throughout the centuries from the tremendous edifices of this history-making age. For they above all will help, in a political sense, to unify and fortify our Volk more than ever before; in a collective sense, they will-for Germans- become part of a proud feeling of belonging together; in a social sense, they will prove the ridiculousness of any other differences of this world in comparison to these tremendous, gigantic witnesses of our sense of community.

[…]

This State shall neither be a power without culture nor a force without beauty. For the armament of a Volk is only morally justified when it is the sword and shield of a higher mission. Therefore we are not striving for the brute strength of someone like Genghis Khan, but instead for an empire of strength which is instrumental in shaping a strong social and protected community as the support and guard of a higher culture!

 Speech to the Labor Service

(Short excerptions)

September 08, 1937

The proudest deed which National Socialism has accomplished toward establishing a future German Volksgemeinschaft was its founding the Reich Labor Service! This Party Congress revolves around the theme of labor. The accomplishments you have shown us are themselves only a product of untiring labor. Your number-one worker, my comrades, is your leader, Party Comrade Hierl!

[…]

You, my comrades, have become a part of our Volk within the space of these few years, a part we can no longer imagine doing without. You belong here in this state which the Party has established, just as the Wehrmacht belongs here.

We can no longer imagine doing without you, and you will never again be done without! And for us, it is an edifying thought to know that, long into the most distant future, generation after generation will shoulder the weapon of peace-the spade-and report for duty at the service of our community and thus of our Volk. We feel fortunate in knowing that a guarantor for the eternal strength of Germany and the greatness of our Volk and our Reich has thus been established anew. Today you are no longer a fantasy; instead you now have already become a tremendous reality!

Speech to the German police

(Short excerptions)

Nuremberg, September 10, 1937

In the year 1933, the National Socialist leadership of state immediately undertook the attempt to lessen the burdens of this position [as representatives of the authority of the state] for you. By limiting your arms exclusively to the live weapons,176 the police have been relieved of that so despised and characteristic feature of the November days. At that time we were of the conviction that it must be possible to enforce and apply the authority of the state, i.e. what the community required of the Volksgenossen, without an appendage as shameful as the rubber truncheon was. At that time we held the view that there were only two alternatives: either it would suffice to enforce the authority of the personality of the individual and the authority of the community, or it would be necessary to use the most effective of weapons to establish respect and obedience for this authority. It is not, however, an alternative to beat the citizens of a Volk as though they were subservient tribes in some colony and hence disgrace them.

[…]

Now a further step is to be taken. The German police shall be increasingly connected with the Movement that not only represents modern Germany in a political sense, but also personifies and leads it. And it is to this end that you are to receive today’s banners personally from my hand. This shall constitute a further act demonstrating the visible integration of the German police in the great front line of the German Volksgemeinschaft marching and fighting for the nation.

I know that you will bear these banners just as do all the other associations which have the appointed task of serving the strength and power of the nation.

It is in these banners above all that you will perceive the symbol of your alliance with the German Volk that is shaping its new life today under this same banner.

You will thereby be guided by two principal ideas: First, in being the representative of the State, also being the Volk’s best friend.

Second, in being the representative of the State, being the most relentless representative of this Volksgemeinschaft toward those asocial, criminal elements which sin against it.

Adolf Hitler – speech to the German women

(Short excerptions)

Nuremberg, September 10, 1937

The more masculine a man is, the more he is undisputed in his sphere of influence from the very start; and the more feminine a woman is, the more her own work and thus her own position is conversely uncontested and undisputed. And the mutual respect of the sexes for each other will ultimately not be achieved by the rules set up by two different formations, i.e. the formation of men and the formation of women; instead, it must be acquired day by day in real life. The more a man is faced with a woman who is truly female, the more his arrogance will be disarmed from the very beginning-so disarmed, that at times it might be unbearable; and conversely the more a man is a whole man and carries out his work and his life-task in the highest sense of the word, the more the woman will find her natural and self-evident place beside him. In this constellation, the two can never cross each other on their life-paths; they will instead join one another in a wholly shared, great mission; and ultimately this mission is none other than preserving the community of mankind as it exists today and ensuring that, in the future, it will be the way we desire it to one day be.

