Berlin, January 30, 1942
My German folk comrades!
My comrades!
Each speaks before the forum, which to him seems most suited - the one before a parliament, whose existence, composition and emergence is sufficiently known to all of us -, and I believed again to have to return to where I came from, namely to the folk! They are namely also delegates of the folk, only with the difference that they do not receive a daily allowance for payments and often have it more difficult to come to such an assembly than the so-called summoned representatives of the democracies.
Before we enter the tenth year of the National Socialist German Reich, it is probably appropriate to cast a look into the past and to once more occupy ourselves with the reasons for our existence, for our development and for our victory.
We hear today very often the comment that this war is actually the Second World War, this hence means, one identifies this struggle with the first, which we ourselves, for the greater part, still experienced as soldiers. And this is not only correct, say, in the sense that this struggle as well really encompasses almost the whole world, rather it is even more correct, if one considers that it is about the same goals, that the same forces, which caused the First World War, are responsible for the present one, and that these forces and powers strive for the same goals, which back then, perhaps, they did not present at the first moment, but which nonetheless represented most fundamentally the intentions of their struggle. They are not only the same causes, rather they are, above all, also the same people. And I may say with pride that the exception to this is made precisely by the states, which are today embodied as allies by the German Reich, by Italy, Japan etc... For probably nobody can dispute one thing: that Churchill, even before the year 1914, was one of the vilest war agitators of the time back then, that Roosevelt back then was the little man of President Wilson, that the capitalist men of today already back then as well had thrown the weight of their influence on the scales for war, while, conversely, nobody can dispute that we were totally not guilty for the war back then. We were all just very little soldiers, just like you now, my dear wounded, who sit here before me, unknown nameless ones, whom duty had simply called, nothing more at all, and who accordingly back then fulfilled their duty as honestly as they could.
They are the same driving forces that were at fault for the First World War, which are now also responsible for the second. In the process, I want to insert one thing here right off: The Germany of back then was a monarchy, hence not a National Socialist dictatorship, the Germany of back then was democratic, hence not a National Socialist state, and the Ger-many of back then was parliamentarian, hence also not what the present-day Germany is, aside from all other differences. Hence there must be reasons, which do not lie in the form of government, which back then and which today lead to the attack by these forces, although, in both cases, they claimed that it was the form of government that mustered them. We Germans cannot imagine this at all, after all, that, if a state in our surroundings suddenly adopts a certain form of government, that now, because this form of government does not suit us, we must therefore go to war. We do not understand this at all - naturally, the others also do not understand this. They also do not go to war for this reason. They did not go, and they also did not go to the war, because the form of government somehow irritated them. For they manage, after all, to embrace the vilest form of government, if necessary, and to enter into brotherhood with it. No, no, it is not the form of government, rather there are different reasons, which already back then led them to the war against the German Reich!
Back then, England was the main driver to this struggle, the England, which over the course of 300 years only through force, through a single series of bloody wars, subjugated roughly a quarter of the whole surface of the earth. For it was not so, that, say, one day Indian princes or Indian tribes or Indian delegations had gone to London with the request: “English, come to India and rule us or lead us!”, rather the English went to India, and the Indians did not want to have the English at all. They went there with force and were no longer to be driven out even with force. They once subjugated with force alone this continent with more than 380 million people and kept it under subjugation. Only with force did they make one state after the next have to pay tribute and interest. Behind this force, naturally stood those others, who scent business everywhere there is unrest: our international Jewish acquaintances. So England, over the course of a few centuries, conquered the world for itself, and in order to secure this world conquest, this suppression of folks, striven to maintain in Europe the so- called “balance of power”, this hence means, to strive so that no European state could gain more than a measure of strength and perhaps thereby be able to rise to a leading role in Europe. What they wanted, this was the fragmented Europe, which dissolves within itself, a Europe eternally balanced in its forces, and in order to achieve this goal, England then also wages wars in Europe, one war after the other. First it saw its hegemony threatened by Spain. After it had finally defeated Spain, it turned its interest toward the Netherlands. And after Holland no longer seemed to be a threat, British hatred concentrated itself against France. And when France was finally broken back then with the help of all of Europe, then it believed, at that moment, that they had to see in Germany the factor that could be suited to perhaps unite Europe. And now the struggle against Germany began, not out of love for the folks, rather only out of their very own, sober interest, behind it, as said, that eternal Jewry, which in every conflict of folks, always in discord and strife, manages and is able to earn and profit. They have hence always been the drivers to produce unrest among the folks, because they were able to gain only in unrest, and perhaps calm would have been able to lead to reflection and hence insight about the nature of this pest of all nations.
When then, in the year 1914, they brought about for the first time a world coalition against the German Reich of back then, they had a few justifications. They said back then: “Germany must be liberated, first from its Kaiser!” In itself, that would have been no concern of the English, rather an internal matter of the German folk. But the English are always concerned about other nations, and hence they accordingly also wanted to free the Germany of back then from its Kaiser. They said further: “Militarism is what makes the German folk unhappy and depressed.” - The English are everywhere against depression and against unhappiness, which burden folks. And finally, they said even further: “War must come to an end at all, hence war against war!” - A wonderful, beckoning, glorious perspective! If one wants to apply it retroactively, this means, if one wanted to say: We see that war is an injustice, for only brute force decides it, hence we want to eliminate force, hence we want to nullify everything that has previously emerged through force. It is a very difficult plan naturally, because the whole world has previously been built only according to the principle of the right of the stronger. But still, it would have been wonderful. If England had gone ahead of the world here with its abhorrence of war in that it would have freed the results of its wars, this means, would have again put it at the disposal of the surrounding world. If England had done that, it would have hence declared: ”We detest war, hence we will immediately initially withdraw from South Africa; we won it through war, namely. We detest war, hence we will also leave India, for we have subjugated it only through wars, we detest, for example, war, hence we also leave Egypt, for we subjugated it as well only through force, we also leave the whole Near East, that, too, became ours only through force - it would have been a wonderful gesture, in this manner to declare war against war!
But by war, this means, by war against war, one understood in England something else, namely one understood by war against war any possibility of once again righting the existing injustice in this world. That is what one understood by it. Hence for the purpose: Power to the one who has power, and any power away from the one who does not have it. It is roughly so, like we knew this in terms of domestic policy as well, if people say: “We no longer want any change of the social order. Whoever is rich, should remain rich, whoever is poor, must remain poor; just as it is, so is it wanted, and as it is wanted, so should it remain; for man should not rebel against what was once wanted, because it has existed.”
