Adolf Hitler – Address to the Members of the International Olympic Committee, 1 August 1936

 

Berlin, Reich Chancellery, August 1, 1936

 

Esteemed Mr. President, Gentlemen of the International Olympic Committee and the Organization Committee! It is a pleasure for me to welcome you personally and on behalf of the German Volk on this, the day marking the opening of the Olympic Games and to have an opportunity to thank you, esteemed Mr. President, for the kind remarks you have addressed to me.

 

My thanks also include the International Olympic Committee for having chosen the capital of the German Reich as the site of the Eleventh Olympics of the modern cycle, thus affording Germany the opportunity to make its contribution to the immortal memory of the Olympic Games. It was with enthusiasm and joy that Germany applied itself to the task of preparing this years’ competitions in a framework which attempts to do justice to the grand idea and traditions of the Olympic Games, and it hopes to have thus contributed toward promoting the ideal of strengthening the bonds between the peoples, the ideal upon which these competitive Games are based.

 

You, gentlemen of the German Organization Committee, I may thank for the devoted and careful work you have put into the preparation of these Games.

 

I am confident in my hope that success will reward you for your efforts.

 

The basic principles which are once more evidenced to the world in the Olympic Games are ones of very ancient origin. They have been passed down from that old place of worship where the Games were celebrated for more than a thousand years as an expression of religious sentiment and a demonstration of the competitive spirit of the Greek people. German scholars unearthed this honorable site in the years 1875-81 in accordance with agreements concluded at that time with the Greek government: hence the world was given a more detailed impression of the arena of this national shrine of the Hellenes and of the type and structure of the games. The excavation was not fully completed at that time.

 

I have now decided, as a lasting memory of the Eleventh Olympics in Berlin, to resume and complete the excavation work begun in 1875 at the site of the Olympic festivities and sports events.166 I may extend my thanks to the Royal Greek Government for granting its enthusiastic consent to this task. Thus a consecrated site from ancient culture is returned to today’s civilization. It is my hope that this will help to keep the memory of the Olympic Games of 1936 alive for all time to come.

 

That they may be a wonderful success is my one sincere desire and the one we all share.

Adolf Hitler – Speech in Weimar, 3 July 1936

July 3, 1936

My dear Gauleiter Sauckel, dear Minister-President Marschler!

I thank you for your welcome. You know best how deeply I am moved by being able to dwell these few days within the walls of the old city. It is a wonderful reunion for all of us, a reunion with our comrades in arms, with the majority of those who marched into Weimar back then. Some have passed away; others have grown gray in the meantime, and many are already white. Yet one thing has remained the same, the memory and the zealous resolve to preserve for all time to come the precepts and principles that guided us then! This resolve to dedicate ourselves to the old principles today, too, at a time when, through a miracle of fate, we have power in Germany, in order to assign them to those who will come after us. Ten years of history can be subject to different interpretations. The ten years we have left behind us are, I believe, truly worldshattering years. Only posterity will be in a position to fully gauge the extent of the foundations laid in the course of these years.

Back then, in the year 1926, we launched an offensive against this city, an offensive against this Land and thus an offensive against Germany. Today, barely ten years later, we have already scored the consummate victory. The faith which filled several hundreds of thousands at that time has today become the faith of the entire German Volk! We were not simply given this success; these ten years have been years of countless battles and countless sacrifices. What do they know, the ones who did not become aware of our Movement until after the victory; what do they know about the sacrifices and battles the preceding years cost us? How many troubles we were forced to bear; how much faith was required in order to ultimately turn this small Movement into the ruling power in Germany? What do they know about how much obedience had to be demanded-how much strict obedience, although this subservience all too frequently seemed to contradict every stirring of emotion, indeed even reason itself? How often was it necessary for us in these ten years to admonish our young fighters never to lose their nerve, never to act unwisely, but always-trusting in the future-to allow time to ripen on its own! May today’s youth learn a lesson from this sacrifice and this obedience for themselves and for the German future.

All of this was attainable only by virtue of the boundless loyalty and devotion of my fellow fighters. For this I would like to express to you my special thanks here and now: to you, my dear Gauleiter, who-I am certain- is one of my most loyal followers; to you, my Party comrades in the government; to all of you who have gathered here from elsewhere in Germany as leaders of the individual organizations; and not least to all of those countless lesser Party comrades, the known and the nameless, who remained steadfast in the years in which the seductive power of the other side was so great and the probability of victory so small. I would like to express my thanks to you for having stood by the Movement so loyally and decently throughout those years, that you did not turn your back on it as sometimes seemed the case, as though our mission might not be accomplished after all- but instead more zealously than ever vowed to support me and zealously stood up in my defense. Where would we have ended up had this devotion been demonstrated only in times of success? What has enabled our Movement to become so great has not been loyalty and devotion after victories and successes, but loyalty above all in the wake of our defeats. When we were faring badly, when good fortune seemed to have deserted us entirely, it was then more than ever that these hundreds of thousands of little people came to stand behind the Movement and, I may say, in front of me. Only thus were we able to wage this battle, so unique in German history, through to the end and prevail as victors.