Thus the individual alliance of man and woman will always stand out from this joint alliance of the two sexes. We know that here, too, this alliance-if it is to be really lasting-must equally rest upon the awareness of this great comradeship for life. Yet because this is so, we must also understand that seeking and finding this comradeship for life cannot simply be brought about by commands or orders, either, but that it is moreover ultimately a problem not only of reason, but here an affair of the heart as well. And, therefore, it is also understandable if there are many-particularly women-who do not succeed in solving this problem for the simple reason that the heart cannot always bow to reason. We wish to have a maximum of understanding for this. For there is yet another great task ahead, the work in our community itself.

The way you have begun here-and this I can say to you, Party Comrade Scholtz-Klink-is right, and it will help us to more easily achieve this goal [of building a community of the German Volk].

For you have demonstrated a truly remarkable talent for avoiding that the organization of women has created, for instance, a counterpole to men, but on the contrary ensured that the German women’s organization has become a complement to the male fighting organization.

Adolf Hitler- speech to the Political Leaders of Germany

(Short excerptions)

Nuremberg, September 10, 1937

For us zealous National Socialists, these days are the most splendid celebration of the whole year! How much trouble and sacrifice does it mean for the individual; how difficult and strenuous it is for many of you-but for us, too-to keep coming here! Yet nonetheless, when these days come to their close, we are all struck by a sadness; we are like children who are deprived of a great celebration.

For us, these clays comprise a remembrance of the time of our historic struggle for Germany. Among you there are many standing before me who still know the Movement from the time when it was difficult and dangerous to support it. Particularly for these old, true comrades in arms, these days are the most splendid remembrance and, at the same time, a reward. Once a year we see each other face to face again, just as so often before. Once a year you are again with me, as so often before in the battles for Germany. Back then I could go forth in your Gaus, and each of you knew me. Today you must come to rne, and here at this place we see each other again and again as the Old Guard of the National Socialist Revolution!

[…]

We have chosen the motto of “Labor” for the Party Congress of 1937. There are a scattered few who perhaps-particularly outside of Germany-might raise the question: Why such a slogan? After having liberated Germany within four years’ time, we have the right to rejoice in our labor!

[…]

I am so pleased to have my old Fighters before me again once a year. I always have the feeling that, as long as the human being has the gift of life, he should yearn for those with whom he has shaped his life. What would my life be without you! The fact that you once found your way to me and believed in me gave your life new meaning and a new goal! The fact that I found you was the prerequisite for my own life and my struggle!

[…]

The German nation, under the leadership of its Party, will protect Germany and never again allow it to fade! And our faith is bound up with this knowledge.

It was not the point of the actions of Providence which has accompanied and blessed our miraculous path that now, perhaps in the final act, the fruits of this struggle should be lost. The Almighty has allowed us to take this wonderful path and will continue to bless us. For we are fighting here for a higher right, for a higher truth and for a higher human decency. I can look forward to the future so serenely because we have now in effect put our own affairs in order.

[…]

Germany shall not be overrun, neither from within nor from without! And I believe that this fact is one of the highest contributions to peace, because it warns all those who attempt, from their base in Moscow, to set the world on fire.

Adolf Hitler - speech to the German Labor Front

(Short excerptions)

September 11, 1937

Party Comrades! My German Volksgenossen!

The fact that I have come to you somewhat late is due to the obligations which are part and parcel of the Party Congress. Therefore, I have asked my friend, Party Comrade Goring, to speak to you in my stead. For I must conserve my voice a little. Now that the weather has become worse, and much speaking must be done outdoors, that wears somewhat on the vocal cords. Now that does not necessarily have to awaken in our foreign correspondents178 the joyful hope that I have cancer and my voice is gone for good. They will still be hearing it quite often and quite frequently. But basically it makes no difference at all which of us is talking. Because each of us will say the same thing. What we have to say is much more than merely a memorized speech. It is the rendering of our profession of faith.

