The Art of the Third Reich – Sculpture - Part 1

The Art of the Third Reich - in this video are presented some masterpieces of the German sculpture - created during the period 1937 - 1938. All presented artworks in this video were exhibited in the House of the German Art in Munich. The musical background is the prelude to Act I of the opera Lohengrin by the great German composer Richard Wagner.

Postcards Collection – Reich Party Congress in Nuremberg - Part I

 

The Reich in Photos - Pictures from the Early Party Rallies of the NSDAP

 1927: The 3rd Party Congress („Day of Awakening“) was held in Nuremberg, August 19–21, 1927.

 

 

1929: The 4th Party Congress, known as the „Day of Composure“, was held in Nuremberg, August 1–4, 1929. The NS hero and martyr Horst Wessel is leading his SA troops.

 

1933: The 5th Party Congress was held in Nuremberg, August 30 – September 3, 1933. It was called the „Rally of Victory“ (Reichsparteitag des Sieges).

 

Die Deutsche Wochenschau – Newsreel No. 741 – 16 November 1944

1. Germany.

 

Germany honours the heroes of the National Socialist movement who fallen on November 9, 1923.

 

– Munich Gauleiter Paul Giesler and Field Marshal Keitel at the monument at the ceremony.

 

– Wreath from the Führer.

 

On this day in all areas of German Reich battalions of people’s militia take oath.

 

– In Konigsberg East Prussia Gauleiter Koch refers to a people’s militia forces, have distinguished themselves in battle.

 

– Those militias, the elderly, the young men.

 

– Oath at the flag.

 

– Volkssturm warriors, armed with Panzerfaust.

 

2. Germany.

 

Danzig.

 

Newspaper headline about the organization Volkssturm Knight Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, the captain of the submarine Werner Hartmann in Torne.

 

– Gauleiter of Danzig Albert Forster inspects Volkssturm unit.

 

– Reichsleiter, SA Obergruppenführer Wilhelm Schepmann addresses a speech to the militias.

 

– Ceremonial march militia fighters through the old Free and Hanseatic City of Danzig.

 

3. Germany.

 

Berlin.

 

– Hundreds of thousands of soldiers of the national militia gathered in Berlin on the square Wilhelmplatz at the Ministry of Propaganda of the building to take the oath.

 

– Hanging a banner: „Volkssturm fighting for his life and freedom of Greater Germany.“

 

– Reichsminister Dr Joseph Goebbels and the generals on the podium.

 

– The officer speaks from the balcony of the oath to the Führer, militias repeat after him.

 

– The ceremonial passing of Volkssturm soldiers.

 

– Goebbels delivers a speech to fight not only at the front, but also at home.

 

– Marching soldiers with Panzerfausts, squad in civilian clothes with rifles in their hands.

 

– The parade watching foreign attaché, Japanese Ambassador Oshima.

 

– The passage at the Brandenburg Gate.

 

4. Western Front.

 

Battles with the Anglo-American forces in the Vosges.

 

– On the line-Epinal-Nancy-Delfor.

 

– An incredible onslaught of a huge number of enemy troops and armoured vehicles. Anglo-Americans who were trying to budge the German front were stopped.

 

– German soldiers in anticipation of battle, a soldier reading a newspaper.

 

– In the trenches of mud and water, infantry shovels flinging muck.

 

– An observer looking through binoculars on the terrain.

 

– Soldiers from the machine-gun nest shell enemy group which broke from the forest area.

 

– Firing mortars, anti-tank gun.

 

– The soldier looks at the sky, where there are Allied planes.

 

– German armoured flak during an air raid.

 

– Laying explosive mines on the bridge under enemy fire.

 

– Lt.Gen. Edgar Feuchtinger awards Senior Corporal Henry Maurer, distinguished himself in the fight with tanks in the short run, the Knight’s Cross.

War without Mercy

  Source: SS Leitheft, Year 9, Issue 12, December 1943

 

We have entered a stage of the struggle that is without mercy. The men who clash there are two types of human beings, are mortal enemies. War in a higher sense is being fought here, which is indeed the father of all things. Its outcome will decide the face of the future world. In the fury of this struggle the world must be transformed, the features of Satanic hatred and barbarism must be erased, for they have no place in the new world. The sword alone decides in this struggle, in which all bridges are destroyed that could lead together.

 

How many times in this campaign has the soldier of the eastern front stood eye to eye with this opponent. Even in the rage and fury of modem battle, that is always the decisive, the most difficult moment, when man faces man with weapon in hand, seething rage in the eyes, will to destruction in the heart, and one must fall, in order to open the other’s way to new battle. It will always remain the most terrible moment, when man collides with man and the final decision falls. Close combat is without pity! I or you, there is no longer anything else in the world. Who has never felt the enemy’s hot breath in his face and seen the murderous lust in his eyes, does not know war’s deepest secret which reveals itself in that moment. Man is the master of things; in his will, in his hands lie the strength of the world. Only who has felt it, who has passed through this merciless war and been purified, even stronger, knowing his own strength and the limitlessness of human will, passed through a hundred deaths and again stepped through the gate of life.

 

For a long time, we no longer fight for victories and successes as we know them from other battles. The whole Occident fights in us, in each individual, its final, decisive battle. Two worlds stand in conflict, one of which must break and will be broken, since world history would otherwise lose its meaning. With full consciousness each individual feels the might of this struggle and that of a battle in which everything fights with us that a thousand-year history has placed in us. And the good spirits of our comrades in Russian earth live day for day within us and admonish us so that we do not become weary. Bolshevism itself has taught us the lesson that there can be no half-measures in this conflict. We have become steel hard, now only will and decision. We know that fate is in our hands and we will master it.

