Hitler Quotes

Here are some of the best quotes ever said by Adolf Hitler. Most of them are taken from his speeches and others from his own published writings. But unlike other sites on the Internet that maintain a similar collection of Hitler quotations, this page actually quotes the date when it was said, and the source of where the English translation for that quotation was found.

The reason this is all on a single page, is to make it convenient to do searches (ctrl + f) for some quotes you may have found. Trying to include these quootations with as much context as possible unlike other sites that post Hitler's words without context to match the agenda of that site. Besides, each quote is source and anyone can easily find the speech to which that particular quotation was taken from so you can read all of Hitler's words from that speech.

Just as I myself have now worked for fourteen years, untiringly and without ever wavering, to build this Movement; and just as I have succeeded in turning seven men into a force of twelve million, in the same way I want and we all want to build and work on giving new heart to our German Volk.

[...]

I do not want to promise them that this resurrection of the German Volk will come of itself.

We are willing to work, but the Volk must help us. It should never make the mistake of believing that life, liberty and happiness will fall from heaven. Everything is rooted in one's own will, in one's own work.

... we shall never believe in foreign help, never in help which lies outside our own nation, outside our own Volk. The future of the German Volk lies in itself alone. Only when we have succeeded in leading this German Volk onwards by means of its own work, its own industriousness, its own defiance, and its own perseverance - only then will we rise up, just as our fathers once made Germany great, not with the help of others, but on their own.

[...]

And this brings us thus to our sixth item, clearly the goal of our struggle: the preservation of this Volk and this soil, the preservation of this Volk for the future, in the realization that this alone can constitute our reason for being. It is not for ideas that we live, not for theories or fantastic party programs; no, we live and fight for the German Volk, for the preservation of its existence, that it may undertake its own struggle for existence.

Hitler's first speech as Reich Chancellor on February 10, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

Again, it is the party who called you here and again you have come. But not the 10,000 of those days but an enormous number of German men. The movement's party rally has always been the great military review of its men - of men determined and ready to defend the principles of a community of people not only in theory but in practice. It is a community without regard to origins, to social standing, to profession, to property, to education. A community which feels united in great faith and great determination. Not through position and not through party, not through profession and not through class, but united for our Germany.

These flags are not merely an outward sign but represent a living obligation. Hundreds and hundreds have died for you. Tens of thousands were injured. Hundreds of thousands have lost position and profession. But the extreme faith of all has changed this from a flag of opposition to the flag of the Reich.

And if, for 14 years the goddess of luck turned from us we know that we ourselves were to blame. We know she will turn her favor towards us again after we have paid our debt. May heaven be our witness. The debt of our people has been paid! The injustices have been avenged! The shame has been removed! The men of November have fallen. Their power is broken!

But we do not want to exist merely for our sake but only for the sake of the people. We want to achieve nothing for ourselves but everything for Germany. We are mortal but Germany must live!

From a Speech shown in the movie "The Victory of Faith" (1933) at ~55 minutes

National Socialism came to power in Germany in the same year in which Roosevelt was elected president of the United States. It is now important to examine those elements that have to be regarded as the cause of the present development.

[...]

Roosevelt comes from a family rolling in money. From the start, he belonged to that class of men for whom birth and descent pave the way and secure success in life in the democracies.

I myself was the child of a small poor family. With unspeakable effort, I had to make my way through work and diligence.

When the World War came, Roosevelt experienced it from where he was in the shadow of Wilson, from the point of view of the profiteer. Therefore, he only knows the pleasant consequences of the confrontation of people and states, reserved for the man who makes deals where others bleed to death.

During this time, I lived my own life on the other, completely opposite, side. I did not belong to the men who make history or deals. I belonged to those who followed orders.

As a common soldier, I labored to do my duty in front of the enemy during these four years. I returned from the war just as poor as I had left for it in the autumn of 1914. I shared the fate of millions of others. Mr. Roosevelt shared the fate of the so-called upper ten thousand. While, after the war, Mr. Roosevelt tried his hand at financial speculations in order to benefit personally from the inflation, that is, the diligence of others, I was still lying in the military hospital like hundreds of thousands of other men.

And while Mr. Roosevelt finally set out to pursue the career of a normal politician, who is experienced in business, has economic backing, and is protected by his birth, I fought as a nameless and unknown man for the resurrection of my Volk, a people which had just suffered the greatest injustice in its history.

The course of the two lives!

Speech of December 11, 1941. Quoted in Domarus

I do not want anything on my gravestone but my name. All the same, owing to the peculiar circumstances of my life, I am perhaps more capable than anyone else of understanding and realizing the nature and the whole life of the various German castes. Not because I have been able to look down on this life from above but because I have participated in it, because I stood in the midst of this life, because fate in a moment of caprice or perhaps fulfilling the designs of providence, cast me into the great mass of the people, amongst common folk. Because I myself was a laboring man for years in the building trade and had to earn my own bread. And because for a second time I took my place once again as an ordinary soldier amongst the masses and because then life raised me into other strata of our people so that I know these, too, better than countless others who were born in these strata.

So fate has perhaps fitted me more than any other to be the broker - I think I may say - the honest broker for both sides alike. Here I am not personally interested; I am not dependent upon the State or on any public office; I am not dependent upon business or industry or any trade union. I am an independent man, and I have set before myself no other goal than to serve, to the best of my power and ability, the German people, and above all to serve the millions who, thanks to their simple trust and ignorance and thanks to the baseness of their former leaders, have perhaps suffered more than any other class.

Speech of May 10, 1933. Quoted in My New Order

I have had three unusual friends in my life. In my youth, poverty accompanied me for many years. When the Great War came to an end it was great sorrow that took hold of me and prescribed my path - sorrow at the collapse of our people. Since January 30 four years ago I have made the acquaintance of anxiety as the third friend - anxiety for the people and Reich which have been confided to my leadership. Since that time it has never left me, and in all probability will accompany me to my end. How could a man shoulder the burden of this anxiety if he had not faith in his mission and the consent of Him who stands above us?

Speech of January 30, 1937. Quoted in My New Order

It is mankind's misfortune that its leaders forget all too often that ultimate strength does not lie anchored in divisions and regiments or in cannons and tanks; rather, the greatest strength of any leadership lies in the people themselves, in their unanimity, in their inner unity, and in their idealistic faith. That is the power which, in the end, can move the mountains of resistance! But this requires a philosophy which the Volk understands, a philosophy which it comprehends and which it loves.

Speech of May 1, 1935. Quoted in Domarus

The question of the form of government or of the organization of the national community is not a subject for international debate at all. It is a matter of absolute indifference to us in Germany what form of government other nations have. At the most, it is a matter of indifference to us whether National Socialism - which is our copyright, just as fascism is the Italian one - is exported or not. We are not in the least interested in this ourselves! We see no advantage in making shipments of National Socialism as an idea, nor do we feel that we have any occasion to make war on other people because they are democrats.

The assertion that National Socialism in Germany will soon attack North or South America, Australia, China, or even The Netherlands, because different systems of government are in control in these places, is on the same plane as the statement that we intend to follow it up with an immediate occupation of the full moon.

Speech of January 30, 1939. Quoted in My New Order

He who desires to receive higher respect than others must meet this demand by a higher achievement.

Speech of July 13, 1934. Quoted in My New Order

A people which is given noble and honorable leadership will in the long run show its noblest and most honorable virtues.

Speech of December 11, 1933. Quoted in My New Order

Power in the last resort is possible only where there is strength, and that strength lies not in the dead weight of numbers but solely in energy. Even the smallest minority can achieve a mighty result if it is inspired by the most fiery, the most passionate will to act. World history has always been made by minorities.

Speech of April 12, 1922. Quoted in My New Order

One day we will all be weighed together and judged together; either we will pass this test together, or the future will condemn us all.

Speech of December 11, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

The conquest of power is a process which is never, never ended, for here, if anywhere, does the principle hold true, 'What you have won, win it ever anew, if you are to possess it!' There is no people in history that has won liberation as a gift, there is no people that will keep its freedom as a gift! Always and forever must this precious possession be guarded without ceasing.

Speech of September 13, 1935. Quoted in My New Order

In the end, blood is stronger than any documents of mere paper. What ink has written will one day be blotted out by blood.

Speech of March 1, 1935. Quoted in Domarus

In the end blood is stronger than all paper documents. What ink, wrote will one day be blotted out by blood.

Speech of March 1, 1935. Quoted in My New Order

A soldier is normally honored twice in his life: following a victory, and following his death.

From a speech honoring Hindenburg on August 7, 1934. Quoted in Domarus

Any weakling can manage victories, but only the strong can manage blows of fortune.

Speech of January 30, 1942. Domarus

The genius consistently stands out from the masses in that he unconsciously anticipates truths of which the population as a whole only later becomes conscious!

Speech of September 7, 1937. Quoted in Domarus

I am of the opinion that once the question of the Saar - which is German land - has been resolved, there is nothing which can bring Germany and France in conflict with each other. Alsace-Lorraine is not in dispute. But how often do we have to repeat that we neither want to absorb what does not belong to us, nor do we want to be loved by anyone who does not love us!

In Europe there is not a single matter of dispute which could justify a war. Everything can be settled by the governments of the nations if they possess a feeling for their honor and responsibility. There is a Poland imbued with patriotic sentiment and a Germany no less devoted to its traditions. There are differences of opinion and matters of friction between them, arising from a bad treaty, but nothing which would make it worth sacrificing precious blood, for it is always the best who are killed in battle. That is why a friendly, neighborly agreement is possible between Germany and Poland.

It is an insult to me when people continue to say that I want war. Am I supposed to be insane (wahnwitzig)? War? It would not settle anything, but only make the world situation worse. It would mean the end of our elite races, and in the course of time one would witness how Asia would take root on our continent and how Bolshevism would triumph. How could I want a war when we are still bearing the burdensome consequences of the last war and will continue to be made to feel them for another thirty or forty years to come?

In an interview with Fernand de Brinon on November 15, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

I myself have no other aim in the future than the aim I have had for the fifteen years lying behind me. I wish to devote my whole life, unto my dying breath, to one task: making Germany free, healthy and happy once more.

Speech of August 17, 1934. Quoted in Domarus

All of us pledge ourselves to the one ancient principle: it is of no importance if we ourselves live—as long as our Volk lives, as long as Germany lives! This is essential.

Speech of September 1, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

If I see an opponent bringing a rifle to his shoulder, then I am not going to wait for him to pull the trigger. Instead, I am determined to pull it before he does.

Speech of October 3, 1941. Domarus

We recognize only two Gods: A God in Heaven and a God on earth and that is our Fatherland.

September 22, 1938. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

Nations are weighed in the spirit of their soldiers and are either found wanting and stricken from the book of life and history or found to be worthy of bearing new life. Our nation, with its difficult geo-political situation, was saved again and again only through the heroic actions of its men.

We have lived for 2,000 years only because there were always men ready to stake all and, if necessary, sacrifice all for the common weal. But these heroes did not give their lives thinking thereby to free later generations of a like obligation. The achievements of the past would all be in vain if a single generation were lacking in strength or the will to make equal sacrifices.

Speech of March 10, 1940, My New Order

What has been strewn about only these past few weeks in the way of altogether crazy, stupid and reckless allegations about Germany is simply outrageous. What can one possibly say, when Reuters invents attacks on my life, and English newspapers talk about huge waves of arrests in Germany, about the closing of the German borders to Switzerland, Belgium, France, etc.; when yet other newspapers report that the Crown Prince has fled Germany, or that a military putsch has taken place in Germany; that German generals have been taken prisoner, and on the other hand that German generals have stationed themselves with their regiments in front of the Reich Chancellery; that a quarrel has broken out between Himmler and Göring on the Jewish question, and as a result I am in a difficult predicament; that a German general has established contact with Daladier via intermediaries; that a regiment has mutinied in Stolp; that 2,000 officers have been dismissed from the army; that the entire German industrial sector has just received orders to mobilize for war; that there are extremely strong differences between the Government and private industry; that twenty German officers and three generals have fled to Salzburg; that fourteen generals have fled to Prague with Ludendorff's corpse; and that I have completely lost my voice, and the resourceful Dr. Goebbels is presently on the lookout for a man capable of imitating my voice to allow me to speak from gramophone records from now on. I take it that tomorrow this journalistic zealot of truth will either contest that I am really here today or claim that I had only made gestures, while behind me the Reich Minister of Propaganda ran the gramophone.

Speech of February 20, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

Hitler and the Treaty of Versailles / Weimar Germany

Think back to the year 1918. The German people, which still in the summer had been at the height of its power, had collapsed within a few months and now lay prostrate, completely wrecked and shattered. One question must have confronted everybody at that time: Is it possible to rise again from this depth of misery and misfortune?

The tragedy of our collapse lay not in military defeat, nor in the horrible peace as such, nor in the oppression resulting therefrom, nor in the lack of armament and defense, nor in all that which afflicted Germany these many years. The tragedy lay in the fact that all this came about through our own fault—that millions of Germans not only did not realize this even at the last moment, but actually welcomed it. It lay in the fact that hundreds of thousands rejoiced at the defeat; that millions acclaimed our disarmament; and that many saw in all our oppression by the enemy a just judgment and the execution of justified punishment. The fact that a great part of the German people no longer cared about the misery of the Fatherland—that was the tragic misfortune and the horrible disaster that befell us.

This brings us to a basic question, the answer to which holds the fate of the German nation. And this question is, will it still be possible in Germany to reintegrate the masses of those who have lost faith in their people and who look upon their enemy as more of a brother than their own Volksgenosse who happens to differ from them in regard to party ideals or philosophy; will it be possible to reintegrate these masses into one unified national community? Yes or no?

If this question is not answered in the affirmative, the German nation will be doomed. For peoples can perish. It is madness to believe that a great people of sixty or seventy million cannot be destroyed. It perishes as soon as it loses its drive of self-preservation.

There are 18,000,000 in the German Reich today who are still of the opinion that self-preservation as such is no justification for the existence of our people on this earth, but that our existence is conditional on some kind of a fantastic conception of the interests of others. ... That is the misfortune of the German people. As long as this condition is permitted to prevail, any thought of liberating the German people is Utopia. And why?

In the first place, why did we actually collapse? We collapsed because for years on end too many sins had been committed in domestic politics and in the old Reich, and because the Reich was denied the means necessary for its existence. We collapsed because for a long time already the most sacred matters of the whole nation were used for purposes of party politics. We collapsed because millions were unwilling to sacrifice their all for the preservation of their people and their country, but were determined to sacrifice both for the sake of their party. We collapsed because the overwhelming majority of our pacifist, anti-national and Marxist citizens no longer gave the state that which was necessary for its existence. And we collapsed as regards foreign policy because the other countries knew only too well our inner political weaknesses. They readily recognized the Achilles heel of the German Reich and they knew exactly how the balance of power stood in Parliament. They knew perfectly well that any policy of active self-preservation would be defeated by the majority of lukewarm, cowardly and stupid individuals in this country. And today, as before the year 1918, the question is still the same. Can this situation be altered or not?

February 27, 1925. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

Twenty-five years ago the German people entered into a war which had been forced upon them. In those days Germany was not well armed. France had made much better use of her national resources than the Germany of pre-war days. Russia was the most formidable adversary. It was possible to mobilize the whole world against Germany. But she entered the struggle. In its course, she accomplished deeds of heroism which were little short of miraculous. And Providence watched over our people. In 1914 German soil was freed from the danger of foreign invasion. In 1915, the situation of the Reich improved; 1916 and 1917 were years of continuous and bitter struggle. Sometimes Germany seemed to be on the verge of collapse but was saved again and again as if by a miracle.

In those days, Germany furnished amazing proof of her strength and it was obvious that Providence had bestowed its blessing upon her. Then the German people became ungrateful. Instead of having faith in their own future and their own strength, they began to place their trust in the promises of others. And finally in their ingratitude, they even rose up against their own state and their own leaders. From that time forth, Providence turned its face from the German people. Since then, I have never regarded this catastrophe as undeserved. I have never complained that Providence treated us unjustly. On the contrary, I have always expressed the opinion that it gave us just what we deserved. The German nation was ungrateful and, therefore, was denied its final reward. This will never be repeated in the history of our nation.

January 30, 1940. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

Twenty years ago I appeared for the first time in this hall before the general public. That which brought me here at the time was the most difficult and most fanatic decision of my life. The fact that I see before me here in this group today so many of my fellow fighters of twenty years ago is in itself remarkable. I do not know how many of the leaders of the democratic countries can appear again before their first followers as I do after so many years. It was no pacifist conviction that caused me to enter this hall in those days. I was still a soldier at that time, a soldier in body and soul! That which brought me here then was my protest as a soldier against what today can be called the greatest humiliation of our people.

An unparalleled collapse had befallen our people—a collapse which was unparalleled in history for the reason that the so-called vanquished had fallen victim to a monstrous self-deception. As a matter of fact, we were not the only ones who were deceived. The victors also deceived their own people. In all the so-called victorious nations, the peoples did not get what they had expected. An era of justice was supposed to emerge, but also within the victorious nations themselves, the social justice which had been promised was not forthcoming. It was, however, our German people that was deceived most of all. The German people laid down its arms on the basis of promises which were set forth in the Fourteen Points. The result was Spaa and finally Versailles.

This was the beginning of a new world order, that is, of the so-called victors and vanquished, a world order wherein the victors had all the rights and the vanquished none at all. There were others who were also deceived. The victorious nations deceived the Italians, they deceived the Hindus. The Hindus were promised their freedom if they would fight for England. The victors deceived the Arabs. The Arabs were told that they would be given a large Arabian empire of their own. At the same time, of course, the Jews also were deceived, for to begin with they had been assured of getting the very same territory that had been promised to the Arabs.

In view of our total collapse there were many people in all walks of life who believed that the end of the German nation was at hand. I was of a different opinion. What many believed was the end, I considered only the beginning, for what had actually collapsed at the time? Untenable structures had been destroyed, structures which would not have been able to stand up much longer anyhow. The bourgeois-capitalist world had collapsed. It had outlived itself. This collapse is bound to occur everywhere sooner or later in some form or other. There will not be an exception anywhere.

At that time there was only one decisive factor as far as we were concerned: At that time when so many external institutions of a formal nature were destroyed, the German individual as such was not destroyed. In fact, he had just accomplished a feat which no other people on this earth had ever accomplished. In a war which lasted four years this people had withstood twenty-six nations and it was defeated only by means of lies and deceit. If there had not been Germans in those days who destroyed the confidence in their own regime, England and France would never have won. If in those days a certain Adolf Hitler had been Chancellor of the German Reich instead of a musketeer in the German Army, do you believe that the capitalist idols of international democracy would have won?

February 24, 1940. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

In order to justify all of the measures of this edict (Treaty of Versailles), Germany had to be branded as the guilty party. This is a procedure which is, however, just as simple as it is impossible. This would mean that in future, the vanquished will always bear the blame for conflicts, for the victor will always be in a position to simply establish this as a fact.

Speech of May 17, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

My program was to abolish the Treaty of Versailles. It is futile nonsense for the rest of the world to pretend today that I did not reveal this program until 1933, or 1935, or 1937. Instead of listening to the foolish chatter of émigrés, these gentlemen would have been wiser to read what I have written—and rewritten thousands of times. No human being has declared or recorded what he wanted more often than I. Again and again I wrote these words—the Abolition of the Treaty of Versailles. Not because it was a quixotic idea of my own, but because the Treaty of Versailles was the greatest injustice and the most infamous maltreatment of a great nation in recorded history and because it was impossible for our nation to continue to exist in the future unless Germany was free of this stranglehold.

January 30, 1941. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

After a war which had lasted for four years and had already done untold damage to the national resources, the victorious Powers imposed upon the German nation a peace dictate devoid of all political and economic reason and which aimed at making the relation of forces that existed at the end of the war the legal basis for the life of the nations for all time.

Without considering the conditions and laws that govern economic life, and even in direct contradiction to them, the victorious Powers deprived Germany of every possibility of an economic revival while demanding on the other hand payments and services which lay within the realm of the fantastic. The edifice of German economics was razed to the ground under the watchword "Reparations".

This incomprehensible disregard for the most elementary economic laws resulted in the following situation: First, the nation had a surplus of workers; second, the nation was in urgent need of something to replace the values pertaining to the high standard of life to which it had been accustomed and which had been destroyed by the war, the inflation, and reparations; third, the nation suffered from a lack of natural resources of foodstuffs and raw materials; fourth, the international market which it needed in order to overcome all these evils was too small and was further increasingly limited in practice by various measures and by a certain inevitable trend in developments.

It is a very poor testimony to the economic sense of those who were then our political opponents that until their action had not only completely destroyed German economy but had begun to show its ill effects in the economic life of other countries they did not begin to see that it was impossible for us to fulfill unlimited and sometimes incomprehensible demands. The result of this madness was that German industry was paralyzed, agriculture was destroyed, the middle classes were ruined, trade had shrunk to almost nothing, the whole economic life was overladen with debt, the public finances were rotten to the core and there were six and a half million unemployed on the register —in reality more than seven and a half millions.

May 21, 1935. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

A peace was established without regard for reality, indeed even without regard for the most primitive intelligence, a peace which was attended by a single thought: How can one suppress the vanquished, how can one deprive the defeated of all honor, how can one brand him for all eternity as the guilty one. It was a peace which was not peace, but which inevitably must lead to the perpetuation of hatred between nations.

There were 440 paragraphs, the majority of which bring the blush of shame to our faces when we read them—a peace which is not to be compared with similar ones of former times. May I refer to the fact that in the year 1870 no one could have any doubt about the cause of war at that time, and thus no doubt about the war guilt. And just as much one could not doubt that at that time we were the victors. But what did Germany impose on the vanquished? The loss of a region which at one time was of German origin, a financial burden which had no relation to the wealth of the enemy of that time nor to his natural wealth, a burden which was completely disposed of in scarcely three years. Moreover, there was not a single clause offensive to the honor of that people, nothing at all which might have burdened the future of that people in any way, no hindrance to their own development, to their own life, to their opportunities, to their abilities, not the slightest attempt to limit their army in the future. No, nothing of all that. After three years France was really completely free.

The last peace, however, was not at all to be measured with the yardstick of reason. What connection is there with reason if the world on the one hand cannot do away with the fact that here exists a nation of 65,000,000 persons and on the other hand deprives it of the possibility of life. The Peace Treaty is based on the gross error that the misfortune of one nation must be the good fortune of another, on the error that the economic plight of one nation would bring economic well-being to another.

This peace, which was supposed to cure the world of all its suffering, this peace which should finally bring reason to the world, which should give human beings life and bread for life, this peace has in reality plunged the world into immeasurable misery. Armies of millions of unemployed are the living witnesses of the folly of those who concluded these treaties. A higher justice prevails here, which has now avenged this folly on all, not only on the vanquished, but also on the victors. There is no more devastating judgment of this Peace Treaty than the fact that it has not only plunged the vanquished into boundless misfortune, but it has also brought no advantage to the victors.

One cannot establish a permanent world order upon the idea of hatred. One cannot construct in Europe a permanent community of nations which are not equal. In the long run such a situation is intolerable and must lead to the disruption of such a community. It is not to be contested that after more than thirteen years this Peace Treaty has brought no peace to Europe, but eternal unrest, disquietude, distrust, hatred, uncertainty, and despair.

October 24, 1933. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

That life was impossible under the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles is something that I need not tell you about. New conditions for life had to be created. This was opposed by a divided nation and two ideologies, which already at the time appeared to be in the process of disintegration, since a large number of parties represented both the bourgeois and the Marxist ideology, which included groups from Social Democracy to the most radical syndicalism, namely, anarchism. It was clear that, in the year 1919, an exclusive, clear victory by one of these two ideas could no longer be expected. Just as Germany had once before disintegrated into countless small dynastic structures, there again was the threat of the German nation disintegrating into countless small ideological or party political groups. There was a time when a maximum of forty-six such "pocket parties" (Parteichen) stepped up to compete for the favor and approval of the German Volk. It was utopian to expect a resurrection under these conditions, not to mention bringing about such a resurrection.

No people can project strength abroad which it is unable to free it at home. This means: the more a nation uses up its strength internally, the more it will lack external strength. A people has only one strength. The strength needed within the system of the assertion of life is either applied at home or abroad— one of the two.

Speech of December 18, 1940. Domarus

Hitler on his own Struggle

I might have perished like millions of my comrades. I took my life back from Providence as a gift and swore to myself to dedicate this life to the Volk. And I will adhere to this until my dying breath.

Speech of October 25, 1932. Quoted in Domarus

I am told that, if you are a German nationalist, you must want military triumphs. I can only say that my ambition is directed toward completely different triumphs. I am a German nationalist and will represent my Volk with all the zealousness of a soldier in that great army of the past.

My ambition is aimed at creating the best possible institutions for training our Volk. I want that we in Germany have the greatest stadiums; that our road network is expanded; that our culture becomes elevated and refined; I want our cities to become beautiful; I want to put Germany at the top in every field of human cultural life and cultural aspiration. That is my ambition!

Speech of March 12, 1936. Quoted in Domarus

Personally, I am against accepting any honorary titles, and I do not believe that one will ever be able to accuse me of much in this respect. I do not do what is not absolutely necessary for me to do. I would never want to have visiting cards printed with the titles which are so ceremoniously conferred upon people in this earthly world. I would not want to have anything else on my gravestone but my name.

But perhaps my own peculiar biography has made me more capable than anyone else of understanding and comprehending the essence and life as a whole in the various German classes - not because I have been able to look down on this life from above, but because I have experienced it myself, because I have stood in the midst of this life, because Fate, on a whim or perhaps guided by Providence, threw me into this broad mass of Volk and people. Because I myself worked for years in the building trade and was forced to earn my own living. And because I once again stood in this broad mass for years as an ordinary soldier, and because life then raised me into the other classes of our Volk so that I also know these better than countless others who are born into these classes. Thus perhaps Fate chose me above all others to be - I may apply this term to myself - the honest broker, a broker honest to all sides.

I have no personal interest; I am neither dependent upon the State nor upon a public office; neither am I dependent upon the economy or industry or any kind of union. I am an independent man, and I have set myself no other goal than to serve the German Volk to the best of my power and ability—and above all to serve the millions of people who have perhaps been hit hardest thanks to their simple trust, their ignorance, and the baseness of their former leaders. I have always held to the opinion that there is nothing finer than to be an advocate of those who are not capable of defending themselves

Speech of May 10, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

For fifteen years I have slowly brought this Movement forward from the people. I have not been placed over this people by anyone. Out of the people I have grown, in the people I have remained, to the people I return. I see my ambition in the fact that I know of no statesman in the world who can say with greater right than I that he is the representative of a people. Today, my German people, I appeal to you to support me with your faith. Be now the source of my strength and my faith.

March 20, 1936. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

If, before history, I look at myself and my opponents, then I do not fear a comparison of our characters. After all, who are they—these egoists! Every single one of them stands up only for the interests of his class. Behind all of them stands either a Jew or their own moneybag. They are nothing other than profiteers; they live from the profits of this war; no good will follow it. I confront these folk as nothing other than the simple fighter for my German Volk that I am.

Speech of February 24, 1941. Domarus

Hitler the National Socialist Revolution

Want and misery came upon our Volk with terrible force. A proud economy, once thriving and rich, seems to be falling into ruin. The scarcity of work condemns millions of industrious people to idleness. The process of proletarianization is pulling one rank of our Volk after another down into its depths. The foundations of our society are crumbling, and the fists of those bringing still further destruction are pounding at the very gates of the temples of our faith. Turmoil and conflict at every turn.

Germany defenseless and without rights, the Volk filled with despondency and despair! Fate has assigned us the wonderful task of fighting in this crisis, of filling the hearts of these despondent people once more with faith and confidence, of restoring order to the economy, of giving work back to the millions of people who are laid off, of snatching the classes back from the brink of destruction, of building a new society and stopping its enemies with a fist of iron, of protecting the nation and its material, moral and cultural assets from the elements of destruction. A bold and proud mission!

Speech of October 15, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

A great age has thus dawned once again for Germany. We say this knowing that the greatness of an age lies in the greatness of the tasks assigned to it and thereby to us. Great tasks, such as those vested in only few generations in history.

Yesterday we were still a powerless Volk, for we were strife-torn, falling out and apart in internal discord, fragmented into hundreds of parties and groups, leagues and associations, Weltanschauungen (worldviews) and confessions ... The economy was in the throes of death. Disintegration and ruin at every turn. Every principle had been abandoned. What had once seemed good became bad; what had been detestable was suddenly venerable. What was once meant to and able to give life more meaning was now passed off and perceived to be merely a burden to mankind. One author summed up the impressions of this age in a book which he entitled, The Decline of the West.