You know, my folk comrades, our National Socialist view toward that. We see in every condition and at every time in this world the result of a never-ending life process. And it is impossible to say at a certain moment: Now this development process stops, rather it lives in the nature of the whole development of all things, that any sterilization of this life process must lead to a dying off. It lies, quite the opposite, in the essence of nature that again and again the more capable raises himself up and is elevated, this hence means, that in the interior of folks, the path must be opened for the capable, that one must not block it through social orders, that in the interior of folks, one must not let it come to a sterilization of the conditions of wealth, rather that one must take care in the interior as well that a constant flow of fresh blood from below upward comes and that everything that is rotten, because it is languid, should die off, because it must die off, because it is ripe to die off, and that one should not preserve it.
Hence the “war against war” was a totally deceitful slogan. The best proof was that at the moment when the war as at an end, the prerequisites for the waging of new wars could in no way be eliminated, but also not the instruments for the waging of the new wars. It would have been a wonderful gesture, if after Germany’s disarmament, just as it had been assured us by treaty, now England, America, France would have also disarmed. We admonished them so often, after all, in the Weimar Republic requested, later then demanded, that they do this. They did not think of it at all! Quite the opposite, the wars continued. Only the sole defeated, the German folk, had lost any possibility to once more change its existence in this world to its favor.
The methods with which one fought in the First World War were similar as the present-day ones. First, struggle from the outside, and indeed, in the form of the bringing together of coalitions. It takes a good portion of Churchillian insolence to say today: “England was never in the position, on its own strength alone, to wage war with Italy or with Germany.” But this same man has for years offered the whole world guarantee promises through his front-rank man. Now he himself admits that they would not have been in the position at all to fight alone. But they guaranteed the Baltic states, they guaranteed the Balkan states. They ran around, they declared to every state in the world: “Do you need a guarantee? Great Britain will step behind you with its whole power and will protect you.” Today this same arch-liar says: “We were not in the position at all to wage a war alone.” This is also correct. In the World War as well, they would not have been in the position to wage the war alone. Hence they assembled a coalition of global magnitude against us. The methods have likewise remained the same: promises to all those faint-hearted or credulous or dummies, who wanted to fall for these promises, and, furthermore, the attempt to let their own interests be represented by as much other blood as possible. It must be noted again and again that the British World Empire, over the course of 400 years since its emergence, had to shed barely 10% of the blood in countless wars, which Germany required in order to defend just its bare existence. And nonetheless, we lost ever more in the process.
That this was so, is connected with the British method, namely, the method of fragmentation. In the period when the British World Empire emerged, Germany had splintered on its own. There were trains of thought back then, which we can no longer understand today, trains of thought of religious nature, which, unfortunately, were fought out with the sword, trains of thought, which were horrible in their consequences, which seem meaningless to us in their inner essence. Only these weighty, inner, religious conflicts, which cost the German folk infinitely much blood, gave England the opportunity in this same period to raise a world claim, which would have been owed it neither in number nor in significance. For I must point out again and again that it is not so that we Germans are, say, the upstarts, rather, if one wants to talk of upstarts, then they are definitely the English, and not we! We have an older history. And in an age when Europe knew a mighty Germany Imperial Reich, England was only a totally insignificant, little, green island.
In the previous World War, one saw the possibility of this fragmentation in a different area. Since religious problems no longer incited to blood-letting, since the priests themselves were no longer ready to let themselves be struck dead for these things, after the impossibility of still entangling the German folk in dynastic internal crises, one found a new opportunity: the playing out of parties. We experienced that back then. Parties of the right and of the left, collapsed again within themselves, half a dozen bourgeois manifestation and again and again divided. And with these parities, beginning with the bourgeoisie through the Center to the KPD, it succeeded back then to slowly undermine and exhaust the German folk in the interior. Nonetheless, the course of the war was an immeasurably glorious one. The years 1914 to 1918, they prove one thing, that not, say, the opponent, triumphed; it was a vile revolt, instigated by Marxist-Centrist, liberal-capitalist subjects, and behind all, as driving force, the eternal Jew. They brought Germany down back then.
We know today from the statements of the English themselves that in the year 1918 they were at the end, stood before their own collapse, when perhaps a quarter hour before 12 o’clock the revolt in Germany let itself be achieved. In addition came the cowardice of those governing back then, their indecision, their supineness, their own insecurity. And only so could the First World War be lost, not through the credit of our opponents, rather exclusively through our own fault.
The consequences of this collapse in November were now not, say, Germany’s acceptance into the open arms of world democracy, were not the concerns by the others for the German folk’s liberation from its burdens, for the German folk’s elevation to a higher level of culture; they could not take care of that at all, because they themselves were on a much lower one, rather the consequences were now only the most horrible collapse, seen politically and economically, that a folk had ever experienced.
Back then, a man stepped toward us, who had inflicted immeasurable damage on the German folk: Woodrow Wilson, the man who lied with a straight face, if Germany would lay down its arms, then it would receive a peace of reconciliation, of agreement, then it would not lose its colonies, rather the colonial problems would be arranged justly. The man lied to us that a general disarmament would come, that we should then be accepted into an equal federation of nations and folks with equal rights etc... He lied to us that secret diplomacy would thereby be eliminated, and that, indeed, now a new era of peace, of equal rights, of reason etc. would come. The little man of this arch-liar was the present-day President Roosevelt. He was hence his right hand. Our German folk trusted this man back then. It had no idea that here it was about an American president, this hence means, about a man who in himself is not obligated to the truth, who, for sample, can comfortably say before an election: “I will stand up against the war”, and after the election can say: “I stand up for the war”, and who, if he is then challenged, can just as comfortably say: “I said that previously, because I believed there would be dummies who take that as the truth and therefore vote for me.” But one still did not know something, that, namely, here it is about a paralytic, about a lunatic, who led this folk back then, with which the German folk had never in its history had a conflict.
So the hour of bitterest disappointment came back then, which began at the moment when the German negotiators went to the forest of Compiegne, known to us for the second time, after all, to the saloon car, and were first confronted there with the rude question: “What do you gentlemen want here?” An armistice came, which, in reality, already meant total disarmament. And the result of this armistice was then the peace treaty, the total disarmament of our folk and hence the disenfranchisement and parallel to it a plundering and exploitation by an international financial plot, which cast our folk into the deepest misery. One had previously declared: “Whoever claims that we have the intention to take the colonies from Germany, he lies.” One took them away from us! One said: “Whoever claims that we possessed the intention to, say, take from Germany its trade fleet, he does not speak the truth.” One took it away from us! One said previously: “Whoever claims that, say, we want to rip off parts from the German folk, stirs up the folk.” One later took one part after the other away from us! One broke all promises! The German folk sank in a few months into an unimaginably deep desperation, despair, nowhere any more hope, a starved folk, to which one still did not even return its war prisoners, after the armistice, yes, the peace had been signed, a folk, to which one still gave no foodstuffs even when it was already defenseless, which one just extorted again and again, if one studies through the time back then, how one again and again demanded and forced from us with a new extortion a new subjugation.