 

Never again will men be allowed to experience and see what all of us have taken upon ourselves in this difficult test and bear until the final decision. An army of soldiers has grown in this war in which each is a fighter with clear consciousness, with deep faith and highest ability to sacrifice. Each individual has a hundred times passed through all tests and passed them.

 

The genuine soldier of a revolution has grown out of faith and knowledge. He fights for everything that was holy to previous generations, for the safety of the homeland in the fate- struggle of the nation, for the life of his children in a world whose first signs rise on the horizon of the Occident. Nothing is death, are heat, cold and all deprivations of a difficult struggle compared to the mighty river of strength and confidence that daily flow into him from the soldier’s devote knowledge and the hard realization of the higher necessity of this decisive battle. Ancestors and fathers fight in him, who is the knowing heir of a thousand-year history. Its virtues are his. From the creative might of his time he adds new forces; for him the destructive powers of war are only necessary means in the conflict of the world, in order to one day reveal their deepest meaning in the formative, constructive form of a future Reich. In this faith, with these strengths the German soldier and his allies will win the decision, which he himself has made when he recognized the deep meaning of his struggle. The day of victory will be his highest fulfillment, because he knows that it is the beginning of a new time.

 

New battles will flare up. Hundreds of kilometers of Russian roads will pain our feet. We have already seen and experienced everything. We will no longer charge with the roaring elan of youths, which was still in us when we assembled for the great judgment. We have become adepts - calm, modest and serious.

 

All the fires of hell have forged us, the searing sun and the icy breath of the snow steppe have hardened us. The images of the existence in the insanity of the most devilish idea mankind ever gave birth to live on within us as well as the knowledge of the gravity and pitilessness in which this struggle must end like it started.

 

The sun wheel rolls over the Soviet Union - in flames and blood a world will be born that should bring our sons space and peace for a happy future. We will be its molders. We have passed through hell and been forged in it for alert consciousness and highest hardness - our faith is firmer and stronger than ever. Death and the devil already lie behind us - new deaths and hells should not frighten us. Victory belongs to us!

 

Horst Slesina

 

The genuine man ’s celebration is the deed! - Goethe

Knowledge, Faith, Desire

Source: Basic Ideas of National-Socialist Cultural Policy – by prof. Wolfgang Schulz

Knowledge

One can differentiate: the knowledge about race and folk, and the knowledge that the race, the folk, has acquired over the course of its existence. The first group of knowledge encompasses race science, genetics, folk science in the broadest sense of the word; the second group of an in itself very independent section of it, in which the structure of all available sciences is contained.

This knowledge provides certainty within the boundaries drawn for it. It provides confidence, it obligates. It also solidifies the faith in the German future and in the desire aimed at it. It alone secures for this desire the action promising its success. One often hears said: knowledge divides, faith unites. But that is a false conception and comparison, which aims at a deficient, splintering knowledge alienated from its foundation, while we mean the total, right one. All genuine knowledge has its foundation in faith and a unifying force, which no other one will achieve so soon.

Good will and a heart in the right place must be present, but they alone do not suffice. Even a strong hand can only take a good hold, where clear gaze has first seen what is necessary. Knowledge is the eye, the will, as it were, the hand.

Without insight, even the best will is blind, without will, even the most correct knowledge paralyzed. Just that if the blind man carries the paralyzed man, the paralyzed man shows the blind man the way, both reach the goal.

But like every comparison, this one as well is imperfect; for the will acquires eyes for itself and knowledge gives it legs.

It is correct that the race makes it, that the blood does it; but it does not do it through an imagined, effortless legacy memory, rather through its moral and spiritual force. Even all inspiration rests on it and on the sense for reality and the supra-reality [das Uberwirkliche] that governs in it and within us, and only becomes due, if much serious inner work has prepared it.

It is also correct that knowledge gives power. All technology proves it. But it is just as correct that our knowledge and are power are very limited. There is no cause for arrogance.

We agree with Newton, who recognized that he had merely found a few shells and mussels on the edge of the ocean of the unfathomable, and with Kant, who stated that the observations and calculations of the astronomers, aside from many admirable things that they taught us, have nonetheless shown us as the most important thing that the abyss of our ignorance is so great that human reason cannot imagine it at all without this realization.

Even the laws of genetics, even race science, even the world- historical experiences with the previous cultures, even the whole structure of the sciences overall means very little, if one considers how incomparably more we do not know.

Nonetheless, this our knowledge exists, and much heart’s blood sticks on it. This knowledge is too little, but, by human measure, it suffices for the purposes that now matter. What may still be lacking, must be added by our faith purified by it. We can bum neither this knowledge nor this faith out of our minds and hearts. We can never let ourselves be talked out of the duty to act according to both and our best conscience.

Science

The might of the racial and folkish idea is so great that even science cannot escape it. The more clearly we see that science itself is best race result, the more determined we are to drive science farther in the direction of the previous race thinking and to employ it in a time of the folk’s greatest distress for the securing of its existence and of its future.

Science and research have their “biological function” in the life of the folk. With their knowledge, they broaden its perceived world, arrange it, clarify it and make it possible to take it in at a glance; with the technological practical applications of this knowledge, they enlarge its world of effect, permeate it and make it governable. In order to remember how science broadens the perceived world, one should think about the world of the large, which the telescope, and the world of the small, which the microscope, opened up; and in order to understand how science broadened the world of effect, one should think about mining, ship travel, the airplane and how depths, expanses and heights previously inconceivable to us thereby become accessible and useful in their results. Science, the pure and the applied, as well as history, as well as population policy, thereby performs a service to the folk. In order to perform this, it must be free. That means, it must attentively and conscientiously follow its most own law: truth.