If we go so far as to believe that we will have educated everyone or perhaps had educated everyone, others will come after them who need to be educated.

That is the same as in the military. One class of recruits has finally, finally been brought to the point that it can stand and walk alone. And then it moves on, and then the next class comes, and then it starts all over again. But that is not such a misfortune after all: on the contrary. The mission of educating is always the best of all. For it is an eternal one, a lasting one.

We had ranks in former times, too, in which the consciousness of rank was hammered (eingepaukt) into the people. Now we are hammering into them a consciousness of the Volk in certain organizations. Those are ranks, too. One of these ranks is the Labor Front. Its job is to help hammer home to German Volksgenossen the consciousness of the Volk. It is a consciousness of rank, too! Namely, the consciousness of belonging to the ranks of German Volkstum! At the moment, this is perhaps inconvenient for some. But when a recruit reports to the barracks for duty, he, too, finds a number of things inconvenient.

First he needs a good rubbing-down until he has dispensed with what he had before. And he is usually most attached to what he should not be attached to at all, because it gives him no reason to be proud. It is so difficult to teach him even, let us say, about cleanliness. And things are no different on a larger scale.

People are so very attached primarily to what is not at all worth one’s having such an affinity with. All of this now needs to he removed. And that is a wonderful task.

And if someone says to me, that has not been accomplished yet-well, we are only in the fifth year of our calendar. Just give us one or two hundred years’ time.

[…]

This morning I saw some of our youth join the Party. And I must say so myself: it is really wonderful. That is a magnificent young generation we are now getting. And above all, they are coming to the Party from all walks of life.

And seriously, one wouldn’t know it from seeing them: they have the same brown shirt. No one asks where they come from. But they all look as alike as peas in a pod. Here are children of the proletariat, there are former sons of the bourgeoisie and of entrepreneurs and employees and peasants, etc. But they all look exactly alike. And that is the wonderful thing. They are already growing up like that. And our other organizations will help to cultivate that slowly but surely. That is what the Party is for, and its organizations, the SA and the SS.

And then comes the Labor Service. And then comes the military. And thus the individual German is kneaded until he gradually learns to come into actual contact with his neighbor. And all of this takes place not so much perhaps under the heading “ideal.” No, no, all of this goes by a much more simple heading, namely the word, “reason.”

I might not be standing before you now, that is to say I would certainly not be standing before you, had I not once been a soldier and, as a soldier, acquired this absolute faith in the value of my Volk, my Volksgenossen, and above all the workers. For you yourselves know that one could so often hear from bourgeois quarters, “Oh, those people are good for nothing, they’re just riff-raff, pure and simple, etc.” I have always said that was not true at all.

Those people are comrades. I have experienced that myself many a time.

Those are the comrades who, God knows, have risked their lives so often for this Germany. They are all decent people. They are all men who are prepared, if necessary, to sacrifice everything, even their lives, for an ideal-and that too is an ideal, if someone goes out on the battlefield for Germany.

 Adolf Hitler - speech to SA, SS & NSKK

(Short excerptions)

Nuremberg, September 12, 1937

It did not want reason and insight to reside in our Volk. And when the first men stood up in order to preach the new reason of a Volksgemeinschaft with me and behind me, those whose interest lay in tearing the Volk asunder rose up against us. We all shared but one possession: a boundless love for our Volk and an unshakeable faith in its resurrection. And today Germany has truly risen once again, and its rising is our achievement!

[…]

A mere ten or fifteen years ago, these people were only barely able to communicate with one another, and today the entire German nation is following one command, one order! In his life on this earth, man needs external, visible symbols which can be carried before him and which he strives to imitate.

For the German, the most sacred symbol has always been the flag; it is not a piece of cloth, but a conviction and a pledge and hence an obligation.