If one today still holds this before one’s eyes, then one now still comes into a state of rage and hatred against a world in which such a thing is thinkable and possible.
In this time, my folk comrades, when everything was broken, when the Reich’s supreme leader had fled to a foreign country, when others capitulated, when the armed forces had to surrender their weapons, when the folk voluntarily disarmed itself, in a time, when one raged against Germany even in the interior, when one wrote in our newspapers: “It is good that we lost the war”, when unscrupulous subjects were found, who declared: “We may not win it at all, this war”, at a moment, when anybody was spat upon, who still just thought of Germany or spoke of it, in a time, when one preached - I want to say - life renunciation as ideal and was ashamed to step before the world as a German, in that time, my folk comrades, I entered political life with the decision to again lift up this Germany. It was such a crazy decision in the eyes of many others, that my closest friends did not understand me at all. I gained the strength for this decision only from the knowledge of the folk. If I had only known the upper ten thousand back then, believe me, my folk comrades, I would not be standing before you today. I would have never found the courage for this idea, decision and faith revolutionizing a folk. Back then, I knew, above all, the broad folk. I knew, above all, my comrades. I knew that these men had for four years performed something immeasurable, inconceivable. I knew how reliable they were. I knew that, if they had had the right leadership, that they could never have been moved to a capitulation, already not their comrades, because each knew: for what I fought, so many of my best comrades have already fallen. I may not leave that in the lurch at all, after all, it would be, after all, a betrayal against my own comrades. They also left life, after all, just as difficult as I myself. They risked their lives as well, after all.
I knew this broad mass of the German folk from my origin, from my life back then. And this mass not only preserved my faith in my folk, rather gave it a new and then later as well through all the years reinforced it, when adverse circumstances or some kind of misfortune seemed to perhaps speak against the achievement of my plan.
ft was clear to me that the whole development, such as we had had in the last twenty, thirty years before the year, had to lead to nothing else than collapse. And I hence made the decision to declare war against this development from the bottom up, this hence means, not simply declare: I want that Germany again gets armed forces, gets an army or gets an airforce, rather it was clear to me that, initially, in the interior, the structure of our social order had to be reshaped, that, in our folk’s died off body, we had to let the blood flow up from the bottom, and that, for this purpose, the social order had to obtain major incisions. I did not view these incisions as possible after the achievement of power, rather I was of the conviction that power could be allotted only to the body in which the face and the essence of the new condition would already embody themselves, this hence means, I was determined to build up a very small movement, beginning with a few people, who in themselves were supposed to embody what I envisioned as later basically necessary for the totality. And this was perhaps noneheless not as difficult as many thought, insofar as I remained protected against the danger, after all, that back then unworthy careerists or selfish people entered my ranks. For whoever back then in the years 1919, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923 came to this movement, that person had to be a boundless idealist. Anybody else, he could only say: “That is a total fool, he wants to build up a new folk, he wants to found a new state. He then wants to establish new armed forces, he wants to make Germany free again, and he does not even have a name, he has no capital, he has no press, no party carries him, he has nothing at all - a lunatic.” They already had to be boundless idealists, who came to me back then, for they had nothing at all to gain, rather always only to lose, always only to sacrifice. And I can say this of all my fellow fighters back then: All who came to me in this time and later still came to me, they had nothing to gain, they only had everything to lose. And how many lost everything, down to life.
I then took up this struggle against the stupidity, initially, the stupidity and laziness of our so-called upper strata. I began it against the cowardice, which spread everywhere, this cowardice, which always went around camouflaged as cleverness, and said, one must adapt oneself, one must be patient, or, as Mr. Erzberger said: “Sign everything, sign everything they put before us, then they will forgive us, then they will become good again.” Against this boundless cowardice, which preferred everything as standing still, I had to fight back then in the small and gradually in the larger circle. How often did we not experience that this bourgeoisie told us again and again: “Why then do you go onto the streets, you see, after all, the others do not want that, hence it always comes to conflicts. Why? Because you provoke, therefore do not provoke, hold yourself back, be quiet, after all!” And we were not quiet; I announced the program back then: The German street belongs to the German man, not to the Jews. And I conquered them, these German men, not through the cleverness of the cowards, rather through the courage of these go-getters, who had joined me back then and who were ready with me to fight the street free of our enemies and opponents and slowly again carry the German colors into these streets, into the German markets, villages and cities. And I had to continue to fight back then against so many interests of all individuals.
The man of the left said to me: “You act against my interests. My interest - I have a class interest, and this class interest obligates me to kill the other!” And the other again said to me: “Sir, stay away from our interests. We have professional interests, we have our interests as well. Stay away from us, do not enter here.” I had to turn against both sides. And above the interests, which seemed anchored in profession or in class, to put the interests that lie in the nationality, in this indissoluble community.
Today, all this looks so obvious, by my old fellow fighters know that it was not obvious, to bring this common sense into the thick-skulls of our people of left and of right. The one did not want to accept these ideas, simply out of obstinacy, because he said: “What, we will crush the others’ skulls!” And the other said, we do not want to accept them out of laziness or stupidity, out of lazy flow of thought, because they said: “That was previously not so, why should we suddenly change now. Indeed, you cannot demand from me that I simply tolerate these people there from the folk, I cannot do that. You know, in the end, you will even demand from me that I sit next to just anybody in the tramway car. So, everything that is right, I am obviously also... - we want to be a united folk of brothers, but with distance, with distance, sir, not too close, and only in election times, but not normally.”
Hence all this was not so simple, to slowly draw one after the other from this folk, and how many ran away from me again. It was not so, after all, my folk comrades, as if everybody who came to me back then, say, would also remain with me. Often, I had won 50, 60 somewhere in a town, and three months later it was again merely 6 or 7 or 8. All the others were gone again. And one had to start again. But I made a calculation back then: If I win a hundred, and always only ten remain, and the other ninety go away again, then it will gradually, when I gain a thousand, be a hundred, if I win ten thousand, a thousand will remain, and gradually the number of those who remain will become ever greater. And if one has perhaps left again for the second or third time, perhaps he is embarrassed to leave the fifth time, rather will then also remain. And so I will gradually, with unbelievable patience and with tenacity and perseverance, build up a new folk community in the German Reich myself. The others may laugh or scorn as they want, that is all the same. They may proceed against us, also all the same, then we will defend ourselves. We will not capitulate. We will not leave the street, we will not vacate our places, rather we will then strike, so long until we either remain lying, or the other pulls back and leaves our path open. Self-evident principles for us National Socialists today, but back then totally new concepts, new realizations, which by many were neither comprehended or accepted as self-evident.