Science that one commands what it must prove, or which one forbids what it has recognized, or one prescribes where it has no business and where it must search, so that it does not become uncomfortable, is not science. For its fundamental service lies precisely where, through thrust into new territory and through new insights, it corrects outdated views and champions them against the prosecution by those who care more for their dogmas than for the truth. The opposition hence exists not between science and faith, rather between science and fossilized piety, such as the bitter struggle of the churches against science, and over it with the goal of bringing it into dependency, has proven again and again.

As important as it is that science preserves its freedom, nonetheless, only a quite general rule lies therein. To fill the framework that is proved by it, that is the actual task.

The value of the objects of research and the knowledge it can yield, however, is not to be determined by materialistically according to use. The leading researcher is not guided by the use, neither his own nor any other, which could perhaps result from the desired scientific knowledge, rather solely the passionate will to find out how “it” is. The selection of this “it”, his object, given pronounced talent, is as little voluntary for him as for the artist. Even the researcher is closely bound to his object, and the significant one to the significant object.

Whether the research leads farther, whether it promises new insights and prospects, or at least completions and clarifications of already existing results, that is what matters. There are countless areas in which one also researches, countless truths which one can also ascertain, and which nonetheless in no way are worthwhile and are neither suited to really enrich our knowledge nor increase our productivity. One just must not judge such questions by appearance, rather with consideration and prudence. Often, an important basic insight has arisen from the examination of apparently secondary things. Often, very theoretical observation has yielded fateful practical applications. Nonetheless, there is much petty, visually deviant, fruitless activity. It is to be turned off.

Even individual questions are to be taken up from the whole of science and solved in the direction of this whole. If the energy of research is not dissipated on the secondary and if it is employed for important objects which promise the fruits of new knowledge, then the practical applications cannot remain lacking; but to base upon them in advance would be the death of any genuine research and also silly. For if the gaze is directed at the use, it does not cling firmly enough to the object which initially matters solely. Also, before one has the knowledge, one can hardly correctly estimate the value that it may bring, and this is the most difficult with knowledge owed to fundamentally new, creative inspiration.

All truth is bound to object, the finding of truth is race-bound, science has been created almost exclusively by the Nordic race.

The Jewish non-spirit [Ungeist], the object-bound, which has diverted from reality-near research into the formal and merely conceptual-constructive, is to be purged.

A new spirit must grip the scholars and researchers from the new thinking and the new orientation of will.

Important research tasks were neglected, because the folk alien cur-rent of the time, hostile to the German nationality, opposed them. In the social sciences, German prehistory is an example, which brings us knowledge about our ancestors and the oldest relationships of the Nordic race, another is the study of Iran, which opens new looks at Jewry, Christianity and knighthood from the side of Aryan essence and must thereby clarify our folkish idea.

The action of science in the service of the folk can take another step in technology. It lies in the nature of technology that either it must set itself tasks or that they are set for it.

The distress of the folk sets such tasks. That means at the same time that one must aim at the important and reject the superficial. An ongoing effect even on research will emanate from that.

Finally, science must more than previously find the path to the folk. If it manages to present its knowledge in understandable language free of foreign words, that will already be a big help. But it must create it, already for itself as well, from inner tie to folkish thought as simple as possible.

It must not please itself with a handed down reputation, rather it must always achieve its reputation anew through the inner value of what it has to offer.

Faith

The National Socialist worldview rests with its basic idea of folk and race not merely on knowledge, rather a strong faith also dwells within it. Both and the newness of this closed spiritual and moral action have as a result that many raise objection after objection precisely out of considerations of their faith, which draws from other preconditions not yet balanced against our own.

One accuses race science of being a crude materialism, drawing only from the appearance of the body and not respecting the energies of the spirit and of the soul.

No misunderstanding can be greater. For body and soul are a union for race science, behind which stands a nature that sets the basis for both. The psychological and mental characteristics are part of race just like the bodily one.

Materialism teaches that the soul, as it were, is a perspiration of the body, spiritualism that the body, as it were, an incrustation of the soul; the doctrine of the body-soul [Leibseele], toward which race science leans, is visibly equally distant from both doctrines.

One further accuses race science of breeding racial arrogance and judging folk comrades according to their racial traits and not according to their moral personality.

That, too, is a misunderstanding. Not the racial traits, rather the performance decides. The racial traits enter into the overall assessment of the folk comrade only as a partial consideration, and only with the weight due them in view of the folk whole.

If we posit a new ideal of beauty and value according to inner bearing, then this, for example, in mate selection, but also in all other selection, without which it never has been and never will be possible, has fundamentally no other result than any other ideal as well: namely that those who correspond less to the ideal must be pushed into the background. Only it is without a doubt more moral and more just, if in mate selection the genes are more important than the moneybag; and it has completely different consequences for the folk whole, if the beauty of the leading race is important instead of that of another one. Seen from the folk whole, the new ideal lies in the direction of its preservation and increase.

Furthermore, one accuses racial hygiene of infringing on a person’s right to one’s own body through limiting deformed offspring.

It is strange that this sanctity of the body is championed precisely by people who occasionally value the body very little.

Up until a few decades ago, one had no reservations against castrating the genetically healthy choirboys of the choir in the Sistine Chapel in order to let their voices, artificially kept high, proclaim God’s honor; but now it is supposed to be despicable, if folks threatened by the generic feeblemindedness, criminality and mental diseases, exclude from procreation such misshapen people, insofar as their reason still suffices, for their own comfort and, besides that, for the blessing of the coming generations.