Is this then really the end of our history and hence of our peoples? No! We cannot believe or accept it! It must be called not the 'Decline of the West,' but the 'Resurrection of the Peoples of the Western World'!

Speech of May 1, 1935. Quoted in Domarus

Our Movement was not formed with any election in view, but in order to spring to the rescue of this people as its last help in the hour of greatest need, at the moment when in fear and despair it sees the approach of the Red Monster. The task of our Movement is still today not to prepare ourselves for any coming election but to prepare for the coming collapse of the Reich, so that when the old trunk falls the young fir-tree may be already standing.

... Either Germany sinks, and we through our despicable cowardice sink with it, or else we dare to enter on the fight against death and devil and rise up against the fate that has been planned for us.

Speech of August 1, 1923. Quoted in My New Order

Germany suffered most from these effects of the [Versailles] Peace Treaty and the widespread insecurity it caused. The number of unemployed increased to a third of those normally engaged in the working life of the nation. That means, however, that in Germany, counting family members, approximately twenty million people of a total of sixty-five million were heading toward a hopeless future without any means of existence. It was only a matter of time until this army of the economically disinherited would of necessity have become an army of fanatics politically and socially alienated from the rest of the world.

One of the oldest lands of culture in today's civilization stood, with over six million Communists, at the brink of disaster, and only a blase lack of comprehension would be capable of ignoring this fact. Had Red rebellion raced through Germany like a firebrand, the civilized countries in Western Europe may well have come to the realization that it is not immaterial whether the outposts of a spiritual, revolutionary, and expansionist Asian world empire stood watch at the Rhine or on the North Sea or whether peaceful German peasants and workers, in sincere solidarity with the other peoples of our European culture, wish to earn their bread by honest work.

In snatching Germany from the brink of this catastrophe, the National Socialist Movement saved not only the German Volk but also made a historic contribution to the rest of Europe.

Speech of October 14, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

Although the [NSDAP] Revolution which took place in Germany did not, unlike the French or Russian Revolutions, butcher hecatombs of humans and murder hostages, and did not, unlike the uprising of the Paris Commune or the Soviet Revolutions in Bavaria and Hungary, destroy cultural monuments and works of art - on the contrary, it did not smash a single storefront window, did not loot a single shop, and did not damage a single building - unscrupulous agitators are spreading a flood of tales of atrocity which can only be compared with the lies fabricated by these same elements at the beginning of the War!

Tens of thousands of Americans, English, and French were in Germany during these months and were able to conclude from what they saw with their own eyes that there is no country in the world with more law and order than present-day Germany, that in no other country of the world can person and property be more highly respected than in Germany, but that, perhaps, too, in no other country of the world is there a fiercer battle being waged against those who, as criminal elements, believe they are at liberty to give free rein to their lowest instincts to the detriment of their fellow men. These parties and their Communist accomplices are the ones who are endeavoring today as emigrants to try to turn honest and decent peoples against one another.

Speech of October 14, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

We are going to see to it that in this state there will be 60,000,000 who will not say in the first line of their political creed: "I am a democrat," or "I am a member of the People's Party," but who will say "I am a German."

November 17, 1928. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

I began my activities in Germany at approximately the same time Bolshevism was celebrating its initial achievements, i.e. the first civil war in Germany. When, after fifteen years, Bolshevism in our country had six million followers, I had risen to thirteen million. Then, in the decisive battle, it lost. National Socialism has ripped Germany and with it perhaps the whole of Europe back from the brink of the most horrible catastrophe of all time.

Speech of May 21, 1935. Quoted in Domarus

The three factors which dominate our revolution do not contradict the interests of the rest of the world in any way.

First: preventing the impending Communist subversion and constructing a Volksstaat (people's state) uniting the various interests of the classes and ranks, and maintaining the concept of personal property as the foundation of our culture. Second: solving the most pressing social problems by leading the army of millions of our pitiful unemployed back to production. Third: restoring a stable and authoritarian leadership of the State, supported by the confidence and will of the nation which will finally again make of this great Volk a legitimate partner to the rest of the world.

Speaking now, conscious of being a German National Socialist, I would like to proclaim on behalf of the National Government and the entire national uprising that, above all, we in this young Germany are filled with the deepest understanding of the same feelings and convictions and the justified demands of the other nations to live. The generation of this young Germany, which until now has come in its lifetime to know only the want, misery and distress of its own Volk, has suffered too dearly from this madness to be capable of contemplating subjecting others to more of the same.

Speech of May 17, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

Both bourgeoisie and proletariat were left behind, and the German nation is the sole victor.

Speech of March 28, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

Today we share a feeling of community which is far stronger than one founded in political or economic interests ever could be. It is the feeling of a community determined by blood. Today man has neither the capacity nor the desire to be separated from his Volkstum, he clings to it with obstinate love. He will endure even the worst distress, he will endure misery, but he shall be with his Volk!

Blood binds more firmly than business!

Speech of March 25, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

Just imagine: we can follow the German Volk throughout history for nearly 2,000 years, and never was the Volk as united in the form of its inner convictions and its actions as it is today. For the first time since Germans have inhabited the world there is one Reich, ruled by one Weltanschauung, shielded by one army - and all this joined under one flag.

Speech of November 8, 1935. Quoted in Domarus

If future historiographers aim to record the entire contents of these three years [1933-35], they will require more pages than they would in other times for perhaps ten, perhaps twenty, fifty, or even a hundred years.

January 15, 1936. Quoted in Domarus

It is to this 1933 Revolution that the German Volk owes its booming economy. The Volk owes the protection accorded by a strong army to this Revolution. It owes a new form of German culture to this Revolution. It owes a new form of German art to this Revolution. However, above all, it owes the development of a new German being to this Revolution.

Speech of July 5, 1936. Quoted in Domarus

I cast my mind back to the time when with six other unknown men I founded this association, when I spoke before eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, twenty, thirty, and fifty persons; when I recall how after a year I had won sixty-four members for the Movement, how our small circle kept on growing, I must confess that that which has today been created, when a stream of millions of our German fellow-countrymen is flowing into our Movement, represents something which is unique in German history.

The bourgeois parties have had seventy years to work in; where, I ask you, is the organization which could be compared with ours? Where is the organization which can boast, as ours can, that, at need, it can summon 400,000 men into the street, men who are schooled to blind obedience and are ready to execute any order - provided that it does not violate the law? Where is the organization that in seventy years has achieved what we have achieved in barely twelve years? - and achieved with means which were of so improvised a character that one can hardly avoid a feeling of shame when one confesses to an opponent how poverty-stricken the birth and the growth of this great Movement were in the early days.

Speech of January 27, 1932. Quoted in My New Order

A splendid crusade! It will go down as one of the most miraculous and remarkable phenomena in world history. And history will attempt to find analogues and parallels, but it will hardly find a parallel in which, beginning with such a birth, an entire Volk and a state could be totally conquered in so few years.

This miracle is something we have wrought. We are the fortunate ones who are not learning about it from books, but were chosen by Fate to live through it.

This is what joins us all and welds us together; coming generations will learn it one day. But we can say: we were there. That is our accomplishment! Other generations learn from heroic sagas and heroic crusades. We have lived this saga and marched in this crusade. Whether the name of a certain individual among us lives on in posterity is of no consequence. We are all bound together in a single, great phenomenon. It will live on.

Speech of November 8, 1935. Quoted in Domarus

We do not have the feeling that we are an inferior race, some worthless pack which can and may be kicked around by anyone and everyone; rather, we have the feeling that we are a great Volk which only once forgot itself, a Volk which, led astray by insane fools, robbed itself of its own power and has now once more awakened from this insane dream.

Let no one believe himself capable of immersing this Volk in such a dreamstate again within the next thousand years; this lesson, which we have learned in such a terrible way, will be a historical reminder to us for millenniums. What happened to us through our own fault will not be allowed to happen to the German Volk a second time!

Speech of June 17, 1934. Quoted in Domarus

The French Premier asks why German youth are marching and falling into line; the answer is, not in order to demonstrate against France, but in order to show and document that very political formation of will which was necessary to overcome Communism and will be necessary to keep Communism at bay. In Germany there is only one bearer of arms, and that is the Army. And conversely, there is only one enemy for the National Socialist Organization, and that is Communism.

Speech of October 14, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

Here there is building going on! Here there is comradeship! And here above all is the faith in a better humanity and hence in a better future! What a difference from another country [Spain] in which Marxism is attempting to gain power. There the cities are in flames, there the villages are being reduced to rubble, there a man no longer knows whom he can trust. Class is fighting against class, rank against rank, brothers are destroying brothers. We have chosen the other path: instead of tearing you apart, I have joined you together.

Speech of September 10, 1936. Quoted in Domarus

In the past, my Volksgenossen, five Germans had ten different opinions. Today, nine out of ten Germans are of the same opinion. I am therefore confident that we will be capable of winning the tenth man, too, for at any rate you can believe me when I say that the path from the first seven men to 38 million was more difficult than the path from 38 to 42 million will be.

Speaking about the recent election results where Hitler won 90% of the vote. August 26, 1934. Quoted in Domarus

When we were engaged in the first trial and were waging that battle, it was still natural - because they were all, in fact, leaders - that each individual was to stand up for his actions and take the entire responsibility. But there was one thing I feared. Following us were nearly 100 Party comrades to come, men from minor combat patrols, members of certain SA storm troops. They, too, would be dragged before the judge. I was already in the fortress when these trials began to unwind. And I had only one fear, namely that under the pressure of being held in detention etc. or of all these methods of conducting trial, one or the other of them might perhaps weaken and try to save himself by declaring, "But I'm innocent, was forced to do it, I had no choice."

My heart overflowed when I saw the first report of these trials and when I read in the Münchener Post (at that time it was delivered to us): "The people from the combat patrols are just as brazen and impertinent as their lord and master." Then I knew: Germany is not lost. The spirit will find a way to survive! It was one thing they would not be able to stamp out.

And these same people from the combat patrols and these same SA men later became the largest organizations of the German Movement, the SA and the SS. And the spirit has remained and proven itself ten thousand times over, hundreds of thousand times over.

Because you see, that is what we owe to these dead: the example they gave us in a most terrible time in Germany. As we marched forth from here, we knew that it was no longer a triumphal march. We went forth in the conviction that it was the end, one way or another. I remember one man who said to me outside on the stairs as we were leaving, "This is the end." Each of us carried this conviction with him.

Speaking of the events of November 1923. November 8, 1935. Quoted in Domarus

The rest of the world will have to change its views. It will have to erase the fourteen years of German history before us from its memory and put in its place the memory of a thousand-year history prior thereto, and then it will understand that this Volk was without honor for fourteen years thanks to a leadership without honor, but was strong and brave and honest the thousand years prior thereto. And it can rest assured that the Germany which is living today is identical with the eternal Germany.

Speech of February 24, 1935. Quoted in Domarus

I am prepared to admit that the National Socialist ideal, in its final perfection, stands like a polar star above mankind. But mankind must ever follow a star. If it laid hold of this star, it would see it no more. We are on the right road, and we have the right goal. We shall be reforming the German people for centuries.

Speech of January 15, 1936. Quoted in My New Order

I admit that the National Socialist ideal, in its ultimate consummation, stands over mankind like the North Star. And man will always need a star to gain his bearings. Were man to grasp that star, he would no longer he able to see it. We are on the right path, and we have the right goal. We will improve upon the German Volk for centuries.

Speech of January 15, 1936. Quoted in Domarus

Back then I derived my entire faith in the German Volk and its future from my knowledge of the German soldier, of the small musketeer. In my eyes, he was a great hero. Naturally, other sections of the Volk did their best also. But still there was a difference. For him who lived at a wealthy home and lived in luxury, for him Germany looked quite beautiful back then. He could take part in everything: culture, the easy life, and so on. He could enjoy German art and so many things more. He could travel through the German lands, tour German cities, and so on. Everything was beautiful to him. That he stood up for it was understandable. But on the other side stood the small musketeer. This little prole, who barely had enough to eat, who slaved away simply to exist, and who, in spite of all of this, fought like a hero out there for four years: on him I stacked my hopes, on him I pulled myself up again. And when all the others in Germany despaired, I looked to this small man and regained my faith in Germany. I knew: naturally, Germany would not perish, not as long as it has such men.

Speech of December 10, 1940. Domarus

At a time when the whole people was running after the illusion of democracy and parliamentarianism, when millions believed that the majority was the source of a right decision. It was at this time that we began resolutely to build up an organization in which there was not one dictator but ten thousand. When our opponents say: 'It is easy for you: you are a dictator' - we answer them, 'No, gentlemen: you are wrong; there is no single dictator, but ten thousand, each in his own place.'

Speech of April 8, 1933. Quoted in My New Order

... even my most malicious libellers cannot deny that I have never changed in these fifteen years.

Whether in good fortune or in bad, whether in liberty or in prison, I have remained true to my flag, the flag which is now the national flag of the German Reich. And they further cannot claim that I had ever in my life undertaken or omitted any political act for the sake of my own personal benefit. And they must finally admit that, in general terms, this fifteen-year-long battle of mine was not unsuccessful, but led a movement evolving from nothing to victory in Germany, giving the German Volk a new and better position at home and abroad.

I will gladly answer for and accept whatever mistakes they can prove that I actually made. However, these all lie within the limits set for everyone by the basic fact of human fallibility. But I can point out in this context that I have never in the course of my fight committed an act which I did not hold to be for the benefit of the German Volk.

For since I have become involved in the political fight, I have been governed and guided, so help me God, by a single thought: Germany!

Speech of August 17, 1934. Quoted in Domarus

As everywhere, I followed the path of instruction, education, and slow adaptation. For it was my pride to have brought about this revolution in Germany without a single glass pane shattering, a revolution which led to the greatest upheaval ever seen on earth. It did not destroy even the least of values, but, instead, slowly set things straight, set the course, until finally the great community has found its new form. That was our goal.

And it was the same in foreign policy. I stated my platform: elimination of Versailles. One should not be silly in the outside world today, should not pretend that I had only discovered this platform in the years 1933, 1935, or 1937. Instead of listening to the foolish talk of the emigrants, the gentlemen would have done well to read what I wrote; what I wrote over a thousand times. No man ever declared and wrote down more often what he wanted than I did. And, time and time again, I wrote: elimination of Versailles.

And when I came to power, I did not then say to myself as democratic politicians do: Never expect gratitude once you've served your purpose. Instead, I made the solemn resolve: I thank you, Lord God, for bringing me to where I can finally realize my platform.

And here, too, I did not want to realize this platform by force. Instead, I spoke, I spoke as much as a man can. My speeches before the Reichstag are evidence of this. No democratic statesman can swindle history from them. The offers which I made them [the English]! How often did I ask them to be reasonable and not to take from a great Volk the foundations of its life and existence! How often did I prove to them that this was not to their advantage, that it was senseless, and, yes, that it was to their detriment! The things I did over the years to ease the way to an understanding for them! Never would it have been necessary to enter into this arms race had the others not wanted it! I placed many proposals before them. However, every proposal which came from me sufficed to agitate a certain Jewish-internationalist, capitalist clique immediately, just as had been the case in Germany, my Volksgenossen, where any reasoned proposal from us National Socialists was rejected primarily because we had made it.

Speech of January 30, 1941. Domarus

Real mistakes which can be proven against me - for them I will readily answer and accept responsibility. They are all within the limits set for everyone by general human fallibility. But against these mistakes I can set the fact that never in my fight have I taken any action which I was not convinced was for the welfare of the German people. For during my whole political fight I have been dominated, commanded, so help me God! by one thought alone, Germany!

Speech of August 17, 1934. Quoted in My New Order

Frequently, people abroad have claimed that we were making propaganda, while in truth it was the idea that propagandized itself. It holds great attraction especially for those who are of the same blood. It does not matter whether or not this pleases the democrats.

Ideas cannot be imprisoned. States can be torn apart, but the bonds of a Volksgemeinschaft [people's community] are indissoluble. And once the sparks of these ideas begin to fly, they inflame every man whose blood links him to them as though it were an internal antenna. And this is precisely the case with National Socialism. Austria's National Socialists were persecuted, hundreds of them were murdered and thousands were shot. They were hanged as though they were murderers lacking any feeling of honor although their only crime had been their belief in their Volk.

And the world remained silent and uttered not a word of condemnation. You can judge for yourselves the meaning the word democracy took on for us. It became the embodiment of lies and injustice, the pinnacle of hypocrisy. But the minute - be it in Berlin or Vienna - we cause one of those Jewish agitators to close his shop for a while and to go somewhere else, then democracy becomes incensed and speaks of an assault upon holy rights.

Speech of March 29, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

I openly admit that, in view of the horrible persecution, the thought occurred to one that it would only be right if the Volk would finally wreak its vengeance on its persecutors. But I nonetheless resolved to avoid that, for one thing I knew: there are those in the ranks of our opponents who are so depraved that they must be deemed lost to the German Volksgemeinschaft; on the other hand, there are also many who are blind or mad and who have simply jumped on the bandwagon.

Speech of March 25, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

I admit openly that at times, in view of the terrible persecutions, the thought might even come to one that it was only right if the people did at last wreak its vengeance on its torturers; but in the end I decided to prevent that. For I saw one thing: amongst our opponents there are men who are so depraved that they must be counted as lost to the community of the German people, but on the other hand there are many blinded and mad folk who have only run with the rest.

Speech of March 25, 1938. Quoted in My New Order

If I then turn my gaze to the unequal weapons with which we had to fight: on the one hand the large and powerful representatives of the State - Ministers, Chancellors, of course only in their capacity as civil servants, not as agitators or, much less, as candidates; when I take a look at the imbalance of arms, with the radio, the cinemas, and the power to prohibit everything which is really convincing on the other hand; and when I see the other side at the mercy of this terror; and when I further reflect on this admirable number of opponents: the Center, the Bavarian People's Party, the German People's Party, the Social Democratic Party, the Reichsbanner, the Iron Front, all of the unions, the Christian unions, the free unions, the "völkisch" organizations such as the DHV - if you take a look at this whole bunch of parties, associations and organizations, then I can be proud that, confronted with this whole jumbled-up mixture, we National Socialists alone summoned up 11.3 million, and now, in a barely thirteen-year-long fight, compared to these "venerable remains" of times past, we have, after all, been able to raise - from nothing - the largest German party which has ever existed.

Speech of March 15, 1935. Quoted in Domarus

Ever since the first German dukes labored to form wild tribes into higher unions, their endeavors had to obliterate institutions grown dear, cherished recollections, manly pledges of loyalty, and so on.

It was nearly two thousand years before the scattered Germanic tribes emerged as one people; before the countless lands and states forged one Reich. We may now consider this process of the formation of the German nation as having reached its conclusion. The creation of the Greater German Reich represents the culmination of our Volk's thousand-year struggle for existence. As streams of German blood flow together therein, so do traditions of times past, their standards and symbols, and, above all else, all the great men of whom their contemporaries were rightly proud. Small matter whose side they stood on in their day, all those daring dukes, great kings, formidable warlords, mighty emperors, and around them the inspired geniuses and heroes of the past served as instruments of Providence in the formative process of a nation. Insofar as we embrace this great Reich in grateful reverence, the wealth of German history reveals itself to us in all its splendor. Let us thank the Lord Almighty for bestowing on our generation the great blessing to be alive at this time and this hour.

Speech of January 30, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

Philosophy of NSDAP

I do not believe in any regime which is not anchored in the Volk itself. I do not believe in an economic regime. One cannot build a house from the top, one must begin at the bottom. The foundations of the State are not the Government, but rather the Volk.

Speech of October 12, 1932. Quoted in Domarus

This Reich shall belong neither to a certain class, nor to a certain rank: it shall be the sole property of the German Volk. ... What I summoned to life during this time does not claim to be an end in itself. Nothing is or ever will be immortal. What remains for us is the body of flesh and blood called the German Volk. The Party, the State, the Wehrmacht, and the economy are all institutions and functions which are valuable only as being a means to an end. In the eyes of history, they will be judged on the basis of the services they performed toward this goal.

Yet their goal is always the Volk. They are short-lived phenomena compared to those which alone are everlasting. To serve these latter with all my might has been and continues to be my life's good fortune.

Speech of February 20, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

We want to educate the Volk so that it moves away from the insanity of class superiority, of arrogance of rank, and of the delusion that only mental work is of any value; we want the Volk to comprehend that every labor which is necessary ennobles its doer, and that there is only one disgrace, and that is to contribute nothing to the maintenance of our Volksgemeinschaft (people's community), to contribute nothing to the maintenance of the Volk itself.

Speech of September 23, 1933

Liberty? Insofar as the interests of the Volksgemeinschaft permit the exercise of liberty by the individual, he shall be granted this liberty. The liberty of the individual ends where it starts to harm the interests of the collective. In this case the liberty of the Volk takes precedence over the liberty of the individual.

Above the liberty of the individual, however, there stands the liberty of our Volk. The liberty of the Reich takes precedence over both.

Speech of May 1, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

Great decisions must be long-term decisions: their realization demands time, as indeed do all great things in this world. So it was essential to give to the new Government an unexampled stability, since only governments which are stable, which are assured of their existence and of the permanence of that existence are in a position to rise to the making of really fundamental and far-reaching decisions.

Speech of March 21, 1934

It is wrong, you see, that the bourgeois parties have become the employers and for the Marxists to call themselves proles and employees. There are just as many proles among the employers as there are bourgeois elements among the employees.

The bourgeois - allegedly for the sake of the Vaterland (Fatherland) - are defending property, a capitalistic value. Thus from a Marxist point of view, love of one's country is not dumb, but rather capital's greed for profit. On the other hand, the international character of Marxism is regarded by the middle class as speculation for a world economy in which there is only state administration and no longer any private property.

In a conversation with Hanns Johst on January 27, 1934. Quoted in Domarus

If we want a strong Germany, you must one day be strong, too. If we want a powerful Germany, you, too, must one day be powerful. If we want an honorable Germany, you must one day uphold this honor. If we want order in Germany, you must maintain this order. If we want to once again create a loyal Germany, you yourselves must learn to be loyal. You are the Germany of the future, and thus we want you to be what this Germany of the future must and will be.

Therefore you must also avoid anything which impressed the stamp of dishonor upon the Germany of the past. You must cultivate the spirit of the great community. The German Volksgemeinschaft (people's community) is anchored in you. For many centuries, people longed for what has become reality today. The nation expects you to be worthy of this great age.

From a speech to Germany's youth on April 30, 1934. Quoted in Domarus

The internal stability of a regime always becomes a source of a people's trust and confidence. When the masses in their millions see that above them there stands a government which is sure of itself, part of this certainty is transferred to the masses. Only in this way the boldness of a government's plans is matched by a like boldness in the readiness of the people to execute and carry into effect these plans. But trust and confidence are the fundamental conditions for the success of any economic revival.

Speech of March 21, 1934

The blood of millions can be pledged only if they know that the conflict does not serve a particular class, but that it benefits the entire people. Do not believe that this people will go to war again, if it does not carry a different conviction to the battlefield than it did formerly. The day will come when the German people will rise up and break their bonds asunder, when in millions of hearts there will be one single faith, one embracing conviction: We do not fight for the German middle class, nor for the German proletariat; we fight for our people, for wife and child, we fight for our children's children.

I am happy that fate guided me, a simple soldier for four years, through the hell of blood and fire. I cannot imagine that a true German would ever take the responsibility of leading his people through this hell a second time unless he was convinced that from this inferno a paradise would be forthcoming for his people.

April 9, 1927. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

Men and nations with the proper Weltanschauung (worldview) climb steadily, and those without it are as chaff in the wind. The decisions of the latter are beyond comprehension. The present-day political parties in Germany serve as the best illustration of what happens to political organizations without a Weltanschauung.

Marxism has a Weltanschauung which leads rapidly to destruction. We too have a Weltanschauung, and we are convinced that it will lead our people upwards.

A Weltanschauung is justifiable if it leads a nation forward. The justification of this Weltanschauung can be ascertained through an investigation of the general laws of all nature, from an examination of all the laws which form the basis of our own life, from a logical testing of the fate of other nations which have perished, from a scientific investigation of definite methods which bring nations to a position of dominance and of the methods which are responsible for the downfall of nations. ...

We Nazis say that we have formulated a Weltanschauung for ourselves. This can be synthesized in a few propositions. What constitutes our importance and the importance of nations in any event is nothing that is academic per se. It is nothing which lies in artificial education. It is something which originally has been an integral part of one's racial heritage. This heritage of blood is our basic value, our specific weight which we, as human beings, possess once and for all. ... The preservation of this heritage is the first and essential factor. Whenever a nation loses its racial heritage, it perishes.

The second factor is that of leadership. We say that among nations it is not the majorities that are decisive but the evaluation attached to the leader. It is not the sum total but genius itself. There is nothing of lasting importance in the world which does not owe its origin to the creative ability of the individual.

Thus a people must organize its constitution and its political life in such a way, that the greatest emphasis is placed upon the value of leadership. Leadership must not be destroyed by an artificial structure; that is, by the system of parliamentary democracy which cultivates little dwarfs—democracy which represents the conspiracy of dwarfs against him who towers head and shoulders above the masses.

The third factor is struggle, without which nothing on earth is created and without which nothing is preserved. Development means struggle. That is the inspiring outlook of the National Socialist Weltanschauung.

November 29, 1929. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

History shows that the right as such does not mean a thing, unless it is backed up by great power. If one does not have the power to enforce his right, that right alone will profit him absolutely nothing. The stronger have always been victorious. The whole of nature is a continuous struggle between strength and weakness, an eternal victory of the strong over the weak. All nature would be full of decay if it were otherwise. And the states which do not wish to recognize this law will decay. If you need an example of this kind of decay, look at the present German Reich.

April 13, 1923. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

The fundamental motif through all the centuries has been the principle that force and power are the determining factors. All development is struggle. Only force rules. Force is the first law. A struggle has already taken place between original man and his primeval world. Only through struggle have states and the world become great. If one should ask whether this struggle is gruesome, then the only answer could be: For the weak, yes, for humanity as a whole, no.

World history proves that in the struggle between nations, that race has always won out whose drive for self-preservation was the more pronounced, the stronger. ... Unfortunately, the contemporary world stresses internationalism instead of the innate values of race, democracy and the majority instead of the worth of the great leader. Instead of everlasting struggle the world preaches cowardly pacifism, and everlasting peace. These three things, considered in the light of their ultimate consequences, are the causes of the downfall of all humanity. The practical result of conciliation among nations is the renunciation of a people's own strength and their voluntary enslavement.

November 22, 1926. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

Never have votes and majorities added one iota to the culture of mankind. Every accomplishment is solely the result of the work and energy of great men, and as such, a flaming protest against the inertia of the masses.

November 23, 1927. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

To us, the German peasant is not only a class, but a representative of German vitality and thus also of the German future. We perceive in the German peasant the source of national fertility, the foundation of our national life.

Speech of October 1, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

In the end, we do not live for ourselves alone; rather, we are responsible for everything which those who lived before us have left behind, and we are responsible for that which we shall one day leave behind to those who must come after us. For Germany must not end with us.

Speech of March 4, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

Life necessarily divides us into many different groups and professions. It is the job of the political and spiritual education of the nation to overcome this division.

Speech of September 12, 1935. Quoted in Domarus

The National Socialist program replaces the liberalistic conception of the individual by the conception of a people bound by their blood to the soil. Of all the tasks with which we are confronted, it is the grandest and most sacred task of man to preserve his race.

Speech of January 30, 1937. Quoted in "My New Order"

The main plank in the National Socialist program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity and to substitute therefor the folk community, rooted in the soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood.

January 30, 1937. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

Leadership is always based upon the free will and good intentions of those being led. My doctrine of the Führer concept is therefore quite the opposite of what the Bolshevists like to present it as being: the doctrine of a brutal dictator who triumphs over the destruction of the values of private life. Thus as Reich Chancellor I am not discontinuing my activities as a public educator; on the contrary: I am using every means provided by the State and its power to publish and make known my every word and deed with the goal of winning the public with this openness for every single decision of my national will by proof and conviction. And I am doing this because I believe in the creative power and the creative contribution of the Volk.

In a conversation with Hanns Johst on January 27, 1934. Quoted in Domarus

The broad mass would rather not be troubled by doubt, it has only one desire: to be led by a leadership it can trust. The mass does not want this leadership to be a divided one, but rather that this leadership should step before it as one.

You may believe me that the Volk likes nothing better than the feeling that when I venture out into the streets with my colleagues on a day such as November 9, they can point at us and say: "That is he, and that is he, and that is he." The Volk feels secure in the knowledge that these men will stand together, follow one Führer, and this Führer will stand by these men. These men are their idols. It is possible that an intellectual might not be capable of comprehending this. But the man in the street, he somehow places his trust in those men who step before him. He depends on these men. Seeing the Führer step forth, accompanied by all his men, that picture reassures the man in the street.