And just as we have achieved our great goal of winning power in Germany and have been able to use this power to accomplish successful work for Germany for the past three-and-a-half years thanks to these virtues, in placing our allegiance in these same principles in the future as well, we will always find our way onwards.

May the German nation never forget that the firmness of a Volk is put to the test not when its leadership can demonstrate visible proof of progress, but in its hours of ostensible failure. As long as a leadership is blessed by good fortune, any weakling can declare his allegiance to it. Only in those hours in which good fortune seems to have vanished do the people who are truly valuable come through. Only then does loyalty count! May the German Volk maintain these virtues in future! With these old precepts, the principles of our Movement, it will march into a great future! Today, in addition to my thanks, I have but one request to the Almighty: that He may bless our Volk in our Movement. It is my most sacred conviction that, as long as the National Socialist Movement stands firm and strong in Germany, Germany will be strong and firm! If this Movement were ever to falter, Germany would falter along with it.

Ten years of struggle lie behind us. Providence has enabled us to score achievements for our Volk in the area of labor and above all to preserve the peace for it. I believe that today we can send no other wish to that same Providence than that this peace be granted our Volk in future as well. But let us always write the word “honor” before peace, and let us always understand this peace to mean liberty! Let us hold that, without this honor and without this liberty, there can be no peace. That is something our Volk knows, and something the world should know, too. I believe that this explicitness is best able to help eliminate false ideas, false hopes, and false opinions and thus promote the cause of genuine peace.

Therefore I may once again thank you, my dear Gauleiter and my dear Minister-President, for your welcome. It is my wish that these days may become for all the Party comrades who are taking part in them for the second time-and even for the first-days of contemplation, of contemplating the magnitude of the Fate we serve!

Adolf Hitler – Proclamation to the German Folk, 22 June 1941

 

German folk!

 

National Socialists!

 

Distressed by heavy cares, condemned to months of silence, the hour has now come in which I can finally speak openly.

 

When the German Reich received the English declaration of war on September 3, 1939, the British attempt repeated itself again to thwart the beginning of a consolidation and hence ascent of Europe through the fight against the continent’s presently strongest power.

 

So did England once ruin Spain in many wars.

 

So did it wage its wars against Holland.

 

So did it later, with the help of all of Europe, combat France.

 

And so began, around the turn of the century, the encirclement of Germany back then and in the year 1914 the World War.

 

Only due to its internal disunity did Germany succumb in the year 1918. The consequences were terrible. After one first hypocritically declared to have fought solely against the Kaiser and his regime, one began with the disarming of the German army and with the systematic destruction of the German Reich. While the prophecies of a French statesman that there were 20 million people too many in Germany, this means, had to be eliminated through hunger, illnesses and emigration, apparently fulfilled themselves literally, the National Socialist movement began to initiate its unification work of the German folk and thus the Reich’s resurrection.

 

This new rise by our folk out of distress, misery and shameful disrespect stood under the sign of a purely internal rebirth. Especially England was not touched or even threatened by it.

 

Nonetheless, the new, hate-filled encirclement policy against Germany momentarily set in again. Internally and externally, it came to that plot, known to us, between Jews and democrats, Bolsheviks and reactionaries, with the sole goals to prevent the erection of a new folk state, to plunge the Reich anew into impotence and misery.

 

Aside from us, the hatred of this international world conspiracy struck those folks, which, likewise overlooked by good fortune, were forced to earn their daily bread in the most difficult struggle for existence. Above all, Italy and Japan were contested, yes, literally forbidden their share in the goods of this world. The union of these nations was hence just an act of selfdefense against the egotistic world coalition of wealth and power threatening them.

 

Just that already in 1936, Churchill, according to the testimony of the American General Wood before a committee of the American House of Representatives, declared that Germany was again becoming too powerful and hence had to be destroyed.

 

In the summer of 1939, the time seemed to England to have come to be able to begin anew the intended destruction with the repetition of an extensive encirclement policy against Germany. The system of the campaign of lies initiated for this purpose consisted of declaring other folks threatened, first ensnaring them with English guarantees and assistance promises and then, like before the World War, having them march against Germany.

 

So England managed, from May to August 1939, to fling into the world the claim that Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Fin-land, Bessarabia as well as the Ukraine were directly threatened by Germany. A portion of these states let themselves to be thereby misguided to accept with these claims the offered guarantee promises and hence joined the new encirclement front against Germany.

 

Under these circumstances, I believed I could take responsibility before my conscience and before the history of the German folk to assure not only these lands and their government of the untruthfulness of the presented British claims, rather, beyond that, to calm the strongest power in the east, especially through solemn declarations, about the limits of our interests.

 

National Socialists!