Finally, one says the idea of taking care of the whole folk according to new knowledge would mean that we presume to intervene into creation, to play creator ourselves - a titanic endeavor, which must be followed by divine punishment.

Yes, many already begin to evoke our punishment.

Again, nothing but misunderstanding! If it is rightly a service, if the individual disciplines himself, rations his hereditary factors and balances them against each other as well as possible, and where they are weak, improves them through exercise and schooling, and if it is rightly a reproach, if he neglects that, although he could, then the same must be true for a folk as a whole.

Nobody may oppose the folk and deny it what one demands from the individual human being; nobody may decry the folk as godless, if it does what one decries as godless with the individual human being, if he neglects it.

The knowledge that we apply stems from the blood of our race and the legacy of our folk, and if the term “God given” is supposed to have a meaning at all, then it certainly has it here. It would be sinful, if we were to please ourselves bragging in this gift or to disrespect it as worthless and wanted to refrain from using it over the one or the other. It is a pledge of higher mercy bestowed upon us, and our duty follows from this.

Whoever closes himself to it, or even resists it being fulfilled, has either not yet understood what is at stake and not yet grasped that it is now about thinking, as one previously thought in individual fates, beyond these individual fates, to think in fates of folks and act accordingly - or in his blindness he does not want at all that our fate, upon which his own also depends, after all, turns.

Desire

So the final decision lies in the desire.

Opposing will must be won. We bring so much that admonishes to reflection that we trust the winning force of this property. But we cannot wait all too long for it to succeed against unreasonable obstacles. For the commandment of the hour, which must not pass unused, is at our heels, and decisive, life-essential things tolerate no postponement.

Nonetheless, what we bring is not compulsion, rather freedom.

The question how moral actions are possible occupies us much less than the task to create space for them on the basis of measures that a new morality puts into our hands, in which the old one fulfills itself on a higher plain.

The question as well whether human will is free moves us much less than the task of presenting to German man his inner law and his world historical responsibility as guideline for his will.

The sign under which we fight symbolizes a controlled force that nonetheless expands ever farther from the inside. It is an ancient sacred sign of salvation that has accompanied the fateful path of the folks of the Nordic race. 

Salvation means “whole”, heal means “make whole”. But more is meant by it that the repair of the broken, of the damaged, and also more than the healing of a wound by the mysterious, whole energy of the living. For this force can do much more. It can produce from the seed a very fresh, rejuvenated and, if we start correctly, ennobled life, for which new energies and possibilities grow. This ever-expanding force within us and its controlled employment, that is our path, the path of our blood, of our spirit and of our confirmation [Bewährung] through the healing deed.

Ludwig van Beethoven - Overture “Coriolan”, Op.62

Conductor: Herbert von Karajan

Performance: Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Die Deutsche Wochenschau – Newsreel No. 739 – 02 November 1944

1. Germany.

Gathering wild rowan and manufacture of juice out of it for the army.

– Berries under pressure.

– Bottles with juice.

– Compare with lemons on the content of vitamin C.

2. Germany.

Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz visiting divers.

– He gets out of the car, greeted the officers.

– Dönitz welcomes Vice-Admiral Hellmuth Heye.

– Dönitz bypasses the new submarine, stands in front of them a speech.

– Demonstrative performance divers on boats.

– Demonstration pilot-controlled torpedoes.

– The pilot-controlled torpedoes diversionary assault team Obergefreiter Walter Gerhold jumps from the boat into the water, directs the torpedo to the target.

– Gerhold out of the water, removes his helmet.

3. Western Front.

Map of military operations.

– Neighbourhood Strasbourg-Nancy-Belfort.

– Towns and villages in the West are on the front line.

– Panoramic display of cities.

– City Belfort, carved stone monument of „Lion of Belfort“.

– The city of Metz, an ancient cathedral, the old fortress, the gates of which the marching soldiers.

– Moselle valley with its forests, ancient city of Trier.

– Residents of these cities, although they are far from the front, but feel threatened by his approach.

Shoot the German anti-aircraft guns that protect the city from the attacks of Anglo-American Aviation.

– Downed British and American planes.

German soldiers are on the streets of the city, the smiling faces of the young Marines.

– View of the city Geilenkirchen.

– Soldiers in the ruins of the houses, in the broken window exposed to the weapon.

– Students Officers’ School in Jülich on the defence of the city.

– NCO without arms suitable for a group of military documents, to discuss the situation.

– German soldiers on the streets.

– Young soldier with the Iron Cross.

RAD Soldiers attack US tanks shelled their bazookas.

– Damaged US „Sherman“.

– American POWs.

4. Hungary, Romania.

– Intense defence characterizes the situation in front of the south-east at this time.

– The area of ​​Debrecen and Großwardein (Oradea).

– German infantrymen, to stop the advance of the Soviet troops.

– Soldiers go on to remove the corn field.

– Moves German military equipment.

– There is a battle with Soviet tanks broken through.

– The infantry followed the tanks.

– The Bolsheviks are retreating.

– Soviet soldiers surrendering.

– Typical face, a young soldier in Budyonovka.

– Padded Soviet tanks.

– The Germans in the liberated German village Siebenbürgen (Transylvania).

– Residents joyfully greet German soldiers treated them with wine and bread.

5. East Prussia (Poland).

German ships in the Baltic Sea shelling Russian positions in Memel (Klaipeda).

– Shooting ship guns on the coast.

Fragments of the fighting on the territory of East Prussia between Goldap and Gumbinnen.

– They’re coming German tanks, infantry moving.

– The village of Nemersdorf affected by Bolshevik terror as well as another Prussian city.

– Burned house.

– The bodies of women, children, old men, killed by the Bolsheviks.