It is this that makes the people happy! That is what they want! This has been the case throughout German history. The Volk always delights in seeing the men on top united. This makes it easier to maintain its own unity. We must bear in mind the big picture, we must do everything in our power to preserve and foster this impression with the Volk. We must instill in the Volk the conviction that the leadership is right and that everyone stands behind this leadership. Psychologically speaking, this makes it possible for the leadership to hold its own in times of crisis.

Speech of November 10, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

It is very difficult to count the number of thinkers who have made stimulating contributions to every great idea of the past. Our entire way of thinking originates to an overwhelming extent in the products of the mental labors of the past and is only in small part the product of our own thoughts. The important thing is to organize the body of thoughts passed down by the great thinkers of former times reasonably and effectively and to draw the resulting logical consequences. What good is knowledge when one does not have the courage to use it?

In an interview with Casimir Smogorzewski on January 25, 1935. Quoted in Domarus

National Socialism is not a doctrine of lethargy, but a doctrine of fighting. Not a doctrine of good fortune, of coincidence, but a doctrine of work, a doctrine of struggle, and thus also a doctrine of sacrifices. That is how we did things before the fight, and in these past three years this has not changed, and it will remain so in the future!

Speech of January 30, 1936. Quoted in Domarus

The German of today is no different from that of ten, twenty or thirty years ago. Since then the number of Germans has not increased to any considerable extent. The capabilities of genius and energy cannot be considered more plentiful than in former times. The one thing which has changed considerably is the way in which these values are utilized to the full by the manner of their organization, and thanks to the formation of a new method of the selection of leaders.

[...]

When appointing men to leading positions in the State and party, greater value should be placed on character than on purely academic or allegedly intellectual suitability. It is not abstract knowledge which must be considered as a decisive factor wherever a leader is required but rather a natural talent for leadership, and with it a highly developed sense of responsibility which brings with it determination, courage and endurance.

It must be recognized on principle that the lack of a sense of responsibility can never be made up for by a supposedly first-class academic training, of which certificates may supply the fruit. Knowledge and qualities of leadership, which always imply energy, are not incompatible. But in doubtful cases knowledge can in no circumstances be a substitute for integrity, courage, bravery and determination. These are the qualities that are more important in a leader of the people in the State and party.

Speech of January 30, 1939. Quoted in My New Order

In assigning men to posts of leadership in State and Party, attitude and character are to be valued more highly than so-called purely scientific or supposed mental qualifications. For, wherever leadership has to be exercised, it is not abstract knowledge which is decisive, but instead the inborn ability to lead and therefore a high degree of readiness to take on responsibility, of determination, courage, and persistence.

In principle, we must realize that documented proof of a presumedly first-class scientific education can never compensate for a lack of readiness to take on responsibility. Knowledge and leadership abilities, and hence vigor, are not mutually exclusive. In case of doubt, however, knowledge cannot serve as a substitute for attitude, courage, valor, and initiative, under any circumstances. These attributes are the more important ones in terms of the leadership of a Volksgemeinschaft in Party and State.

From a Speech on January 30, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

When appointing men to leading positions in the state and Party, greater value should be placed on character than on purely academic or allegedly intellectual suitability. It is not abstract knowledge which must be considered a decisive factor wherever a leader is required but rather a natural talent for leadership and with it a highly developed sense of responsibility which brings with it determination, courage and endurance.

It must be recognized on principle that the lack of a sense of responsibility can never be made up for by a supposedly first-class academic training of which certificates may supply the proof. Knowledge and the qualities of leadership, which always imply energy, are not incompatible. But in doubtful cases knowledge can in no circumstances be a substitute for integrity, courage, bravery and determination. These are the qualities that are more important in a leader of the people in state and Party.

I say this to you now, gentlemen, looking back on the one year of German history which has shown me more clearly than the whole of my previous life how vital and essential these very qualities are, and how in a time of crisis one single energetic man of action outweighs a thousand feeble intellectuals.

January 30, 1939. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

The sacrifice of the woman bearing a child for this nation is equal to that of the man who defends this nation.

Speech of November 8, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

... any Reich built only upon the classes of intellect is a weak construction!

I know this intellect: perpetually brooding, perpetually inquiring, but also perpetually uncertain, perpetually hesitating, vacillating, never firm! He who would construct a Reich on these intellectual classes alone will find that he is building on sand.

It is no accident that religions are more stable than the various forms of government. They generally tend to sink their roots deeper into the earth; they would be inconceivable without this broad mass of people. I know that the intellectual classes are all too easily seized by the arrogance that rates this Volk according to the standards of its knowledge and its so-called wisdom; yet there are things here which even the understanding of the prudent fails to see because it is unable to see them. This broad mass of people is certainly often dull and certainly backward in some respects, not as nimble, not as witty, not as intellectual. But it does have one thing: it has faith, it has persistence, it has stability.

Speech of May 10, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

It is no chance that religions are more stable than constitutional forms. Generally they tend to sink their roots deeper into the soil; they would be unthinkable in the absence of the masses of the people. I know that the intellectual classes fall all too easily a victim to that arrogance which measures the people according to the standards of its knowledge and of its so-called intelligence; and yet there are things in the people which very often the intelligence of the 'intelligent' does not see because it cannot see them. The masses are certainly often dull, in many respects they are certainly backward, they are not so nimble, so witty, or intellectual; but they have something to their credit - they have loyalty, constancy, stability.

Speech of May 10, 1933. Quoted in My New Order

There are, however, in the life of nations certain necessities which, if they are not brought about by peaceful methods, must be realized by force, however regrettable this appears, not only to the life of the individual citizen but also to the life of the community. It is undeniable that the greater interests common to all must never be impaired by the stubbornness or ill will of individuals and communities.

Speech of October 6, 1939. Quoted in My New Order

I have always stressed that an authoritarian regime bears particularly great responsibilities. If it is demanded of the Volk that it place blind trust in its leadership, that leadership must earn this trust by its achievements and by particularly good behavior. Mistakes and errors may occur in a given case, but they can be eradicated. Bad behavior, drunken excesses, molesting peaceful, upstanding citizens - this is unworthy of a leader, contrary to National Socialism, and detestable to the utmost degree.

Thus I have always insisted that higher demands be placed upon the behavior and conduct of National Socialist leaders than upon the other Volksgenossen. He who would command more respect for himself must in turn achieve more. The most basic thing which can be expected of him is that his life not be a disgraceful example to those around him.

Speech of July 13, 1934. Quoted in Domarus

When one demands of a people that it should put blind confidence in its leaders, then for their part these leaders must deserve this confidence through their achievement and through specially good behavior. Mistakes and errors may in individual cases slip in, but they are to be eradicated. Bad behavior, drunken excesses, the molestation of peaceful decent folk - these are unworthy of a leader, they are not National Socialist, and they are in the highest degree detestable.

Speech of July 13, 1934. Quoted in My New Order

The world does not live on wars, and similarly the Volk does not live on revolutions. Both cases can, at most, provide the basis for a new life. But no good will come of it if the act of destruction is not accomplished for the sake of a better and thus higher idea, but is exclusively subject to the nihilistic drives of destruction and will thus result not in the formation of something better but in unending hatred.

A revolution which perceives its sole purpose as the defeat of a political opponent, the destruction of earlier accomplishments, or in the elimination of existing circumstances will lead to nothing better than a world war which will reach its appalling culmination—or rather its logical progression - in a mad Diktat.

Speech of September 5, 1934. Quoted in Domarus

Peoples have never yet been successfully led by a majority but always only by a minority.

This minority is not something outside, alien to the majority and opposed to it, it is composed of the best elements chosen out of the people as a whole. Just as the nation entrusts to a minority the defense of all its individual vital interests and feels no jealousy, so it will without hesitation entrust to a minority also the defense of its most weighty affairs so soon as it realizes that the minority is the most capable authority and, further, represents those from its own ranks best qualified to perform these tasks.

Speech of September 10, 1934

We cannot live from phrases, from platitudes and theories, but only from the results of our work, our capacity, and our intelligence. This hard life-struggle of ours is not made any easier by each going his own way, if each man says, 'I do what I will and what seems good to me.' No, we must live one with another. No one can shut himself off from this community, because no one can escape from this common destiny.

Speech of May 1, 1937. Quoted in My New Order

The German people is no warlike nation. It is a soldierly one which means it does not want a war but does not fear it. It loves peace but it also loves its honor and freedom.

Speech of February 20, 1938. Quoted in My New Order

With every shred of its being, the German Volk is not a warlike, but a soldierly Volk; i.e. it does not desire war, yet it does not fear it, either. It loves peace, but it equally cherishes its honor and its liberty.

Speech of February 20, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

National Socialism regards the forcible amalgamation of one people with another alien people not only as a worthless political aim, but in the long run as a danger to the internal unity and hence the strength of a nation. National Socialism therefore dogmatically rejects the idea of national assimilation. That also disposes of the bourgeois belief in a possible 'Germanization.'

Speech of May 21, 1935. Quoted in My New Order

... the cultural evolution of a Volk resembles that of the Milky Way. Amongst countless pale stars a few suns radiate. However, all suns and planets are made of the same one material, and all of them observe the same laws. The entire cultural work of a Volk must not only be geared toward fulfillment of one mission, but this mission must also be pursued in one spirit.

National Socialism is a cool and highly-reasoned approach to reality based upon the greatest of scientific knowledge and its spiritual expression. As we have opened the Volk's heart to these teachings, and as we continue to do so at present, we have no desire of instilling in the Volk a mysticism that transcends the purpose and goals of our teachings.

Above all, National Socialism is a Volk Movement in essence and under no circumstances a cult movement! Insofar as the enlightenment and registration of our Volk demands the use of certain methods, which by now have become part of its traditions, these methods are rooted in experience and realizations that were arrived at by exclusively pragmatic considerations. Hence it will be useful to make these methods part of our heritage at a later date. They have nothing to do with other borrowed methods or expressions derived from other viewpoints which have to this date constituted the essence of cults. For the National Socialist Movement is not a cult movement; rather, it is a völkisch and political philosophy which grew out of considerations of an exclusively racist nature. This philosophy does not advocate mystic cults, but rather aims to cultivate and lead a Volk determined by its blood.

Speech of September 6, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and co-operation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life.

Speech of February 1, 1933. Quotes in "My New Order"

What the intellect of the intellectual could not see was grasped immediately by the soul, the heart, the instinct of this simple, primitive, but healthy man. It is another one of the tasks of the future to re-establish the unity between feeling and intellect; that is, to educate an unspoiled generation which will perceive with clear understanding the eternal law of development and at the same time will consciously return to the primitive instinct.

Speech of September 1, 1933. Quoted in My New Order

I am of the opinion that there is nothing which has been produced by the will of man which cannot in its turn be altered by another human will.

Speech of January 27, 1932. Quoted in My New Order

Government of the Reich will undertake a thorough moral purging of the body corporate of the nation. The entire educational system, the theater, the cinema, literature, the Press, and the wireless - all these will be used as means to this end and valued accordingly. They must all serve for the maintenance of the eternal values present in the essential character of our people.

Art will always remain the expression and the reflection of the longings and the realities of an era. The neutral international attitude of aloofness is rapidly disappearing. Heroism is coming forward passionately and will in future shape and lead political destiny. It is the task of art to be the expression of this determining spirit of the age. Blood and race will once more become the source of artistic intuition.

Speech of March 23, 1933. Quoted in My New Order

Germany possessed once - as the first condition for the organization of our people on a large scale - a weltanschauliche basis in our religion - Christianity. When this basis was shattered we see how the strength of the nation turned from external affairs to internal conflicts, since the nature of man from an inner necessity compels him at the moment when the common weltanschauliche basis is lost or is attacked to seek for a new common basis. These were the great periods of the civil wars, of the wars of religion, etc., struggles and confusions during which either a nation finds a new weltanschauliche platform and on this can build itself up anew and then it can turn its force outwards, or else a people is split in two and falls into chaos.

Speech of January 27, 1932. Quoted in My New Order

The more you bring it home to their consciousness that they are only objects for men to bargain with, that they are only prisoners of world-politics, the more will they, like all prisoners, concentrate their thoughts on purely material interests. On the other hand, the more you bring back the people into the sphere of faith, of ideals, the more will it cease to regard material distress as the one and only thing which counts. And the weightiest evidence for the truth of that statement is our own German people. We would not ever forget that the German people waged wars of religion for 150 years with prodigious devotion, that hundreds of thousands of men once left their plot of land, their property, and their belongings simply for an ideal, simply for a conviction. We would never forget that during those 150 years there was no trace of even an ounce of material interests. Then you will understand how mighty is the force of an idea, of an ideal. Only so can you comprehend how it is that in our Movement today hundreds of thousands of young men are prepared at the risk of their lives to withstand our opponents.

Speech of January 27, 1932. Quoted in My New Order

The Government of the nation must never harden into a purely bureaucratic machine: it must ever remain a living leadership, a leadership which does not view the people as an object of its activity, but which lives within the people, feels with the people and fights for the people. Forms and organizations can pass, but what does and must remain is the living substance of flesh and blood.

Speech of September 1, 1933. Quoted in My New Order

The organizations defending class interests naturally resisted their own dissolution: but one cannot let a people go to ruin because these organizations wish to live. For a people does not live for theories, for programs or for organizations, but all these have to serve a nation's life.

Similarly today we see that the struggle between peoples is fostered by folk with definite interests to promote. It is an uprooted international clique which incites the peoples one against another. They are folk who are at home everywhere and nowhere: they have no soil of their own on which they have grown up: today they are living in Berlin, tomorrow they may be in Brussels, the day after in Paris, and then again in Prague or Vienna or London - everywhere they feel themselves at home. Everywhere they can carry on their business, but the people cannot follow them: the people is chained to its soil, is tied to its homeland, tied to the possibilities of life of its State, its nation. The peasant cannot leave his soil, the workman depends upon his factory. If his factory is ruined, where will he find help? What is today the meaning of international class solidarity? That is mere theory at a time in which on every hand distress cries aloud and peoples have to fight hard for their existence. The strength of all of us lies - not in this international phantom, it lies in our homeland. My aim has always been to arouse and to reinforce this strength.

Speech of November 10, 1933. Quoted in My New Order

A Press which is on principle anti-national cannot be tolerated in Germany. Whoever denies the nation can have no part in it. We must demand that the press shall become the instrument of the national self-education.

Speech of April 27, 1923. Quoted in My New Order

Hitler on Economics

Great are the tasks of the National Government in the sphere of economic life.

Here all action shall be governed by one law: the Volk does not live for the economy, and the economy does not exist for capital, but capital serves the economy and the economy serves the Volk!

In principle, the Government protects the economic interests of the German Volk not by taking the roundabout way through an economic bureaucracy to be organized by the State, but by the utmost promotion of private initiative and a recognition of the rights of property.

A fair balance must be established between productive intention on the one hand and productive work on the other.

Speech of March 23, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

Here all action must be governed by one law: the people does not live for business and business does not exist for capital, but capital serves business and business serves the people.

Speech of March 23, 1933. Quoted in "My New Order"

National Socialist Germany has created a new economic doctrine which views capital as the servant of the economy and the economy as the servant of the people.

Speech of February 24, 1939. Quoted in My New Order

We have one single doctrine which is that in economic life there is no place for doctrine.

In an interview with Madame Titayna on January 26, 1936. Quoted in Baynes

We cannot exist on phrases, clichés and theories, but only on the fruits of our labor, our ability and our intelligence. ... For at the fore of our National Socialist economic leadership stands not the word "theory," nor the word "money," nor "capital," but the word "production."

Believe me, my Volksgenossen: it requires more brain-work, more effort and more concentration to draw up and implement a Four-Year Plan to secure for our Volk the requisite vital goods for the future than to start up the rotary press to print more paper money. It is very easy to stride before the public and say, "We're raising salaries, earnings and wages" - and then tomorrow we shall raise prices. And it is very easy to say, "We'll shorten working hours - that means output - and raise wages instead." That may be popular at the moment. But the collapse is inevitable, for the individual does not live on a paper wage but on the total sum of the production of his Volksgenossen. That is the foremost precept of National Socialist economic policy.

Speech of May 1, 1937. Quoted in Domarus

The State is not a plantation where the interests of foreign capital are supreme. Capital is not the master of the State, but its servant. Therefore the State must not be brought into dependence on international loan capital. And if anyone believes that that cannot be avoided, then do not let him be surprised that no one is ready to give his life for this State.

Speech of April 24, 1923. Quoted in My New Order

We have not practiced a policy of using cheap popular phrases. We have divested money of its phantom-like traits and assigned to it the role it deserves: neither gold nor foreign exchange funds, but work alone is the foundation for money! There is no such thing as an increase in wages if it does not go hand in hand with an increase in production. This economic insight has enabled us to decimate seven million unemployed to approximately 800,000 and to keep prices almost completely stable for all essential vital goods. Today there is work going on everywhere. The peasant is tilling his fields, the worker is supplying him with manufactured products, an entire nation is working. Things are looking up!

Speech of June 6, 1937. Quoted in Domarus

I am resolved to complete the transformation of the Reichsbank, begun January 30, 1937, changing it from a bank under international influence to a purely German bank of issue. If some other countries complain that thereby another German undertaking would lose its international features and characteristics, then we can only reply that we are absolutely determined that every institution in our national life shall have primarily German, that is, National Socialist, features.

Speech of January 30, 1939. Quoted in My New Order

I stand determined to bring to its conclusion the transformation of the German Reichsbank - a path pursued ever since January 30, 1937 - from an internationally controlled bankers' enterprise to the institute of issue of the German Reich.

If the rest of the world laments the loss of the international character of yet another German institution, may we point out that it is our inexorable decision to impart to all institutions affecting our lives predominantly German, i.e. National Socialist characteristics.

I now hold it to be the duty ... of every German man and every German woman to comprehend the conduct of the Reich's economic policy. In the cities and in the countryside you have to consider in particular that Germany's economic policy is not based on some sort of financial theory, but rather on a very primitive understanding of production, i.e. on the realization that the sole determining factor is the quantity of goods produced.

Speech of January 30, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

We National Socialists see in private property a higher degree of human economic development which regulates the administration of rewards in proportion to the differences in achievement, but which in general makes possible and guarantees to all the advantages of a higher standard of living. Bolshevism destroys not only private property but also private initiative and the zest for personal responsibility. In this way it has failed to save millions of men from starvation in Russia, the greatest agrarian state in the world. The results of such a catastrophe in Germany would be inconceivable. In Russia there are ninety people living on the land to only ten living in the cities, whereas in Germany there are only twenty-five peasants to every seventy-five city dwellers.

May 12, 1935. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

The salvation of our Volk is not a financial problem; it is exclusively a problem of utilizing and employing the available work force on the one hand and exploiting available soil and mineral resources on the other. The Volksgemeinschaft [people's community] does not subsist on the fictitious value of money but on actual production, which gives money its value. This production is the primary cover for a currency, not a bank or a vault full of gold! And when I increase this production, I am actually increasing the income of my fellow citizens; if I decrease production, I decrease income, regardless of what salaries are being paid out.

This concerted resolution of economic issues finds its greatest expression in the Four-Year Plan. It assures that once great numbers of German workers are released by the armament industry and re-enter the labor force, these workers shall find secure employment within our economy.

It is quite clear that neither strikes nor lockouts can be tolerated in a sphere where such views prevail. The National Socialist State does not recognize an economic law of the jungle. The common interest of the nation - i.e. of our Volk - has priority over the interests of all its competing components. Therefore we cannot allow that any means suited for utilization in our Volk's training and education be exempted from this shared obligation.

Speech of January 30, 1937. Quoted in Domarus

What could a Volk expect that had neither trust nor confidence in itself? Could it expect that others would rate it more highly than it rated itself? First, one had to get rid of all this cronyism and rubbish about an economically bankrupt system just as one had to discard obsolete economic doctrines and terminology. These had to be replaced with simple and fundamental principles and realizations. Only what a nation produces as a whole will benefit the nation as a whole. What it does not produce, it does not possess. Money can never replace inadequate production, rather - in this case - it becomes merely a means of duping the nation.

Speech of March 29, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

To take another instance where we are condemned: They claim to be fighting for the maintenance of the gold standard as the currency basis. That I can well believe, for the gold is in their hands. We too once had gold, but it was stolen and extorted from us. When I came to power, it was not malice which made me abandon the gold standard. Germany simply had no gold left.

Consequently, quitting the gold standard presented no difficulties, for it is always easy to part with what one does not have. We had no gold. We had no foreign exchange. They had all been stolen and extorted from us during the previous fifteen years. But, my Volksgenossen, I did not regret it, for we have constructed our economic system on a wholly different basis. In our eyes, gold is not of value in itself. It is only an agent by which nations can be suppressed and dominated.

When I took over the government, I had only one hope on which to build, namely, the efficiency and ability of the German nation and the German working man, the intelligence of our inventors, engineers, technicians, chemists, and so forth. I built on the strength which animates our economic system. One simple question faced me: Are we to perish because we have no gold; am I to believe in a phantom which spells our destruction?

I championed the opposite opinion: Even though we have no gold, we have capacity for work. The German capacity for work is our gold and our capital, and with this gold I can compete successfully with any power in the world. We want to live in houses which have to be built. Hence, the workers must build them, and the raw materials required must be procured by work. My whole economic system has been built up on the conception of work. We have solved our problems while, amazingly enough, the capitalist countries and their currencies have suffered bankruptcy.

Sterling can find no market today. Throw it at any one and he will step aside to avoid being hit. But our Reichsmark, which is backed by no gold, has remained stable. Why? It has no gold cover; it is backed by you and by your work. You have helped me to keep the mark stable. German currency, with no gold coverage, is worth more today than gold itself. It signifies unceasing production. This we owe to the German farmer, who has worked from daybreak till nightfall. This we owe to the German worker, who has given us his whole strength. The whole problem has been solved in one instant, as if by magic.

December 10, 1940. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

I wish to put before you a few basic facts: The first is that in the capitalistic democratic world the most important principle of economy is that the people exist for trade and industry, and that these in turn exist for capital. We have reversed this principle by making capital exist for trade and industry, and trade and industry exist for the people. In other words, the people come first. Everything else is but a means to this end.

When an economic system is not capable of feeding and clothing a people, then it is bad, regardless of whether a few hundred people say: As far as I am concerned it is good, excellent; my dividends are splendid. However, the dividends do not interest me at all. Here we have drawn the line. They may then retort: Well, look here, that is just what we mean. You jeopardize liberty. Yes, certainly, we jeopardize the liberty to profiteer at the expense of the community, and, if necessary, we even abolish it.

British capitalists, to mention only one instance, can pocket dividends of 76, 80, 95, 140 and even 160 per cent from their armament industry. Naturally they say, "If the German methods grow apace and should prove victorious, this sort of thing will stop." They are perfectly right. I should never tolerate such a state of affairs. In my eyes, a six per cent dividend is sufficient. Even from this six per cent we deduct one-half and, as for the rest, we must have definite proof that it is invested in the interest of the country as a whole. In other words, no individual has the right to dispose arbitrarily of money which ought to be invested for the good of the country. If he disposes of it sensibly, well and good. If not, the National Socialist State will intervene.

December 10, 1940. Quoted in "Hitler's Words

It is intolerable for us to be the puppets of other nations and to have them prescribe for us, for example, what economic policy we are to pursue. We are carrying out the economic policy which is most advantageous to the German people. I am not persuading the others. If they want to sit on their money bags, let them do so. But when they say, "You do the same," I shall take care not to buy dead gold with the productive power of German workmen. I purchase the necessities of life with the productive power of German workmen.

The results of our economic policy speak for us, not for the gold standard people. For we, the poor, have abolished unemployment because we no longer pay homage to this madness, because we regard our entire economic existence as a production problem and no longer as a capitalistic problem. We placed the whole organized strength of the nation, the discipline of the entire nation, behind our economic policy.

We explained to the nation that it was madness to wage internal economic wars between the various classes, in which they all perish together. Of course, a fundamental social principle was necessary to achieve this. It is today no longer possible to build up a state on a capitalistic basis. The peoples eventually begin to stir. The awakening of the peoples cannot be prevented by wars. On the contrary, war will only hasten it. Such states will be ruined by financial catastrophes which will destroy the foundations of their own former financial policy.

February 24, 1941. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

In one respect, we cannot compete with our opponents: just as the party was once the poorest and won only because of the idealism of its followers, so, naturally, the German Volk is today perhaps the poorest of all people in the world in matters of gold. We have no gold. But what we have is living manpower.

What we have is a sacred diligence and a sacred will. In such a struggle of life and death, this is in the end a thousand times more decisive than gold. Of what use are their vaults of gold now to the Americans, other than that you can use them for making dentures. If they had ten synthetic-rubber factories, then that would be worth more than their entire stock of gold. I have had other things built. However, we did not bring any gold into this war, but rather the prerequisites for leading this fight. In any event, we Germans do not have a tank without rubber tires, but the English do today.

... The people of Europe are not fighting so that, afterwards, a couple of folk can again come along with their "fine instincts," pillage mankind, and leave behind millions of unemployed, only so that they can fill their safes. We had a good reason why we distanced ourselves from the gold standard. We wanted to eliminate one of the prerequisites for this type of economic outlook and enterprise. And this is certain: Europe will emerge from this war far more economically sound than before.

Speech of November 8, 1942. Domarus

Hitler on Culture

Man shall not live by bread alone. When we regard the rebuilding of our Volk as the task of our age and our lives, we see not only an ailing economy, but also an endangered culture; not only the suffering of the flesh, but also the suffering of the soul, and we can only envision that the German Volk will rise anew if German culture and above all German art emerge once more.

Speech of October 15, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

The Movement has taken on two thousand years of German history and culture. It will become the bearer of German history and German culture of the future. It will ensure that new, unforgettable documents are created which will continue to award the Volk its place among the circle of great civilized peoples in world history. We are not working for the moment, but for the judgment of millenniums.

Speech of April 22, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

I shall at some future date be able to demand of history that it will certify that at no hour of my actions in behalf of the German people did I forget the duties which I and all of us owe to the preservation of European culturalized civilization. A prerequisite, however, for the continued existence of this Continent, which is so extraordinary because of the differences of its cultures, is the realization that it is unthinkable without the existence of free and independent national States. Let every European people be convinced it has made the greatest contribution to our Occidental culture.

Speech of March 7, 1936. Quoted in My New Order

One day I will be able to demand from history confirmation of the fact that at no time in the course of my struggle on behalf of the German Volk did I forget the duties I myself and all of us are obligated to assume toward maintaining European culture and civilization.

However, it is a prerequisite for the existence of this continent, which ultimately owes its uniqueness to the diversity of its cultures, that it is unthinkable without the presence of free and independent national states.

Each European people may be convinced that it has made the greatest contribution to our Western culture. On the whole, however, we would not wish to do without any of what the separate peoples have given, and thus we do not wish to argue over the value of their respective contributions. Rather, we must recognize that the greatest achievements in the most diverse areas of human culture doubtless stem from the rivalry between individual European accomplishments.

Speech of March 7, 1936. Quoted in Domarus

National Socialist Germany has no other wish but to steer the competition of the European peoples back to those areas in which they bestowed upon the entire human race in the most noble and mutual rivalry those tremendous assets of civilization, culture, and art which enrich and beautify the appearance of the world today.

Speech of October 14, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

The merits of every great age are ultimately expressed in its architecture. When peoples internally experience great times, they also lend these times an external manifestation. Their word is then more convincing than the spoken word: it is the word of stone! ... Since the construction of our cathedrals, we see here for the first time a truly great architecture on display, an architecture which does not consume itself in the service of petty, day-to-day orders and needs, but is instead an architecture that far surpasses the scope of daily life and its requirements.

Speech of January 22, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

No Volk lives longer than the evidence of its culture!

Speech of September 11, 1935. Quoted in Domarus

When the poor human soul, oppressed with cares and troubles and inwardly distracted, has no longer a clear and definite belief in the greatness and the future of the nation to which it belongs, that is the time to stimulate its regard for the indisputable evidences of those eternal racial values which cannot be affected in their essence by a temporary phase of political or economic distress. The more the natural and legitimate demands of a nation are ignored or suppressed, or even simply denied, the more important it is that these vital demands should take on the appeal of a higher and nobler right by giving tangible proof of the great cultural values incorporated in the nation. Such visible demonstration of the higher qualities of a people, as the experience of history proves, will remain for thousands of years as an unquestionable testimony not only to the greatness of a people but also to their moral right to existence. Even though the last representatives of such a people should submit to the final disgrace of having their mouths closed forever, then the stones themselves will cry out. History pays scarcely any positive regard to a people that has not left its own monument to bear witness to its cultural achievement.