In the long yearn of our struggle for the German being against its adversaries, the flag was carried at your fore, the one which is today the flag of the German Reich. These standards of our struggle at that time were inconspicuous and faded, wholly unprepossessing; yet how we loved our flag regardless, a flag that had nothing to do with the disintegration of the nation but to us seemed to be the sunshine of a new and better German future! How the tens of thousands and later hundreds of thousands of our party comrades clung to this flag, and how they rallied around this flag! There are times when we still see them today, these oldest storm banners of the party, so faded and hleached- and nevertheless shining stars for us all. They accompanied us in the time of a fantastic struggle, the likes of which perhaps has never existed in any other country as it has in our Volk and as it has at such length.

Today they have been raised before us as symbols of the State we have earned and the German Volksgemeinschaft we have fought for and won.

Adolf Hitler - speech to the Wehrmacht

September 13, 1937

Soldiers!

For the fourth time now you have assembled here on this field on the occasion of this great day of the nation. Much has changed since then, not for the worse, but all for the better! Today, Germany is more splendid, greater and above all stronger than back then. You yourselves constitute visible proof of this strength! In a few weeks, some of you will leave the barracks and return to civilian life after two years of service for the German Volk and hence for our homeland. Not only have you given these two years to Germany; you, too, have been given them! For in these two years you have not only become soldiers, but above all men, men of whom the nation has reason to be proud and of whom it shall be proud in the future! The evolving German Army has made it possible not only to win external freedom for the German Reich but moreover to commence and perform the great works you see in Germany today. Most of all, it has enabled us to preserve peace for our Volk in a time of unrest and general insecurity. Peoples who were weak have never been blessed by peace, but only those who have been strong.

The fact that Germany is strong again today is something it owes first and foremost to its soldiers! Germany is fond of you, and above all, it is proud of you. For it sees in you the pillars of an immortal, glorious past. You, too, have just as much reason to be fond of Germany, for once more you can be proud of your Volk, your homeland and our German Reich!

Deutschland Sieg Heil!

Adolf Hitler – closing speech at the NSDAP congress in Nuremberg

September 13, 1937

How often we dwell on the question of what would have happened to Germany if Fate had granted us a swift and easy victory in 1914. What we were all striving for at that time with hearts aglow would presumably-seen from a higher vantage point-have been but a misfortune for our Volk. That victory would probably have had extremely grievous consequences. For in the inner sphere, it in particular would have prevented us from gaining the knowledge that today allows us to look back in horror at the path on which that Germany of the past was already making its way. The perceptive few who were preaching caution had lapsed into ridiculousness.

The State, grounded only in the external military means of power which bore it up, would sooner or later have become the annihilator of its own existence and its own means of existence, wholly ignorant of the meaning of the blood-related sources of the Volkskraft! Phenomena such as we have had an opportunity to observe in many other countries after their supposed victory would have descended upon us. Instead of being jerked back from the brink of destruction by a disruption of a catastrophic nature, we would all the more surely have gradually succumbed to the insidious poisons of inner decay of the Volk! In our case, the accuracy of a wise saying can be said to have been proven true: there are times when Providence demonstrates the deepest love it has for its creatures in an act of punishment!

One would have to be incredibly naive to dispute the fact that Bolshevism does indeed have that international character, i.e. a revolutionary character, in an age when Bolshevism hardly allows a day to pass without stressing its mission of world revolution as the be-all and end-all of its program, and hence the basis for its very existence! Only a bourgeois-democratic politician would refuse to believe what the programmatic183 foundation of this Red world movement actually is and what, in reality, is revealed in fact to be the most significant feature of this world movement. National Socialism was not the first to claim that Bolshevism was international; it was Bolshevism itself-the strictest rendering of Marxism-which solemnly proclaimed its international character.