– The crosses on the graves of civilians, families, 9, 13, 24 people.

German infantrymen watch for Soviet bombers in the sky.

– It launches an attack on the Soviet tanks and infantry positions.

– Tanks at Ebenrode position.

– Padded Soviet tanks. 

– The Bolsheviks have lost more than 400 tanks for a few days.

Adolf Hitler - Speech on September 4, 1940 in Berlin - Opening of the War Winter Aid Work 1940/41

In these days ends the first war year. The second began, and with it the new War Winter Aid Work. The successes of this first year, my folk comrades, are unprecedented. They are so unprecedented that not just the opponents could not imagine this course of history, rather even many in the German folk could barely conceive the magnificence of the processes and the speed of the events.

We cannot at all draw upon the first war winter of the World War as comparison; for in this first war year then, despite the greatest valor, despite unheard of great sacrifices, only partial results were achieved, not a definitively carried out solution.

This time, we only need to gaze upon the mighty triangle that is today protected by the German Wehrmacht: In the east the Bug, in the north the North Cape, Kirkenes and Narvik, and in the south Spain’s border! A number of opponents has been eliminated. Only to a favorable geographic situation and an extraordinary speed in retreating does England owe that it has not shared the same fate! For it is not so, like some British politicians portray it, that, say, the British army chomps on the bit like a wild horse with burning eagerness to finally be released against the German enemy. They were so close to us, after all, and could have easily satisfied their desire for combat back then. They themselves distanced themselves from us. And it remained up to them to portray this repeated distancing as great victories.

Decisive successes have been achieved in this year. And the large region that is dominated by German troops at this time has expanded through our ally Italy, which, for its part, has likewise gone on the offensive in East Africa and then, too, strengthened its position and beaten back England.

Naturally, this is also confronted by English “victories”. They are successes, which human, healthy common sense just does not understand and does not recognize. They also have no special context in themselves. We experience again and again that, since this year, English propaganda falls from the peak into the abyss, in order, however, just a few days later to soar at an even greater altitude. I have read this once; it went, for example, “Now the dice of war fall. If the Germans do not manage to reach Paris - and they will not manage that -, then they have lost the war. But if they should reach Paris, then England will win the war.”

Since September 3rd and 4th, England has won numerous “victories” of that sort. The most glorious victory - in our eyes, it would be the most ignominious failure - was the flight from Dunkirk. But what did one not do in an emergency! We merely need to read the English war reportage in order in to know what this success is like. It states there, for example: “One tells us that...” or: “One learns from well-informed circles...” or: “One hears from well-informed offices...” or: “One can hear from experts...” or: “One believes one may seriously believe that...” Yes, once it was stated: “One believes to have reason to may able to believe that...etc.” And then, as said, naturally any defeat can become a success.

We were just entering Poland and the English propaganda declared that they knew from well-informed circles that the Germans had already suffered a number of most severe defeats and that the Poles were on the triumphant advance against Berlin. A few days later, the well-informed circles still assured that now the fate in the east had definitively shifted. Then equally well-informed experts came who noted that even if Germany should have won a success - which was not the case at all -, that this success was in reality a failure - seen from a higher strategic standpoint, naturally.

And as we already stood in Warsaw, then one again knew that one had the right to be able to presume that now, in the west, the attack by the allies had won its first great, and indeed penetrating, successes.

And that went on so until there was finally no longer any Po-land. And then one said: “A great nightmare has been taken from us, for this Poland in the east was always our weakest spot. Since Poland is finished, the Allies can finally concentrate on the theater where they are superior to the Germans, and the German will learn that in the shortest time.”

Then there was quiet for a long time. This quiet was naturally also a tremendously ongoing success for the British armed forces and an equally constant failure for Germany. How did England work in these months, and what did we sleep through! What did the English politicians see and correctly recognize in this period and what did we in contrast miss! Until Norway came. When the operation began, English war reportage was pleased by the huge “mistake” that we had now made. “Finally, the Germans have made a mistake, and now they will pay for it”, so did one write, and one was pleased in England that one had now gotten the opportunity to be able to measure oneself against the Germans. In the west, we had for months been just a new hundred meters apart! They could have measured themselves against us at any hour! They acted as if they could not see us at all in the west, and now, for the first time in Norway, kind fate now gave them, thanks to our, and ^specially my, stupidity, the opportunity to finally be able to deal with us militarily.

The conflict, it came then, too. And it is really an irony of fate that perhaps the, for the English worst, blow back then was owed to their own propaganda. When, namely, we had already long since pushed the Norwegians out of Hamar and Lillehammer, a British brigade marched staunchly, piously and unsuspectingly along the same route toward Hamar. It had no link at all to the rear, for our Stukas and bombers had meanwhile severed all that. And so they only listened to the British radio. And on British radio, the British brigade commander heard that we were still far away, naturally far from Lillehammer, seen from his standpoint, far behind Lillehammer, and that we had suffered a severe defeat. And so the staunch British brigade commander marched at the point of his brigade into Lillehammer, sat down to rest there, at his side the chest with the document upon which stood: “Top secret! Do not allow to fall into enemy hands!”, and was round up still that same night together with his precious Ark of the Covenant by our troops. That is what happens, if somebody relies on Mr. Churchill, the war reporter!

That was how it was almost everywhere. They lied. They were thrown into the sea, and then it was “a very great victory”. That they managed to still save the last few ruins of Andalsnes or of Namsos, they declared that to the world as the “mightiest success of recent British war history”. Naturally, we cannot measure ourselves against them in that. But the reality confronted that, namely: a few weeks later, there was no longer any Norway. The British military forces had to evacuate this land as well.