What would the Egyptians be without their pyramids and their temples and the artistic decorations that surrounded their daily lives? What would the Greeks be without Athens and the Acropolis? What would the Romans be without their mighty buildings and engineering works? What would the German emperors of the Middle Ages be without their cathedrals and their imperial palaces? What would the Middle Ages itself be without its town halls, and guild halls, and the like? What would religion be without its churches? That there was once such a people as the Mayas we should not know at all, or else be unconcerned about them, had they not left for the admiration of our time those mighty ruins of cities that bear witness to the extraordinary epic qualities of that people, such ruins as have arrested the attention of the modern world and are still a fascinating object of study for our scholars. A people cannot live longer than the works which are the testimony of its culture.

If artistic works, therefore, have more powerful and more durable repercussions than any other human activity, then the cultivation of the arts becomes all the more necessary in an age that is oppressed and distracted by an unfavorable political and economic situation. For art is more effective than any other means that might be employed for the purpose of bringing home to the consciousness of a people the truth of the fact that their individual and political sufferings are only transitory, whereas the creative powers and therewith the greatness of the nation are everlasting. Art is the great mainstay of a people, because it raises them above the petty cares of the moment and shows them that, after all, their individual woes are not of such great importance. Even if such a nation should go down in defeat and yet have produced cultural works that are immortal, in the eye of history that nation will have triumphed over its adversary.

September 11, 1935. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

It is a great mistake to believe that any human community would get along much more easily if it did without certain cultural achievements. Wealth and poverty, like everything else in this world, are in the final analysis only relative concepts. He who thinks only about material goods will always be very poor. But he who succeeds in diverting a people from materialistic aims to idealistic aims will suffer the least from the want of material goods.

Marxism only incites the material instincts because it believes it has found in them a medium comprehensible to that great mass within the nation which did not help to build the states but was only given shape when the state was formed. Marxism makes an appeal to the most primitive instincts which, once incited, can be most readily used for the destruction of the community, which has to limit the freedom of the individual in order to facilitate the life of all, and which can improve the material well-being of all only through the idealistic sacrifices of the individual.

In erecting temples to their gods, religions direct humanity away from the eternally insufficient satisfaction of individual desires toward the more noble realization of a common ideal. They build a mighty monument to faith which even superficial people cannot just disregard but which admonishes and at the same time elevates them. Only in this way should one regard and evaluate the usefulness of art.

September 9, 1936. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

The small requirements of every-day life have changed in the course of thousands of years and will go on changing forever, but the great cultural monuments of granite and marble erected by man still stand after thousands of years. They alone represent the only lasting and permanent thing amid the transitory flight of all other phenomena. In decadent periods man has always sought and found in them eternal magic power, enabling him once more to master disorder and to bring about a new order of things in place of chaos. These edifices are, therefore, not intended for the year 1940 or even for the year 2000, but they are made to project, like the cathedrals of the past, into the millenniums of the future.

It is these very monuments which will more than ever assist in uniting and strengthening our nation politically; in a social sense they will become for the Germans the basis of a proud feeling that they are one; they will, furthermore, prove the ridiculousness of other worldly differences compared with these mighty and gigantic witnesses of our community; and psychologically they will lend an unlimited pride and confidence to the citizens of our nation, namely, that of being German.

These huge buildings will at the same time also represent a grand justification for the political strength of the German nation. This is not intended to be a power without culture, a force without beauty. For the armament of a nation is only morally justified insofar as the shield and sword are used for a higher purpose. Consequently we are not striving for the brutal power of a Genghis Khan, but for a powerful empire in the form of a strong social and protected community as supporter and guardian of a higher culture!

September 7, 1937. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

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

Speech of September 7, 1937. Quoted in Domarus

Before National Socialism acceded to power, there was a so-called "modern" art in Germany, i.e., just as the word itself indicates, a new art every year. National Socialist Germany, in contrast, wishes to re-establish a "German art," and this art shall and will be eternal, just as is every other creative merit of a people. If it lacks such eternal merit for our Volk, then it is today without significant merit as well.

When the cornerstone was laid for this building [Haus der Kunst], it marked the beginning of construction of a temple not for a so-called modern, but for a genuine and eternal German art - or better: a building for the art of the German Volk and not for some international art of 1937, '40, '50, or '60. For art is not established in terms of a time, but only in terms of peoples. Thus the artist does not so much erect a memorial to a time, but rather to his people. For time is something changeable: the years come and go. Whatever would exist only within a certain time would have to be as transient as time itself.

Speech of July 19, 1937. Quoted in Domarus

[Speaking about modern "art"] The fact that something has never existed before is no proof for the quality of an accomplishment; it can just as easily be evidence for an inferiority which has never existed prior thereto. Thus if a so-called artist perceives his sole purpose in life as presenting the most confusing and incomprehensible portrayals of the accomplishments of the past or the present, the actual accomplishments of the past will nevertheless remain accomplishments, while the artistic stammerings of the painting, music, sculpture, and architecture produced by these types of charlatans will one day be nothing but proof of the magnitude of a nation's downfall.

Speech of September 1, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

In the twentieth century, the German Volk is a Volk of a resurrected affirmation of life, enchanted in its admiration of the strong and beautiful and hence of what is healthy and capable of sustaining life. Power and beauty are the slogans of our time. Clarity and logic reign supreme in our efforts. Whoever wants to be an artist in this century must wholeheartedly pledge himself to this century.

Speech at Haus der Deutschen Kunst, July 10, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

The heroic feats of greatness which our Volk accomplished in history over 2,000 years number among the most tremendous experiences of mankind. There were centuries in which works of art corresponded to a spiritual human greatness in Germany - and in the rest of Europe. The unique eminence of our cathedrals represents an incomparable standard for the truly - in a cultural sense - monumental attitude of these ages. They demand from us more than admiration for the work itself; they demand reverence for the races which were capable of planning and carrying out such great ideas.

... Our cathedrals are witnesses to the glory of the past! The glory of the present will one day be gauged by the eternal values it leaves behind. Only then will Germany undergo a revival of its art and our Volk become conscious of a higher destiny.

Speech of September 11, 1935. Quoted in Domarus

This is a fundamental principle: no one can maintain an inner relationship to a cultural accomplishment which is not rooted in the essence of his own descent.

Speech of September 9, 1936. Quoted in Domarus

The great buildings which shall stand there will not only gladden our Volk in the present, but also fill it with pride in the future. The only truly immortal investment of human labor is art!

Speech of September 9, 1936. Quoted in Domarus

National Socialist art ... must serve the development of our community. National Socialist art, therefore, can no longer tolerate the symbols of the decadent world behind us, the democratic destructive qualities of which carried over visibly into the cultural field. We love that which is healthy. The best that is in our people in respect to body and soul is to be the determining measure. We want our art to glorify only that and nothing else. Our law of beauty shall always read: Health. In the field of architecture this means clarity, purposefulness, and—coming out of these two—again beauty.

September 9, 1936. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

Never has a great work of art been created for the sake of money. The artists have often starved to death beside their works. Every epoch has also the artists it deserves. A miserable and characterless period in which money rules has no art but only trash and regards art as a means of attracting tourists. With this trash one can do business for awhile, but one cannot create lasting values. Munich would not have tourist trade if it had not had a Ludwig I who made of Munich a city which everyone must see who wants to know Germany. Ludwig II created works of art out of an inner urge, and not because he could realize a profit from them.

April 3, 1929. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

In our opinion, art and politics belong together as nothing else on this earth. Everything that has been built in the great cultural centers was created with a political will as the determining factor. Do not think that the Pharaohs built their pyramids so that Cook's Travel Bureaus can make money or the steamship lines can do business. The reasons were political in nature. And if you say, no, religion was the reason, then we must answer: In those days the highest task of religion was still the preservation of the state. The time in which political parties used religion to destroy states came only later. Preservation of the state and of the people at that time was the reason for this manifestation of the royal will, in reality of the great, monumental racial will [Rasse-Willens] of a ruling class. Not one of the great monuments of culture which exists today owes its existence to any factor other than the political. There is Rome or Hellas. Not a single city of culture owes its existence to anything but the political hope and the political will to preserve inter-related monuments, testimonials of the unification of peoples, and to profess the overwhelming power of the central authority. ... When Ludwig I created an art center he did not do it solely for the love of art, but because of pride and belief that Munich could in that way attain what could not be attained in any other way, namely, an importance which far surpassed her size.

November 29, 1929. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

Today the beer-happy bourgeois (Bierspiesser) of those times is no longer regarded as the ideal of the German Volk, but men and girls who are fit as a fiddle, who are string taut. What we want from our German youth is different from what the past wanted of it. In our eyes, the German youth of the future must be slender and supple, swift as greyhounds, tough as leather, and hard as Krupp steel. We must cultivate a new man in order to prevent the ruin of our Volk by the degeneration manifested in our age.

In a speech to Hitler Youth on September 15, 1935. Quoted in Domarus

Today, our entire German system of education - including the press, theater, film, and literature - is run and organized exclusively by German Volksgenossen. How often were we told before that removing the Judentum from these institutions must result in their collapse or deterioration? And what has happened now? In all of these areas we are witnessing a tremendous flourishing of cultural and artistic life. Our films are better than ever before; the performances on the stages of our first-rate theaters are in a world class all their own. Our press has become a powerful instrument serving the self-assertion of our Volk and does its part in fortifying the nation. German science is doing successful work, and tremendous proofs of our creative architectural will shall one day bear witness to this new epoch!

Speech of January 30, 1937. Quoted in Domarus

... the Reich Government intends to undertake a thorough moral purging of the German Volkskörper (Body Politic). The entire system of education, the theater, the cinema, literature, the press, and radio—they all will be used as a means to this end and valued accordingly. They must all work to preserve the eternal values residing in the essential character of our Volk.

Art will always remain the expression and mirror of the yearning and the reality of an era. The cosmopolitan contemplative attitude is rapidly disappearing. Heroism is arising passionately as the future shaper and leader of political destinies. The task of art is to give expression to this determining spirit of the age. Blut and Rasse (Blood and Race) will once more become the source of artistic intuition.

The task of the government, particularly in an age of limited political power, is to ensure that the internal value of life and the will of the nation to live are given that much more monumental artistic expression in culture. This resolve entails the obligation to grateful appreciation of our great past. The gap between this past and the future must be bridged in all sectors of our historical and cultural life. Reverence for the Great Men must be instilled once more in German youth as a sacred inheritance. In being determined to undertake the political and moral purification of our public life, the government is creating and securing the requirements for a genuinely profound return to religious life.

Speech of March 23, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

Up to now it has been customary for everyone in Germany to build how and where he liked. This caused the disharmony in the overall design of German cities. Do you think a Ludwigstrasse would ever have been constructed had it been up to the citizens and other institutions of Munich? Great architectural solutions can only come about through a central plan, and this is the way it will be once again today.

All architectural projects, be it those of the Reich, of the Länder or communities, of insurance companies or private buildings, will be placed under one single central planning authority. This will be done in due consideration of aesthetic conditions and exigencies, of the needs of the cities and of traffic flow. And this is how it will be done in this city.

In addition, there will be a plan to secure those culturally important buildings which are essential in defining Munich's character as a city of the arts. Here, too, the maxim applies: idleness rusts the mind. When you review the new projects, you must admit efforts are being made constantly to improve the physical appearance of the city.

Speech of May 22, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

All the great cultural achievements in the history of mankind have been the product of those forces which spring from the feeling of communion in the social group, so that such works may be said to originate in the community itself. Hence they reflect in their genesis and final form the spiritual life and ideals of the community. It is, therefore, no accident that all the great communities in history which were inspired and formed by a definite concept of the world and life, religious or philosophical, have striven to perpetuate themselves through the medium of great cultural works. In those epochs of religious intensity, where material cares were set aside as far as possible, the human mind achieved the greatest cultural triumphs.

The contrary was the case with Judaism. Infected by the spirit of capitalism through and through, and directing their actions accordingly, the Jews never produced an art that was characteristically their own, and will never create such a thing. Although this people for long periods in its history has had immense individual fortunes at its disposal, it never created an architectural style of its own, nor have the Jews been able to produce a music that reflects their racial characteristics. Even in the building of the Temple at Jerusalem foreign architects had to be employed to help in giving it final shape, just as most of the Jewish synagogues nowadays are the work of German, French, and Italian artists. I am convinced, therefore, that after a few years under the National Socialist leadership of state and people, the Germans will produce much more and greater work in the cultural domain than has been accomplished during the recent decades of the Jewish regime.

September 11, 1935. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

Hitler on National-Socialism

If we are asked, 'Why have you seized, upon an entirely new ideology?' the answer is: 'Because the old ideology failed miserably; and, not only at home.'

Speech of January 30, 1941. My New Order

A Socialist is one who serves the common good without giving up his individuality or personality or the product of his personal efficiency. ... Our adopted term "Socialist" has nothing to do with Marxist Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true socialism is not. Marxism places no value on the individual, or individual effort, or efficiency; true Socialism values the individual and encourages him in individual efficiency, at the same time holding that his interests as an individual must be in consonance with those of the community. All great inventions, discoveries, achievements were first the product of an individual brain. It is charged against me that I am against property, that I am an atheist. Both charges are false.

Quoted in Daily Express. September 28, 1930

'National' and 'social' are two identical conceptions. It was only the Jew who succeeded, through falsifying the social idea and turning it into Marxism, not only in divorcing the social idea from the national, but in actually representing them as utterly contradictory. That aim he has in fact achieved.

At the founding of this Movement we formed the decision that we would give expression to this idea of ours of the identity of the two conceptions: despite all warnings, on the basis of what we had come to believe, on the basis of the sincerity of our will, we christened it 'National Socialist.'

We said to ourselves that to be 'national' means above everything to act with a boundless and all-embracing love for the people and, if necessary, even to die for it. And similarly to be 'social' means so to build up the State and the community of the people that every individual acts in the interest of the community of the people and must be to such an extent convinced of the goodness, of the honorable straightforwardness of this community of the people as to be ready to die for it.

Speech of April 12, 1922. Quoted in My New Order

... we chose a course which lay between two extremes. In the first place, we had fallen into one extreme, the liberal and individualistic, which made the individual the center, not only of speculation, but of action. On the other side stood the theory of humanitarianism as a universal doctrine. Between these two extremes lay our ideal, a national community in body and in spirit, designed and founded by providence into the midst of which man is set to achieve the purpose of his life.

Fully conscious of what we were doing, we subordinated all our thoughts to this end; we adapted all our interests and measures to it. Out of this arose the ideology of National Socialism. In itself it represents the conquest of individualism - not in the sense of curtailing individual faculties or paralyzing individual initiative, but in the sense of setting the interest of the community above the liberty and the initiative of the individual. The interests of the community became the regulating and, if necessary, the commanding factor.

Speech of January 30, 1941. My New Order

There is no such thing as socialism which does not have the power of the spirit at its disposal; no such thing as social good fortune which is not protected by - and even finds its prerequisite in - the power of a nation. And there is no such thing as a nation - and thus no such thing as nationalism - if the army of millions who work with their intellects are not joined by the army of millions who work with their fists, the army of millions of peasants.

As long as Nationalism and Socialism march as separate ideas, they will be defeated by the united forces of their opponents. On that day when both ideas are molten into one, they will become invincible!

Speech of July 15, 1932. Quoted in Domarus

Sometimes when I see shabbily dressed girls, shivering with cold themselves, collecting with infinite patience for others who are cold, then I have the feeling that they are all apostles of a certain Christianity! This is a Christianity which can claim for itself as no other can: this is the Christianity of a sincere profession of faith, because behind it stands not the word, but the deed!

With the aid of this tremendous society [Winterhilfswerk], countless people are being relieved of the feeling of social abandonment and isolation. Many are thus regaining the firm belief that they are not completely lost and alone in this world, but sheltered in their Volksgemeinschaft; that they, too, are being cared for, that they, too, are being thought of and remembered. And beyond that: there is a difference between the theoretical knowledge of socialism and the practical life of socialism. People are not born socialists, but must first be taught how to become them.

Speech of October 5, 1937. Quoted in Domarus

The lone individual is short-lived; the Volk is lasting. While the liberal world outlook, by according the individual a god-like status, must of necessity lead to the destruction of the Volk, National Socialism wishes to preserve the Volk as such, if necessary at the expense of the individual.

It requires a tremendous educational effort in order to make clear to the people what initially appears to be a difficult lesson in order that they may realize that in the discipline of the individual lies a blessing not only for the whole, but ultimately also for the individual himself.

Speech of October 1, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

The Winterhilfswerk (Winter Relief of the German People) is to alleviate the misery which cannot be alleviated by official measures. It shall also contribute to educating the Volk in socialist thinking. In the affluent Germany of the pre-war age, it was not possible to establish such an organization. In months of the most intensive propaganda, pre-war Germany obtained a total of no more than seven million marks in donations for the zeppelin project, although it was a cause involving the entire Volk.

In a single winter, we have raised 320 million marks in an impoverished Germany. This enormous sum is not only an accomplishment in and of itself, but also proof of the spirit of sacrifice which abides in our Volk.

Speech of April 17, 1934. Quoted in Domarus

One can easily state, so far as the mere understanding of the statement goes, that the highest form of Nationalism finds its expression only in an unconditional devotion of the individual to the people. It will never be denied that the purest form of socialism means the conscious elevation of the claims of the people, its life and its interests above the interests and the life of the individual.

Speech of August 17, 1934. Quoted in My New Order

Germany cannot give more to each of us than we ourselves are willing to give to Germany!

In a speech on October 20, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

There is no attitude which does not have its ultimate justification in the resulting advantages for the community. What is unimportant or detrimental to the existence of the community can never be seen as moral in the service of a social order.

In a Speech on January 30, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

Hitler on Democracy

I see two diametrically opposed principles: the principle of democracy which, wherever it is allowed practical effect, is the principle of destruction: and, the principle of the authority of personality which I would call the principle of achievement, because whatever man in the past has achieved - all human civilizations - is conceivable only if the supremacy of this principle is admitted.

Speech of January 27, 1932. Quoted in My New Order

It must be admitted that in the economic sphere, from the start, in all branches men are not of equal value or of equal importance. And once this is admitted it is madness to say: in the economic sphere there are undoubtedly differences in value, but that is not true in the political sphere. It is absurd to build up economic life on the conceptions of achievement, of the value of personality, and therefore in practice on the authority of personality, but in the political sphere to deny the authority of personality and to thrust into its place the law of the greater number - democracy.

In that case there must slowly arise a cleavage between the economic and the political point of view, and to bridge that cleavage an attempt will be made to assimilate the former to the latter - indeed the attempt has been made [Communism], for this cleavage has not remained bare, pale theory.

Speech of January 27, 1932. Quoted in My New Order

In the economic sphere communism is analogous to democracy in the political sphere.

Speech of January 27, 1932. Quoted in My New Order

The German Volk of earlier decades, politically and socially disorganized, squandered large part of its inherent strength in an inner struggle as fruitless as it was senseless. The so-called democratic freedom to live to the full according to one's persuasions and instincts leads not to an evolutionary advancement nor to a freeing of exceptional forces or values. Instead, it leads to a squandering of the existing wealth of the creative potential of the individual and to his ultimate paralysis.

[...]

It is complete nonsense to presume that obedience and discipline are useful only to soldiers and that they have no further application in the life of peoples beyond this. To the contrary: a Volksgemeinschaft [people's community] instilled with discipline and obedience can far more easily mobilize the forces necessary to secure the survival of its own people, thereby benefiting other peoples and serving the interests of all more effectively.

Such a Volksgemeinschaft cannot be created by force primarily, however, but by the compelling force of the idea itself, hence, through the toil of a continuing education.

Speech of January 30, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

The Right has further completely forgotten that democracy is fundamentally not German: it is Jewish. It has completely forgotten that this Jewish democracy with its majority decisions has always been without exception only a means towards the destruction of any existing Aryan leadership. The Right does not understand that directly every small question of profit or loss is regularly put before so called 'public opinion,' he who knows how most skilfully to make this 'public opinion' serve his own interests becomes forthwith master in the State. And that can be achieved by the man who can lie most artfully, most infamously; and in the last resort he is not the German, he is, in Schopenhauer's words, 'the great master in the art of lying' - the Jew.

Speech of April 12, 1922. Quoted in My New Order

I believe that the time is not far distant in which the philosophical community between Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany will prove essentially different than the one between democratic Great Britain and the bolshevist Russia of Stalin.

However, if there really should be no ideological difference, then I can only say: How correct, indeed, is my position toward Marxism and communism and democracy! Why two phenomena if they possess the same contents?

Speech of April 1, 1939. Quoted in My New Order

I believe the time is near when it shall become apparent that the weltanschaulich community of Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany is of a different mettle than that of democratic Great Britain and Bolshevist Russia under Stalin. Should there really be no ideological differences between them, then all I can say is: how correct indeed my views of Marxism, communism, and democracy were! Why should there be two phenomena when the substance is actually the same?

In a Speech on April 1, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

Some people of late have come up to me and claimed: "Oh, we meant to destroy the dictatorships but not the German and Italian peoples." My only answer to this is: something of this sort you could perhaps claim prior to November 1918, but no longer after November 1918!

Back then, these very same circles had claimed that all they sought was the destruction of "Prussian militarism," the destruction of only one dynasty, the House of Hohenzollern, not the destruction of the German Volk! The German Volk would then be led toward regaining its freedom in the framework of international democracy. We got to know this particular type of "freedom" quite well! And the German Volk has learned its lesson.

Speech of November 8, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

There has been formed in the world the curious custom of dividing peoples into so-called 'authoritarian' States, that is disciplined States, and democratic States. In the authoritarian, that is, the disciplined States, it goes without saying that one does not abuse foreign peoples, does not lie about them, does not incite to war. But the democratic States are precisely 'democratic,' that is, that all this can happen there. In the authoritarian States a war-agitation is of course impossible, for their Governments are under an obligation to see to it that there is no such thing. In the democracies, on the other hand, the Governments have only one duty: to maintain democracy, and that means the liberty, if necessary, even to incite to war.

Speech of November 6, 1938. Quoted in My New Order

In the world, a rather odd differentiation of peoples has developed according to which these either form so-called authoritarian states, that is states of discipline, or they form democratic states. In the authoritarian, in other words, disciplined states, it is self-evident that one should not defame foreign peoples, that one should not lie about them and that one should not plunge them into war! In democratic states, however, all this is allowed because after all one is "democratic."

In authoritarian countries, such warmongering is out of the question because, after all, it is the duty of their governments to prevent warmongering. In democratic countries, the governments know but one duty: to sustain democracy. In other words, they have the liberty to become warmongers if need be!

Speech of November 8, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

Hitler and Religion

... Let us take the second falsification—that we wished to eliminate all the world's religions. I am fifty-two years old now, and I have something better to do than to deal with this child's play and stupidity. Besides that, it does not interest me how many kinds of religion there are in the world and how the people adhere to these religions. This interests only the American President Roosevelt. In the German Reich, according to our view, each may live after his own fashion!

I have read that in the United States a preacher is not allowed to speak against the state and that soldiers are not allowed to attend such sermons. It is the same here with us. But there is a difference: namely, that the denominations in the German Reich receive nearly 900 million Reichsmark annually from the state, and not a penny in America! No priest has ever been persecuted in the German Reich because of his doctrine of faith unless, because of his doctrine of faith, he interfered with the doctrine of state. But this only a very few did. The great majority stands behind the German state in this struggle. It knows quite well that if this struggle is lost for the German Reich, religion would fare far worse in a Stalinist protectorate than it does in ours.

Speech of November 8, 1941. Domarus

The Lord helps those who help themselves. ... That is not only a very pious phrase, but a very just one. For one cannot assume that God exists to help people who are too cowardly and too lazy to help themselves and think that God exists only to make up for the weakness of mankind. He does not exist for that purpose. He has always, at all times, blessed only those who were prepared to fight their own battles. We have seen what can be expected from the help of others. ...

Providence has not led us along these amazing paths in vain. On the day that the Party was founded I recalled that our nation once gained immense victories. Then it became ungrateful, disunited, sinned against itself. Thereupon it was punished by Providence. We deserved our defeat. If a nation forgets itself as completely as the German nation did at that time, if it thinks that it can shake off all honor and all good faith, Providence can do nothing but teach it a hard and bitter lesson. But even at that time we were convinced that once our nation found itself again, once it again became industrious and honorable, once each individual German stood up for his nation first and not for himself, once he placed the interests of the community above his own personal interests, once the whole nation again pursued a great ideal, once it was prepared to stake everything for this ideal, the hour would come when the Lord would declare our trials at an end.

February 24, 1941. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

We do not imagine that success will be presented to our Movement as a gift. We shall have to face the most difficult struggle and to make innumerable sacrifices to reach our goal. We know that Germany cannot be made free by folding our hands in our laps. Every effort will be required to achieve this freedom. We are a group of men who recognize that the highest good is worth the greatest effort. We are not a Party of lazy, narrow-minded townsmen; we are not a Movement of worthless brothers, who are content to discuss the topics of the day, who as men say to their wives: My dear wife, the Lord has given, the Lord has taken away, praised be the will of the Lord; if it pleases Him, He will make us free again. No! The Lord gave us His blessing because we deserved it; the Lord revoked His blessing because we were not worthy of it; the Lord will give us His blessing again when He sees that He has a rejuvenated people before Him.

April 2, 1927. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

Hitler on the British Empire

How often did I say to myself during the World War as a simple soldier, lying across from the English troops, that it was absolute madness to combat these people - who could be members of our own Volk - with arms. Such a thing must never be repeated!

In a meeting with Lord Londonderry on February 4, 1936. Quoted in Domarus.

At one time, on August 4, 1914, I was deeply unhappy that both great Germanic peoples who had lived in peace side by side for so many hundreds of years, through all the aberrations of human history, were now thrown into war. I would be happy were this lamentable psychosis to come to an end and the two related nations were to find their way back to their old friendship.

In an interview with Ward Price on October 18, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

And for what this unthinkable massacre? In the end all of us, victor and vanquished alike, will lie buried beneath the same rubble, and there will be only one who will benefit from it—the one in Moscow.

And who should ever have imagined that it would be I, of all people, who would be forced to envision a like conflict? It was I who repeatedly was faulted in Germany for being too incorrigible an admirer of the British Empire; who so frequently sought to bring about a lasting understanding between the Reich and England, an understanding which I still consider vital to the defense of European culture even today! And to be blamed for all of this is solely the unreasonableness and obstinate blindness of the leaders of Great Britain!

Speaking on April 19, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

If an English statesman today believes he can resolve all outstanding problems by means of open consultations and negotiations, then this will elicit from me only one comment: There was ample time for this before we came— fifteen years! Apparently, the world today is persuaded it can divide the nations into two categories: those which are virtuous and those which are not. England and France belong to the first category, while Germany and Italy belong to the latter. All we can say in reply is: Is it not best left to the Lord Almighty to determine who is virtuous and who is not? Assuredly, it is not up to us mortals to pass judgment.

Perhaps this English statesman will then retort: "Evidently, the Lord has already passed his judgment, for did he not accord the virtuous nations a quarter of the surface of this earth while he took everything from those which are not virtuous?" Please permit me to ask a question here: Precisely by what means have these virtuous nations appropriated themselves a quarter of the earth? There is only one reply to this: surely these means were not virtuous! For 300 years now, England has acted in a fashion which cannot be described as virtuous. And now, in its old age, it speaks of virtue!

[...]

If a British statesman today demands of me that all problems related to Germany's vital interests first be discussed with England, then I could as well insist that all issues pending in Great Britain had first to be discussed with us. It is entirely possible that the English would retort to this: "The Germans have no business being in Palestine!" Indeed, we do not want to be in Palestine. And just as we Germans have no business being in Palestine, the English have no business being in our German Lebensraum!

And now they declare the issues at stake to be general questions of law and legitimacy. This opinion would hold good only if they were universally binding ones. They tell us that we have no right to do this or no right to do that. I would like to ask in turn: What right have the English—to cite only one example—to go about shooting Arabs in Palestine only because these stand up to defend their homeland? Who gives them this right?

Speech of April 1, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

If the world says today that the nations must be divided into virtuous nations and into such as are not virtuous - and that the English and French belong to the first class, and the Germans and Italians belong to those not virtuous - we can only answer: The judgment whether a people is virtuous or not virtuous can hardly be passed by a human being. That should be left to God.

Perhaps the same British statesman will retort: 'God has passed the verdict already, because He presented the virtuous nations with one quarter of the world and He took everything away from the nonvirtuous!'

The question may be permitted: 'By what means have the virtuous nations obtained for themselves this quarter of the world.'

And one must answer: 'They did not apply virtuous methods!'