 

You probably all once felt how this step was a bitter and difficult one for me. The German folk have never harbored hostile feelings toward Russia’s ethnic groups. Just that for over two decades, the Jewish-Bolshevik leadership has endeavored from Moscow to put not only Germany, rather all of Europe, on fire. Not Germany has ever tried to bring its National Socialist worldview to Russia, rather the Jewish-Bolshevik rulers in Moscow have incessantly undertaken to force their rule upon ours and the other European folks, and this not only intellectually, rather, above all, also in terms of military power.

 

The consequences of the activity of this regime, however, were in all lands only chaos, misery and hunger.

 

Conversely, I have endeavored for two decades, with a minimum of intervention and without any destruction of our production, to come to a social order in Germany that not only eliminates unemployment, rather also lets the profit of work flow increasingly to the working people themselves.

 

The successes of this policy of the economic and social new order of our folk, which, in the systematic overcoming of professional and class contradictions, as final goal strives for a genuine folk community, are unique in the whole world.

 

It was hence a difficult decision for me, in August 1939, to send my minister to Moscow in order to try there to work against the British encirclement policy against Germany. I did it only out of an awareness of responsibility toward the German folk, above all, however, in the hope to, in the end, nonetheless come to a permanent relaxation and to perhaps be able to reduce the sacrifices otherwise demanded from us.

 

In that Germany now solemnly assured in Moscow the listed regions and lands - aside from Lithuania - as lying outside all German political interests, an additional special agreement was made for the event that England should manage to actually incite Poland into war against Germany. But here as well, a limitation of German claims took place, which stood in no ratio to the accomplishments of German arms.

 

National Socialists!

 

The consequences of this treaty, wished for by me myself and concluded in the interest of the German folk, were very difficult, especially for the Germans living in the affected lands.

 

Far more than half a million German folk comrades - all small peasants, tradesmen and workers - were forced almost overnight to leave their previous homeland in order to escape a new regime that initially threatened them with boundless misery, sooner or later, however, with total extermination.

 

Nonetheless, thousands of Germans disappeared! It was impossible to ever discover their fate or even their location. Among them are more than 160 men of German Reich citizenship alone.

 

1 was silent about all this; because I had to be silent! For it was my wish, after all, to bring about a final relaxation and, if possible, a permanent settlement with this state.

 

Already during our advance in Poland, however, the Soviet rulers suddenly claimed, against the treaty, Lithuania as well.

 

The German Reich has never had the intention to occupy Lithuania and also not only never put such a proposal to the Lithuanian government, rather, quite the opposite, rejected the request by the Lithuanian government back then to send German troops to Lithuania in this sense as not corresponding to the goals of German policy.

 

Nonetheless, I submitted to this new Russian demand as well. But it was only the beginning of continuous new extortion, which has since then always repeated itself...

 

The victory in Poland, which had been won exclusively by German troops, caused me to direct a peace offer to the western powers anew. It fell to rejection by the international and Jewish war agitators.

 

The reason for this rejection, however, was that, already back then, England still had the hope to be able to mobilize a European coalition against Germany with the inclusion of the Balkans and of Soviet-Russia.

 

So one decided in London to send Mister Cripps to Moscow as ambassador. He received the clear assignment under all circumstances to resume anew the relations between England and Soviet Russia and to develop them in the English sense. The English press reported about the progress of this mission as long as tactical reasons did not cause it to be silent.

 

In the autumn of 1939 and spring of 1940, the first consequences also actually already showed themselves. While Russia prepared to militarily subjugate not only Finland, rather also the Baltic states, it suddenly based this process with the equally deceitful as ridiculous claim that it had to protect the lands against a foreign threat and preempt it. But only Germany could be meant by that. For another power could neither penetrate into the Baltic Sea region nor, say, wage war there. Nonetheless, I had to remain silent. But the rulers in the Kremlin immediately went farther.

 

While Germany in the spring of 1940, in the sense of the so-called friendship pact, pulled its combat forces far back from the eastern border, yes, to a large extent totally denuded these regions of German troops, the assembly of Russian force began already in this period to an extent that could only be viewed as an intentional threat against Germany.

 

According to Molotov’s personally made statement back then, already in the spring of 1940, there were 22 Russian divisions in the Baltic states alone.

 

Since the Russian government itself always claimed that it had been called by the populace there, the purpose of its presence there could only be a demonstration against Germany.

 

While our soldiers now, from May 10, 1940 onward, had broken French-British power in the west, the Russian assembly on our eastern front was continued in a gradually ever more threatening magnitude.

 

From August 1940 onward, I hence believed, in the interest of the Reich, to no longer be able to be responsible for leaving our already so often devastated eastern provinces unprotected against his mighty assembly of forces of Bolshevik divisions.

 

What the British-Soviet Russian cooperation intended, thereby set in, however, namely: the binding of such strong German forces in the east, that, especially in the air, the German leadership could no longer be responsible for a radical ending of the war in the west.