And then came the hour of the conflict in the west. There, too, we arrived too late. And precisely in this campaign, this allied combination really had to suffer nothing else than just defeats. The facts, the historical facts speak for it and provide testimony. Nonetheless, this, too, ended with a great British “victory”, namely with the magnificent, glorious feat of arms of Dunkirk. I have seen with my own eyes the traces of this feat of arms. It looked rather disorderly!

Now France is likewise broken. And what kind of explanation does one have now? Hardly had Norway been permanently cleansed of the Allies, when one declared: “We wanted that, after all. We wanted to entice the Germans up here, after all. That was a victory, a distinctly clear victory for us, a shortening of our front.” And after France was finally crushed, one declared: “Now England can finally, for the first time, concentrate all its strength. Now we no longer have the need to always waste ourselves and expend our troops, to scatter ourselves. Not we have achieved the strategic position that we have continually desired and hoped for. The dead weight of France has finally fallen away from us. It only cost us precious British blood, and now we are in the position to oppose the Germans quite differently.”

Right at the start of the war, one concerned oneself with certain prophecies about the duration of this war. One said: “This war will last three years. British prepares itself for three years.” One also had to do that, for the people there, who, after all, are all extremely rich holders of stocks, war factory portfolios, these people are smart enough, they naturally know that these new investments cannot become profitable at all in half a year or in one year. That requires some time. But I was also equally careful back then and immediately told the Reich Marshal back then: Göring, let us prepare everything for five years. Not because I believe the war will last five years. But whatever may come, England will break down, one way or another! And I know no other term than this term alone.

I will naturally always prepare everything cleverly and carefully and conscientiously. You will understand that. And if one is very curious in England today and says: “Yes, why doesn’t he come?” Be calm, he will come! One does not always have to be so curious. This world will become free. The nonsense must be cleared away forever that it can be possible for one nation to blockade an entire continent whenever it wants. It must be made impossible in the future that a pirate state can from time to time again and again, according to wish and mood, surrender 450 million people here more or less to poverty or to misery. We are fed up, especially as Germans, to let England dictate to us in all future, whether or not we may do this or that, yes, in the end, even whether or not a German may drink coffee. If England does not like it, then coffee import will be blocked. That does not interest me personally at all. I don’t drink any. But it angers me that others cannot drink it. And, indeed, I find it unbearable that here a nation of 85 million can be punished at any time on life and limb by another folk, if it does not fit some plutocrat in London.

I have so often offered the English folk the hand of reconciliation. You know it yourselves, after all. It was my foreign policy goal. I have recently done it again for very last time. Now I prefer to fight until a very clear decision has been produced. And the clear decision can only be that this regime of pitiful and vile war agitators is eliminated and that a condition is established in which it is impossible that, in the future, one nation can still tyrannize all of Europe.

Here Germany, and here Italy as well, and here both states will bear the concern that this does not repeat itself in history again a second time. And here England and also all its allies can do nothing, neither Emperor Haile Selassie nor Mr. Benesch nor another, not even King Haakon and also not Queen Wilhelmina and also not the French General De Gaulle. All these allies will not be able to help at all. And whatever else they may still plan, whatever else they may have also keep in view in the deepest fold of their heart, we are on guard, ready for everything, determined for everything and ready to act at any time.

And above all: One does not terrify us with anything at all. We German National Socialists have passed through the hardest school that is at all humanly conceivable. First, we were soldiers of the great war, and then we were the fighters for the German resurrection. And what we had to endure in these years, that has hardened us. One hence also cannot intimidate us with anything. One cannot surprise us with anything at all. When one entered the war in England a year ago, one said: “We have an ally.” One was curious who that probably was. They said: “It is a general, this ally. His name is General Revolution.” Aha! They have an idea of the new National Socialist German folk state! And then they waited in London for the activity of this General Revolution. On September 6th, nothing happened, on September 7th, nothing happened. On September 8th: according to their statements, this general was supposed to rise up inside a week, General Revolution. And he has not been found.

Then one said: “But we now have a more effective general. It is General Hunger.” We have counted on it from the start that the great humanitarians, like in the World War, would try to starve women and children, and have also prepared ourselves for it. This general as well was only a miscalculation, a ghost, a jack-o’-lantern in the brain of Mr. Churchill.

Now one has come to the third general as ally. It is General Winter. He already existed once. He failed back then, he will or he would fail this time as well exactly so. Indeed, the English should, if they really take such obscure generals, then they should not forget to perhaps promote their most significant general to the British Imperial Field Marshal, namely General Bluff. That is their sole solid ally, who would deserve that they actually let him have the highest promotion. They can no longer defeat us with these generals anymore - you can be convinced of that. Perhaps one can make the dumb British folk dumb with that, but the German folk has actually become acquainted with England. The babbling of Mr. Churchill or of Mr. Eden - to speak of old Chamberlain, piety forbids one that - this babbling leaves the German folk completely cold, moves it at most to laughter. There is no fitting word in our High German language for such a manifestation as Duff Cooper. There one must resort to a dialect, and here, I believe, a word has been coined only in the Bavarian, which characterizes such a man, namely: spasmodic hen [Krampfhenne]! The gentlemen can calm themselves, with these means they will not win the war. And the other means, which, thank God, are in our hands, will remain in our hands! And when the hour has struck, then we will put in the place of General Hunger or Revolution or Winter or Bluff, we will again put the General of the Deed, that means action. And then we will see who proves himself best here.

I have already pronounced the gratitude of the German folk to its soldiers in the Reichstag. These days, we are moved by gratitude to our Luftwaffe, to our valiant heroes who, day after day, fly into England and respond there to what brilliant Mr. Churchill first invented.