For 300 years this England acted without virtue in order now in maturity to speak of virtue. Thus it could appear that during this British period without virtue 46,000,000 Englishmen have subdued nearly one-quarter of the world while 80,000,000 Germans, because of their virtue, must live at a rate of 140 to one square kilometer.

Speech of April 1, 1939. Quoted in My New Order

Just as we Germans have little to do in Palestine, just as little business has England mixing in our German section of existence. And if they now declare that it involves general questions of law and justice I could approve of this opinion only if it was considered as binding to both of us.

They say we have no right to do this or that. I should like to raise the counter-question: What right, for example, has England to shoot down Arabs in Palestine just because they defend their homeland; who gives them this right?

Speech of April 1, 1939. Quoted in My New Order

After 300 blood-stained years of British history, today 46 million Britons in the home country dominate approximately one-quarter of the earth, in area and in population. About 15,400,000 square miles is the share of 46 million persons. It is important, my fellow-countrymen, that we should constantly reiterate this fact, because shameless democratic liars stand up and maintain that the so-called totalitarian States wish to conquer the world. In reality, it is our old enemies who have always been the conquerors and aggressors.

Speech of January 30, 1941. My New Order

Mr. Eden holds that, in the future, every state should possess only those arms which are necessary for its defense. I do not know whether and in what form Moscow has been approached with respect to putting this interesting thought into practice, and to what extent promises have already been made from that quarter.

There is, however, one thing I must say: there is no doubt that the amount of the arms required for defense depends upon the amount of the dangers which threaten a country. This is something which each Volk - and each Volk alone - is competent to judge. Thus if Great Britain establishes the limits of its arms today, everyone in Germany will understand this; the only way we can see it is that London alone is competent to decide on the proportions of the protection required by the British Empire. At the same time, however, I would also like to stress that the proportions of the protection and hence defensive arms required by our Volk comprise a matter which falls under our own competence and thus is to be decided exclusively in Berlin.

Speech of January 30, 1937. Quoted in Domarus

There need be no controversy between us. We will not stand in the way of the pursuit of your interests outside of Europe and, if you give us a free hand in Central and Southeastern Europe, it will not be to your detriment. At one point, the colonial question will need to be resolved, but there is time yet, and I do not see any reason why this should lead to war.

Hitler during a meeting with Chamberlain on September 24, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

I wanted the closest friendship with England. I thought the Germanic races should go together.

Speech of November 8, 1940. My New Order

Throughout my years of political activities, I have always advocated the idea of establishing close Anglo-German friendship and cooperation. I found countless congenial people in my Movement. Perhaps they even joined my Movement because of this conviction of mine. The desire for Anglo-German friendship and cooperation not only reflects my own proper sentiments on the topic, derived from the common heritage of our two peoples, but also my opinion that the existence of the British Empire is of importance to mankind and in its best interest. Never have I left any doubt about my conviction that the maintaining of this empire is an object of inestimable value to mankind's culture and economy.

By whatever means Great Britain may have gained its colonial possessions— and I know this entailed the use of force, the use of the most brutal force in many instances—I nevertheless realize that no other empire has ever been created by different means. In the end, world history values not the method so much as the success; and this not in terms of the success of the method employed, but of the general utility derived from the method.

Undoubtedly the Anglo-Saxon people have accomplished a great colonizing work on this earth. I sincerely admire this achievement.

... However, my sincere respect for this attainment does not mean I will refrain from assuring the life of my own Volk. I believe it is not possible to bring about a lasting friendship between the German and the Anglo-Saxon peoples if the other side fails to realize that next to British interests there are German ones also. As for the men of Britain the sustenance of the British Empire lends meaning and purpose to life, so the sustenance and liberty of the German Reich does for the men of Germany! A lasting friendship between these two nations is conceivable only in the framework of mutual respect.

... I have never made any demands which affected British interests, posed a real danger to its world empire, or were detrimental to England in some other manner. I have restricted myself to demands in the framework of Germany's Lebensraum, questions closely tied to the German nation's eternal possessions.

Speech of April 28, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

The minute another man rises to power in England and replaces Chamberlain - someone like Mr. Duff Cooper, Mr. Eden or Mr. Churchill - that minute we know that it would be the ambition of these men to break loose yet another world war, and that immediately. They are quite open about this, they do not make a secret of it.

In a Speech on October 9, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

Now that these British advocates of world democracy maintain that this year alone we destroyed two democracies, I can only ask them: What precisely is democracy? Who has the right to speak in the name of democracy?

Has the good Lord handed over the keys to democracy to Mr. Churchill or to Mr. Duff Cooper? Has the lock combination been engraved upon some ancient tabulae perhaps at present in the hands of the British opposition?

[...]

These gentlemen of the British parliament might know their way around the British world empire, but of Central Europe they know nothing! Here they completely lack any idea of the situation, the events, and their circumstances. They should not, and will not, regard this as an insult, for, after all, we do not know our way around India, Egypt, or Palestine either.

Nonetheless, I believe it would be for the better if these gentlemen applied their enormous expertise and their infallible wisdom for which they are so well known, if they applied these, let us say, for instance or rather especially to the case of Palestine. They might do great good there. Because, after all, damn it, what is happening there reeks of brute force rather than democracy! But I am just citing this as an example, I do not mean to criticize, for I am but the advocate of the German Volk rather than that of others. In this I differ from Mr. Churchill and Mr. Eden who see themselves as the advocates of the whole world.

Speech of November 8, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

Why did England go to war back then? In 1914, the English claimed: Great Britain is fighting for the freedom of the small nations. Later we all saw how Great Britain dealt summarily with the freedom of these small nations, how little its so-called statesmen cared for the freedom of these small nations, how they repressed the minorities there, abused the peoples. And this is precisely what they are doing today and what they do whenever it suits their ends and programs.

They claimed at the time: England is fighting for justice! Well, England has been fighting for justice for three hundred years now and, as recompense, the dear Lord has given it about forty million square kilometers of soil on this earth and, in addition, the "right" to rule over 480 million human beings. Such is the Lord's recompense for "people who fight only for justice." Especially for people who fight only for the "right of others to self-determination," as, in 1914, England supposedly fought for this "right to self-determination." It declared: "The British soldier is not fighting for his own interests, but for the right of all peoples to self-determination." Now, England could well have proclaimed this right to self-determination for the peoples of the British Empire at the time. Apparently, it was saving this for the next war!

Speech of November 8, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

If Halifax declared yesterday that he stands for Kultur, then I reply we had a Kultur at a time when the British had not the slightest idea of Kultur. And in these last six years more has been done for Kultur in Germany than in the last 100 years in Britain. Wherever we went, whether Prague, Posen, or Vienna, in fact everywhere, we did not find monuments of British Kultur, but of German Kultur. Perhaps monuments of British Kultur stand in Egypt or India.

Speech of November 8, 1939, My New Order

For England these colonies are useless. It has forty million square kilometers. What is it doing with them? Nothing at all. It is the avarice of old usurers, who do not want to give away what they possess. They are sick creatures. If they see that their neighbor has nothing to eat, they would still rather throw what they possess into the sea than give it away, even if they cannot use it themselves. They get ill at the thought that they could lose something. And I did not even ask for anything that belonged to the English. I asked only for what they robbed us of and stole from us in the years 1918 and 1919! Robbery and theft contrary to the solemn assurances of the American president Wilson! We did not ask anything of them, we did not make any demands. Again and again, I stretched my hand out to them, and, still, everything was in vain. The reasons are clear to us: for one, it is German unification as such. They hate this, our state, irrespective of what it looks like, whether it is imperial or National Socialist, democratic or authoritarian. That makes no difference to them. And second: above all, they hate the rise of this Reich.

Speech of January 30, 1941. Domarus

If we still speak of Britain as a world Power or as master of the world today, we are laboring under a delusion. In spite of her conquest of the world, Britain is socially the most backward state in Europe, a state managed solely for the benefit of a relatively small upper class, closely associated with Jewish interests. The interests of the masses receive no consideration whatever in the affairs of the State. Here, too, phrases disguise the truth. They may prate of 'liberty,' of 'democracy,' of 'the achievements of a liberal system,' but they mean only the stabilization of the ruling class which, by virtue of its investments, controls and directs the press and formulates public opinion.

Thus it is possible that - in an Empire so blessed by Nature, in a State which has the greatest riches of the earth at its disposal, together with immense expanses of land with perhaps two inhabitants per square mile - millions of human beings in no way share these blessings, but live more miserably than the masses of overpopulated Central Europe. The land which is a paradise for the few, offers the masses only untold misery - miserable food, miserable clothing and, above all, miserable housing, insecurity in employment and in the whole field of social legislation.

And if a British Labor Secretary who, however, receives a salary from the State as a member of the opposition, gets up and says that after the war and victory Britain must begin to deal with social questions, to solve social problems and to care for the masses, I can only tell him his remarks are of interest solely because they confirm our statement that Britain is sociologically the most backward country in the world; in Germany these things were done long ago. The tremendous riches reveal themselves as unfruitful when we look beneath the surface and consider not merely a few individuals, but the condition of the people as a whole.

Speech of January 30, 1941. My New Order

We perceive Bolshevism, even more than in the past, as the incarnation of the human drive for destruction.

Since Great Britain quite frequently proclaims through the mouthpieces of its responsible statesmen that it is interested in maintaining the status quo in the world, then this should also apply there.

Every Bolshevization of a European country constitutes a change in this status quo. For these Bolshevized territories are then no longer autocratic states with a national life of their own, but sections in the Muscovite Center of Revolution. I am aware that Mr. Eden does not share this view. Mr. Stalin shares it, and openly admits it, and in my opinion, at present Mr. Stalin is personally a more reliable expert on and interpreter of Bolshevist ideas and intentions than a British minister!

Speech of February 20, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

Soviet Russia

We see in Bolshevism more now than before the incarnation of human destructive forces. We do not blame the Russian people as such for this gruesome ideology of destruction. We know it is a small Jewish intellectual group which led a great nation into this position of madness. If this doctrine would confine itself territorially to Russia maybe one could put up with it. Alas, Jewish international Bolshevism attempts to hollow out the nations of the world from its Soviet center.

Speech of February 20, 1938. Quoted in My New Order

In his last major speech, Herr Stalin expressed the fear that forces hostile to the Soviets might be acting in Germany; I must, however, take this opportunity to correct this opinion by saying that Germany will tolerate Communist tendencies or even propaganda just as little as German National Socialist tendencies would be tolerated in Russia.

Speech of January 30, 1934. Quoted in Domarus

As M. Stalin in his last great speech expressed the fear that forces hostile to the Soviet might be active in Germany: I must correct this opinion insofar by stating here that communistic tendencies or even propaganda would be no more tolerated in Germany than German National Socialistic tendencies would be tolerated in Russia.

Speech of January 30, 1934. Quoted in My New Order

Never has the German Volk harbored feelings of animosity against the people of Russia. Alas, for over two decades, the Jewish-Bolshevik rulers have labored from Moscow to set afire not only Germany, but also all of Europe. Never has Germany attempted to carry its National Socialist ideology into Russia. However, the Jewish-Bolshevik rulers in Moscow have constantly undertaken to force their rule on our people and others in Europe as well, and not merely ideologically, but especially in terms of military force and power. In all countries, the consequences of the activities of this regime were chaos, misery, and famine.

Speech of June 22, 1941. Domarus

Hitler on Czech Republic

We feel no hatred against the Czech people. We have lived together for years. The English statesmen do not know this. They have no idea that Hradčany castle was not built by an Englishman but by a German and that the St. Vitus Cathedral likewise was not erected by Englishmen but that German hands did it.

Even the French were not active there. They do not know that already at a time when England still was very small a German Kaiser was paid homage on this hill [Hradčany castle] - that one thousand years before me the first German King stood there and accepted the homage of this people.

Englishmen do not know that. They could not know that and they do not have to know it. It is sufficient that we know it and that it is true that this territory lay in the living space of the German people for over a thousand years.

Speech of April 1, 1939. Quoted in My New Order

We harbor no hatred for the Czech people. For years, our peoples lived alongside each other. The English statesmen know nothing of this. They have no inkling that the Hradčany Castle was not built by Englishmen, but by Germans. Neither did the English built the St. Vitus' Cathedral. No, Germans had their hands in this, too.

The French were not active in this area either. They do not know that, when England was still a small country, a German emperor was paid homage on this mountain [Hradčany castle]. A thousand years before I stood there, the first German king received this people's homage. The English do not know about this. They cannot and need not know about this. It suffices that we should know it and that this was the case. For a millennium, this area formed part of the Lebensraum of the German Volk.

Nevertheless, we would not have had anything against an independent Czech state if it had not oppressed Germans and had not been intended as a weapon in the pending attack on Germany.

Speech of April 1, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

When in the course of the migration of the peoples, German tribes for inexplicable reasons began to leave the area which today is Bohemia and Moravia, a foreign, Slavic people penetrated this area and drove a wedge between those Germans who had remained behind. Ever since, this people's Lebensraum was embraced by the German Volkstum in the form of a horseshoe. In economic terms, an independent existence of this area is conceivable only in connection with the German Volk and the German economy.

Besides this, nearly four million Germans live in the Bohemian and Moravian area. Pressure by the Czech majority has brought a policy of annihilation to bear, especially apparent since the Diktat of Versailles, but which has also been in part due to the economic situation and an increasing poverty, which, in turn, has led to an exodus of the German elements from the area. The numbers of the remaining Germans there dropped to approximately 3.7 million. While the fringes of this area are populated exclusively by Germans, there are several big islands of German speech in its interior.

The Czechs are a people alien to us, given their foreign heritage. Through a community formed over a thousand years, German influence has largely molded and fashioned their culture. Their economy is the result of affiliation with the greater German economy. At times, the capital of this area was a German Imperial city. It is home to the oldest German university. Numerous cathedrals, city halls, palaces of noblemen and burghers attest to Germany's cultural influences. Throughout the centuries, the Czech people have fashioned their relations to the German Volk now the more closely, now the more distantly. Closeness of relations leads to a bloom of both the German and the Czech peoples; separation to catastrophe.

The merit and value of the German Volk is known to us. The Czechs also deserve our respect for the sum of their skills and abilities, their enterprise and diligence, their love for their homeland and folklore. And, indeed, there were periods in which respect for each other's national conditions was considered most natural.

Speech of April 28, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

National Socialist Germany has no intention whatever of renouncing the racial principles on which we pride ourselves. They will not only benefit the German, but also the Czech Volk.

Speech of April 28, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

Hitler on Austria

It is, however, obvious that a single idea which seizes the entire German nation and moves it to its very depths will not halt before the border posts of a country which not only, in terms of its Volk, is German, but which also, in terms of its history as the Ostmark, comprised an integral part of the German Reich for many centuries; whose capital had the honor, for half a millennium, of being the seat of the German emperors; and whose soldiers fought side by side with the German regiments and divisions as recently as the World War.

Even apart from this, there is nothing peculiar about this fact when one considers that nearly all revolutionary thoughts and ideas in Europe have always made themselves felt hitherto beyond the borders of individual countries. For instance, the ideas of the French Revolution extended beyond the borders between States to inspire the peoples throughout Europe, just as today the National Socialist idea has naturally been seized upon by the German element (Deutschtum) in Austria out of an instinctive intellectual and spiritual association with the entire German Volk.

Speech of January 30, 1934. Quoted in Domarus

What injustice have we done to any foreign country, whose interests have we violated, when we concur with the desire of the overwhelming majority of the Austrian population to be Germans?

These people here [Austria] are Germans. A protest note from other countries on my action in Austria has no more significance than a note of the Reich Government would have in which it protested against the relations between the British Government and Ireland.

In an interview with Ward Price on March 12, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

We will not attack Austria, but we cannot prevent Austrians from attempting to reestablish their former ties with Germany. These States are separated only by a line, and on both sides of this line live peoples of the same race.

If one part of England were artificially separated from the rest, who would prevent its endeavoring to become united once more with the rest of the country? Germany and Austria were united until 1866.

From an interview with Ward Price on August 5, 1934. Quoted in Domarus

Germany has once again become a world power. Yet which power in the world would calmly tolerate for any length of time that, before its very gates, a mass of millions (Millionenmasse) belonging to its own national race are so bitterly abused? There are moments when it becomes simply impossible for a self-confident nation to bear that sight any longer!

Speech of March 18, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

Only a lunatic could believe that suppression and terror can permanently rob people of their love for their ancestral Volkstum. European history has proven that such cases serve to breed an even greater fanaticism. This fanaticism then compels the oppressor to resort to ever harsher methods of violation, and these in turn increase the loathing and hatred of the objects of those methods.

Speech of May 12, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

From the very beginning, this state of Austria was simply not viable! The economic distress was horrendous as could be anticipated; the annual mortality rate rose alarmingly. Alone in a city such as Vienna, there were 24,000 fatalities and only 10,000 births. I am not saying this in the belief that it might make an impression on democratic world Philistines, because I know that their hearts are completely hardened to such things. They can calmly look on while half a million people are butchered in Spain without being moved in the least. At the same time, they are equally capable of feigning profound indignation without blushing in the least, when in Berlin or in Vienna some Jewish agitator is divested of his means of doing business.

Speech of March 18, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

Hitler on France

The happiest event we have witnessed this year has been the scheduling of the plebiscite for the Germans in the Saar - I say the happiest because it marked the end of a situation under which not 800,000, but 67 million Germans suffered. For not only you, my Volksgenossen in the Saar, have suffered and are still suffering from this separation from the Vaterland; no, Germany too has suffered equally from it. Germany sees you as an indivisible component of its own self. We have followed your fight in Germany, in the Reich, with burning interest. He who attacked you has attacked us; he who abused you has abused us; he who violated you has violated us.

Nothing has been inflicted upon you which has not been inflicted upon Germany as a whole.

Speech of August 26, 1934. Quoted in Domarus

Hitler on Italy

I am accused of admiring Mussolini. At a time when only dwarfs are in evidence, I welcome the sight of any man! And that is not only my view but also the view of the Bayerischer Kurier, which on January 13, 1928, wrote that even the opposition must admit that Mussolini is the greatest, perhaps the only real, statesman in the world today. This statesman is the only possibly ally for Germany because he values national honor and domestic order. I could not be a man with blood in my veins if I did not admit that I have admiration for such a person. I have more than admiration. I am sorry and envious that Germany lacks such a man!

May 8, 1929. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

It is hard to estimate the significance of fascism for Italy. What fascism has done for the preservation of civilization is as yet incalculable. Who can stroll through Rome or Florence without being moved at the thought of the fate that all these unique documents of human art and civilization would have suffered if Mussolini and his fascist movement had not succeeded in saving Italy from bolshevism? Germany was faced with this same danger. ...

Speech of January 30, 1939. Quoted in My New Order

In view of the dangers enveloping us today, I regard it as most fortunate to have found states within Europe and beyond Europe which, like the German Volk, have had to struggle hard to preserve their existence: Italy and Japan.

In the Occident, Italy and Germany today constitute the most ancient peoples, Italians as the descendants of Ancient Rome and Germans as the descendants of the Germanic tribes, and hence we have been in touch with one another the longest. Already on the occasion of my speech in the Palazzo Venezia in Rome during my visit to Italy, I underlined the tragic nature of the centuries-long and fruitless confrontation between this most mighty of cultured peoples of the Ancient world and the young German Volk, which belonged to a new world coming into being. These clashes were due largely to the lack of any natural frontier separating the two peoples and to a multitude of other circumstances.

But from these contacts throughout the millenniums sprang a community, one tied not only by linkage of blood, but by a shared historical and cultural past, a heritage of supreme significance. What precisely the Germanic peoples owe to Antiquity in terms of the evolution of statehood, realization of ethnic affinity, and in the sphere of general cultural development, defies measurement and description in its totality. Two thousand years have passed since. And the time came when we ourselves were called on to make a contribution, and we did so generously. Throughout, we remained closely linked to the Italian people, spiritually, culturally, and historically.

The 19th century heralded a process of political unification, strikingly alike in both instances. The Germanic tribes united in the German Reich, the Italian people came together in the Italian Kingdom. And the year 1866 even witnessed both peoples entering side by side into the struggle to form new states.

Now, for a second time, these peoples are experiencing a similar development. A man of secular standing was the first to oppose successfully to the democratic world of ideas, which had become barren, a forceful new idea which reigned victorious within a few years' time. What Fascism means to Italy is difficult to imagine. What it has contributed to the preservation of the culture of man is of astronomic proportions.

Striding through Rome or Florence, who can help being overcome by the contemplation of what fate these unique monuments of human creativity might have met with had it not been for Mussolini and Fascism, which pulled Italy back from the brink of Bolshevist oblivion? Germany, too, faced this danger. Here National Socialism wrought the miracle of rescue. And the belief in a new Renaissance in our day and age clings to these two states in the imagination of countless men of all races. The solidarity between these two regimes represents far more than simple, egotistical self-interest. This solidarity holds the promise of Europe's rescue from its threatened destruction by Bolshevism.

Speech of January 30, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

The National Socialist Movement and the Fascist Revolution have created two new powerful states, states which stand fast as structures of order and healthy progress in a world of civil unrest and dissolution. Germany and Italy have a common interest and are deeply intertwined through their shared Weltanschauung.

Hitler in an address before Mussolini on May 7, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

To my profound regret, all attempts to reach an understanding with the English proved futile, no matter what I did, no matter how often I held out my hand, no matter what I offered them.

I was all the more happy when I was able to obtain that relationship with the second state, which we had once striven for. Actually, it is not surprising. Today, it would be surprising had things come differently. It is not merely a coincidence—I said this to a delegation today—if two people suffer almost identical fates in the course of barely a hundred years.

Germany and Italy: in the last century, they fight for their rebirth as a state and its unification, then, for the first time, both states join together. Then, they part company, and their luck runs out. At nearly the same time in both states, a revolution takes place, a revolution whose ideas are as similar as can possibly be imagined for two people. Both revolutions run a nearly identical course. Everywhere severe setbacks, but victory in the end. The program of both revolutions is social and national rebirth. Both staunchly see this program through. Both elicit the hatred of the surrounding world. Both revolutions represent nations whose soil does not yield them their daily bread, in spite of all diligence. Contrary to their will, both nations are one day confronted by the same enemies, by the same international coalition. This begins as early as 1935, as England suddenly turns against Italy for no reason whatsoever. Italy has not taken anything away from England. But England does not want Italy to have its independence. The same goes for us, since England does not want Germany to have its independence. What are we taking away from England, what from France, what from America? Nothing at all! How many times did I offer them peace?! What else should I be offering them?

... in both cases, there are two men who come from the people, who have kindled the revolutions and have uplifted their states. In the few free hours I have had these last weeks, I read a lot about the Fascist revolution in Italy. It seemed to me as though I had before me the history of my own party: everything so similar, so much the same. The same struggle, the same enemies, the same opponents, the same arguments—it really is a miracle.

And so, the three great have-nots [Germany, Italy, and Japan] are now united. We will see who will be stronger in this struggle: those who have nothing to lose and everything to win, or those who have everything to lose and who cannot win anything.

What does England want to win? What does America want to win? They have so much that they do not know what to do with all they own. They need to feed only a few people per square kilometer. They do not have all those worries that trouble us. For us, a single bad harvest is a national disaster. They have the whole world at their disposal. For decades now, they have robbed us, exploited us, bled us white, and still they have not eliminated their own economic misery. They have more raw materials than they could possibly need, and still they have not managed to find a reasonable solution to their problems. We will see on whom Providence will bestow the victor's laurels in this struggle: on the man who has everything and wants to take even the last bit from the man who has almost nothing, or on the man, who defends the last bit he owns.

Speech of January 30, 1942. Domarus

Europe

There was a time when Europe was that Greek island into which Nordic tribes penetrated in order to light the flame for the first time that has since slowly but steadily begun to enlighten the world of man. And as these Greeks parried the invasion of the Persian conquerors, they were not only defending their own homeland, which was Greece, but also that idea that today is called Europe.

And then Europe moved from Hellas to Rome.

Greek spirit and Greek civilization united with Roman thinking and Roman statesmanship. An empire was created which even today is not equaled in significance and fertility, not to mention surpassed. As the Roman legions defended Italy against the African assault of Carthage in three difficult wars and finally secured the victory, again it was not Rome that they were fighting for, but the Roman-Greek world—the Europe of the day.

The next invasion of this new human civilization's native soil issued from the expanses of the east. A dreadful storm of uncivilized hordes poured out of inner Asia deep into the heart of today's European continent, burning, pillaging, murdering, like a true scourge of God.

In the Battle on the Catalaunian Field, Romans and Teutons joined together for the first time to defend that civilization in a struggle of unforeseeable significance. Starting with the Greeks, this civilization first cast its spell on the Romans and now finally on the Germanic people.

Europe grew. Hellas and Rome developed into the Occident. For many centuries, its defense was the task not only of the Romans, but also in particular of the Germanic people. The term Europe experienced a spatial expansion. The degree to which the Occident, enlightened by Greek civilization and inspired by the mighty heritage of the Roman Empire, expanded its space through Germanic colonization, irrespective of whether a German emperor fended off invasions from the east at the Unstrut or on the Lechfeld, or whether Africa was forced to retreat from Spain in long battles, it was always the struggle of the developing Europe against a profoundly alien, surrounding world.

While Rome had earned undying merit in the creation and defense of this continent, the Germanic people now took over the defense and protection of a family of nations. Irrespective of how each nation's political designs and ambitions differed and diverged, as a whole, this family of nations formed one unit in terms of blood and culture, while its various parts either equaled or complemented one another.

And not only did the settlement of other parts of the world start out from this continent, so did a spiritual and cultural fertilization, as any man who is willing to search for the truth, instead of denying it is aware.

Therefore, England did not cultivate this continent, but splinters of the Germanic people of our continent moved to this island as Anglo-Saxons and Normans, and made possible a development that is certainly unique. And likewise, America did not discover Europe, but the other way around. And everything that America did not get from Europe may seem admirable to a Jewish mixed race. But Europe sees it as a sign of the decline of art and civilized living, as the heritage of Jewish and Negro blood.

... I have to make these detailed statements because the struggle, which in the first months of this year slowly began to emerge as inevitable and which primarily the leadership of the German Reich is called on to lead this time, goes far beyond the interests of our own Volk and country. It was not Rome that the Greeks once defended against Carthage. It was not the Occident that the Romans and the Germanic people defended against the Huns. It was not Germany that the German emperors defended against the Mongols. It was not Spain that the Spanish heroes defended against Africa. Instead, it was Europe that all of them defended. In the same way today, Germany does not fight for itself, but for the continent that belongs to all.

Hitler's Reichstag Speech of December 11, 1941. Quoted in Domarus

The blood which has been shed on the European continent in the course of the last 300 years stands in no proportion to the national results obtained. In the end France has remained France, Germany Germany, Poland Poland, and Italy Italy. What dynastic egoism, political passion, and patriotic blindness achieved in the way of apparently far-reaching political changes, by shedding rivers of blood, has done no more than scratch the surface of the nations, as far as national feeling is concerned. It has not substantially altered their fundamental characters. If these states had applied merely a fraction of their sacrifices to wiser purposes, their success would certainly have been greater and more permanent.

May 21, 1935. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

In the course of history we have naturally had a number of confrontations with, for instance, national France. However, somehow and somewhere, we still belong together in the great European family of peoples, most of all when we all look deep into our innermost selves.

It is then I believe that, in essence, we do not really want to miss any of the truly European civilized nations. We have each other to thank not only for a certain amount of aggravation and suffering, but also for an incredible crossfertilization. We have given each other models, examples, and lessons - just as, on the other hand, we have also given each other a certain amount of pleasure and many things of beauty. If we are just, we have every reason to harbor mutual admiration instead of hate!

In this community of the civilized European nations, international Jewish Bolshevism is a totally alien element which has not the slightest contribution to make to our economy or to our culture, but instead wreaks only havoc; which has not a single positive accomplishment to show for itself in an international perspective on European and world life, but merely propagandistic tables of forged figures and rabble-rousing posters.

Speech of September 13, 1937. Quoted in Domarus

The best witnesses for the work of our movement will be the men who return from the front and who have been able to compare the effects of twenty-three years of Communist rule to ours.

They can judge what National Socialism has accomplished and what Europe would face if this other world won. They understand our great ambition: that in this struggle we finally want to free Europe of the danger posed by the east, and that, at the same time, we prevent the east, with its immeasurable fertility, its immeasurable riches in raw materials and ores, from being mobilized against Europe, and instead place it in the service of Europe.

This is truly a gigantic goal, which reaches far beyond the frontiers of our German Reich—gigantic not only in terms of accomplishments, but also gigantic in its consequences. The situation as it is now is madness—this Europe where in some areas nearly two hundred sixty people live on one square kilometer—and that is just the west!