Now, if one of our Western Europeans still insists on denying that Bolshevism is international, i.e. that it uses internationally uniform means and methods to pursue an internationally self-same goal, one is left to fear that, in the near future, we will be hearing from the lips of one such world-wise person correspondingly that National Socialism, contrary to its program, does not intend to stand up for Germany, and neither does Fascism for Italy! I would nonetheless find it regrettable if we were not to be believed. And it pains me just as much that no one even believes Bolshevism when it itself asserts its intentions and proclaims what it is.

Moreover, he who has no concept of the magnitude of this world menace and above all holds, for reasons of domestic and foreign policy, that he is not allowed to take this menace seriously, will all too easily intentionally overlook everything which might perchance be seen to constitute proof of the existence of this world menace.

[…]

As National Socialists, we are fully conscious of the origins and conditions of the fight which is today causing unrest in the world. Above all, we comprehend the extent and dimensions of this struggle. It is a gigantic event in terms of world history! The greatest menace with which the culture and civilization of the human race have been threatened since the collapse of the nations in Antiquity.

This crisis cannot be compared to any of the otherwise habitual wars or any of the revolutions that take place so often. No, this is an all-encompassing, general attack against modern societal order, against our spiritual and cultural world. This attack is being launched both against the essential character of the peoples per se, against their inner organization and against the race’s own leadership of these bodies politic, as well as against their spiritual life, their traditions, their economies, and all the other institutions which determine the overall essence, character, and life of these peoples or states. This attack is so extensive that it draws nearly all of the functions of life into the sphere of its actions. The duration of this battle is unforeseeable. One thing which is certain is that, since the birth of Christianity, the triumphant advance of Mohammedanism or the Reformation, nothing of this type has ever before taken place in this world.

[…]

What others profess not to see because they simply do not want to see it, is something we must unfortunately state as a bitter truth: the world is presently in the midst of an increasing upheaval, whose spiritual and factual preparation and whose leadership undoubtedly proceed from the rulers of Jewish Bolshevism in Moscow.

When I quite intentionally present this problem as Jewish, then you, my Party Comrades, know that this is not an unverified assumption, but a fact proven by irrefutable evidence.

All our European states originated in what were initially small racial cores but which are to be regarded as the truly powerful and hence determining factors in this constellation. This fact is most pointedly demonstrated in those states in which, as late as our modern times, the formed and guided masses and the forming and guiding powers were not brought into a balance-or perhaps they could not be, but probably this was not even intended. One of these states was Russia. A very thin-not Russian-volklich, i.e. not Slavic- layer of leadership pieced this state together from an assortment of small and even smaller communities to form a virtual colossus of a state, which was seemingly impregnable, but whose greatest weakness always lay in the discrepancy between the number and merit of its ruling class-non-Russian in terms of blood-and the number and merit of its national Russian elements.

Therefore it was particularly easy for a new racial core to successfully penetrate and attack; it intentionally manifested itself as a volklicb leader in disguise in contrast to the old, official leadership of state. Here the Jewish minority, which was in no way proportionate to the Russian Volk itself in terms of numbers, took the detour of appropriating the leadership of the national- Russian proletariat to succeed not only in ousting the former social and state leadership from its position, but in exterminating it without further ado.

Yet for this reason in particular, the Russia of today is basically no different from the Russia of two hundred or three hundred years ago. A brutal dictatorship by a foreign race which has seized utter control of genuine Russentum (Russian civilization) and is exercising that control commensurately.

To the extent that this process of forming a new state came to its conclusion in Russia, one might be able to simply take cognizance of the fact as a historic reality just as with any other similar situation, and leave it at that. Yet now that this Jewish racial core is seeking to bring about the same effects in other peoples and thereby views modern Russia as its already conquered base and bridgehead for further expansion, this problem has exceeded the dimensions of a Russian problem and become a world problem which will be decided one way or another, because it must be decided.

