Berlin
March 10, 1940
It is at a solemn hour that the German Volk celebrates
its Heroes’ Memorial Day today. With more justification than ever before in the
past twenty years can one step before the spiritual eye of those who once, as
courageous sons of our Volk, sacrificed themselves for the future of the
nation, the greatness and inviolability of the Reich. What once resounded as
empty phrases of an unworthy posterity has today become an expression of proud
gratitude by a worthy present. After an unequaled victorious campaign in the
East, the soldiers of our Field Army’s divisions, the crews of our ships, the
fighters of our Luftwaffe, are henceforth prepared to take up the defense of
the Reich in the West against the enemies of old with the same sense of duty,
the same obedience, as true to their orders as soldiers of the Great War.
Behind them stands the homeland, cleansed of elements of disintegration and
fragmentation. For the first time in our history the entire German Volk steps
before the countenance of the Lord Almighty to implore Him to bestow His
blessings on our struggle for existence.
The
struggle of our soldiers is a hard one. Insofar as we comprehend nature and
have gained insight into its ways, we know that just as life, to sustain
itself, demands sacrifice time and time again to bear new life and deals out
pain to heal wounds, the soldier is the foremost representative of life itself.
At all times, he represents the cream of a people. He places his life at risk,
and gives his life if need be, to render possible and to secure the life of his
contemporaries and hence of posterity. In the hour in which Providence shall come to weigh the intrinsic
worth of a people, he steps up before the Lord Almighty to face trial by
ordeal.
And
through him, the nations shall be weighed. They will be judged either too light
and hence they will be erased from the book of life and the book of history, or
they will be deemed worthy enough to create new life. Only he who himself had
the opportunity to fight under the most adverse of conditions, who himself saw
death’s shadow pass him by time and time again in years of struggle-only he can
measure the greatness of the risk taken by the soldier, only he can appreciate
the graveness of the sacrifice. The instinct of survival has engraved upon
mankind universal principles for the evaluation of those who were willing to
give up themselves so that the life of the community should be sustained.
Mankind
places the idealist in opposition to the repulsive egoist. And when it despises
the one as a coward, then its gratitude for the other is all the greater in the
subconscious realization of the sacrifice brought. It glorifies him as a hero
and raises him above the mass of other, indifferent phenomena. No one has a
greater right to celebrate its heroes than the German Volk! Given the most
precarious geopolitical location of its lands, it was possible to assure the
existence of our Volk time and time again only thanks to the heroic mustering
of its men. And if we have enjoyed a historic existence within these past 2,000
years, then we did so only because men were willing, time and time again within
these 2,000 years, to place their lives at risk for the community-and, if
necessary, to sacrifice their lives. Every one of these heroes gave his life
not in the mistaken belief that he would deliver future generations of this
duty. All the achievements of the past would be for naught should only one
future generation lack the strength to make similar sacrifices. For the life of
a nation resembles a chain without end until the day one generation decides to
sever this link and thereby brings to an end the course of evolution. No one
has the right to celebrate heroes who is not himself capable of such conviction.
No
one has the right to speak of tradition who is not himself willing to enrich
this tradition through his own life and works. This principle applies to all
peoples just as to all statesmen. And it applies to soldiers no less than to
generals.
From
within the sacred halls of this building, relics of an incomparably glorious
past speak to us. They were fought for and sealed with the blood of countless
German heroes. We have no right to enter into this hall unless we bear in our
hearts the solemn resolve to be no less valiant than the bearers of these
weapons, of these emblems, and of these uniforms before us. The risking of his
life was no less difficult for a musketeer in the Seven Years’ War than for one
who, 1,000 years before, as a German knight, fought off the hordes of the East
to protect the German lands. And it was no less difficult than that demanded of
us today. The power of decision, the cool daring courage of the great statesmen
and warlords of the past were not less than those expected of us today. Then,
too, the gods loved these great statesmen and warlords only because they
attempted and demanded the apparently impossible. Hardly one of the great
battles in the history of our Volk and, above all, in the history of Prussia,
already betrayed its likely outcome at the beginning. Based on numerical and
material superiority, many an action seemed destined to success, only to end in
defeat due to the lack of spirits of the fighters. Conversely, many others
which seemed doomed from the very start, based on all human intuition, entered
into history as glorious victories.