I see all these things from a higher point of view, if I may say so. I differentiate between the French and their Jews, between the Belgians and their Jews, between the Dutch and their Jews. I know that countless people live there who are also the victims of this crazy European construction, according to which the genuinely richest part of Europe is constantly mobilized against that part of Europe where the people living there possess not even the most primitive standard of living. Our soldiers saw this: in a country where the soil is virtually brimming with fertility; in a country, where a fraction of the work could result in as many times the profit as it makes here; there people have barely enough to call a pot their own; they dwell in miserable huts, neglected, full of lice, and dirty.

A few days ago, I read that lice had been found on a German prisoner of war in the east. Mr. Stalin is circulating this. I assume that he wants to make believe that this prisoner of war brought the lice all the way from Munich or Berlin to Russia.

In the Soviet paradise, the most miserable type of slavery exists that the world has ever seen: millions of frightened, oppressed, neglected people, half-starved! Above them, there is the regime of commissars, ninety percent of whom are of Jewish descent, who control this whole slave state.

It will be a great relief for Europe not only if this danger disappears, but also if the fertility of this soil benefits all of Europe.

... We have a goal. It spans this continent. Primarily, there is our Fatherland, then come all those who live in the same misery as we do. And I am convinced that this continent will not be second in the world, but that it will remain the first.

And if Mr. Willkie [Republican candidate for the presidency in 1940], this man of honor, declares that there are only two possibilities: either Berlin will become the capital of the world or Washington, then I can only say: Berlin does not want to be the capital of the world, and Washington will never be the capital of the world. I believe that, in Europe at least, hundreds of medium-sized towns would protest against such a burdening of human civilization.

Speech of November 8, 1941. Domarus

How it hit us when the Baltic states were overpowered [by the Soviets], only he can appreciate who is familiar with German history and knows that there is not a single square kilometer that was not opened up to human culture and civilization by the pioneering work of Germans.

Speech of October 3, 1941. Domarus

Hitler on America

Never, for instance, have German soldiers fought on American soil unless it was in the cause of American independence and freedom; but American soldiers were brought to Europe to help strangle a great nation that was striving for its freedom. Germany did not attack America, but America attacked Germany, as the committee of investigation of the American Senate concluded, from purely capitalist motives, without any other cause.

Speech of January 30, 1939. Quoted in My New Order

German soldiers have never fought on American soil other than for the cause of America's independence and freedom. Yet American soldiers were shipped to Europe and contributed to the suppression of a great nation struggling to preserve its liberty. It was not Germany that attacked America; it was America that attacked Germany. And it did so, according to the findings of an investigative committee in the American House of Representatives, without any compelling reason, other than perhaps capitalist considerations.

Speech of January 30, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

Our relations with the North American Union have suffered unduly because of a smear campaign. With the pretext that Germany threatens America's independence and even its liberty, it has placed an entire continent at the service of all too transparent political and financial interests. These are attempting to agitate against those European states governed by the people for the people. All of us are aware that these elements are not representative of the will of millions of American citizens who do not doubt for one minute, despite bombardment by a 'gigantic Jewish-capitalist instigated propaganda campaign—via press, radio, and film—that there is not a word of truth in all these claims. Germany desires to live in peace and friendship with all countries, America included. It declines any involvement in America's internal affairs and hence, equally vigorously, it rejects American involvement in Germany's internal affairs.

Speech of January 30, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

That the German Volk holds nothing against the American people is clear to everyone who is not purposefully engaged in distorting the truth. With the possible exception of Germans fighting for the freedom of the continent, Germany has never pursued any interests on the American continent!

Speech of January 30, 1941. Domarus

Mr. Roosevelt declares that "three nations in Europe and one in Africa have seen their independent existence terminated."

I do not understand which three nations in Europe are being referred to. Should reference be made to the provinces which have been reintegrated in the German Reich, then I must bring a mistaken notion of history to the attention of the President. These nations have by no means lost their independence within Europe. Rather it was in the year 1918 when, through the breach of a solemn promise, they were torn from the communities they belonged to. The stamp of nationhood was imprinted on their brow, one they neither desired nor deserved. Independence was likewise forced on those who gained no independence thereby, but who instead were forced into a dependency on foreign powers whom they despised.

As far as the nation in Africa is concerned which supposedly lost its freedom too, this is evidently yet another case of mistaken identity. Not one nation in Africa has lost its freedom. Rather nearly all former inhabitants of this continent have been subjected by brute force to the sovereignty of other peoples. This is how they lost their freedom. The people of Morocco, the Berbers, the Arabs, the Negroes, and so on, all of them became the victims of foreign powers, whose swords assuredly did not bear the inscription "Made in Germany," but instead "Made by Democracies."

In a telegram to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 28, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

Mr. President Roosevelt! Without any difficulty, I do understand that the greatness of your empire and the immense riches of your land allow you to feel responsible for the fate of the entire world and for the fate of all peoples. However, Mr. Roosevelt, my situation is much more modest and limited. You have 135 million inhabitants living on nine-and-a-half million square kilometers. Your land is one of untold riches and vast natural resources. It is fertile enough to sustain half a billion human beings and to provide them with all necessities.

I once took over a state on the brink of ruin thanks to its ready trust in the assurances of the outside world and the feeble leadership of a democratic regime. Unlike America, where not even fifteen persons live on one square kilometer, this state has 140 persons per square kilometer. The fertility of our soil does not equal yours. We lack the numerous natural resources which nature places at the disposal of your people. The billions of German savings, accumulated in the form of gold and currency during the years of peace, were extorted from us and taken away. We lost our colonies. In the year 1933, there were seven million unemployed in my country. Millions worked part-time only, millions of peasants were reduced to misery, commerce was nearly destroyed, trade was ruined; in short: chaos reigned.

I have been able to accomplish only one task in the years since, Mr. President Roosevelt. I could not possibly feel myself responsible for the fate of a world which showed no sympathy for the woeful plight of my own Volk. I saw myself as a man called on by Providence to serve this Volk and to deliver it from its terrible hardships. Within the six-and-a-half years now lying behind us, I lived day and night for the one thought: to awaken the inner forces dormant in this Volk forsaken by the outside world, to increase them to the utmost, and, finally, to use them in the salvation of our community.

I overcame chaos in Germany. I restored order, enormously raised production in all spheres of our national economy, labored to create substitutes for a number of the raw materials we lack, smoothed the way for new inventions, developed traffic, ordered the construction of gigantic roads. I had canals dug, colossal new factories brought to life. In all this, I strove to serve the development of the social community of my Volk, its education, and its culture. I succeeded in bringing those seven million unemployed, whose plight truly went to heart, back into a useful production process. Despite the difficulties faced, I managed to preserve his plot of soil for the German farmer, to rescue this for him. I brought about a bloom in German trade and fostered traffic.

To preclude threats from the outside world, I have not only united the German Volk politically, I have rearmed it militarily. Further, I have sought to tear to shreds page upon page of this Treaty, whose 448 articles represent the most dastardly outrage ever committed against a people and man. I have restored those provinces to the Reich which were stolen from it in 1919. I have led home to the Reich millions of despondent Germans torn from us. I have restored the one-thousand-year old, historic unity of the German Lebensraum. And I have labored to do so, Mr. President, without bloodshed and without bringing either upon my own Volk or other peoples the hardships of war.

I have done this all by myself, Mr. President, although a mere twenty-one years ago, I was but an unknown laborer and soldier of my Volk. And, hence, before history, I can truly claim the right to be counted among those men who do the best that can reasonably and in all fairness be expected of them individually.

Your task is infinitely easier, Mr. President. In 1933, when I became Reich Chancellor, you became the President of the United States. From the start, you thereby placed yourself at the head of the largest and richest state in the world. It is your good fortune to have to nourish barely fifteen human beings per square kilometer in your country. You have virtually never-ending natural resources at your disposal, more than anyone else in the world. The vastness of the terrain and the fertility of the soil are capable of providing each individual American with ten times the foodstuffs possible in Germany. Nature permits you to do this. While the inhabitants of your country number barely a third more than those of Greater Germany, they have fifteen times its Lebensraum at their disposal.

Thus, the vastness of your country allows you to have the time and leisure to attend to problems of a universal nature. You hence conceive of the world as so small a place that you can intervene beneficially and effectively wherever this might be required. In this sense, your concerns and suggestions can be far more sweeping than mine. For my world is the one in which Providence has put me, Mr. President Roosevelt, and for which I am responsible. It is a much smaller one. It contains only my Volk. But I do believe I am thereby in a better position to serve those ends closer to the hearts of all of us: justice, welfare, progress, and peace for the entire community of man!

In a telegram to President Roosevelt on April 28, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

The question poses itself, for what reason was this man [Roosevelt] so fanatically hostile toward a country that up to now has never in its history harmed either America or this man? Insofar as this regards Germany's attitude to America, the following can be said:

1. Germany is perhaps the only great power that has never possessed colonies on the north and south American continents or has become politically active there in any other respect, with the exception of the emigration of millions of Germans and their work, from which the American continent, especially the United States, has only benefited.

2. The German Reich has never in the entire history of the development and existence of the United States assumed a politically adverse or even hostile attitude to it. On the contrary, through the blood of many of its sons, it has helped to defend the United States.

3. The German Reich has never participated in a war against the United States while, in the year 1917, it was invaded by the United States for reasons that have been revealed completely by a committee that the current President Roosevelt had himself formed in order to examine this question.

It was this investigative committee for the examination of the reasons behind the American entry into the war that clearly stated that the American entry into the war in 1917 was due to the capitalist interests of a few small groups, and that Germany had no intention of coming into conflict with America.

Beyond this, there is likewise no antagonism between the German and the American people, either territorial or political in nature, that could somehow interfere with the interests or the existence of the United States. There has always been a difference in the form of government. However, this cannot be regarded as the cause of animosity in the life of nations, as long as one form of government does not try, outside its natural sphere, to intervene in others.

America is a republic led by a president with great authoritarian powers. Germany was once a monarchy with limited authority, later a democracy without any authority at all, and today it is a republic with great authority. There is an ocean between the two states. The differences between capitalist America and Bolshevik Russia, if there is any truth to these terms at all, must be considerably greater than the differences between an America led by a president and a Germany led by a Führer.

Hitler's Reichstag Speech of December 11, 1941. Quoted in Domarus

A clique of Jews who went to the United States dragged that country into war against all its interests only for Jewish-capitalist reasons. President Roosevelt, owing to his own lack of ability, seeks advice from a Brain Trust whose leading men are all Jews. Just as in 1917, the United States was dragged step by step into war by her Judaized President and his Jewish entourage—a war without any reason, against nations who had never harmed the United States, against peoples from whom the United States could never gain anything. What is the point of a war by a state with space without people against a people without space?

From a political point of view, this war is not being waged in the interests of individual people. It is a clash between nations who want to secure a safe existence for their people and nations who have become the powerless tools of international parasites.

April 26, 1942. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

Hitler and Japan

No matter at what time and in what manner the happenings in Eastern Asia may ultimately right themselves, Germany, in the defensive attitude she adopts toward Communism, will always regard and appreciate Japan as an element of security, and a guarantee, moreover, for the culture of mankind. For just as we are perfectly certain that Japan's greatest victory would not affect the civilization of the white races in the very least, so do we not doubt for a moment that a victory gained by Bolshevism would signify the end of the present thousand-year-old civilization of the white races!

In this connection I should like to defend myself most emphatically against idiotic attacks which accuse Germany of betraying the interests of the white race in the conflict in the Far East, because of the attitudes we have adopted. Really, I must confess we are simply amazed when forced to read such assertions in French and English newspapers. That this National Socialist State, always the object of attack on account of its racial policy, should now suddenly have the honor of drawing the sword for racial ideals, or, rather let us say racial interests, is a huge jest in world history.

Germany has no territorial interests in Eastern Asia. She has the natural wish to carry on trade and commerce, and in so doing she is not obliged to support any one party. But we are obliged to recognize the fact that a Bolshevik victory would destroy the last possibilities in this sphere of activity. Moreover, Germany herself once possessed territory in Eastern Asia. True, this did not prevent certain powers with the help of a coalition of white and yellow races from expelling the German Reich from that country.

February 20, 1938. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

Hitler on Lebensraum

The problems of our life are worse than those of other peoples. Perhaps there are peoples who can afford the luxury of waging war at home, of wrangling and bashing each other's heads in. Where Nature has given human beings everything in abundance, they will perhaps accord less importance to the necessity of uniform action and thus of a uniform will. Yet Nature has not been very kind to us Germans here on earth. A great Volk, an infinitely competent Volk, an industrious Volk, a Volk who has a will to live and a right to make demands on life, is living in a space much too tight and too confined to possibly provide to it everything it needs, even given the greatest diligence. When we sometimes hear foreign politicians say, "Why do you need a further, broader scope for life?" we might respond by asking them in turn, "Then why do you place such great emphasis on it?" It is for the very reason that our life-struggle is so much more difficult than elsewhere that we must draw specific conclusions from this fact which constitutes our fate.

Speech of May 1, 1937. Quoted in Domarus

What is the reason for all our economic troubles? Simply the overpopulation of our Lebensraum! And in this context, I can only hold out to these critical gentlemen in the West and in the democracies beyond Europe one simple fact and one simple question: The German Volk survives with 135 inhabitants per square kilometer without any exterior assistance and without access to its earlier savings. The rest of the world has looted Germany throughout the past one-and-a-half decades, has burdened it with enormous debt payments. Without any colonies, its people are nonetheless fed and clothed and, moreover, Germany boasts no unemployment. And now to my question: Who among our so-called great democratic powers is in a position to say as much of itself?!

To him on whom nature has bestowed bananas for free, the struggle for survival necessarily will appear far easier than to the weary German peasant who, all year round, toils to sow and reap on his plot of soil.

[...]

The dilemma we shall then face can only be resolved in two ways:

1. through an increase in the import of foodstuffs which necessitates an increase in the export of German manufactured goods in due consideration of the fact that raw materials used in the production process have to be imported initially and hence only a fraction of profit remains for the purchase of foodstuffs, or

2. through an expansion of Lebensraum for our Volk, thereby establishing an economic circle to secure the production of sufficient foodstuffs for Germany domestically.

Since the second approach is as yet impossible to pursue due to the persistent delusions of the one-time victorious powers, we are forced to follow along the path of the first proposition. This means we must export in order to be able to purchase food from abroad. Since these exported goods use up raw materials which we ourselves do not possess, this means we must export yet more goods to secure these raw materials for our economy. We are compelled not by capitalist considerations, as this may be the case in other countries, but by dire necessity, the most excruciating which can befall a people, namely, concern for its daily bread.

Speech of January 30, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

The present Greater German Reich contains no territory which was not from the earliest times part of this Reich, not bound up with or subject to its sovereignty. Long before an American continent had been discovered - to say nothing of settled - by white people, this Reich existed, not merely in its present extent but with the addition of many regions and provinces which have since been lost.

Speech of April 28, 1939. My New Order

If we want to survive with our 137 people per square kilometer, we will simply have to make more of an effort than those who occupy a square kilometer with only ten or twelve persons. The German must wring what he can from his barren soil. Therefore, our problems are graver than those in other countries. Yet there is no better worker in the whole world than the German.

Speech of June 23, 1937. Quoted in Domarus

At a moment when Germany is struggling to consolidate a Lebensraum which encompasses little more than 100,000 square kilometers, saucy newspaper journalists in other states, which rule forty million square kilometers, claim that Germany strives for world supremacy in this struggle.

Speech of October 6, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

At a moment when Germany is struggling to consolidate her own living space, which only consists of a few hundred thousand square kilometers, insolent journalists in countries which rule over 40,000,000 square kilometers state Germany is aspiring to world domination!

Speech of October 6, 1939. Quoted in My New Order

For many years imaginary aims have been attributed to Germany's foreign policy, which at best might be taken to have originated in the mind of a schoolboy. At a moment when Germany is struggling to consolidate her living space, which consists only of a few hundred thousand square kilometers, shameless journalists in countries which rule over 40,000,000 square kilometers assert that Germany is aspiring to world domination!

October 6, 1939. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

If we say today that our Lebensraum is too small and that, therefore, it is essential for us to supplement it by way of colonies, some wiseacre will appear from somewhere in the world and say, "Why do you need colonies? Colonies would do you no good at all! You have purchasing power!" Frankly, we ourselves are smart enough to buy what we can when we have money. But one should not have cleaned us out for fifteen years first - then we could buy things today!

There are rich people who say, "Wealth is a very heavy burden to bear! Let no one wish that he, too, might be encumbered by this burden!" Now one might think that, if wealth is such a heavy burden, they would be glad to give some of it away. That, however, is something they do not want to do, either. And there are foreign statesmen who say, "Colonies are a heavy burden." Yet they do not want to give away any part of this burden! They say, "Colonies have no value at all!" Yet under no circumstances are they willing to restore this "worthless" possession to its rightful owner! And when I talk about "rightful owners," it is in a time and in a world pervaded by the ideals of morality and modesty laid down by the League of Nations. And it was in accordance with these ideals that we Germans once acquired our colonies, but in accordance with different principles - such as, from the moral perspective of the League of Nations, would deserve to be utterly condemned - that we lost them.

Speech of October 3, 1937. Quoted in Domarus

Providence has placed man upon this earth and has given him this earth as his playground, as the basis for his existence. Providence has not initiated man in its designs. It has not assigned peoples certain Lebensräume. Instead Nature has placed these beings on this earth and has given them freedom. He who wants to live asserts himself. He who cannot assert himself does not deserve to live. He will perish. This is an iron, yet also a just principle. The earth is not there for cowardly peoples, not for weak ones, not for lazy ones. The earth is there for him who takes it and who industriously labors upon it and thereby fashions his life. That is the will of Providence. That is why it has placed man upon this earth, along with the other beings, and has paved the way for him, has freed him to make his own decisions, to lead his own struggle for survival.

And should he fail in this struggle, should he become weak in asserting his existence, then Providence will not rush to his aid. Instead, it will sentence him to death. And rightly so. Other men will come. The space will not remain empty. What the one man loses, another will take. And life continues in accordance with its own eternal rhythm without consideration for the weakling.

Speech of May 3, 1940. Quoted in Domarus

There is no better proof of the innate love of peace of the German people than the fact that, despite its ability and courage, which can scarcely be questioned by its opponents, and in spite of its large population, the German nation has secured for itself only such a modest share of the world's living space and the world's goods.

March 7, 1936. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

The natural situation [in the life of a people] would be that condition in which it could secure its existence from the produce of its own soil. In such a case, however, the people and the size of the population must have an equitable relationship with the area in which it lives. In Germany these two factors are not equitable. Quite the contrary, for there is a glaring incongruity between the two. The population grows steadily, but the area remains the same year in and year out. Neither internal colonization nor a more intensive tilling of the soil will remove this incongruity.

There is only one possibility. Soil and territory must be brought into consonance with the population. Our forefathers recognized this when they colonized the East Mark [Austria] and when they conquered with the sword the region east of the Elbe. They did this because necessity forced them to it. A man who is hungry does not question the source of the piece of bread that satisfies his hunger. The same holds true in the struggle for existence among the nations. When nations are in need, they do not ask about legal rights. There is then only one question. Does a people have the power to acquire the soil and territory which it needs?

March 6, 1927. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

... in this world population represents the changing element, while soil and territory represent an unchanging element. This means that at present soil and territory are limited in this world.

Germany is the Fatherland of 62,000,000 people who live together on an area which is 450,000 kilometers square. This is a ridiculous figure when one considers the size of the other nations in the world today. This is especially noticeable when one looks at a globe map of the world on which Germany completely disappears.

Unfortunately the great mass of our German people does not have the logical insight to draw the necessary conclusions from this fact. Instead, the great mass of our German people prefers to chase after certain phantoms. Moreover, the population can increase in a short time; it can perhaps reach 68,000,00 or 70,000,000, and yet the area on which it lives will remain the same. ...

The only thing left for a people to do, then, is to attempt an adjustment in the relationship between the area on which it lives, that is, its reservoir of subsistence, and its population.

The first method [limitation of the population] is the one which seems the easier. If we cannot expand the soil, then we decrease the population. There are certain parties in Germany who advocate this method ... Just a few weeks ago the "German" press announced that we had now received permission to send Germans to Canada again and that the first quota had actually been reached. It was said that this was an important and obvious success of our foreign policy. The success of German foreign policy, therefore, consists in chasing our best human material out of Germany.

May 1, 1927. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

In the beginning of his speech our party comrade Rosenberg indicated that the most important problem for a nation was the adaptation of its space to the population. In this connection he revived the phrase "Dem Volk den Raum!" [Space for the people.] It is especially we Germans who know from our history how this phrase has determined and settled our suffering for centuries. We know too, that except for a comparatively short period in our history, we did not achieve the adaptation of the soil to the population. Today this question demands solution. No government, no matter what form or type, can in the long run avoid this issue.

The problem of the subsistence of a nation of 60,000,000 people compels us not only to preserve the basis of this subsistence for the future but to enlarge it in proportion to the increase in the population. The basis of this subsistence can lie in many fields.

We especially as National Socialists must assert here and now that the most difficult problem with regard to the future of the European nations is not industrial production. It is moreover the realization of the fact that within the next few decades it will become increasingly more difficult to secure markets, and that some day matters will reach dead center when those countries which as yet are not regarded as industrial slowly submit to industrialization.

These countries, however, will still not be in a position to satisfy their needs with their own man-power. This in itself will at some future date cause complications in connection with foreign markets. And these complications will grow in proportion as they no longer affect one single country in Europe but a number of countries.

It follows logically that the increasing competition will force these countries gradually to apply more and more severe methods. It will then be merely a question of time when the severity of the industrial struggle is replaced by the sharpness of the sword. Consequently, wherever a healthy nation stands face to face with this last alternative and in spite of great efficiency is no longer able to break this competition it will rely on the sword. For the question of subsistence is the question around which all life revolves. The question of subsistence then is a question of power.

The adaptation of the soil to the population is, therefore, the best way to a natural, wholesome, and lasting solution of this problem. In considering this problem we are led to the conclusion that the basis of its solution is power and again power. Power is also necessary to carry on economic struggle. ... Power is the basis for the acquisition of soil and territory. ...

If we investigate the concept of power more closely we will find that as far as a nation is concerned power lies in three factors. First there is the size of the population. This aspect of power is no longer represented by Germany. A nation of 62,000,000 does not represent a factor of power at a time when large territorial expanses with populations up to 400,000,000 become more and more active in world affairs and in addition employ a special kind of economic policy.

If our population does not represent a factor of power we may turn to the second consideration—the factor of space. This, too, is no longer an element of power with us. In fact it seems ridiculously insignificant, for one can cross German territory with an aeroplane in scarcely four hours. Such an area does not provide protection in itself, as in the case of Russia where the territory alone represents a factor of power, that is, an assurance of safety.

If then these two bases of power—population and space—are not decisive in Germany, there remains the third factor of power—the inner strength of a people. A people can achieve great things if it can count this inner strength among its virtues. When, however, we examine the German people from this point of view, we must conclude to our dismay that this last factor of power is also not at hand.

August 21, 1927. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

Wherein lies the power of a people? It lies in three factors. First, in the size of the population, which in our own case is not large enough. Second, in the area on which a people lives. For us this, too, is insufficient, because the present area upon which our people of 62,000,000 is now crowded scarcely covers 440,000 square kilometers. In the third place, power lies in the inner value of a people, in its inner worth per se, that is, in its spiritual virtue and its material accomplishments. This value is still with us. At the present time, however, it is buried beneath a rubbish heap of mere theories and phrases. But it is there, it has only to be sifted out. This value lies, first of all, in our racial heritage, in our blood. And we can proudly say that our German people, from the standpoint of race and blood, can be considered as among the best of its kind in existence.

March 18, 1928. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

Hitler on World War II

If we compare the causes which prompted this historic struggle, and the magnitude and the far-reaching effects of military events, we are forced to the conclusion that its general course and the sacrifices it has entailed are out of all proportion to the alleged reasons for its outbreak, unless they were nothing but a pretext for underlying intentions.

Speech of July 19, 1940. My New Order

Whoever contrasts the factors which triggered this historic conflict with the extent, the greatness, and consequence of the military occurrences, must realize that the events and sacrifices of this struggle stand in no relation to the alleged causes, unless these causes themselves were but pretexts for intentions yet concealed.

Speech of July 19, 1940. Domarus

Maintaining of the present situation in the West is unthinkable. Every day will demand ever increasing sacrifices. Perhaps, one day, France will aim at Saarbrücken for the first time and demolish it. The German artillery then, for its part, will take revenge and shatter Mulhouse. France will then point its cannons at Karlsruhe in retribution. Germany will then take on Strasbourg. Then the French artillery will target Freiburg, and the German Colmar or Schlettstadt. Then guns with greater range will be drawn up, and on both sides the destruction will reach ever farther into the countryside. What cannot be reached by long-range projectiles will be destroyed by aircraft. And all this will be of great interest to certain international journalists, and beneficial for producers of aircraft, weaponry, ammunition, etc. But it will be a gruesome affair for the victims.

And this struggle unto destruction will not remain restricted to the Continent. No, it will reach across the Sea. There are no more islands today.

The wealth of Europe's peoples will burst beneath a rain of grenades. The strength of these peoples will drain onto the battlefield. A frontier shall separate Germany and France once again some day, but fields of ruins and endless cemeteries will populate the stretch once home to blossoming cities.

... One thing is sure, however; in world history, there have never been two victors, while far too often there have been only losers. To me, this seems to have been the case in the last war already.

Speech of October 6, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

The Anglo-French warmongers needed war, not peace. And they needed a long war, as Mr. Chamberlain put the matter at the time. It was to last for at least three years, since they had in the meantime invested their capital in the armament industry, bought the necessary machinery, and now needed the precondition of time for the thriving of their business and for the amortization of their investments. And besides: what are Poles, Czechs, or other such nationalities to these citizens of the world?

Speech of July 19, 1940. Domarus

We demanded nothing of others. When France entered this war, there was no reason for her to do so. It was only that she wanted to fight Germany again. She said, "We want the Rhineland. We want to tear Germany apart, tear Austria away and dissolve Germany." With such wild fantasies, simply impossible in the twentieth century with its nationalist ideals, they pictured the overthrow of the Reich. It was all utterly childish.

And Britain? I have offered her my hand again and again. It was the very essence of my program to come to an understanding with her. There was only one question: The return of the German colonies. I stated that we were willing to discuss the matter. Time was of no importance, and I fixed no limit. ...

Even after the war had begun, there were possibilities for an agreement. Immediately after the Polish campaign, I again offered my hand. I demanded nothing from France or Britain. Still, all was in vain. Immediately after the collapse in the West, I again offered my hand to Britain. Howls and shouts were my only reception. They literally spat on me. They were outraged. Very well, it is all in vain. Financial interests are victorious over the genuine interests of the people. The blood of nations must again serve the money of this small international group. Thus the fight started. Thus will it continue. ...

We have been drawn into war against our will. No man can offer his hand more often than I have. But if they want to fight to exterminate the German nation, then they will get the surprise of their lives. This time they will not meet a worn-out Germany, as in the Great War. They will encounter a Germany mobilized in the highest sense of the word, capable of fighting and determined to fight. If there are hopes to the contrary, I do not understand them.

January 30, 1941. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

My struggle for the liberty of our Volk was a struggle against Versailles. What was at stake were not so much the endless paragraphs of Versailles, but beyond this it was a struggle against the mentality which found its expression in the Diktat of Versailles. Its roots lie in the conception that two to three peoples have simply been ordained by the Lord to rule over the entire earth, and that, every time one people refused to be subjected to their rule, they have the right to claim that this one people is set on mastery of the earth. Mr. Chamberlain is saying as much at a time when all of India is rising up in protest against him, at a moment when Arabs are calling for resistance to him.

Against such a background, this Mister stands up to declare: England is fighting against a German attempt at forcible mastery of the world.

Speech of February 24, 1940. Quoted in Domarus

I offered my hand to France and England at the time for an understanding. You still recall the answer I received. My arguments against the nonsense of pursuing this war, on the certainty of gaining nothing, even under the most favorable of circumstances, and of losing much, were mocked and scoffed at, or passed over.

I promptly assured you then that I feared, because of my peace proposal, to be decried as a cockerel who no longer wants to fight because he is no longer able to fight. And this is exactly what happened. I now believe that France— less the guilty statesmen than the people—thinks differently about this October 6 today. What nameless misery has befallen this great country and people since then. I shall not even mention the toll of suffering the war has placed on the soldier. For above this stands the suffering caused by the recklessness of those who drove millions of people from their homes without proper cause, who were compelled by the thought that this might somehow hamper the German war effort. This premise defied comprehension: this evacuation was mostly to the detriment of the Allied war effort and, moreover, it was the most cruel experience for the unfortunate afflicted. The injury the gentlemen Churchill and Reynaud have done millions of people, through their advice and commands—this they can neither justify in this world nor in the next.