And then another thing came in: The accursed tradition, with which everybody grew up, from which he believed he could not separate himself, indeed, this whole problem of education, these egg shells, which the individual, after all, casts off with much greater difficulty than everything else, the opinion he was simply born different. The one, he simply could not mix with the broad folk, for the reason, because he comes from the society stratum, and the other cannot, because he again comes from the other one. It was a struggle against traditions and naturally also against the educational elements, which one all too easily confuses with the value of people. For one said: “You cannot expect from me as an educated person, that I join a local unit, in which, for all I care, a daily wage earner is the leader anyway.” I first had to teach the people that leading has nothing at all to do with abstract knowledge, which one has had pumped into him in an educational facility. The one is learned and other drummed in with God knows how many extra hours and aids, and the other is inborn and will always overcome. And to now find a synthesis here, to find a marriage between the natural talent for leading and the necessary knowledge, that was the great task posed.
One did not grasp that at all back then. It was a struggle against almost all life practices, and in addition to that a struggle against the most natural interests, in which the individual says: “Yes, listen , if I were really to join you, then I lose my business, after all!” And the other again: “Then I’ll be thrown out of my workplace. My colleagues, they will not tolerate it, after all!” - What do you believe, my folk comrades, what kind of heroism was it back then, to be the first National Socialist in whatever mine, in whatever factory, but I admit, also a heroism, to be the first National Socialist in a salon; the one, because he was threatened bodily, the other, because he was threatened mentally. And I do not know what is worse: a bodily threat or a mental harassment, which under circumstance can perhaps wreck a human being even faster than the bodily threat. There were heroes, who back then came to us.
And I want to explain still something else here: These heroes, in reality, continued the 1914/18 war, after all. One later so often portrayed it as if, here were soldiers and here party. No, those were once the soldiers, and indeed the best soldiers! Namely those eternal soldiers who did not want to endure and could not endure the subjugation, just as I am also of the conviction that a really good National Socialist will also always be the best soldier.
And then came the organized opponents as well. That was initially so roughly 46 or 47 parties. This varied, according to whether the bicyclist and the small gardeners or the landless laborers or other people merged. But it was often up to 46 parties. Organized opposition! And here, above all, naturally the party secretaries, their functionaries, who naturally saw in us the ruin of their whole existence, for where should a bourgeois world of parties, represented by its syndics, party secretaries etc. end up, and where a proletarian world of parties, represented by trade union leaders and again party secretaries, if now suddenly somebody comes and says: “The whole struggle is in itself sheer nonsense, you quarrel here about something, which brings no benefit, you will both have to get down from your high horse, in the long run, you cannot get by without each other, hence it is smarter, you come together for once rationally than that you destroy each other reciprocally.” One could naturally say that to the individual, but say it to a party secretary, this would mean, to make the man immediately ponder, and pondering here leads to the realization that his whole existence would thereby be over, after all. If I first once say, one does not wage political fights for denominations, what does the Center interested party then go? If I say, I cannot wage a political fight, for example, let us say, for conflicts that are of a purely economic nature, and hence can only be fought out economically and thereby be settled through reason, where then do the union secretaries and the syndics end up? And, above all, where do the dear Jews end up, who, on the one hand, direct capital as well as, on the other hand, lead the anti-capitalists, and indeed often already from the same family two brothers in both camps.
My folk comrades! When I began this struggle back then, it was very clear to me that it was a struggle against a whole world, and how difficult it was, only my old fellow fighters can measure.
I can say that for me the war had not found an end since the year 1914. I fought on, since I could speak again, and traveled up and down the land, from town to town, from city to city, and only spoken, and spoke, and spoke again and worked, always only with the one thought, to redeem the German folk from this fragmentation, to pull it out of its lethargy, to bring it out of its sleep and put it together again.
And I now not only found fellow fighters, rather also countless people over the course of these years, who helped us. Women and men, who gave everything, for whom the party was absolutely everything. The others, these pitiful burghers, cannot understand this at all, they cannot grasp it at all, what National Socialism meant for many families, that the whole day long they thought only about their movement, that they gave everything for it, that they worked for it, made every sacrifice for it! Today, the whole nation knows it. What back then were small local units, are today millions of German folk comrades, who go to the collection points and today, as members of our community, donate their last sweater or pullover, if necessary, for our Wehrmacht, for our soldiers.
This joy, to be able to serve a cause, to be allowed to sacrifice for it, which millions have, back then, only the few National Socialists in our movement had that. How great the joy was, however, all those can also measure, who today can say of themselves: I do everything for my folk, everything for our soldiers, so that they can endure.
For the German folk community has simply nonetheless developed from the small movement of back then, slowly, but that was good so. It needed time. But it became. This struggle for the soul of our folk, it did not run uninterrupted in uniform constant, rather days of the worst distress also came again, times of the biggest setbacks. I just need to remind you of the year 1923. I fought back then. In the Ruhr region, our enemy stood there. Germany was ruined by inflation. The whole German folk seemed to approach a misery without equal. And over everything triumphed the Jew. He rotted our folk, he profited from our misfortune. And I tried back then, as one man, to get power into my hands in order to still offer resistance. And at the moment when I already could believe to get this power, fate knocked me to the ground, and instead of power, I went to prison.
And in this period, the movement had to prove itself. And naturally, also I myself. And I may already state, that at this moment, hardly had I first again regained consciousness, I immediately took new courage and regained my old faith. My opponents said: “Now he is dead! One no longer needs to pay any attention at all to him, one also no longer needs to mention him. National Socialism is a finished matter.” After thirteen months, I returned again and now began again anew. And I believe, this was perhaps the decisive thing for our party: any weakling can bear victories, to withstand blows by fate, only the strong can do that! And fate gives the ultimate highest prize only to those who manage to handle these blows by fate.
Back then, I received the first heavy blow in the movement of large magnitude. What it cost in work and nervous energy, those know who stood close to me back then. But I also preserved this boundless confidence, even in my own person, that nothing at all, whatever it may be, can ever throw me out of the saddle, that nothing can still shake me. And that the person errs, who believes he can frighten me through anything, to be able to bluff me. I took the words of a great German philosopher to heart back then: “A blow that does not knock down a strong man, only makes him even stronger!”
And how were foreign countries back then? Nobody took notice of us, after all, for these foreign countries were informed through their diplomats, and these diplomats moved in circles in which National Socialists could not move back then, and did not at all want to move, and, as far as I was concerned, also may not move. These diplomats sent wonderful reports to their governments, in which they portrayed the Reich’s whole play of forces, and overlooked the force that was fated to one day take over the whole Reich. They treated the Germany of back then as if National Socialists would not exist at all or had not existed.