 

But this corresponded not only to the goal of British, rather also of Soviet Russian, policy. For both England as well as Soviet Russia have the intention to make this war last as long as possible in order to weaken all of Europe and to put it into ever greater impotence.

 

Russia’s ominous attack against Romania was likewise supposed, in the final analysis, to only serve the task of getting hands on, or, under circumstances, at least destroying, an important basis of not only German economic life, rather that of all of Europe.

 

But precisely the German Reich has endeavored since the year 1933 with infinite patience to win the southeastern European states as trade partners. We hence also possessed the greatest interest in their governmental consolidation and order. Russia’s invasion into Romania, the Greek tie to England threatened to transform these regions as well in the shortest time into a general theater of war.

 

Contrary to our principles and practices, on the urgent request of the Romanian government of back then, itself at fault for this development, for the sake of peace, I gave it the advice to give in to the Soviet Russian extortion and cede Bessarabia.

 

But the Roman government believed it could present this to its own folk only under the condition that Germany and Italy, as compensation for this, would at least give the guarantee that Romania’s still remaining territory would no longer be touched. I did this with a heavy heart, Above all, already because: If the German Reich gives a guarantee, this means that it also lives up to it. We are neither Englishmen nor Jews.

 

So I believed, still at the last hour, to have served the peace in this region, even though under the acceptance of a heavy obligation of ours. But in order to finally solve these problems and likewise obtain clarity about the Russian position on the Reich as well as under the pressure of the every escalating mobilization on our eastern order, I invited Mr. Molotov to come to Berlin.

 

The Soviet foreign minister now demanded Germany’s clarification or consent in the following four questions.

 

Molotov’s first question:

 

Should the German guarantee for Romania, in the event of an attack by Soviet Russia against Romania, also be directed against Soviet Russia?

 

My reply:

 

The German guarantee is a general one and one that unconditionally binds us. But Russia has never told us that, outside of Bessarabia, it still has any other interests at all in Romania. Already the occupation of Northern Bukowina was a violation of the assurance. I hence did not believe that Russia could now suddenly have more far-ranging intentions against Romania.

 

Molotov’s second question:

 

Russia feels itself threatened anew by Finland, Russia is determined not to tolerate this. Is Germany willing to give Finland no assistance whatsoever and, above all, to immediately withdraw the German troops marching through to Kirkenes as relief?

 

My reply:

 

Germany, now as well as before, has no political interests in Finland. A new war by Russia against the small Finnish folk, however, could no longer be viewed by the German Reich government as bearable, all the more so, as we could never believe in a threat against Russia by Finland. But we also do not want at all that a war region could again emerge in the Baltic Sea.

 

Molotov’s third question:

 

Is Germany willing to agree that Soviet Russian, for its part, give Bulgaria a guarantee and for this purpose sends Soviet Russian troops to Bulgaria, whereby he - Molotov - wants to declare that they do not have the intention, for example, to eliminate the king for this reason.

 

My reply:

 

Bulgaria is a sovereign state and I do not know that, similar to how Romania asked Germany, Bulgaria had ever asked Soviet Russia for a guarantee at all. I would have to discuss this with my allies.

 

Molotov’s fourth question:

 

Soviet Russia needs under all circumstances free passage through the Dardanelles and demands as well for its protection the occupation of a few important strong points on the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. Does Germany agree to this or not?

 

My reply:

 

Germany is willing to give its consent at any time to a change of the Statute of Montreux in favor of the Black Sea states. Germany is not willing to agree to the seizure of Russian strong points on the straits.

 

National Socialists!

 

I have taken that stance here, which I could alone take as responsible leader of the German Reich, but also as responsible representative of European culture and civilization.

 

The result was an escalation of Soviet Russian activity directed against the Reich, above all, however, the immediate beginning of the inner hollowing out of the new Romanian state and the attempt, through propaganda, to eliminate the Bulgarian government.

 

With the help of confused, immature heads in the Romanian Legion, it was possible to instigate in Romania a coup d’état, whose goal it was to overthrow chief of state General Antonescu, produce chaos in the land, in order, through the elimination of a legal authority, to remove the prerequisite for the taking effect of the German guarantee promise.

 

Nonetheless, I still believed it best to continue my silence.

 

Immediately after the failure of this enterprise, another reinforcement of Russian troop concentrations on the German eastern border took place. Tank formations and paratroopers were moved in ever increasing number into an ominous proximity to the German border. The German Wehrmacht and the German homeland know that, still up to a new weeks ago, there was not a single German panzer or motorized division on our eastern border.

 

But if final proof were still required for the, despite all diversion and camouflage, meanwhile arisen coalition between England and Soviet Russia, then the Yugoslavian conflict provided it. While I endeavored to undertake a final attempt for the Balkan’s pacification and, in understanding cooperation with Il Duce, invited Yugoslavia to join the Axis Pact, England and Soviet Russia, in joint work, organized that coup d’état, which in one night eliminated the government back then ready for agreement.