All of this—as I said—need not have happened. For peace was all I asked of France and England in October. But the gentlemen war profiteers wanted a continuation of this war at all cost. They have it now.

I myself am too much a soldier not to comprehend the tragedy of such a development. Still all I hear from London are cries—not the cries of the masses, but of the politicians—that this war must now, all the more, be pursued. I do not know if these politicians have an inkling of just how this war is in fact to be pursued. They declare that they will continue this war, and should England fall, then they will do so from Canada. I do not believe this means that the English people will all emigrate to Canada, but rather that the gentlemen war profiteers will all retreat to Canada by themselves. I fear the people will have to remain behind in England. And, assuredly, they will see the war with different eyes in London than their so-called leaders in Canada.

Believe me, my Deputies, I feel an inner disgust at this type of unscrupulous parliamentarian annihilators of peoples and states. It is almost painful to me to have been chosen by Providence to give a shove to what these men have brought to the point of falling. It was not my ambition to wage wars, but to build up a new social state of the highest culture. And every year of war takes me away from my work

Speech of July 19, 1940. Domarus

I do not know whether these politicians already have a correct idea of what the continuation of this struggle will be like. They do, it is true, declare that they will carry on with the war and that, even if Great Britain should perish, they would carry on from Canada. I can hardly believe that they mean by this that the people of Britain are to go to Canada. Presumably only those gentlemen interested in the continuation of their war will go there. The people, I am afraid, will have to remain in Britain and the people in London will certainly regard the war with other eyes than their so-called leaders in Canada.

Believe me, gentlemen, I feel a deep disgust for this type of unscrupulous politician who wrecks whole nations and states. It almost causes me pain to think, that I should have been selected by Fate to deal the final blow to the structure which these men have already set tottering. It never has been my intention to wage wars, but rather to build up a state with a new social order and the finest possible standard of culture. Every year that this war drags on is keeping me away from this work.

Speech of July 19, 1940. My New Order

For over 300 years, England has sought to prevent a real consolidation of Europe, just as France sought to prevent a consolidation of Germany for many a century. Today Mr. Chamberlain stands up to preach his pious war aims to the outside world. To this, all I can say is: English history has already betrayed your intent, Mr. Chamberlain!

For 300 years, your statesmen have spoken just as you do today, Mr. Chamberlain, at the onset of war. They always fought for "the Lord and religion." They never had "a material goal." And just because they never fought for such "a material goal," the Lord so richly rewarded them in material terms! That England always declared itself "a fighter for truth and justice" and "a protagonist of all virtues," this Dear Lord has not forgotten. Generously He has bestowed His blessings on the English. In those nearly 300 years, they have subjugated forty million square kilometers of soil on this earth. Naturally, they did this not from egotistical motives or because they lusted for mastery, riches, or enjoyment. To the contrary, they were merely fulfilling a mission in the name of the Lord and religion.

Forty million square kilometers obtained through conquest: a succession of rape, extortion, tyrannical abuse, oppression, pillaging. Events mark English history inconceivable for any other state or for any other people. The English waged war for any old reason. They waged war to expand trade; they waged war to force others to smoke opium; they waged war for gold mines and for mastery over diamond mines. Their goals were always material in nature, though hidden beneath a cloak of noble ideals.

And this last war was led in the service of noble purposes, too. To have pocketed German colonies in the process was the Lord's will; to have taken our fleet from us; to have pocketed German accounts abroad. All these exploits were mere side effects of the "noble struggle for a holy religion." When I see Mr. Chamberlain go about, bible in hand, preaching his noble war aims, I cannot help having the impression of watching the devil, bible clasped under his arm, creeping up to a poor soul.

All this is no longer original. It is all in exceedingly bad taste. Nobody believes him anymore. Sometimes I fear he is coming to doubt himself.

In this context, I must praise Mr. Churchill. He frankly states what old Mr. Chamberlain only thinks quietly to himself and hopes for secretly. He says, our goal is the dissolution, the destruction of Germany. Our goal is the extermination, if possible, of the German Volk. Believe me, I welcome this openness.

And the French generals also freely discuss what is actually at stake. I believe we can understand each other more easily in this manner. Why always fight with lies and empty phrases? Why not be open about things? We should greatly prefer this. We know the objective they are pursuing whether or not Mr. Chamberlain walks about with the bible in hand or not; whether he is acting piously or not; whether he speaks the truth or not. We know their goal: it is the Germany of 1648 which they envision, a Germany disintegrated and torn to pieces.

They know only too well that over eighty million Germans sit in this Central Europe. These human beings have a right to live—they have a right to a piece of the pie—and for three hundred years they were cheated out of it. They could only be cheated since their disintegration led to the weight of their numbers being proportionally undervalued. And thus today we have 140 men living on one square kilometer. And when such numbers unite, they have power. When they are divided, they are defenseless and impotent. There is a moral imperative lying within their unity also. What does it matter when thirty, fifty or 200 small states rise to protest or to claim their vital rights? Who takes note? When eighty million men rise up—that is a completely different story!

Speech of January 30, 1940. Quoted in Domarus

Mr. Churchill is already dying to start it. He cherishes the hope, as expressed by intermediaries as well as by his own person, that bombardment should finally, and as soon as possible, feature in this war. And already they are crying that this war should not pay heed to women and children. For when has England ever paid heed to women and children?! After all, this entire blockade warfare is nothing other than a war against women and children, just as once was the case in the Boer War. It was then that concentration camps were invented. The English brain gave birth to this idea. We only read about it in the encyclopedias and later copied it—with one crucial difference: England locked up women and children in these camps. Over twenty thousand Boer women died wretchedly at the time. Why should England fight differently today?

Speech of January 30, 1940. Quoted in Domarus

The case of Poland certainly shows how little Britain is interested in the existence of such states, else she would have had to declare war on Soviet Russia, for Poland was approximately cut in half. But now the British say, "That is no longer decisive; now we have another war aim." First it was the freedom of Poland; then it was the extermination of Nazism, and then again it was guarantees for the future. It will always be something different. They will wage war as long as they find someone who is ready to wage war for them, that is to say, to sacrifice himself for them. The old catchwords serve as a pretext. If they say that they want to champion the cause of liberty, then Great Britain could set the world a wonderful example by granting complete freedom at last to her own peoples. How noble this new British crusade would appear if it had only been introduced by a proclamation of freedom for the 350,000,000 inhabitants of India, or with a proclamation of independence and a general plebiscite for all the other British colonies! Instead, we see Britain oppressing these millions, just as she looked on while countless millions of Germans were being oppressed.

We are therefore not moved when a British Cabinet Minister proclaims with unction that Britain pursues only her ideals and never selfish aims. Naturally, as I have already mentioned, the British have never fought for selfish aims. The good Lord has given these peoples and countries to Britain as a reward, simply because she has always fought so unselfishly. ...

Or else they say that they are championing culture. We had better leave the question of Britain as a champion of culture alone. We Germans, at any rate, have no need to be impressed by British culture. Our music, our poetry, our architecture, our painting, our sculpture, are, to say the least, equal to those of Great Britain. It is my belief that one single German, Beethoven, for instance, has accomplished more in the realm of music than all the British musicians in the past and the present taken as a whole. We know, too, how to cultivate these arts better than the British ever can.

If they add that their aim in this war is to put an end to war once and for all—why, then, did they begin a war at all? For we are only at war because Britain wanted it! We are convinced that there will be wars as long as this world's goods are not justly distributed and their distribution is not undertaken in a spirit of justice and good will. How easily it could have been done!

If they say today, "Oh, National Socialist Germany, we cannot give her colonies, much as we regret it. We should like to divide the world's raw materials, but we must give them to someone whom we can trust!" Well, gentlemen, there were other governments in Germany before us! They were governments by the grace of Britain; they were partly in the pay of Britain. These governments at least, you must have trusted! Why were not this world's goods given to them if they were trustworthy! But there was no need to distribute anything at all; it would have been enough not to rob us of our property!

November 8, 1939. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

Justice is on the side of those nations that fight for their threatened existence. And this struggle for existence will spur these nations on to the most tremendous accomplishments in world history. If profit is the driving force for production in the democracies—a profit that industrialists, bankers, and corrupt politicians pocket—then the driving force in National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy is the realization by millions of laborers that, in this war, it is they who are being fought against. They realize that the democracies, if they should ever win, would rage with the full capitalist cruelty, that cruelty of which only those are capable whose only god is gold, who know no human sentiments other than their obsession with profit, and who are ready to sacrifice all noble thought to this profit instinct without hesitation.

National Socialist Germany, Fascist Italy, and allied Japan know that what is at stake in this war is not a form of government. It is not a question of some type of international structure for the future, but it is a question of whether this world belongs only to certain people and not also to others.

An American politician coined the clever saying that, basically, this struggle is nothing other than an attempt by the have-nots to obtain something. That's all right with us. While the outside world is setting about to steal from the have-nots the little that they possess, we confront the world of ownership with the decision to fight for the human rights of the have-nots and to secure for them that share in life to which these rights entitle them.

This struggle is not an attack on the rights of other nations, but on the arrogance and avarice of a narrow capitalist upper class, one which refuses to acknowledge that the days are over when gold ruled the world, and that, by contrast, a future is dawning when the people will be the determining force in the life of a nation.

Speech of January 1, 1941. Domarus

Mr. Churchill has repeated the declaration that he wants war. About six weeks ago now, he launched this war in an arena in which he apparently believes he is quite strong: namely, in the air war against the civilian population, albeit beneath the deceptive slogan of a so-called war against military objectives.

Up to now I have given little by way of response. This is not intended to signal, however, that this is the only response possible or that it shall remain this way.

I am fully aware that with our response, which one day will come, will also come the nameless suffering and misfortune of many men. Naturally, this does not apply to Mr. Churchill himself since by then he will surely be secure in Canada, where the money and the children of the most distinguished of war profiteers have already been brought. But there will be great tragedy for millions of other men. And Mr. Churchill should make an exception and place trust in me when as a prophet I now proclaim:

A great world empire will be destroyed. A world empire which I never had the ambition to destroy or as much as harm. ... In this hour I feel compelled, standing before my conscience, to direct yet another appeal to reason in England. ... I see no compelling reason which could force the continuation of this war.

Speech of July 19, 1940. Domarus

What they [the members of the British Government] hate is the dangerous example of our social labor legislation. They hated it before the Great War. They still hate it today. The object of their hate is this Germany with its social welfare, which is striving to do away with social injustice and class distinctions. They hate the Germany which, in the course of seven years, exerted itself to make a decent life for its people. They hate Germany for having solved the question of unemployment, which all their wealth failed to do. The Germany which gives its workers decent living quarters is what they hate, because they feel that their own people might be infected by the urge for similar advantages. They hate the Germany which celebrates the first of May as the day of honest work.

They hate the Germany which is struggling to raise its standard of living. This is the Germany which they hate, the Germany of a healthy people, the Germany which washes its children and sees to it that they are not overrun with vermin, which does not permit conditions to arise which even their own press is forced to denounce. This is the Germany they hate. It is their city magnates, their Jewish and non-Jewish international banking princes who hate us, because they see in this Germany a bad example that might stir up other people, including their own. They hate the Germany of our young, healthy, and active generation, and the Germany which looks after that generation.

Naturally, they hate our strength; they hate Germany on the march, unafraid of sacrifices. We were forced to realize how they hated us. We were compelled by their hate to adopt a Four-Year-Plan. By our Four-Year-Plan we deprived no one of anything. What do we take from others by manufacturing petrol and rubber from our coal, by making divers new substitutes for raw materials denied us? Nothing, nothing at all. On the contrary, they ought to be glad; they ought to tell themselves: At least they will not be a burden on our markets. If they make petrol themselves, they need not export in order to import. All the better for us. They fought our Four-Year-Plan simply because it set Germany on her feet. That was, and is, the only reason.

November 8, 1939. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

Our people have high aims, far higher than merely winning the war. What we want to do is build a new state. And that is why others hate us so. They have said it often enough. They say, "But your social experiments are very dangerous. If that kind of thing begins to spread, and if our workers see it, it will be bad. It costs billions and earns nothing. There is no profit and no dividend to be gotten out of it. What good is it? We are not interested in such a development. We welcome everything that helps the materialistic progress of humanity —provided that such progress nets a profit. But social experiments— all the things you are doing—can only serve to awaken the greed of the masses and to pull us off our pedestal. You can hardly expect that of us."

We have been looked upon as the bad example; whatever we tried was no good because it was meant for the people. We have taken the road toward true social legislation and toward a sociological development which is hated in other countries. For they are plutocracies in which a very small clique of capitalists rules the masses and, naturally, cooperates closely with the international Jews and the Freemasons. We have known these enemies from the days of our internal struggle; it is the dear old coalition of the Weimar system.

They hate us on account of our social principles, and everything that we plan and carry out in that direction looks dangerous to them. They are convinced that this development must be destroyed. But I am convinced that the future belongs to this development, and that those states which do not follow it will sooner or later collapse. Unless they find a solution dictated by reason, the states which have social problems remaining unsolved will sooner or later end in chaos. National Socialism has prevented chaos in Germany.

You know our aims, and you know that we defend them persistently and with fixity of purpose—and that we shall achieve them. That is why all these international plutocracies, the Jewish newspapers, the stock exchanges of the world, hate us; that is why all the countries whose attitude is identical or similar are in sympathy with those democracies. It is precisely because we know that the fight is a struggle for the entire social foundation of our nation and is directed against the very substance of our life that, while we are fighting for these ideals, we must profess them again and again.

September 4, 1940. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

I read this morning that an English minister—I do not know who he was— calculated by some process that I have made seven mistakes in the past year, that is, in the year 1940. Seven mistakes! The man is wrong. I did not make seven mistakes, I made seven hundred twenty-four. And I continued counting: my opponents made four million three hundred eighty-five thousand mistakes! He can trust me on this one! I went over the figures carefully. We will move on, even with our mistakes. And if we make as many mistakes this year as we did last year, then I will thank my Lord God on my knees at the end of the year. And if our opponents do as many clever things as they did last year, then I can likewise be content.

Speech of January 30, 1941. Domarus

I did not want this. Immediately after the first confrontation, I extended my hand again. I myself was a soldier and I know how much it costs to gain victory: how much blood and misery, despair, deprivations, and sacrifices it takes. However, my hand was rejected even more brusquely. And since then, you have seen how every single one of my peace proposals was used by the warmonger Churchill and his followers to tell the threatened people that this was a sign of German weakness, that it was proof that we could not fight any longer and were about to capitulate. Therefore, I gave up trying it this way again. I came to the conviction that we must fight for a clear decision here, a decision with an impact on world history for the next hundred years.

Speech of October 3, 1941. Domarus

Before I went to war, I had started a gigantic program of cultural, economic, and social work. I had begun it and, in part, I had already finished it. Everywhere, new plans were being made, new projects being developed by me and my assistants.

By contrast, when I look at my enemies, what have they actually accomplished? It was easy for them to push for war, since they had nothing to show for peace. They had not accomplished anything that might speak for them. This garrulous drunkard Churchill, what has he created that is of lasting worth, this damned liar, this first-class lazy fellow? If this war had not come, then centuries would have spoken of our age and also of my person, as the creators of great works of peace. However, if Mr. Churchill had not managed this war, who would ever have spoken of him? This way, he will live on, as the destroyer of an empire. We are not destroying it, he is. He is one of the most pitiful glory-seeking vandals in world history, incapable of creating anything positive, or accomplishing anything. He is capable only of destroying.

Speech of January 30, 1942. Domarus

To concoct an "Atlantic Charter" is naturally quite simple. This stupidity will soon be rectified by hard facts. There is yet another reason why it is easier for our enemies to speak today: after long and futile efforts, they have suddenly discovered our party program. With astonishment, we see how they promise the world the same things we have already given our German Volk and for which we were in the end attacked by others.

It is also quite clever when, for example, a president says, "we want everyone to have the right in the future not to suffer misery," or something of the sort. Here you can only say: it would perhaps have been easier had the president used the entire capacity for work of his country to build up useful production instead of jumping headlong into a war, and had he above all taken care that need and misery would be eliminated among his own people, who live in an area with only ten persons per square kilometer but have thirteen million unemployed. All this the gentlemen could well have done! Now, they suddenly make an appearance, portraying themselves to the world as saviors, and declaring, "we shall take care in the future that the need of the past does not return, that there will be no more unemployment, and that everyone gets an apartment."—But these owners of empires could have done this long before us in their own countries!

In a Speech on September 30, 1942. Quoted in Domarus

I am so confident when I meet any of the German soldiers fighting on the Eastern Front on their return home; I can ask any one of them: Have a look at our institutions, compare our homesteads, our settlements, our social institutions, with what you have seen over there! Compare this, my dear friend, and then tell us who has done it better and who, above all, has been more sincere in his intentions!

Not one has yet returned who expressed any opinion but that if anywhere in the world a socialist state was about to become a reality, this happened in Germany alone.

This, too, is a reason why that other world which represents capitalist interests is active against us. Those people there form a concern which presumes even today to govern, to direct, and if necessary to maltreat the world to suit private capitalist interest.

If, for instance, a few days ago a British snobbish, perfumed lout, such as Mr. Eden, declared: We Englishmen have experience in governing, then one can only reply: In governing? No! In exploiting, in pillaging!

What do you mean by experience in governing if a country inhabited by 46,000,000 people itself controlled 40,000,000 square kilometers of the globe, but had 2,500,000 unemployed at the outbreak of war? Where is the art of governing or, indeed, the art of leading! It is only unscrupulous exploitation. When this very man says, "We have a fine instinct for spiritual and material values"—yes, indeed they have; they have destroyed the spiritual values everywhere and the material values they have pinched! And they have pinched and appropriated them always only by brutal force.

November 8, 1942. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

I can direct the following question to any German fighting today in the east: look at our institutions, compare our homes, the settlements we are building, compare our National Socialist institutions with what you have seen over there; compare the fate of the German peasant with the fate of the Russian peasant, compare all this with one another, and then tell me what you think: who did it better and who meant it more honestly?

Surely, nobody has yet returned who would have expressed an opinion different from the following: if ever there was a socialist state anywhere that was in the process of being realized, then this is Germany alone.

However, that is the very reason why this outside world, insofar as it represents capitalist interests, is going against us. It is a collective that even today presumes to govern the world in accordance with its private, capitalist interests and, if necessary, to mistreat it.

Speech of November 8, 1942. Quoted in Domarus

It is almost a joke if today that man of the White House says "We have a world program and this world program is to give people freedom and the right to work." Mr. Roosevelt! Open your eyes! We have had that for a long time in Germany. Or else he says that measures against illness shall be taken. Get out of the garden of our Party program, these are National Socialist compounds, sir! This means heresy for a democrat. Or else he says, "We want the workers to have a holiday." You are rather late with this wish for we have already put that into practice, and we should have gotten much further if you had not interfered. Or else he says, "We want to increase prosperity, also for the broad masses." All these are things out of our program.

Perhaps he might have been able to achieve that if he had not started a war, because we too did it without a war, before the war. No, those capitalistic hyenas did not even dream of doing a thing like that. All they see in us is a bad example. In order to have a decoy for their own peoples, they have now to delve into our Party program, and have to pick out some bits, these miserable bunglers—and even at that they do a bad job.

January 30, 1942. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

Compared with the state of affairs in the year 1932, the National Socialist revolution has managed to bring a little more than two-and-a-half million people into the world. The present war has not cost us even ten percent of what flowed into the German nation in terms of additional human life.

In a Speech at the Sportpalast in Berlin. On May 30, 1942. Quoted in Domarus

Racial Conception of the World

As a man I have the duty to see to it that human society does not suffer the same catastrophic collapse as did the civilization of the ancient world some two thousand years ago - a civilization which was driven to its ruin through this same Jewish people.

Then indeed when Rome collapsed there were endless streams of new German bands flowing into the Empire from the North; but, if Germany collapses today, who is there to come after us? German blood upon this earth is on the way to gradual exhaustion unless we pull ourselves together and make ourselves free!

Speech of April 12, 1922. Quoted in My New Order

There are talented and untalented peoples in the world. The European countries belong to the former category. One must become conscious of the fact that, in this sense, they comprise a community of peoples, though they are sometimes a quarrelsome family.

In an interview with Madame Titayna. January 23, 1936. Quoted in Domarus

We perceive in this historical evidence of Teutonism the unconscious mandate vested by Fate, to unite this stubborn German Volk, if necessary by force. That was, in terms of history, just as necessary then as it is necessary today.

Speech of January 25, 1936. Quoted in Domarus

I can prophesy here that, just as the knowledge that the earth moves around the sun led to a revolutionary alteration in the general world-picture, so the blood-and-race doctrine of the National Socialist Movement will bring about a revolutionary change in our knowledge and therewith a radical reconstruction of the picture which human history gives us of the past and will also change the course of that history in the future.

January 30, 1937. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

When understanding and reason have apparently been silenced in international life, then this does not necessarily mean that there is not a rational will somewhere, even if from the outside only stupidity and stubbornness can be discerned as causes.

The British Jew, Lord Disraeli, once said that the racial question is the key to world history. We National Socialists have been raised in this belief. By devoting ourselves to the essence of the racial question, we have obtained clarification of many events that would otherwise appear to defy understanding.

Speech of April 26, 1942. Domarus

No state has ever gone to ruin except through the decline of its race. Among animals we observe the laws of race; among men we disregard them. There is only one person who knows the racial laws and observes them carefully: The Jew.

September 29, 1922. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

I am convinced that, particularly today, our Volk represents the pinnacle reached by an evolution toward gradual, racial improvement, unequaled on this planet at present. With regard to statistics you should always keep in mind that the American Union is made up of 126 million or 127 million people. However, if you subtract the Germans, Italians, Negroes, Jews, etc., then all you are left with are about 60 million Anglo-Saxons, people who count themselves as members of the Anglo-Saxon race. The Russian Empire contains not even 55 million or 56 million true Russians. The British Empire has less than 46 million Englishmen living in the mother country. The French Empire contains less than 37 million true Frenchmen. Italy has little more than 40 million Italians. Only 17 million Poles remain in Poland.

However, from 1940 on, 80 million people of one race will live in Germany, surrounded by nearly eight million people additionally who are actually of the same race as well. Whoever has doubts about the future of so great a block of people, whoever does not believe in this future, is merely a weakling. I believe in this future without reservation!

We once called our own the greatest empire on earth. Since then, we have slackened in our efforts, and we have worn ourselves out. We exhausted our powers in a process of inner disintegration. We lost in standing abroad. Now, after a period of crisis which has lasted 400 or 300 years, our Volk has finally recuperated. And I am certain that what we are witnessing today we is the rebirth of Germany and hence of Germany's future. For all of us, the greatest happiness lies with having been allowed to partake in the process of preparing, forming, and realizing this future.

Speech of November 10, 1938. Quoted in Domarus

The greatest revolution Germany has undergone was that of the purification of the Volk and thus of the races which was launched systematically in this country for the first time ever. The consequences of this German racial policy will be more significant for the future of our Volk than the effects of all the other laws together. For they are what is creating the new man. They will preserve our Volk from doing as so many historically tragic past prototypes of other races have done: lose their earthly existence forever because of their ignorance as regards a single question.

For what is the sense of all our work and all our efforts if they do not serve the purpose of preserving the German being? And what good is any effort on behalf of this being if we omit the most important thing to preserve it pure and unadulterated in its blood?

Any other mistake can be rectified, any other error can be corrected, but what one fails to do in this area can often never again be amended.

Whether our work in this area of purifying our race and thus our Volk has been fruitful is something you can best judge for yourselves here during these few days. For what you are encountering in this city is the German being. Come and see for yourselves whether he has become worse under National Socialist leadership or whether he has not indeed become better. Do not gauge only the increasing number of children being born - gauge above all the appearance of our youth. How lovely are our girls and our boys, how bright is their gaze, how healthy and fresh their posture, how splendid are the bodies of the hundreds of thousands and millions who have been trained and cared for by our organizations!

Where are there better men to be found today than those who can be seen here? It is truly the rebirth of a nation, brought about by the deliberate breeding of a new being.

Speech of September 7, 1937. Quoted in Domarus

Communism / Bolshevism / Marxism

Communism is not a higher stage of development: rather it is the most primitive form of life - the starting-point.

Speech of September 3, 1933. Quoted in My New Order

Communism is not a higher evolutionary stage, but the most primitive basic form of shaping peoples and nations.

In devoting ourselves in this way to caring for our own blood, a blood which Fate has entrusted to us, we are best helping to protect other peoples from diseases which spread from race to race and from Volk to Volk. If a single Volk were to fall prey to Bolshevism in Western or Central Europe, this poison would continue its corrosive work and devastate today's oldest and most beautiful cultural possession on earth. In taking this fight upon itself, Germany is but fulfilling, as so often in its history, a truly European mission.

Speech of September 3, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

Amongst the numberless documents which during the last week it was my duty to read, I have discovered a diary with the notes of a man who, in 1918, was thrown into the path of resistance to the laws and who now lives in a world in which law in itself seems to be a provocation to resistance. It is an unnerving document - an unbroken tale of conspiracy and continual plotting: it gives one an insight into the mentality of men who, without realizing it, have found in nihilism their final confession of faith. Incapable of any true cooperation, with a desire to oppose all order, filled with hatred against every authority, their unrest and disquietude can find satisfaction only in some conspiratorial activity of the mind perpetually plotting the disintegration of whatever at any moment may exist.

Speech of July 13, 1934. Quoted in My New Order

Among the countless files which I was obliged to read through in the past few weeks, I also found a journal with the notes of a man who was cast onto the route of resistance to the laws in 1918 and now lives in a world in which the law itself appears to provoke resistance; an unnerving document, an uninterrupted sequence of conspiracies and plots, an insight into the mentality of people who, without realizing it, have found in nihilism their ultimate creed. Incapable of any real cooperation, determined to take a stand against any kind of order, filled by hatred of every authority as they are, their uneasiness and their restlessness can be quelled only by their permanent mental and conspiratorial preoccupation with the disintegration of whatever exists at the given time. Many of them stormed the State with us in our early period of struggle, but an inner lack of discipline led most of them away from the disciplined National Socialist Movement in the course of the struggle.

The last remnant seemed to have withdrawn after January 30. Their link with the National Socialist Movement was dissolved the moment this itself, as State, became the object of their pathological aversion. As a matter of principle, they are enemies of every authority and thus utterly incapable of being converted. Accomplishments which appear to strengthen the new German State only provoke their even greater hatred. For there is one thing, above all, which all of these oppositional elements principally have in common: they do not see before them the German Volk, but the institution of order they so abhor. They are filled not by a desire to help the Volk, but by the fervent hope that the government will fail in its work to rescue the Volk. Thus they are never willing to admit that an action is beneficial but are instead filled by the will to contest any success as a matter of principle and to extract from every success any potential weaknesses.

Speech of July 13, 1934. Quoted in Domarus

While now in Soviet Russia the millions are ruined and are dying, Chicherin - and with him a staff of over 200 Soviet Jews - travels by express train through Europe, visits the cabarets, watches naked dancers perform for his pleasure, lives in the finest hotels, and does himself better than the millions whom once you thought you must fight as 'bourgeois.' The 400 Soviet Commissars of Jewish nationality - they do not suffer; the thousands upon thousands of sub-Commissars - they do not suffer. No! All the treasures which the 'proletarian' in his madness took from the 'bourgeoise' in order to fight so-called capitalism - they have all gone into their hands.

... For a morsel of bread he gives millions in objects of value. But the bread is in the hands of the State Central Organization and this is in the hands of the Jews: so everything, everything that the common man thought that he was winning for himself, flows back again to his seducers.

Speech of April 12, 1922. Quoted in "My New Order"

The same Jew, who as a majority Socialist or as an Independent led you in those days [November 1918], still leads you. No matter whether he is an Independent or a Communist, he has remained the same. And just as he did not look after your interests at that time but after the interests of the capital of his own race, so today he certainly will not lead you in the fight against his race and its capital. On the contrary, he will prevent you from fighting your real exploiters. He will never help to liberate you, for he is not the one who is enslaved.

While now in Soviet Russia millions are starving and dying, while in Soviet Russia 30,000,000 so-called "Proletarians" lie prostrate, clawing roots and grass from the soil in order to prolong their lives for even a few days or weeks, Chicherin and a delegation of about 200 Soviet Jews are traveling through Europe on special trains, going to night clubs, attending strip-teases, and living in the best of hotels. As a matter of fact they are better off than the millions of so-called "Bourgeois" you once thought you had to fight.