While one part of the “Jewish fellow citizens” demobilizes democracy via the influence of the press or even infects it with their poison by linking up with revolutionary manifestations in the form of peoples’ fronts, the other part of Jewry has already carried the torch of the Bolshevist revolution into the midst of the bourgeois-democratic world without even having to fear any substantial resistance. The final goal is then the ultimate Bolshevist revolution, i.e. not, for example, consisting of the establishment of a leadership of the proletariat by the proletariat, but of the subjugation of the proletariat under the leadership of its new and alien master.

Once the incited, insane masses-gone wild and supported by the asocial elements released from the prisons and penitentiaries-have exterminated the natural, indigenous intelligence of the peoples and brought them to the scaffolds to bleed to death, what will remain as the last bearer of-albeit miserable- intellectual knowledge is the Jew. For one thing should be made clear here: this race is neither spiritually nor morally superior, but in both cases inferior through and through. For unscrupulousness and irresponsibility can never be equated with a truly brilliant disposition. In terms of creativity, it is an untalented race through and through. For this reason, if it seeks to rule anywhere for any length of time, it is forced to undertake the extermination of the former intellectual upper classes of the other peoples. Otherwise it would naturally he defeated by their superior intelligence within a very short time.

That is because, in everything that has to do with true accomplishment, they have always been bunglers, and bunglers they will remain. In the past year, we have shown in a series of alarming statistical proofs that, in the present Soviet Russia of the proletariat, more than eighty percent of the leading positions are held by Jews. This means that not the proletariat is the dictator, but that very race whose Star of David has finally also become the symbol of the so-called proletarian state.185 And incidentally, we have all experienced the same thing in Germany, too, of course. Who were the leaders of our Bavarian soviet republic? Who were the leaders of Spartakus? Who were the real financial backers and leaders of our Communist Party? Now that is something even the most well-meaning Mister World-Democrat can neither do away with nor change: it was none other than the Jews! That is the case in Hungary, too, and in that part of Spain which the truly Spanish people has not yet recaptured.

As you know, in Spain this Jewish Bolshevism proceeded in a similar fashion starting with the detour of democracy up to open revolution. It is a crass misrepresentation of the facts to claim, as is being done, that the Bolshevist oppressors of the Volk there were vested with legal power, while the fighters of national Spain were illegal revolutionaries.

No! We regard General Franco’s men as the genuine and above all lasting Spain, and the usurpers of Valencia as the international revolutionary troop hired by Moscow, a troop which today is ravaging Spain and tomorrow may be ravaging a different state.

In England and France, one professes to be worried about the idea that Spain might even be occupied by Italy or Germany; we are just as appalled in the face of the possibility that it might be conquered by Soviet Russia! By no means would this conquest have to be effected in the form of an occupation by Soviet Russian troops; rather, it will become a fait accompli at that moment when a Bolshevized Spain has become a section, i.e. an integral component, of the Central Bolshevist Office in Moscow-a branch which receives both its political directives and its material subsidies from there. In any case, we principally regard every attempt to further expand Bolshevism in Europe as a shift in the European balance of power.

[…]

I am merely stating a fact! Therefore we have a serious interest in preventing this Bolshevist plague from spreading even further in Europe. In other respects, in the course of history we have naturally had a number of confrontations with, for instance, national France. However, somehow and somewhere, we still belong together in the great European family of peoples, most of all when we all look deep into our innermost selves.

It is then I believe that, in essence, we do not really want to miss any of the truly European civilized nations. We have each other to thank not only for a certain amount of aggravation and suffering, but also for an incredible crossfertilization.

We have given each other models, examples, and lessons-just as, on the other hand, we have also given each other a certain amount of pleasure and many things of beauty. If we are just, we have every reason to harbor mutual admiration instead of hate! In this community of the civilized European nations, international Jewish Bolshevism is a totally alien element which has not the slightest contribution to make to our economy or to our culture, but instead wreaks only havoc; which has not a single positive accomplishment to show for itself in an international perspective on European and world life, but merely propagandistic tables of forged figures and rabble-rousing posters.