And how they treated this Germany! Their Germany, their democratic Germany! The child, which they themselves had once procreated, this miscarriage of parliamentarian democ-racy, Weimar constitution and Versailles legislation! How did they mistreat, extort and squeeze this birth. If they today act as if they were against us National Socialists or rejected National Socialist Germany, when then did they inflict on the democratic Germany! Only with one difference: They could not do it to us at all, after all, but, unfortunately, they could to democratic Germany! We are totally indifferent, after all, to how they judge us. I have, after all, never put any value on how foreign countries judge me. I am quite indifferent to it. If my enemies should once praise me, then the German folk can chase me to the devil. Therefore, for us and for me, for us this was all the same. But they mistreated democratic Germany, this Germany, which crawled into the League of Nations and whined and begged there, went from one loan to the next, and was fed with a few crumbs that fell down from the table of these so- called haves. They were really treated like have-nots, but they at least had the honor to be allowed to sit in Geneva. One denied them all human rights, but they had the honor to be allowed to participate in an international conference or even preside. One mistreated the German folk’s right of self- determination in this period, one concerned oneself with nothing, but they were at least allowed to talk about the right of self-determination in the Geneva League of Nations, in regard to other nations, and they were already happy and satisfied with that.
Disarmament: If one says today, this Germany, this National Socialist Germany, has forced us to arm! - Aside from it that I so often made proposals to them about disarmament, after all - there was once a Germany that had no armaments at all. Why then did they not disarm back then? They could have done that, after all. Or does one believe that, say, Stresemann or Marx or any of these gentlemen, Wirth, Bauer, Ebert, Schiedemann, would have declared war against the world? Therefore, they cannot demonstrate that to anybody. They themselves also did not believe that. They did not do it. Quite the opposite, they continued to wage wars. Some entrenched themselves here, others there. The English no longer concerned themselves with their allies. They swindled the Arabs out of their right of self-determination. From the Indians, whom they first needed in the war, they later also abruptly took away again all promises.
They know precisely why Germany had to disarm! They inflicted all that on the democracy! And then the huge unemployment, the economic misery, where was also the world’s economic help? Where were they then, the thousand artists? If I read so today in the newspaper that Mr. Roosevelt declares America will give the world a new economic system, a new one yes, but it will be a miserable one, namely the system with which he has made himself so bankrupt that he finally believes to be able to save himself from mob-justice only through a war. Economically as well, the German folk did not receive what one had once promised it before the days of Versailles.
Quite the opposite, just like the other world, it collapsed ever more. Unemployment rose and got ever greater. The years from 1923 to 1930, they are years of a continuous experimentation, but of a constant economic decline, of an uninterrupted surrender of the German folk’s sovereign rights, but also the surrender of economic substance. And one had to look on at all that in these years. I now fought. But in these years as well, my folk comrades, there were many setbacks: bans of the party, soon I myself could not speak at all again for two years, then local units were disbanded again, then again the movement banned in whole German provinces; fine, it was a constant fight with uninterrupted setbacks. Then September 1930 finally came, and we now entered the Reichstag with our 106 mandates and then one more, 107.
Now one really should have let us participate in the government. Quite the opposite! The suppression first really set in, and it escalated uninterrupted. It was a constant fight, which also made use of terror. How many party comrades did we lose in this period, all assassinated. Over 40,000 wounded are to be counted in these few years. And then the year 1932 came. First presidential election. Again, a setback. The second presidential election, it again saw the party caught. And then follows election after election, battle after battle in this year for the internal power in the state. It was a struggle in which everything was also at stake. Many had to pay this year again with their life, many landed in the prisons.
And then July came with an overwhelming victory. And now everybody screamed: Now the hour has come for the assumption of power! And the hour passed again. It had to pass again. And then a setback came again and then a last battle and finally the day whose memory we celebrate today.
Now, my folk comrades, I have presented this to you here quite briefly in order to show you all one thing: The victory that we celebrate here today did not fall into our laps back then as a simple gift, rather the victory was tied to exertions, to sacrifices, to deprivations, to constant work and to setbacks without equal. And if you had asked somebody even on January 25th: “Do you believe that this person - back then, that was only me, after all - will come to power?”, then everybody would have told you, even on the 25th, even on the 28th: “Never!” And when I came to power on January 30th, a wise man said: “Only for six weeks!” Today it has been nine years!
But now I must mention another thing. I told you, my folk comrades, what I found, when in the year 1919 to 1920, I called the party into life. I portrayed to you what the situation was after my first great collapse. But I must also in a few sentences remind you of what I had taken over on this January 30th: It was a legacy, which hardly anybody still wanted to assume. Everything ruined, the economy destroyed, seven million people unemployed, and this rose week by week, seven million short-term workers. The Reich finances a gigantic deficit of almost three billion, the provincial finances huge deficits, the municipalities indebted to the top, the peasantry before total collapse, before the auction of the land and property, trade paralyzed, commerce at a standstill, our shipping no longer existent. Everything at all in Germany seemed to now be dead. That is what I took over back then. It was not a shining legacy, but I viewed it as my honor to take over something not at the moment when it flourishes, rather to take it over at the moment when others say: “All is already lost there, nobody can still help there.”
I dared it back then, it was quite clear to me that, if it had not succeeded, I would have probably been stoned, one would have struck me dead, one would have declared: “Now you have it!” I dared it, and we won it. Ina few years, we handled these problems.
In 1933/34, I initially created order in the interior, immediately eliminated the parties and all this nonsense. I have, with the founding of the German Work Front under party comrade Ley, obtained the prerequisite to be able to finally approach at all rationally the economic problems, without being constantly disturbed from both sides, the one, in that he says: “I’ll lock out”, and the says: “I’ll strike.” And both are the suffering parties. I have begun to stabilize the German currency through ruthless pressure from above. But I have began to not only stabilize it through pressure from above, rather also in that I again put German production behind the German mark.
All this is easy to say today. But back then, it was not easy. For if it had been so easy, why did my opponents not do it then? I began right away to push back all folk alien elements in Germany, above all, our cosmopolitans. But I also began in this period to integrate the individual provinces into the Reich. When the year 1934 came, I had actually finished in the interior with the most essential prerequisites in order to now put the German folk in the enjoyment of its work. Instead of countless provincial parliaments, there was still only a single Reich sovereignty. Instead of countless parties, still only one single leadership of the German folk. Instead of countless economic organizations, a consolidation of all into one single hand. Naturally, at first, everybody cursed, who was thereby threatened in his interests. But nobody can dispute the one thing, neither from right nor from left, in the end, all were better off than before. And whatever the one had to surrender at the moment, he nonetheless regained through the rationale that laid at the basis of all actions, and through the insight into the necessary. In 1935, external freedom as well already began to triumph. You all still know this: introduction of compulsory military service,
1936 elimination of these crushing Versailles chains, which concerned the Rhineland, restoration of our Reich sovereignty,
1937 and 1938 completion of our armament, not without me first making many proposals to spare us this armament.
For you must all admit the one thing, my folk comrades: Wherever you may go, everywhere, you see today the works of peace, which we could no longer continue due to the war. Everywhere, you see large buildings, schools, settlements, which the war prevents us from continuing.