The 400 Soviet comissars of Jewish nationality are not suffering want, nor the thousands upon thousands of deputy comissars. On the contrary. All the treasures which the "Proletarian" in his madness took from the so-called "Bourgeoisie" in order to fight so-called capitalism, have all now gotten into the hands of the Soviet comissars.

It is true that a few workers in those days took the pocketbook of his landlord or his employer; it is true that he took rings and diamonds and rejoiced at being in possession of the treasures formerly owned only by the "Bourgeoisie." But in his hands those possessions are dead, yes, really dead gold. They do not do him any good. He is stuck in his wilderness and he cannot feed himself on diamonds. He gives millions in value for a crust of bread. But the bread is in the hands of the State Central Organization and that is in the hands of the Jews. In that way everything, absolutely everything, that the common man once thought he was winning for himself, flows right back into the hands of his seducers.

The Jew accomplished it. A redistribution of wealth took place, but not according to the desire of the masses. It was nothing more than a shifting of wealth. Millions of men were deprived of their last ruble, which they had once saved honestly, honorably, and carefully. These rubles, by the millions, now became the property of those who as leaders had not done anything and who are not doing anything today except to starve and bleed the people. And now, my dear Volksgenossen, do you believe that those people who are doing the same thing here will end the Revolution [of 1918]? They do not wish to end the Revolution for there is no necessity for them to do so. The Revolution is for them nothing but milk and honey...

April 12, 1922. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

The acts of terrorism practiced by the Marxist parties against our Movement now number tens of thousands. The number of dead is more than 300; the number of injured last year was more than 6,000, but in the seven and a half months of this year, this figure has already exceeded 8,200.

Countless comrades have been crippled and will remain so for the rest of their lives. In the past, our governments and the press - if I leave out very few papers, of which yours is one - have never taken any interest in these matters. At the most, if a National Socialist defended himself in order to save his life, he was made out to be the aggressor in the end and even sentenced on top of it. In this regard, I am not counting the terrible acts of persecution against the Party by the police which have, in a single city - namely Dortmund - finally been punished in court and thus been acknowledged as having taken place. On the day of the election, without warning, one of these red murderers slashed the throat of one of our comrades with a razor in broad daylight in Königsberg, for no reason at all. The poor man died a wretched death. The press, which normally makes a fuss about every single villain, took hardly any notice. Though, mind you, the bourgeois newspapers and the governments instantly came awake when calls for revenge came from the cup now filled to overflowing with indignation and wrath! Now that the party comrades who are in permanent danger of being killed have finally begun to retaliate, the value of human life has suddenly been discovered, but they do not now join forces against the red plague of murderers, no: they join forces against the "general political acts of terror."

In an interview by Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung on August 16, 1932. Quoted in Domarus

We did not defend Germany against Bolshevism back then because we were intending to do anything like conserve a bourgeois world or go so far as to freshen it up. Had Communism really intended nothing more than a certain purification by eliminating isolated rotten elements from among the ranks of our so-called 'upper ten thousand' or our equally worthless Philistines, one could have sat back quietly and looked on for a while.

The aim of Bolshevism is not, however, to liberate peoples from what is sick, but the opposite: to exterminate what is healthy, what is healthiest of all, in fact, and to place in its stead the most degenerated of all.

Speech of September 14, 1936. Quoted in Domarus

I am a German, I love my Volk and am attached to it. I know that it can only be happy if allowed to live in accordance with its nature and its way. The German Volk has been able not only to cry, but also to laugh heartily all its life, and I do not want the horror of the Communist international dictatorship of hatred to descend upon it.

I tremble for Europe at the thought of what would lie in store for our old, heavily populated continent were the chaos of the Bolshevist revolution rendered successful by the infiltrating force of this destructive Asiatic concept of the world, which subverts all our established ideals. I am perhaps for many European statesmen a fantastic, or at any rate uncomfortable, harbinger of warnings.

That I am regarded in the eyes of the international Bolshevist oppressors of the world as one of their greatest enemies is for me a great honor and a justification for my actions in the eyes of posterity.

Speech of March 7, 1936. Quoted in Domarus

All around us we see the signs of growing evil. We preached for years about the greatest world menace of this second millennium of our Christian history now coming to an end, and now it is becoming a horrible reality.

Everywhere the burrowing work of the Bolshevist wire-pullers is beginning to take effect. In an age where bourgeois statesmen talk of non-intervention, an international Jewish center of revolution in Moscow is undertaking to revolutionize this continent via wireless stations and thousands of channels of money and agitation. One thing we do not want to be told is that we are developing an anxiety psychosis by repeatedly drawing attention to these facts and these dangers in Germany.

Even today we have no fear of a Bolshevist invasion of Germany - not because we do not believe in such a thing, but because we are determined to make the nation so strong that, just as National Socialism was able to deal with this worldwide incitement within, it will ward off every attack from without with the most brutal determination.

This is the reason for the measures we have taken in the military sphere.

These German measures will rise or fall proportionate to the degree of the dangers surrounding us increasing or decreasing. We do not gladly ban the energies of our Volk to arms plants or barracks. However, we are also men enough to look this necessity in the face and remain cold and unflinching.

I would like to say here in this proclamation before the entire German Volk that, convinced as I am of the necessity of maintaining Germany's peace without - just as I have safeguarded its inner peace - I will not shrink from any measure conducive to making the nation not only feel secure, but above all to make us, under all circumstances, feel convinced of the independence of the Reich. The Muscovite Communist rabble-rousers Neumann, Béla Khun and cohorts, who are today devastating Spain on behalf of the Comintern Movement, will play no role in Germany, and the agitation of the Muscovite radio station calling for support to reduce unhappy Spain to rubble, will not be repeated in Germany.

Speech of September 9, 1936. Quoted in Domarus

The very moment Bolshevism broke out in Spain, the nation's capacity to produce was so reduced that there appeared an immediate decline in a really valuable exchange of goods. If we are countered with the assertion that other countries are doing good business with Red Spain, we must point out that payment of these goods is being made in gold which has received its value not from Spanish Bolshevism, but from the labor and achievements of former National Spain, which in turn was pilfered by Spanish Bolshevism and sent abroad. One cannot build a solid and lasting economic policy upon such a foundation; that can only be based upon an exchange of real values and not in trade with stolen goods.

Bolshevism ruthlessly destroys the production of real values. Soviet Russia proves that even though subjecting its workers to a dog's life, Bolshevism cannot restore that production even after a period of twenty years. This may not interest wealthy Great Britain. It may be a matter of extreme indifference to the British if Spain becomes a desert, if she is economically ruined in the familiar Bolshevik manner. Perhaps England regards this Spanish situation only from the political point of view. But we Germans, who do not have the opportunity to anchor our economy in our own world empire, must regard contemporary Europe as one of the prerequisites of our existence.

A Bolshevik Europe would render every commercial policy of this state impossible, not because we would not desire to trade, but because we could find no one with whom to trade. This is not merely a question of theoretical considerations, of moral solicitude, or a problem of international complaints—for we do not have enough respect for international institutions to believe for one second that they would be of any aid to us—but this is a problem of life or death for us. We know well, if Spain were to become completely Bolshevized and this Bolshevik wave were to spread over the rest of Europe—you know that Bolshevism regards this as a certainty and desires it—this would be a serious economic catastrophe for Germany. For we must continue a reciprocal exchange of goods with these countries in the obvious interest of maintaining the existence of the German people.

September 13, 1937. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

Bolshevism is a doctrine of world revolution, i.e. of world destruction. To adopt this doctrine, to accord it equal rights as a factor in European life, is tantamount to placing Europe at its mercy. If other peoples choose to expose themselves to contact with this menace, Germany has nothing to say on the matter.

I hold the Bolshevist doctrine to be the worst poison which can be administered to a people. I therefore do not want my own people to come into contact with this doctrine in any way.

Speech of January 30, 1937. Quoted in Domarus

At issue here is not a special form of life indigenous to, let us say, the Russian people; rather, it is the Bolshevist goal of world revolution. The fact that the honorable [British] Foreign Secretary Eden refuses to see Bolshevism as we see it is perhaps related to Great Britain's location, perhaps to other experiences of which we have no knowledge. I do, however, hold that, because we speak of these things not as theoreticians, one cannot accuse us of being insincere in our conviction.

For Mr. Eden, Bolshevism is perhaps something sitting in Moscow; for us, however, Bolshevism is a plague against which we have been forced to defend ourselves in a bloody fight; a plague that has attempted to make of our country the same desert it has made of Spain, that had begun the same shooting of hostages we are now witnessing in Spain! National Socialism did not seek contact with Bolshevism in Russia; rather, the Jewish international Muscovite Bolshevism attempted to penetrate Germany! And it is still attempting to do so today! And we have fought a difficult battle against this attempt, upholding and thus defending not only the culture of our Volk, but perhaps that of Europe as a whole in the process.

Speech of January 30, 1937. Quoted in Domarus

Beginning with the family and ranging through all of the concepts of honor and loyalty, Volk und Vaterland, culture and economy, all the way to the eternal foundation of our morality and our faith: nothing has been spared by this negating, all-destroying dogma.

Fourteen years of Marxism have ruined Germany. One year of Bolshevism would destroy Germany. The richest and most beautiful cultural areas of the world today would be transformed into chaos and a heap of ruins. Even the suffering of the last decade and a half could not be compared to the misery of a Europe in whose heart the red flag of destruction had been hoisted. May the thousands of wounded, the innumerable dead which this war has already cost Germany serve as storm clouds warning against the coming tempest.

Speech of February 1, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

[Communism] It is an ideology founded in a fear of one's neighbor, in a dread of somehow standing out, and is based upon a spiteful, envious cast of mind. This code of regression to the primitive state leads to cowardly, anxious acquiescence and thus presents a tremendous threat to mankind.

Speech of September 20, 1933. Domarus

The bourgeois parties view what happens in the world through their own eyes. Small and shortsighted as they are, they suppose the manifestations of the environment to be powers similar to their own. Even now, they have not yet recognized in Bolshevism the destruction of all human cultures but perceive it to be a perhaps still "interesting experiment of a new desire on the part of the State." They are totally unaware that today a thousand-year-old culture is being shaken to its very foundations; they have no conception of the fact that, if Bolshevism ultimately triumphs, it will not merely mean that a few miserable bourgeois governments will go to the devil, but that irreplaceable historic traditions will come to an end as well. Yes, and that furthermore a turning point in the development of humanity will inevitably be the end result in the worst meaning of the word. Bolshevism's triumph means not only the end of today's peoples, their states, their cultures, and their economies; it also means the end of their religions! This world shock will result not in freedom, but in barbarous tyranny on the one hand and a materialistic brutalization of man on the other!

... Were the National Socialist Movement to cease existing today as a counterbalance to Marxism, Germany would be Bolshevist tomorrow.

Speech of January 1, 1932. Quoted in Domarus

What Bolshevism can do to man, you have seen. We can show the homeland photos of it, which are at our disposal. It is the cruelest thing that the brain of man can contrive. It is an opponent who, on the one hand, fights driven by his thirst for blood and, at the same time, by cowardice and fear of his commissars; it is a country that our soldiers are now getting to know after twenty-five years of Bolshevik existence. I know one thing: someone who has been there and who was somehow a Communist at heart, even if only in the idealistic sense, comes back cured of this view. You can rest assured of that.

I always correctly described this paradise of workers and peasants. After ending this campaign, five to six million soldiers will confirm that I spoke the truth. I will be able to call them as witnesses. They marched through these streets. They were not able to live in the miserable huts of this paradise because they did not enter them unless absolutely necessary. They saw the institutions of this paradise. It is nothing but a single arms factory existing at the expense of the living standards of the people, an arms factory against Europe. And against this cruel and bestial opponent, against this opponent with his gigantic armament, our soldiers secured mighty victories.

Speech of October 3, 1941. Domarus

Street riots, barricade fighting, mass terror, and an individualistic propaganda of disintegration today trouble nearly all countries throughout the world. In Germany as well, a few isolated fools and criminals of this type are still making repeated attempts to ply their destructive trade. Since the defeat of the Communist Party, we have experienced, albeit growing constantly weaker, one attempt after another to establish Communist organizations with varying degrees of anarchist character and to put them to work. Their methods are always the same. While portraying the present lot as unbearable, they extol the Communist paradise of the future and, in doing so, are practically only waging war for hell. For the consequences of their victory in a country like Germany could be nothing other than destructive.

Speech of July 13, 1934. Quoted in Domarus

If Bolshevism is spreading today in Russia this Bolshevism is for Russia fundamentally just as logical as was the Czardom formerly. It is a brutal regime over a people which cannot be held together as a State except through a brutal Government. But if this view of the world gains a hold on us, too, then we must not forget that our people also is composed racially of the most varied elements and that therefore we have to see in the watchword 'Proletarians of all countries, unite!' much more than a mere political battle-cry. It is in reality the expression of the will of men who in their essential character have in fact a certain kinship with analogous peoples on a low level of civilization.

Speech of January 27, 1932. Quoted in My New Order

If allowed to triumph in Europe, in the next five hundred years Communism would necessarily bring about the complete annihilation of even the last vestiges of the fruits of that Aryan spirit which, providing the roots of culture and in its many-facetted boughs and branches, has bestowed upon the entire world the general foundations of our culture and thus our truly human foundations in the millenniums upon which history has shed light.

Speech of February 7, 1934. Quoted in Domarus

I find that Europe is divided into two halves: one comprised of self-sufficient and independent national states, of peoples with whom we are linked a thousandfold by history and culture and with whom we wish to continue to be linked for all time in the same manner as with the free and self-sufficient nations of the non-European continents; and the other governed by the very same intolerant Bolshevist doctrine claiming general international supremacy, which even preaches the destruction of the immortal values - sacred to us - of this world and the next, in order to built a different world whose culture, exterior and content seem abhorrent to us. Except for the given political and economic international relations, we do not wish to have any closer contact with that.

Speech of March 7, 1936. Quoted in Domarus

Hitler and the Jewish Question

We are determined to undercut the efforts of a certain foreign people to nest here; a people whose members knew how to capture all leading positions. We will banish this people. We are willing to educate our own Volk to assume these leadership functions. We have hundreds of thousands of the most intelligent children of peasants and workers. We will have them educated, and we are already educating them. We are hoping that one day we can place them in all leading positions within the state along with others from our educated classes. No longer shall these be occupied by members of a people alien to us.

Above all, as the literal meaning of the term already indicates, German culture is exclusively German; it is not Jewish. Hence we shall place the administration and the care for our culture in the hands of our Volk. Should the rest of the world be outraged and protest hypocritically against Germany's barbarous expulsion of such an extraordinary, culturally valuable, irreplaceable element, then we can only be astonished at the consequences such a stance would imply.

Should not the outside world be most grateful to us for setting free these glorious bearers of culture and placing them at its disposal? In accordance with its own statements, how is the outside world to justify its refusal to grant refuge in its various countries to these most valuable members of the human race? For how will it rationalize imposing the members of this race on the Germans of all people? How will the states so infatuated with these "great guys" explain why they are suddenly taking refuge with all sorts of pretenses just in order to deny asylum to these people?

I believe the earlier this problem is resolved, the better. For Europe cannot find peace before it has dealt properly with the Jewish question.

It is possible that the necessity of resolving this problem sooner or later should bring about agreement in Europe, even between nations which otherwise might not have reconciled themselves as readily with one another. There is more than enough room for settlement on this earth. All we need to do is put an end to the prevailing assumption that the Dear Lord chose the Jewish people to be the beneficiaries of a certain percentage of the productive capacities of other peoples' bodies and their labors. Either the Jews will have to adjust to constructive, respectable activities, such as other people are already engaged in, or, sooner or later, they will succumb to a crisis of yet inconceivable proportions.

Speech of January 30, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

German culture, as its name alone shows, is German and not Jewish, and therefore its management and care will be entrusted to members of our own nation. If the rest of the world cries out with a hypocritical mien against this barbaric expulsion from Germany of such an irreplaceable and culturally eminently valuable element [Jews], we can only be astonished at this reaction. For how thankful they must be that we are releasing apostles of culture and placing them at the disposal of the rest of the world.

In accordance with their own declarations they cannot find a single reason to excuse themselves for refusing to receive this most valuable race in their own countries. Nor can I see a reason why the members of this race should be imposed upon the German nation, while in the States that are so enthusiastic about these 'splendid people' their settlement should suddenly be refused with every imaginable excuse.

I think the sooner this problem is solved the better, for Europe cannot settle down until the Jewish question is cleared up. It may very well be possible that sooner or later an agreement on this problem may be reached in Europe, even between those nations that otherwise do not so easily come together. Speech of January 30, 1939. Quoted in My New Order

I have been a prophet very often in my lifetime, and this earned me mostly ridicule. In the time of my struggle for power, it was primarily the Jewish people who mocked my prophecy that, one day, I would assume leadership of this Germany, of this State, and of the entire Volk, and that I would press for a resolution of the Jewish question, among many other problems. The resounding laughter of the Jews in Germany then may well be stuck in their throats today, I suspect.

Once again I will be a prophet: should the international Jewry of finance succeed, both within and beyond Europe, in plunging mankind into yet another world war, then the result will not be a Bolshevization of the earth and the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.

Speech of January 30, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

What would America do were the Germans in America to commit a sin against America like the one these Jews have committed against Germany? The National Revolution did not harm a hair of their heads. They were allowed to go about their business as before; but mind you, corruption will be exterminated, regardless of who commits it. Just as belonging to a Christian confession or our own Volk does not constitute a license for criminals, neither does belonging to the Jewish race or the Mosaic religion.

Speech of March 28, 1933. Quoted in Domarus

The days of propagandist impotence of the non-Jewish peoples are over. National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy possess institutions which, if necessary, permit opening the eyes of the world to the true nature of this problem. Many a people is instinctively aware of this, albeit not scientifically versed in it. At this moment, the Jews are still propagating their campaign of hatred in certain states under the cover of press, film, radio, theater, and literature, which are all in their hands. Should indeed this one Volk attain its goal of prodding masses of millions from other peoples to enter into a war devoid of all sense for them, and serving the interests of the Jews exclusively, then the effectiveness of an enlightenment will once more display its might. Within Germany, this enlightenment conquered Jewry utterly in the span of a few years.

Peoples desire not to perish on the battlefield just so that this rootless, internationalist race can profit financially from this war and thereby gratify its lust for vengeance derived from the Old Testament. The Jewish watchword "Proletarians of the world, unite!" will be conquered by a far more lofty realization, namely: "Creative men of all nations, recognize your common foe!"

Speech of January 30, 1939. Quoted in Domarus

For the time when the non-Jewish nations had no propaganda is at an end. National Socialist Germany and fascist Italy have institutions that enable them when necessary to enlighten the world about the nature of a question of which many nations are instinctively conscious, but which they have not yet clearly thought out. At the moment Jews in certain countries may be fomenting hatred under the protection of a press, of the film, of wireless propaganda, of the theater, of literature, etc., all of which they control. ...

The nations are no longer willing to die on the battlefield that this unstable international race may profiteer from a war or satisfy its Old Testament vengeance. The Jewish watchword, 'Workers of the world, unite!' will be conquered by a higher realization, namely, 'Workers of all classes and of all nations, recognize your common enemy!'

Speech of January 30, 1939. Quoted in My New Order

I do not want to forget the directions I gave to the German Reichstag on the first of September, 1939 - directions to the effect that when the other world has been delivered from the Jews, Judaism will have ceased to play a part in Europe. They may still laugh today, just as they laughed over my prophecies in the past. The coming months and years will prove that what I foresaw was right.

Even now our racial creed is penetrating nation after nation and I hope that those nations who are still opposed to us will some day recognize the greater enemy within them. Then they will join us in a combined front, a front against international Jewish exploitation and racial degeneration.

Speech of January 30, 1941. My New Order

Is there still a racial problem in this "modern" world? The yellow race is denied the permission to settle in America. But this peril, comparatively speaking, is not nearly so great as the peril which today stretches its hand over the entire world—the Jewish peril. Many people do not regard the Jews as a race, but is there another people that is as determined to perpetuate its race everywhere in the world as the Jews? As a matter of fact, the Jew can never become a German. If he wanted to become a German he would have to give up being a Jew. That he cannot do.

His actions remain Jewish and he works for the "greater idea" of the Jewish people. Since that is so and cannot be otherwise, the mere existence of the Jew is a colossal lie. The Jew is a past master at lying, for his existence as such in the organism of other peoples is •only possible because of falsehood. This already was the opinion of the great Arthur Schopenhauer. The Jew lies to the other peoples when he pretends to be German, French, or the like.

What are the aims of the Jews? They aim to expand their invisible state as a supreme tyranny over the whole world. The Jew is therefore a destroyer of nations. In order to realize his domination over peoples he has to work in two directions. Economically he dominates the peoples, politically and morally he subjugates them. Politically he accomplishes his aims through the propagation of the principles of democracy and the doctrine of Marxism, which makes the proletarian a terrorist in domestic matters and a pacifist in foreign policy. From the ethical point of view the Jew destroys the peoples in respect to religious and moral considerations. Any one who is willing to see that, can see it; and no one can help the person who refuses to see it. The Jew, voluntarily or involuntarily, consciously or unconsciously, undermines the foundation on which alone a nation can exist.

April 20, 1923. Quoted in "Hitler's Words"

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

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

In the past year, we have shown in a series of alarming statistical proofs that, in the present Soviet Russia of the proletariat, more than eighty percent of the leading positions are held by Jews. This means that not the proletariat is the dictator, but that very race whose Star of David has finally also become the symbol of the so-called proletarian state.

And incidentally, we have all experienced the same thing in Germany, too, of course. Who were the leaders of our Bavarian soviet republic? Who were the leaders of Spartakus? Who were the real financial backers and leaders of our Communist Party? Now that is something even the most well-meaning Mister World-Democrat can neither do away with nor change: it was none other than the Jews! That is the case in Hungary, too, and in that part of Spain which the truly Spanish people has not yet recaptured.

Speech of September 13, 1937. Quoted in Domarus

It was clear to me that, ultimately, behind this war was that incendiary who has always lived off the quarrels of nations: the international Jew.

We followed his traces over many years. In this Reich, probably for the first time, we scientifically resolved this problem for all time, according to plan, and really understood the words of a great Jew [Benjamin Disraeli] who said that the racial question was the key to world history. Therefore, we knew quite well—above all, I knew—that the driving force behind these occurrences was the Jew. And that, as always in history, there were blockheads ready to stand up for him: partly spineless, paid characters, partly people who want to make deals and, at no time, flinch from having blood spilled for these deals. I have come to know these Jews as the incendiaries of the world.

After all, in the previous years, you saw how they slowly poisoned the people via the press, radio, film, and theater. You saw how this poisoning continued. You saw how their finances, their money transactions, had to work in this sense. And, in the first days of the war, certain Englishmen—all of them shareholders in the armament industry—said it openly: "The war must last three years at least. It will not and must not end before three years."—That is what they said. That was only natural, since their capital was tied up and they could not hope to secure an amortization in less than three years. Certainly, my party comrades, for us National Socialists, this almost defies comprehension.

But that is how things are in the democratic world. You can be prime minister or minister of war and, at the same time, own portfolios of countless shares in the armament industry. Interests are explained that way.

We once came to know this danger as the driving force in our domestic struggle. We had this black-red-golden coalition in front of us; this mixture of hypocrisy and abuse of religion on the one hand, and financial interests on the other; and, finally, their truly Jewish-Marxist goals. We completely finished off this coalition at home in a hard struggle. Now, we stand facing this enemy abroad. He inspired this international coalition against the German Volk and the German Reich.

First, he used Poland as a dummy, and later pressed France, Belgium, Holland, and Norway to serve him. From the start, England was a driving force here. Understandably, the power which would one day confront us is most clearly ruled by this Jewish spirit: the Soviet Union. It happens to be the greatest servant of Jewry.

Time meanwhile has proved what we National Socialists maintained for many years: it is truly a state in which the whole national intelligentsia has been slaughtered, and where only spiritless, forcibly proletarianized subhumans remain. Above them, there is the gigantic organization of the Jewish commissars, that is, established slaveowners.

Frequently people wondered whether, in the long run, nationalist tendencies would not be victorious there. But they completely forgot that the bearers of a conscious nationalist view no longer existed. That, in the end, the man who temporarily became the ruler of this state, is nothing other than an instrument in the hands of this almighty Jewry. If Stalin is on stage and steps in front of the curtain, then Kaganovich and all those Jews stand behind him, Jews who, in ten-thousandfold ramifications, control this mighty empire.

Speech of November 8, 1941. Domarus

And while the Jew 'organizes' these masses, he organizes business, too, at the same time. Business was depersonalized, i.e., Judaized. Business lost the Aryan character of work: it became an object of speculation. Master and man were torn asunder ... and he who created this class division was the same person who led the masses in their opposition to this class division, led them not against his Jewish brethren, but against the last remnants of independent national economic life.

And these remnants, the bourgeoisie which also was already Judaized, resisted the great masses who were knocking at the door and demanding better conditions of life. And so the Jewish leaders succeeded in hammering into the minds of the masses the Marxist propaganda: 'Your deadly foe is the bourgeoisie; if he were not there, you would be free.' If it had not been for the boundless blindness and stupidity of our bourgeoisie the Jew would never have become the leader of the German working-classes. And the ally of this stupidity was the pride of the 'better stratum' of society which thought it would degrade itself if it condescended to stoop to the level of the 'Plebs.' The millions of our German fellow countrymen would never have been alienated from their people if the leading strata of society had shown any care for their welfare.

Speech of April 24, 1923. Quoted in My New Order

German and allied soldiers have become well acquainted with the actual activities of this Jewish-international warmongering in a country [Russia] where Jewry has set up an exclusive dictatorship, preached it as the idol of a future human race to which, as once here with us, other people's inferior subjects have incomprehensibly become enslaved.

We know the theoretical principles and the cruel reality of this international plague. It is called the reign of the proletariat but it is the dictatorship of Jewry! It is the extermination of the national establishment and intelligentsia of nations, the domination of the proletariat—by that time leaderless and therefore rendered defenseless due to its own fault—by the solely Jewish international criminals.

What happened to such a cruel extent in Russia—the extermination of countless millions of leading persons—was to be continued in Germany. If this intention failed, then it was because our Volk still had too many healthy powers of resistance, but insofar as the establishment on the Bolshevik side is concerned, which consisted only of Jews, it was due above all to the lack of courage and to the unanimous approval by the proletariat for the execution in Germany of what had succeeded in Russia.

With the increasing recognition of Jews as the parasitic germs of these diseases, state after state was forced in the last years to take a position on this fateful question for nations. Imbued with the instinct of self-preservation, they had to take those measures which were suited to protect for good their own people against this international poison.

Even if Bolshevik Russia is the concrete product of this Jewish infection, one should not forget that democratic capitalism creates the conditions for it. In this way, the Jews prepare what the same Jews execute in the second stage of this process. In the first stage, they deprive the majority of men of their rights and reduce them to helpless slaves. Or, as they themselves put it, they make them expropriated proletarians in order to spur them on, as a fanaticized mob, to destroy the foundations of their state. Later, this is followed by the extermination of their own national intelligentsia, and finally by the elimination of all cultural foundations that, as a thousand-year-old heritage, could provide these people with their inner worth or serve as a warning to the future. What remains after that is the beast in man and a Jewish class that, as parasites in leadership positions, will in the end destroy the fertile soil on which it thrives.

On this process—which according to Mommsen results in the Jewish engineered decomposition of people and states—the young, awakening Europe has now declared war. Proud and honorable people in other parts of the world have allied themselves to it. They will be joined by hundreds of millions of oppressed men who, irrespective of how their present leaders may view this, will one day break their chains. The end of these liars will come, liars who claim to protect the world against a threatening domination but who actually only seek to save their own world-rule.

We are now in the midst of this mighty, truly historic awakening of the people, partly as leading, acting, or performing men. On the one side stand the men of the democracies that form the heart of Jewish capitalism, with their whole dead weight of dusty theories of state, their parliamentary corruption, their outdated social order, their Jewish brain trusts, their Jewish newspapers, stock exchanges, and banks—a combination, a mix of political and economic racketeers of the worst sort; on their side, there is the Bolshevik state, that is, that number of brutish men over whom the Jew, as in the Soviet Union, wields his bloody whip. And on the other side stand those nations who fight for their freedom and independence, for the securing of their people's daily bread.

So it is the so-called "haves" from the cellars of the Kremlin to the vaults of New York's banking houses against the "have-nots," that is, those nations for which a single bad harvest means misery and hunger. In spite of all the diligence of their inhabitants, they are unable to obtain their daily bread at a time when, in the states and countries of the "haves," wheat, corn, coffee, and so on, are thrown into the fire in order to achieve somewhat higher prices.

Speech of April 26, 1942. Domarus