 

For the German folk can today be informed: the Serbian coup d’état against Germany took place not only, say, under English, rather essentially under Soviet Russian flag. Since we kept silent about this as well, the Soviet Russian leadership, however, went still another step farther. It organized not only the revolt, a few days later it concluded with the new creatures subservient to it the known friendship treaty, which was designed to strengthen the Serbs in their will for resistance against the Balkan’s pacification and to incite them against Germany. And this was no Platonic intention.

 

Moscow demanded the mobilization of the Serbian army.

 

Since even now I still believed it better not to talk, the Kremlin’s rulers went still another step farther:

 

The German Reich government possesses today the documents from which it is proven that Russia, in order to finally bring Serbia into the fight, gave the assurance to deliver via Salonika weapons, airplanes, ammunition and other war material against Germany.

 

And this happened almost at the same moment, when I myself still gave to the Japanese Foreign Minster Dr. Matsoka the advice to bring about a relaxation with Russia, always in the hope to thereby serve peace.

 

Only the swift breakthrough by our incomparable divisions to Skoplje as well as the capture of Salonika itself thwarted the intentions of this Soviet Russian-Anglo-Saxon plot. The Serbian pilot officers, however, fled to Russia and were immediately taken in there as allies.

 

The victory by the Axis powers in the Balkans alone has initially thwarted the plan to entangle Germany this summer in months of fighting in the southeast and meanwhile complete ever more the assembly of Soviet Russian armies, to strengthen their war readiness, and then, together with England and supported by the hoped for American deliveries, to be able to suffocate and crush the German Reich and Italy.

 

Moscow has thereby not only broken the agreements of our friendship pact, rather betrayed them in a wretched manner!

 

And all this, while the Kremlin’s rulers, down to the last minute, just like in the case of Finland or Romania, feigned peace and friendship and composed apparently harmless denials.

 

But just as I was previously compelled by circumstances to again and again remain silent, so the moment has now nonetheless come, when continued looking on would not only be a sin of omission, rather a crime against the German folk, yes, against all of Europe.

 

Today around 100 Russian divisions stand on our border. For weeks, constant violations of this border have been occurring, not by us, rather likewise in the far north, as well as in Romania. Russian fliers have fun to simply overlook our border unconcerned, probably in order to thereby prove to us that they already feel themselves the masters of these regions.

 

In the night of June 17/18th, Russian patrols again probed into German Reich territory and could be driven back only after a prolonged firefight.

 

But now the hour has thereby come in which it becomes necessary to confront this plot by the Jewish-Anglo-Saxon war agitators and the equally Jewish rulers of the Bolshevik Moscow central.

 

German folk!

 

At this moment, an assembly takes place, which in expanse and extent is the greatest that the world has previously seen. In union with Finnish comrades, the warriors of the victor of Narvik stand on the Arctic Ocean. German divisions under the command of the conqueror of Norway, with the Finnish freedom heroes under their marshal, jointly protect Finnish soil. The formations of the German eastern front stretch from East Prussia to the Carpathians. On the banks of the Pruth, on the lower course of the Danube to the shores of the Black Sea, German and Romanian soldiers unite under chief of state Antonescu.

 

The task of this front is hence no longer the protection of individual lands, rather Europe’s security and hence the salvation all.

 

I have hence decided today to again put the fate and the future of the German Reich and of our folk into the hands of our soldiers.

 

May the Lord help us precisely in this struggle!

 

Berlin, June 22, 1941

Adolf Hitler

85 Years Since the German and European Crusade Against the Bolshevism!

The Führer to the German Folk - June 22, 1941

 

German folk!

 

National Socialists!

 

Distressed by heavy cares, condemned to months of silence, the hour has now come in which I can finally speak openly.

 

When the German Reich received the English declaration of war on September 3, 1939, the British attempt repeated itself again to thwart the beginning of a consolidation and hence ascent of Europe through the fight against the continent’s presently strongest power.

 

So did England once ruin Spain in many wars.

 

So did it wage its wars against Holland.

 

So did it later, with the help of all of Europe, combat France.

 

And so began, around the turn of the century, the encirclement of Germany back then and in the year 1914 the World War.

 

Only due to its internal disunity did Germany succumb in the year 1918. The consequences were terrible. After one first hypocritically declared to have fought solely against the Kaiser and his regime, one began with the disarming of the German army and with the systematic destruction of the German Reich. While the prophecies of a French statesman that there were 20 million people too many in Germany, this means, had to be eliminated through hunger, illnesses and emigration, apparently fulfilled themselves literally, the National Socialist movement began to initiate its unification work of the German folk and thus the Reich’s resurrection.

 

This new rise by our folk out of distress, misery and shameful disrespect stood under the sign of a purely internal rebirth. Especially England was not touched or even threatened by it.

 

Nonetheless, the new, hate-filled encirclement policy against Germany momentarily set in again. Internally and externally, it came to that plot, known to us, between Jews and democrats, Bolsheviks and reactionaries, with the sole goals to prevent the erection of a new folk state, to plunge the Reich anew into impotence and misery.