Before I entered this, I had started a gigantic program of social, economic and cultural work, begun and, in part, also already completed. But everywhere, there were new plans, new projects before me.
If, conversely, I view my opponents: What have they really created? They could very easily push for war. The war has not robbed them of a peace deed, for they created nothing. This blabber, this drunkard Churchill, what has he performed in his life, in reality, this lying subject, this lazybones of the first rank? If this war had not come, then centuries would have spoken of our era and of all us and also of my person as creators of great works of peace. But if this war had not come, who would speak of Churchill? So one will, however, one day speak of him, but as the destroyer of an empire, which he and not we destroyed. One of the most pitiful Herostratus natures in world history, incapable of creating something, only capable of destroying.
I do want to speak at all, in the process, about his accomplice in the White House - a pitiful lunatic!
However, the more we worked, the more we put Germany in order, the more the hatred also grew, unfortunately. For something else came in addition to it. Now came the most obstinate hatred by society strata., which in foreign lands believed that the German example, the socialist German example, could under circumstances break in there as well. I have heard this so often, after all, that foreigners themselves said to me: “Yes, you know, but for us, these National Socialist ideas are naturally not executable.” I said: “I also do not demand that at all, after all, that you carry it out, quite the opposite, I am not there so that I concern myself with the happiness of other folks, rather I feel myself exclusively responsible for my own folk. I work for it. I will add to my sleepless nights still another one for foreign countries!” And nonetheless, they said: “No, already the example, your example, that is just it. The example spoils good customs,” this means, in this case, the bad practices and the bad virtues or vices. They said: “You travel with your ships to us, we cannot allow the Strength through Joy ships to land by us.” “Why not?” “That spoils our workers.” Why should that spoil the workers? I do not understand, the German worker workers more than ever before, why should he then not relax? Is it not a downright joke, if today this man in the White House says: “We have a world program, and this world program should give man freedom and the right to work?” Mr. Roosevelt! Open your eyes - we have long since done this in Germany. Or if somebody says, illness should be taken care of. - Depart from the garden of our party program, this is a National Socialist doctrine, not yours, sir! This is heresy for a democrat. Or if he says: “We want the worker to get a vacation as well.” You want that very late, we have, namely, already carried it out. And we would be even much farther, if you had not gotten in our way.
Or if one says: “We want to heighten prosperity, even for the broad mass.” Those are all nothing but things that stand in our program! He would have been able to carry that out much more easily, if he had not started a war. For we also did that without a war, after all, before the war. No, these capitalist hyenas do not think at all about doing such a thing. They see in us only the bad example, and in order to bait their own folks, they must now climb into our party program and pull out such individual statements, these pitiful bunglers. And in the process, they also do it stupidly.
We have had a closed world against us here. Naturally, not only from the right, rather equally so from the left. For those on the left said to us: “If that succeeds, this experiment, it actually creates..., if it manages it and eliminates the housing shortage, if it succeeds and introduces a school system, on the basis of which every talented boy, quite regardless, what parents he has or what kind his parents are, God knows what kind of a position he can achieve; which manages to turn former agricultural workers into Reich regents, which manages it and actually introduces old age care for an entire folk, which, man, which in the end manages it and actually sends this folk on vacation, builds ships for it, which brings it an ordered and secure living standard; yes, what do we do then? After all, we live, because that does not exist. We live from it, after all, hence fight against this National Socialism.
What the others have created here, I must say again, my comrades see, after all, and have seen that best in Russia. We have now been at the helm for nine years. Bolshevism has been at the helm since the year 1917 - hence soon twenty-five years. Anybody can pass a judgment, who now compares this Russia with Germany. What have we created in nine years, what does the German folk look like, and what has one created there? I do not want to talk at all about the capitalist states. They do not care for their unemployed at all, after all. For an American millionaire, an unemployed personally is something that he does not see at all, because he does not enter the neighborhood where they live. Now and then, they indeed make a hunger march to Washington, to the White House or to the capitol, but then they are first dispersed somewhere by the police with rubber clubs and tear gas etc.: nothing but things that are not present in autocratic Germany. We have not applied these means against our folk at all. We manage without rubber clubs and without these things, without tear gas.
In other worlds: we really have had a closed world of opponents against us, and it is obvious that at the moment of the assumption of power, this only escalated. I have tried to introduce a certain foreign policy. You know it already from the period of struggle. I wanted to enter into a close relationship with three lands: with England, with Italy and with Japan.
Every attempt to come to an agreement with England was totally pointless. These here were people who seemed impossible to still be removed from their stupid, crazy ideology, prejudice and obstinacy. That the world had changed fundamentally since the time of their great queen Victoria, these people were not at all aware of this. That, in the final analysis, Germany did not threaten their empire, rather that this Empire could be maintained only if it found a closer connection to Europe, they were not aware of this. Quite the opposite, they fought against Europe at every opportunity. And here, above all, the man, whom I have already mentioned a few times: Churchill. Any attempt to even just approach this man with the idea of an agreement was thwarted by his stubborn: “I want to have a war.” Nothing at all was to be discussed with this man, and around him stood that clique of Duff Cooper - therefore, it is sad, if one just names the names, they are, after all, really such zeroes! It is interesting, after all, how they themselves, if a man comes anywhere, like now Wavell, are immediately thrown out. But that does not matter. They are fragile eggs: wherever they fall, they somehow remain lying again for a time. They have simply been continuously lying in lime for too long - and this damages, seen in centuries, generations, families, also individual human beings. I also do not want to speak of the Jews in the process - they are our old opponents anyway, they have experienced us through the thwarting of their plans, and they rightly hate us, just like we hate them. It is clear to us that this war, after all, could only end with that either the Germanic folks are exterminated or Jewry disappears from Europe. I already pronounced it on September 1, 1939 in the German Reichstag - and I guard myself against premature prophecies -, that this war will not end like the Jews imagine, namely that the European Aryan folks are exterminated, rather that the result of this war will the annihilation of Jewry. For the first time, others will not bleed, rather, for the first time, this time the genuine old Jewish law will be applied: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!
And the farther this struggle spreads, all the more - this may be said to World Jewry - will anti-Semitism spread with this struggle. It will find its nourishment in every prison camp, it will find its nourishment in every family that is enlightened, why, in the final analysis, it had to make its sacrifice. And the hour will come, when the worst world enemy of all time will have again played out his role, at least for a millennium.
With England, this attempt was in vain, what all I also did, how often 1 also extended my hand, whatever I also offered them - to my real deepest chagrin.