But today I wish to direct gratitude, above all, to the homeland for the year lying behind us, gratitude to the whole Ger-man folk, and indeed, I want to thank the German folk for its whole bearing, which it showed during this year in often not easy situations. For perhaps it is not at all known to many what it means to evacuate over 700,000 people in a few weeks in the past year. And it all went without a hitch. However, everything was also prepared among us - in contrast to the others. But what people individually took upon themselves here and there was often very difficult, and they bore it admirably. They are happy that they could now return to their homeland again.

But we must also thank all those who, in this homeland itself, carried out the most important protective measures, for which they are responsible: air defense and especially for the mighty operations of the Red Cross, which in the physicians, in the whole medical personnel, but especially in the nurses, performed a huge amount.

But we must now remember, above all, the German woman, that band of millions of women, German mothers and also German girls, who must now replace the man and who work in city and countryside, and who make sure that, on the one hand, our daily breads comes again and, on the other, that the soldier gets the necessary weapons and ammunition. At their side stand all the millions of German workers, who in the munitions factories, often very old or still very young, work so that the fighting front does not lack that from which it, in the final analysis, once collapsed in the year 1918. It is something amazing to see our folk here in the war, in its whole discipline.

We experience this precisely now at a time when Mr. Churchill introduces us to his invention of the night air raid. He does it not because these air raids are particularly effective, rather because his airforce cannot fly over Germany by day. While German pilots and German planes are over English soil day after day, an Englishman does not cross the North Sea in the light of day at all. So they come in the night and now, as you know, drop their bombs indiscriminately and without system on civilian residential districts, on farmsteads and villages. Wherever they see a light, a bomb is dropped on it.

For three months, I have not responded to this, in the view they would cease this nonsense. Mr. Churchill saw in this a sign of our weakness. You will understand that we now, night after night, give a reply, and indeed increasingly so, night after night. And if the British airforce drops 2,000 or 3,000 or 4,000 kilograms of bombs, then we not drop in one night 150,000, 180,000, 230,000, 300,000 and 400,000. And if they declare they will attack our cities to an increased degree - we will eradicate their cities! We will put a stop to these night pirates, so help us God. The hour will come, when one of the two of us breaks, and that will not be National Socialist Germany! For I have already once in my life waged such a fight to the ultimate consequence, and the opponent broke who today still sits in England on a last island in Europe.

Precisely in view of this fight, however, it is now really necessary to comprehend how important the shaping and forming of our German folk community is. We would not have been able to perform all that, if up at the front, lost and all on his own, a German soldier stood without the tie to like-minded souls in the homeland. What makes the German soldier up front strong, is the awareness and the knowledge that behind him, feverish in iron solidarity, but with fanatical will, there stands an entire folk, and indeed a folk filled with a lofty goal. And this goal goes far beyond, say, winning only this war. No, we want to build a new state. That is also why we are so hated by the others today. They have often pronounced it. They said: “Yes, your social experiments are very dangerous. If that now spreads, and if our workers as well see this, that is very worrisome. That costs billions and brings in nothing. It converts neither to a profit of the economy nor in a dividend. What is all that supposed to do? We have no interest in such developments. We welcome everything that serves mankind’s material progress, insofar as this material progress again converts economically into profit. But social experiments, what all you do, that, after all, can only lead to awakening the appetite of the masses, and finally lead to us having to descend from our pedestal. You cannot expect that from us.” One saw in us the worst example. Every institution that we created, it as not, say, adopted by the others, no, rather it was rejected, because we carried it out. They saw already in that a concession again on the path to a social legislation and this to a social development that is hated in these states. They are simply plutocracies in which a very small clique of capitalists rule these masses, and naturally in the closest tie with international Jewry, with the Freemasons. We know these friends from here, after all, our old dear coalition, System Germany, which, after all, personnel-wise as well has also in part fled there. They hate us due to our social stance, and everything that we plan or carry out based on it, appears dangerous to them. And they are of the conviction that one must eliminate this development. And I am of the conviction that the war, the future, belongs to this development. I am of the conviction that the states that do not join this development will sooner or later collapse. We see very many states in this world with unsolved social questions. They will, if they find no solution of reason, sooner or later reach a solution of lunacy.

National Socialism has prevented that in the German folk. And they now know our goal, and they know that we will tenaciously and logically champion and also achieve this goal. Hence this hatred by all the international plutocrats, this hatred by all the Jewish newspapers, by the whole world stock market and the sympathizers of all those in other lands, who think likewise or similarly as these plutocrats.

But because we know this, that this struggle, in the final analysis, is a struggle for the whole social foundation of our folk, for the substance of our life, and is directed against this substance, nothing at all remains for us than, precisely in this struggle for this ideal, to ourselves affirm this ideal ever more.