 

Aside from us, the hatred of this international world conspiracy struck those folks, which, likewise overlooked by good fortune, were forced to earn their daily bread in the most difficult struggle for existence. Above all, Italy and Japan were contested, yes, literally forbidden their share in the goods of this world. The union of these nations was hence just an act of selfdefense against the egotistic world coalition of wealth and power threatening them.

 

Just that already in 1936, Churchill, according to the testimony of the American General Wood before a committee of the American House of Representatives, declared that Germany was again becoming too powerful and hence had to be destroyed.

 

In the summer of 1939, the time seemed to England to have come to be able to begin anew the intended destruction with the repetition of an extensive encirclement policy against Germany. The system of the campaign of lies initiated for this purpose consisted of declaring other folks threatened, first ensnaring them with English guarantees and assistance promises and then, like before the World War, having them march against Germany.

 

So England managed, from May to August 1939, to fling into the world the claim that Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Fin-land, Bessarabia as well as the Ukraine were directly threatened by Germany. A portion of these states let themselves to be thereby misguided to accept with these claims the offered guarantee promises and hence joined the new encirclement front against Germany.

 

Under these circumstances, I believed I could take responsibility before my conscience and before the history of the German folk to assure not only these lands and their government of the untruthfulness of the presented British claims, rather, beyond that, to calm the strongest power in the east, especially through solemn declarations, about the limits of our interests.

 

National Socialists!

 

You probably all once felt how this step was a bitter and difficult one for me. The German folk have never harbored hostile feelings toward Russia’s ethnic groups. Just that for over two decades, the Jewish-Bolshevik leadership has endeavored from Moscow to put not only Germany, rather all of Europe, on fire. Not Germany has ever tried to bring its National Socialist worldview to Russia, rather the Jewish-Bolshevik rulers in Moscow have incessantly undertaken to force their rule upon ours and the other European folks, and this not only intellectually, rather, above all, also in terms of military power.

 

The consequences of the activity of this regime, however, were in all lands only chaos, misery and hunger.

 

Conversely, I have endeavored for two decades, with a minimum of intervention and without any destruction of our production, to come to a social order in Germany that not only eliminates unemployment, rather also lets the profit of work flow increasingly to the working people themselves.

 

The successes of this policy of the economic and social new order of our folk, which, in the systematic overcoming of professional and class contradictions, as final goal strives for a genuine folk community, are unique in the whole world.

 

It was hence a difficult decision for me, in August 1939, to send my minister to Moscow in order to try there to work against the British encirclement policy against Germany. I did it only out of an awareness of responsibility toward the German folk, above all, however, in the hope to, in the end, nonetheless come to a permanent relaxation and to perhaps be able to reduce the sacrifices otherwise demanded from us.

 

In that Germany now solemnly assured in Moscow the listed regions and lands - aside from Lithuania - as lying outside all German political interests, an additional special agreement was made for the event that England should manage to actually incite Poland into war against Germany. But here as well, a limitation of German claims took place, which stood in no ratio to the accomplishments of German arms.

 

National Socialists!

 

The consequences of this treaty, wished for by me myself and concluded in the interest of the German folk, were very difficult, especially for the Germans living in the affected lands.

 

Far more than half a million German folk comrades - all small peasants, tradesmen and workers - were forced almost overnight to leave their previous homeland in order to escape a new regime that initially threatened them with boundless misery, sooner or later, however, with total extermination.

 

Nonetheless, thousands of Germans disappeared! It was impossible to ever discover their fate or even their location. Among them are more than 160 men of German Reich citizenship alone.

 

1 was silent about all this; because I had to be silent! For it was my wish, after all, to bring about a final relaxation and, if possible, a permanent settlement with this state.

 

Already during our advance in Poland, however, the Soviet rulers suddenly claimed, against the treaty, Lithuania as well.

 

The German Reich has never had the intention to occupy Lithuania and also not only never put such a proposal to the Lithuanian government, rather, quite the opposite, rejected the request by the Lithuanian government back then to send German troops to Lithuania in this sense as not corresponding to the goals of German policy.

 

Nonetheless, I submitted to this new Russian demand as well. But it was only the beginning of continuous new extortion, which has since then always repeated itself...

 

The victory in Poland, which had been won exclusively by German troops, caused me to direct a peace offer to the western powers anew. It fell to rejection by the international and Jewish war agitators.

 

The reason for this rejection, however, was that, already back then, England still had the hope to be able to mobilize a European coalition against Germany with the inclusion of the Balkans and of Soviet-Russia.

 

So one decided in London to send Mister Cripps to Moscow as ambassador. He received the clear assignment under all circumstances to resume anew the relations between England and Soviet Russia and to develop them in the English sense. The English press reported about the progress of this mission as long as tactical reasons did not cause it to be silent.