Furthermore, to us Germans the thought that this Europe could be guided or ruled by Moscow of all places is simply unbearable. The fact that, in other countries, this type of presumptuousness is tolerated as a political demand, is something which we can only register with astonishment and regret. For us, at any rate, the mere idea of taking orders from a world so very far beneath us is just as ridiculous as it is outrageous. Furthermore, the stated goal of an uncivilized, Jewish-Bolshevist, international league of criminals to rule over Germany-an established member-country of European civilization-from a base in Moscow is yet another insult. Moscow can remain Moscow, and Soviet Russia can remain Soviet Russia, for all we care. Our German capital is Berlin in any case, and what is more: Germany, thank God, will always remain Germany! Thus let no one allow himself to be deceived on one point: National Socialism has banished the Bolshevist world menace from within Germany. It has ensured that the scum of Jewish litterateurs alien to the Volk does not dictate over the proletariat, i.e. the German worker, but that instead the German Volk finally comprehends its own destiny and finds its own leadership. It has moreover made our Volk and the Reich immune against Bolshevist contamination.

Apart from this, it will not shrink from countering any repetition of former attacks from within on the sovereignty of our Volk with the most determined means available. We National Socialists grew up fighting this foe. It took us more than fifteen years to destroy it in Germany spiritually, weltanschaulicb, and in point of fact. Neither countless murders and other acts of violence it performed, nor the support it received from the Marxist rulers of the Reich at the time were able to halt our triumphal march. Today we are keeping a close and careful watch to ensure that such a menace will never again descend upon Germany. Yet should anyone have the audacity to bring this menace to or into Germany from without, may he bear in mind that the National Socialist state has also produced the weapon with which it can crush such an attempt in the speed of lightning.

The fact that we were good soldiers is something the world has certainly not yet forgotten. The fact that today we are even better soldiers is something they can take our word for. But the fact that the National Socialist state will stand up and fight for its existence with a different zeal than the bourgeois Reich of old is something no one should doubt! The age when the German Volk suffered from parliamentary infirmity is over, to return no more. We all have one great desire, that Fate might give us the necessary peace and all the time to bring the inner regeneration and the work of our great inner reconstruction to a close, and that means bringing it to a close in a Europe that has once more come to its senses. It is not our intention to thrust our ideas or ideals on anyone else; but let no one attempt to force his opinion upon us. Above all, let the criminal Muscovite sovietism finally cease continuing to expand its barbarism and, if possible, make us unhappy as well.

The age is over when one could unreasonably demand everything from a defenseless Volk.

The bombs that fell on our armored ship not only hit the vessel-called Deutschland-but also met with the response which, from now on, will be dealt out immediately in answer to any such attempt.

Today it is so easy to admire the overall outcome, but so difficult to sense how much work, sacrifice, industry, and initiative was required to reap these results. What are a mere 100,000 men! They stood here group after group, standard after standard, company after company, battalion after battalion, and regiment after regiment. Behind them stand just as many millions of comrades and soldiers, and all of this has been called to life and come to be in the space of a few years, in part from out of nothing, from out of turmoil, and from out of decay.

This tremendous demonstration alone is the result of immeasurable labors.

Now do you understand, why, my Party Comrades, in the face of such brilliant products of human ability and industry, we have given this celebration the name “Party Congress of Labor”?

[…]

In a few short hours, the trains with their hundreds of thousands of participants will roll back out into the German Gaus. The peasants and their sons will return to their villages; workers, employees and civil servants will return to their plants and their offices; the soldiers will report to the barracks; youth will go to school-but all of them will think back with throbbing hearts on this further great demonstration of the National Socialist Party and the National Socialist State.

And they will take with them the proud feeling of having again been witnesses of the internal and external uprising of their Volk. Yet may they be conscious that therein a hope of millenniums and the prayer of many generations, the confidence and faith of innumerable great men of our Volk have finally achieved their historic realization. The German nation has been given its Germanic Empire after all.