The
secret of the miracle of life will never reveal itself to the pale
theoretician.
He
will always see amiss the mighty formative force of existence that he himself
most sorely lacks, namely: willpower, boldness in making and carrying out
decisions.
And
thus we commence this day of commemoration of our heroes with a feeling of new,
inner dignity. Not with heads bowed, but rather with heads carried high and
with pride we greet them, conscious that we are their equals, capable of the
same achievements, and-should this be necessary- willing to take upon ourselves
the same sacrifices.
What
they once fought for, we now fight for ourselves. What was noble enough a goal
for them to fight and, if necessary, to die for-every hour will find us braced
for a like deed. The faith which inspired them has grown within us. Whatever
life or destiny might deal to the individual among us, the existence and future
of the community takes precedence over it. There is something which carries us
further yet than in the ages past, namely, the realization of what it was that
many earlier ages unconsciously were forced to fight for: the German Volk! To
be allowed to live within it is our greatest earthly good. To belong to it is
our pride. To defend it in unconditional loyalty even in the worst of times, is
our fanatic defiance. The greater the dangers surrounding us, the more precious
this treasure of our community seems to us. All the more important is,
therefore, the realization that in its development and promotion lies the
strongest raison d’etre for German survival. Now that the outside world
of plutocratic democracies has declared the wildest of campaigns against
National Socialist Germany and has pronounced its destruction as the loftiest
of war aims, then this simply reaffirms to us what we already know: the thought
of a National Socialist Volksgemeinschaft alone has made the German Volk
especially dangerous in the eyes of our enemies, because it has made it
invincible. Above all differences of class or rank, profession or confession,
and above all the usual confusion of everyday life, looms the social union of
the German man, irrespective of caste or origin, based on blood, forged in
communal life throughout thousands of years, bound together by destiny for
better or for worse.
The
world desires our dissolution. Our answer to this can be but a renewed oath
sworn to the greatest community of all time. Their aim is the disintegration of
Germany.
Our avowal of faith is German unity. They hope for the success of capitalist
interests, and we will the victory of the National Socialist Volksgemeinschaft!
In nearly fifteen years of laborious work, National Socialism has delivered the
German Volk from its state of tragic despair; in a unique historic work, it has
uplifted the conscience of the nation and has driven away the wretched specter
of a defeatist capitulation; it has built the general political foundations for
a rearmament. In spite of all this, I stood prepared throughout the years to
extend my hand to the world for a true understanding. They rejected the idea of
a reconciliation of all peoples based on equal rights.
As
a National Socialist and a soldier, I have always upheld the principle of securing
the rights of my Volk either in peace, or-if necessary-in a fight.
As
the Fuhrer of the nation, the Chancellor of the Reich, and the Supreme
Commander of the German Wehrmacht, I live today for the fulfillment of one
great task: to think of the victory, day and night; to struggle for it; to work
for it; and to fight for it. If necessary, I shall not spare my own life either
in the realization that this time around the future of Germany shall
be decided for centuries to come.
As
a former soldier of the Great War, nevertheless, I have devoutly pleaded with Providence to accord us
the grace of closing honorably this last chapter in the great struggle of
nations (Volkerringen) for the German Volk. Then the spirits of our
fallen comrades shall rise from their graves to thank all those whose courage
and loyalty have now once more atoned for the sins committed in an hour of
weakness against them and against our Volk. Let our avowal of faith on this day
be a solemn oath: the war forced upon the Greater German Reich by the
capitalist rulers of France
and England
must be transformed into the most glorious victory in German history!
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