 

In the autumn of 1939 and spring of 1940, the first consequences also actually already showed themselves. While Russia prepared to militarily subjugate not only Finland, rather also the Baltic states, it suddenly based this process with the equally deceitful as ridiculous claim that it had to protect the lands against a foreign threat and preempt it. But only Germany could be meant by that. For another power could neither penetrate into the Baltic Sea region nor, say, wage war there. Nonetheless, I had to remain silent. But the rulers in the Kremlin immediately went farther.

 

While Germany in the spring of 1940, in the sense of the so-called friendship pact, pulled its combat forces far back from the eastern border, yes, to a large extent totally denuded these regions of German troops, the assembly of Russian force began already in this period to an extent that could only be viewed as an intentional threat against Germany.

 

According to Molotov’s personally made statement back then, already in the spring of 1940, there were 22 Russian divisions in the Baltic states alone.

 

Since the Russian government itself always claimed that it had been called by the populace there, the purpose of its presence there could only be a demonstration against Germany.

 

While our soldiers now, from May 10, 1940 onward, had broken French-British power in the west, the Russian assembly on our eastern front was continued in a gradually ever more threatening magnitude.

 

From August 1940 onward, I hence believed, in the interest of the Reich, to no longer be able to be responsible for leaving our already so often devastated eastern provinces unprotected against his mighty assembly of forces of Bolshevik divisions.

 

What the British-Soviet Russian cooperation intended, thereby set in, however, namely: the binding of such strong German forces in the east, that, especially in the air, the German leadership could no longer be responsible for a radical ending of the war in the west.

 

But this corresponded not only to the goal of British, rather also of Soviet Russian, policy. For both England as well as Soviet Russia have the intention to make this war last as long as possible in order to weaken all of Europe and to put it into ever greater impotence.

 

Russia’s ominous attack against Romania was likewise supposed, in the final analysis, to only serve the task of getting hands on, or, under circumstances, at least destroying, an important basis of not only German economic life, rather that of all of Europe.

 

But precisely the German Reich has endeavored since the year 1933 with infinite patience to win the southeastern European states as trade partners. We hence also possessed the greatest interest in their governmental consolidation and order. Russia’s invasion into Romania, the Greek tie to England threatened to transform these regions as well in the shortest time into a general theater of war.

 

Contrary to our principles and practices, on the urgent request of the Romanian government of back then, itself at fault for this development, for the sake of peace, I gave it the advice to give in to the Soviet Russian extortion and cede Bessarabia.

 

But the Roman government believed it could present this to its own folk only under the condition that Germany and Italy, as compensation for this, would at least give the guarantee that Romania’s still remaining territory would no longer be touched. I did this with a heavy heart, Above all, already because: If the German Reich gives a guarantee, this means that it also lives up to it. We are neither Englishmen nor Jews.

 

So I believed, still at the last hour, to have served the peace in this region, even though under the acceptance of a heavy obligation of ours. But in order to finally solve these problems and likewise obtain clarity about the Russian position on the Reich as well as under the pressure of the every escalating mobilization on our eastern order, I invited Mr. Molotov to come to Berlin.

 

The Soviet foreign minister now demanded Germany’s clarification or consent in the following four questions.

 

Molotov’s first question:

 

Should the German guarantee for Romania, in the event of an attack by Soviet Russia against Romania, also be directed against Soviet Russia?

 

My reply:

 

The German guarantee is a general one and one that unconditionally binds us. But Russia has never told us that, outside of Bessarabia, it still has any other interests at all in Romania. Already the occupation of Northern Bukowina was a violation of the assurance. I hence did not believe that Russia could now suddenly have more far-ranging intentions against Romania.

 

Molotov’s second question:

 

Russia feels itself threatened anew by Finland, Russia is determined not to tolerate this. Is Germany willing to give Finland no assistance whatsoever and, above all, to immediately withdraw the German troops marching through to Kirkenes as relief?

 

My reply:

 

Germany, now as well as before, has no political interests in Finland. A new war by Russia against the small Finnish folk, however, could no longer be viewed by the German Reich government as bearable, all the more so, as we could never believe in a threat against Russia by Finland. But we also do not want at all that a war region could again emerge in the Baltic Sea.

 

Molotov’s third question:

 

Is Germany willing to agree that Soviet Russian, for its part, give Bulgaria a guarantee and for this purpose sends Soviet Russian troops to Bulgaria, whereby he - Molotov - wants to declare that they do not have the intention, for example, to eliminate the king for this reason.

 

My reply:

 

Bulgaria is a sovereign state and I do not know that, similar to how Romania asked Germany, Bulgaria had ever asked Soviet Russia for a guarantee at all. I would have to discuss this with my allies.

 

Molotov’s fourth question:

 

Soviet Russia needs under all circumstances free passage through the Dardanelles and demands as well for its protection the occupation of a few important strong points on the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. Does Germany agree to this or not?

 

My reply:

 

Germany is willing to give its consent at any time to a change of the Statute of Montreux in favor of the Black Sea states. Germany is not willing to agree to the seizure of Russian strong points on the straits.