I am all the happier, that instead I found with the second sate that relationship, for which we once strove. This is actually no miracle at all, rather it would almost be a miracle, if it had gone differently. For it is already - I said this to a delegation today - no coincidence, if two folks, over the course of hardly a hundred years, have experienced almost the exact same fates. In the previous century: Germany fights for its governmental rebirth, for its governmental unification. And Italy fights for its governmental unification. And for the first time, back then, both sides also once walked together. Then both states part, and both states no longer find their happiness. And now, a revolution comes in both states at almost the same time, similar in ideas, such as is just imaginable at all in two different folks. Both revolutions take almost the same course. Everywhere, major setbacks, but, in the end, victory nonetheless. Both revolutions a program of socialist and national rebirth. Both revolutions carry out this program unerring. Both arouse the hatred of their surrounding world, both revolutions represent folks, which do not find their daily bread on their own soil despite all industriousness. Both folks one day, against their will, face the same opponents, the same international coalition. It began already in 1935, when England suddenly turned against Italy without any cause. Italy had taken nothing at all from England. Simply for the reason: “We do not want that Italy receives - I want to say - life-freedom.” Exactly the same with us: “We do not want that Germany receives its life-freedom.” - What did we take from the English? What did we want to take from England, what from France, what indeed from America? - Nothing at all! How often did I offer them peace. Indeed, what then should I offer them? They were men who simply declared - Mr. Churchill says: “I want to have a war” and with him a certain clique in addition, and behind him, behind this corruptible, drunken subject, the paying forces of international Jewry, and, on the other hand, an old Freemason, who believes only through war to perhaps be able to once more repair his bankrupt economy or at least win time. So both states again face the same enemies, for totally the same reasons. And they are compelled to fight alongside each other, to wage the same fight, bound together for life or death.
And then there is a fourth thing. I also mentioned it today: In both cases, there are men, two men, who came from the folk, who founded revolutions, and who led the states upward. In the last weeks, I have read very much in the few free hours I had about the Italian Fascist revolution, and it seemed to me as if I had before me the history of my own party: So similar, so the same, the same struggle, the same enemies, the same opponents, the same arguments; it is really a unique miracle. And now we fight in the same theaters, Germans in Africa, Italians in the eastern war theater. We fight together, and one should not deceive oneself: This struggle will be waged to the shared victory!
And now the third state as well has finally joined us, with which I have also always wanted for many years to have good relations. You all know this from “Mein Kampf’: Japan!
And the three great have-nots are thereby now united, and we want to see now, who in this struggle are the stronger: those who have nothing to lose or those who have everything to lose and nothing to gain. For what does England want to gain? What does America want to gain? What do they all want to gain? They have so much that they do not know where to start with what they possess: they need to feed few people on a square kilometer, they do not have all the worries that we have. A single bad harvest means for us a national misfortune - the whole world stands at their disposal. They once plundered and exploited and squeezed us for decades, and nonetheless, they could not eliminate their own economic distress. They have raw materials, as much as they want to extract at all, and they do not manage to actually find a reasonable solution for their problems. We will now see to whom Providence gives the victor’s prize in this struggle! To the one who has everything and still wants to take from the one who has almost nothing the last thing, or to the one who defends the last thing he calls his own. And if a British Arch-Bishop prays to God that he should send Bolshevism over Germany and over Europe as punishment, then I can only say: it does not come over Germany, but whether it does not come over England, that is a different question. And then this old sinner and blasphemer can perhaps for once try, whether he can with his prayer banish this British threat itself. We have never done anything to England, France and America. Nonetheless, the declaration of war now ensued in the year 1939. And it has now expanded.
But now, you must really understand me from my whole history, but also correctly. I once pronounced words that foreign lands did not comprehend at all. I said: ”If a war is really inevitable, then I prefer to wage it; not because I thirst for this glory - quite the opposite: I gladly renounce any glory here, this is not glory at all in my eyes. My glory, if Providence preserves my life, will, after all, one day consist of the great works of peace, which I still plan to create! But because I believed that, if Providence has ordained it so, that this struggle must be fought out according to the unfathomable will of this Providence, then, however, I can only ask Providence that it entrusts me with the burden of this struggle, that it burdens it upon me. I want to bear it and want to shun no responsibility. In every hour in which a distress comes, I want to take this burden upon myself. I wish to beat every responsibility, just like I have previously carried it. I have the greatest authority in this folk. It knows me, it knows the endless plans I had in these years before the war. It sees everywhere testaments of the beginning of this work, in part, also the documents of completion. I know that this folk trusts me. I am so happy to know that. But the German folk may also be convinced of one thing: a year 1918, as long as I live, will never happen! It will never lower this flag!
I am happy that so many allies have joined our soldiers: In the south, Italy, in the far north, Finland, and between now all the other nations, which also send their sons here toward the east: Whether they are Romanians or Hungarians, Slovaks or Croats, Spaniards, Belgians, yes, even Frenchmen have gathered at this place...and additionally, the volunteers of our Germanic states from the north and from the west. It is already today a war of Europe. And, finally, in the east, as new ally, which has already exorcised from a master his ridiculous slogans: Japan.
About the war itself, I want to say little. Here, history already speaks: 1939 elimination of Poland, 1940 Norway and France and England, the Netherlands and Belgium, 1941 first the Balkans and then finally the state, of which Mister Cripps just a few days ago, in his talkativeness, assured us that it had for years already prepared itself for the conflict with Germany. I knew that. At the moment when it became clear to me that a crooked game was being played here, at the moment when I learned that Mr. Churchill, in his secret sessions, already referred to this new ally, at the hour when Molotov departed here in Berlin, and indeed, departed under the auspices of a failed agreement - for he demanded things, which I could not approve -, at the same moment, it was clear to me that this conflict had to come.
And here, too, I am thankful to Providence that it has put me at the top of the Reich, so that the other would not be granted the fourteen days or three weeks time to strike the first blow. For if there must be fighting, then I stand on the standpoint that the first blow is often the decisive one.
And we have experienced this in East Asia as well. We can only congratulate Japan that, instead of still haggling with this lying subject, it has abruptly struck.
And now, since this June 22nd, our soldiers fight in the east a war, which will one day go down into history as our folk’s heroic song. On the sea, our naval forces and our U-boats, which now thwart what Roosevelt had intended. He had the intention, through ever new declarations of American sovereign territory, to gradually drive the German U-boat arm out of the ocean through simple acts and to lead them to a very small path, which could have then been protected by the British naval forces.
And this, my folk comrades, was also the reason for the reduction of the figures of sinkings, not, say, the insufficient number or declining number of U-boats. Quite the opposite! It has increased tremendously. Also not, say, the insufficient courage of our crews, also not the impossibility to attack at all, rather exclusively this attempt, along the path of declarations, to restrict us in our freedom of action.