And here, the Winter Aid Work, this most splendid social assistance institution that exists at all on earth, here this Winter Aid World is also a mighty demonstration of this spirit. Everybody will believe me that we would have also been able to solve this differently. We would have been able to easily bring this about along the taxation route. We could have had everything done by public officials. But even if the financial result would have been exactly the same, for all I care, even greater, in terms of ideals, the result would not have been even close to what we have this way. For this way, it is voluntary organization of the German folk community in its practical effect - an education for the one who donates, but also an education for the other, who now himself voluntarily performs this work. For there are two people here who make a sacrifice: the one who makes a donation and the other who now administers this donation, administers it without pay. This little girl who walks down the street here and collects, supported by all the other occupations, which in rotation complete this work, up to the representatives of the state, of the economy, of the arts etc.- it is a practical education toward folk community. And that is the decisive thing, my folk comrades, for we are all somehow burdened with the traditions etc. of the past, of origin, of position, of occupation etc... Either we strike millions dead, who are irreplaceable in their other national activity, in their economic work, because they are not yet ripe for such a community, or we educate them toward this community. Those are two fundamental ideas. National Socialism has from the start represented the view that every stance is just the product of education, of habit, of inheritance, and can hence be relearned again the same way. For the child who grows up today in our folk will not be primarily born with whatever prejudices of class or occupational origin. Basically, this worm screams against this just like every other one, There is no difference at all between them. Only over the course of life are these differences artificially imposed upon them by their environment. And to eliminate this is our task, if we do not want to despair for the creation of a really organic and load-bearing human society. We have taken up this task and now begin to carry out this task in all areas, starting with the small child. As soon as the worm starts to think that one can educate it for the differences of human life, we begin with the education for the shared and then no longer let loose. And even if one or the other declares: “The results?” Yes, my dear friend, we have, after all, started just a few years ago, first in our party as community and then, soon for eight years, in the German folk. A short period, if you consider what worked in reverse for centuries, but nonetheless, in the result already now tremendous. These mighty demonstrations of our community speak for this, after all. All this would have been totally impossible twenty years ago, after all, and thirty years ago inconceivable, and forty years ago one would not have wanted it at all. Today this is already a reality. And we do this in all our areas. We educate people toward a uniform life view, to a uniform, homogenous view of duty. And we are of the conviction that, after a certain era of this education, people will be the product of this education, this means, they will then represent the new ideas the exact same way as they today in part still embody the old ones.

This is a laborious path of grinding away and of education. But we also see it, after all, in the Winter Aid Work, ft makes progress. When the first Winter Aid Work came, many people still ran around in Germany who said: “Who comes there?”, such as, well, Ludwig Schmitz, you all know him, after all, “a man with a can, so right or left, or perhaps even with a stupid comment”. That this was so and that it this has improved, one sees this, after all, in that the donations got ever bigger. Tenacity has led to success here. Gradually, even the most thickheaded representative of the old order has realized this: First, nothing helps anyway; they come again and again, and when one is gone, the next comes. Hence, second, it is better that I take it and pin it on, and third, well, actually, basically, something is really being done, after all.

What happens thereby! What wounds have we thereby healed in Germany! Where all have we helped! How could we help out people individually! What gigantic social institutions have been created! Believe it, many people are initially against such an innovation simply out of laziness, out of mental laziness. But when they first see what comes out of it, they say: “Well yes, by God, naturally one can also give something. I had not thought about it at all correctly, after all. I did not imagine it so, that such a mighty thing develops and finally that it has consequences. They are naturally, after all, really splendid deeds, works, which are achieved here.” And before the person thinks about it, he is already himself, as the most stubborn representative of earlier views, on the path toward the new Germany.

And conversely. If we would have previously told somebody thirty years ago: “Sir, here is a tin can, now stand on a street corner and now ask somebody to give you something for your folk comrades”, he would have said: “What? I’ll donate something myself, but you cannot ask that from me. I am Mr. So-And-So, or I am this or that, and I cannot do that. What are you thinking at all? And furthermore, how will I be addressed? Do I know whether somebody might say something stupid to me?” - Yes, he is no smarter than the person who says this stupid thing. One must educate people reciprocally. It is very good, if you see how stupid many people often talk. That is a wonderful education. But precisely this work has already now in so few years shown how teachable a folk body is and how much people are gripped, in the final analysis, by a great idea, but also by a great work, by a great achievement. And we grip them on all sides, after all. This education is carried out everywhere.

I know how often even earlier one spoke the words, the Napoleonic words that every soldier carries the marshal’s baton in his backpack. But that was really not to be taken literally, for normally it was once not at all conceivable for a soldier to walk this path. All that has changed up to the top. If once the highest decorations could only be given - let us say - to an officer, then today a valiant non-commissioned officer or enlisted man can just as well wear it. A world of prejudices has been torn down, a world of prejudices.

And believe me, over the course of decades, it will become ever nicer to live in this state. The tasks become ever greater, and in them we will educate our folk more and more to itself, transform it into an ever closer and more intimate community. And if then a few still people still do not want to under any circumstances, then we will one day give them an honorary burial. Those are the last representatives of a past age; and, in that regard, perhaps also still interesting. But the world, the future belongs to the young folks who solve these problems. And we have already begun with this solution and also solve it.

And the Winter Aid Work is here a mighty community proclamation of the homeland in view of the mightiest proclamations of the community of the front. For just as there a huge body, well organized, does its duty, so does this homeland stand at home and is ready for the same accomplishments and willing for any sacrifice that this struggle for our future’s existence or non-existence may put to us.

If I hence once more thank all those who, in the first Winter Aid Work, have given or were otherwise active as helpers, then I simultaneously ask you all: Fulfill your task anew in the second Winter Aid Work. The one as voluntary helper and the others as voluntary donors. Make sure than this, too, even becomes anew to the world a demonstration of our indissoluble sense of community, and that it may finally realize that the speculation in General Revolution is an idiocy and that another general stands in place of this general: the general of shared fulfillment of duty, who commands us all. 

It is the spirit of our folk community that lets us endure everything and that lets our folk be strong for all conflicts and decisions of the future. In this as well, each individual helps to break the will of our enemies, in that he robs them of such illusions, he contributes his share in the spread of the knowledge of and insight into our folk. The more the other world sees that this great folk is a single community, the more it will realize how hopeless its plan is. People who are separated from each other, each walking his own path, they could break them - but 85 million who have one will, one decision and are ready for one deed, a world does not break them!