 

National Socialists!

 

I have taken that stance here, which I could alone take as responsible leader of the German Reich, but also as responsible representative of European culture and civilization.

 

The result was an escalation of Soviet Russian activity directed against the Reich, above all, however, the immediate beginning of the inner hollowing out of the new Romanian state and the attempt, through propaganda, to eliminate the Bulgarian government.

 

With the help of confused, immature heads in the Romanian Legion, it was possible to instigate in Romania a coup d’état, whose goal it was to overthrow chief of state General Antonescu, produce chaos in the land, in order, through the elimination of a legal authority, to remove the prerequisite for the taking effect of the German guarantee promise.

 

Nonetheless, I still believed it best to continue my silence.

 

Immediately after the failure of this enterprise, another reinforcement of Russian troop concentrations on the German eastern border took place. Tank formations and paratroopers were moved in ever increasing number into an ominous proximity to the German border. The German Wehrmacht and the German homeland know that, still up to a new weeks ago, there was not a single German panzer or motorized division on our eastern border.

 

But if final proof were still required for the, despite all diversion and camouflage, meanwhile arisen coalition between England and Soviet Russia, then the Yugoslavian conflict provided it. While I endeavored to undertake a final attempt for the Balkan’s pacification and, in understanding cooperation with Il Duce, invited Yugoslavia to join the Axis Pact, England and Soviet Russia, in joint work, organized that coup d’état, which in one night eliminated the government back then ready for agreement.

 

For the German folk can today be informed: the Serbian coup d’état against Germany took place not only, say, under English, rather essentially under Soviet Russian flag. Since we kept silent about this as well, the Soviet Russian leadership, however, went still another step farther. It organized not only the revolt, a few days later it concluded with the new creatures subservient to it the known friendship treaty, which was designed to strengthen the Serbs in their will for resistance against the Balkan’s pacification and to incite them against Germany. And this was no Platonic intention.

 

Moscow demanded the mobilization of the Serbian army.

 

Since even now I still believed it better not to talk, the Kremlin’s rulers went still another step farther:

 

The German Reich government possesses today the documents from which it is proven that Russia, in order to finally bring Serbia into the fight, gave the assurance to deliver via Salonika weapons, airplanes, ammunition and other war material against Germany.

 

And this happened almost at the same moment, when I myself still gave to the Japanese Foreign Minster Dr. Matsoka the advice to bring about a relaxation with Russia, always in the hope to thereby serve peace.

 

Only the swift breakthrough by our incomparable divisions to Skoplje as well as the capture of Salonika itself thwarted the intentions of this Soviet Russian-Anglo-Saxon plot. The Serbian pilot officers, however, fled to Russia and were immediately taken in there as allies.

 

The victory by the Axis powers in the Balkans alone has initially thwarted the plan to entangle Germany this summer in months of fighting in the southeast and meanwhile complete ever more the assembly of Soviet Russian armies, to strengthen their war readiness, and then, together with England and supported by the hoped for American deliveries, to be able to suffocate and crush the German Reich and Italy.

 

Moscow has thereby not only broken the agreements of our friendship pact, rather betrayed them in a wretched manner!

 

And all this, while the Kremlin’s rulers, down to the last minute, just like in the case of Finland or Romania, feigned peace and friendship and composed apparently harmless denials.

 

But just as I was previously compelled by circumstances to again and again remain silent, so the moment has now nonetheless come, when continued looking on would not only be a sin of omission, rather a crime against the German folk, yes, against all of Europe.

 

Today around 100 Russian divisions stand on our border. For weeks, constant violations of this border have been occurring, not by us, rather likewise in the far north, as well as in Romania. Russian fliers have fun to simply overlook our border unconcerned, probably in order to thereby prove to us that they already feel themselves the masters of these regions.

 

In the night of June 17/18th, Russian patrols again probed into German Reich territory and could be driven back only after a prolonged firefight.

 

But now the hour has thereby come in which it becomes necessary to confront this plot by the Jewish-Anglo-Saxon war agitators and the equally Jewish rulers of the Bolshevik Moscow central.

 

German folk!

 

At this moment, an assembly takes place, which in expanse and extent is the greatest that the world has previously seen. In union with Finnish comrades, the warriors of the victor of Narvik stand on the Arctic Ocean. German divisions under the command of the conqueror of Norway, with the Finnish freedom heroes under their marshal, jointly protect Finnish soil. The formations of the German eastern front stretch from East Prussia to the Carpathians. On the banks of the Pruth, on the lower course of the Danube to the shores of the Black Sea, German and Romanian soldiers unite under chief of state Antonescu.

 

The task of this front is hence no longer the protection of individual lands, rather Europe’s security and hence the salvation all.

 

I have hence decided today to again put the fate and the future of the German Reich and of our folk into the hands of our soldiers.

 

May the Lord help us precisely in this struggle!

 

Berlin, June 22, 1941

Adolf Hitler