You will understand that for me it was always a self-control to weigh whether one should now put an end to this lie and deception, or for the sake of dear peace to nonetheless let a new limitation be imposed upon oneself. Japan’s attack has finally freed us of this distress. Now they will be able to form convoys on all the world’s oceans, and now they will see how our U-boats work. And whatever plans they may have and whatever they may look like, we are equipped for everything, from the north to the south, from the desert to the east. And they may also be clear about one thing. I have already said this once: Today they encounter a different Germany than the Germany of once, they now again encounter a Frederician one. We will fight where we stand, surrender not a foot without a fight. And when we give up a foot, immediately advance again. And we are so happy, after all, to know since yesterday that our Senior General Rommel, with his brave Italian and German panzer and motorized men, at the moment when they believed they had defeated him, immediately turned around again and struck back again. And they will experience this for so long until this war will have ended with our victory.
To both these arms, comes as third our Luftwaffe. Its glory is an immortal one. What it has performed in actions in the arctic cold in the far north, in the east or in the heart of the desert or in the west: It is everywhere the same thing: a heroism, which one cannot honor at all with decorations.
These three arms, they now encompass everything that belongs to them, for I cannot emphasize an individual man. Only one must I stress again and again: It is this our infantry. In the end, it performs the most.
And behind these arms stands a gigantic transport organization with tens of thousands and tens of thousands of drivers and railroad-men, and they all, they all risk themselves and will master even the hardest tasks, for this is self-evident: The shift from the offensive war to the defense in the east was not easy. Not the Russian forces the defense on us, rather it was only minus 38 and 40 and 42 and, in part, 45 degrees cold. And in this cold, a troop, which, for its part, is not accustomed to it, can as little fight as it can fight in the scorching heat of the desert in certain months. Only, at this moment, when the difficult shift was necessary, I again viewed it as my task to take the responsibility for it as well upon my shoulders. I wanted to thereby draw even closer to my soldiers, and at this point, insofar as they hear it today on those icy fronts, I want to just assure them: I know what they perform, but I also know that the hardest lies behind us. Today is January 30th. The winter was this eastern opponent’s greatest hope. This hope will not be fulfilled for him. In four months, we had advanced almost to Moscow and Leningrad. Four months of winter in the north are now past. He has advanced a few kilometers at a few points and has sacrificed hecatombs of blood and human life there. He may be indifferent to that. But in a few weeks, in the south, the winter will already break, and then spring will again draw toward the north, the ice will melt, and then the hour will come when the ground becomes hard and firm again, and when the German musketeer with his equipment can again operate against him and when new weapons from the homeland will flow in, and when we will strike again and want to avenge those who have now fallen victim solely to this frost. For I can say this to them, the soldier up front, he has the feeling of a towering superiority over the Russian. To compare him with them, would be an insult. The decisive thing is only that this shift from offense to defense succeeded, and I may say: it has succeeded. These fronts, they stand, and where so individual Russians break through, and they believe they also occupy towns somewhere, they are not towns, they are only piles of ruins. What does this mean compared to what we have occupied, what we have put in order and what we will put in order in the coming spring and from spring on.
For behind this front stands today a German homeland worthy of it. Recently, in view of the knowledge that what had been prepared could not by a long shot suffice against the frost, I directed an appeal to the German folk. I wanted to myself express gratitude to it, to this folk. This appeal was also a vote. If the others talk of democracy: This is the true democracy. It has shown itself in these days. And I know what so many little people have given in the process, but this time also many, many, many, for whom it had become hard perhaps or earlier would have seemed impossible to part from a precious fur. They donated it today nonetheless in the realization that the smallest musketeer is worth more than the most expensive fur. And I have taken care that, in the process, it does not go like in the World War, when the homeland delivered copper and a copper supply firm paid out 2260% dividends, when the homeland had to deliver other things, leather, or got no leather, and the leather processing firm paid out 2700% dividends. Whoever enriches himself from this in the Third Reich, he dies! For I do not know whether there is not a little poor musketeer whom perhaps a wool glove could save a hand, or who perhaps could be protected against frostbite by a warm vest, which somebody at home takes away from him. I will defend the soldier’s interests here, and I know that the whole German folk stands behind me in the process.
So I can give you only one thing as assurance on this January 30th: How this year will end, I do not know. Whether the war finds its end in it, I do not know. But I know one thing: Wherever the opponent may appear, we will strike him again in this year, just like previously! It will again be a year of great victories. And just as I earlier held the flag high at every time, so will I really hold it high now, for in what different situation do I find myself today!
My German folk comrades! My soldiers! We have behind us a glorious history, and one so gladly draws comparisons with this history. In this history, German heroes have often fought in apparently hopeless inferiority. But, above all, we may draw no comparison at all with the Frederician era. For that, we have no right. We have the strongest army in the world. We have the strongest Luftwaffe in the world. Frederick the Great had to fight against a superior force, which was downright crushing. When he waged the First Silesian War, 2.7 million Prussians faced a state back then of still 15 million. When he was forced to wage the third in seven years, there stood 3.7 or 3.8 million Prussians against around 50 or 54 others. A man with iron will held out through all setbacks and never despaired of his success, and if he wanted to despair, again and again pulled himself together, and then took the flag in his strong hand. What do we want to say of it today? We have an opponent before us, who may be numerically superior to us. But in the spring, we will be numerically at least equal to him. But we will again beat him in terms of weapons. Then our time comes again. And it will be so everywhere. Above all, however: We have allies today. It is also no longer the World War era. What Japan alone performs here in the east, is totally incalculable for us. No other path remains for us than the path of struggle and the path of success. It may be difficult, or it may be easy - it is never harder that our ancestors’ battles were. It will hence also not be easier. And we may not expect that it should be easier than those battles were. But we thereby so properly fulfill all the sacrifices, which our soldiers make. Who can comprehend this more than I, who was I myself once a soldier. Today as well, I feel myself as the Reich’s first musketeer. In the period when I myself was only a musketeer, I fulfilled my duty. I fulfill it today exactly as unerringly. But I understand all the suffering of my comrades, know everything that is around them. I therefore cannot and therefore do not want to use any slogan. I can tell them only one thing, the homeland really surmises what they have had to go through. The homeland really surmises what it means to lie in the snow and in the ice at minus 35, 38, 40, 42 degrees cold and to defend this homeland. But because the homeland knows this, it also wants to do everything that it can do in order to lighten this lot for you. It wants to work, and it will work! And I must ask it: German folk comrades at home, work, produce weapons and produce more ammunition! You thereby spare many and numerous comrades up front their lives.
Workers, produce and work on our means of transport so that all this gets to the front. The front, it will then stand, it will fulfill its duty, the German homeland can be unconcerned there. And the prayer of this devil priest, who wishes that Europe be punished by Bolshevism, will not go into fulfillment, rather the prayer will find go into fulfillment:
Lord, give us the strength, that we preserve for ourselves freedom, for our folk, for our children and for our children’s children, not only for us Germans, rather also for Europe’s other folks. For it is not a war, which we all wage this time only for our German folk alone, it is a war for all of Europe, and hence really for all of mankind.
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