Adolf Hitler Speech
January 30, 1939
Editor's note:
We believe this is the only complete English text of this speech on the internet. All others we have seen are incomplete and(or) full of errors.
Section headings and bold print have been placed in this document by the WFF.
Part of this speech comes from computer translation and (while accurate) is not as polished as our usual translations.
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On January 30, 1933, I entered Wilhelmstrasse, filled with deep concern for the future of my people. Today - six years later - I can speak to the first Reichstag in Greater Germany! Truly, perhaps more than another generation, we may be able to gauge the pious meaning of the saying: 'What a turn of God's providence!
Six years were enough to fulfill the dreams of centuries. A year to bring our people into the enjoyment of that unity that was the futile aspiration of many generations. As I see you today gathered around me as representatives of our German people from all parts of the empire and know among you the newly elected men of the Ostmark and the Sudetenland, I again relishes the tremendous impressions of the events of a year in which centuries were realized. How much blood flowed around this destination in vain! How many millions of German men, consciously or unconsciously in the service of this purpose, have gone the bitter road of rapid or painful death for more than a thousand years! How many others were condemned to end life behind fortress and dungeon walls, that they wanted to give to Greater Germany! How many hundreds of thousands have flowed into the wide world as an endless stream of German emigration, driven by distress and anxiety! For decades thinking of the unfortunate homeland, after generations forgetting it. And now, in one year, the realization of this dream has succeeded. Not without a fight, as thoughtless citizens may believe it.
Before this year of German unification, there are almost two decades of the fanatical struggle of a political idea.
Hundreds of thousands and millions use their entire being, their physical and economic existence for them; took mockery and mockery as willingly as years of shameful treatment, pathetic slander and barely bearable terror. Countless blood-covered dead and injured in all German districts are the witnesses of the fight.
And moreover: this success was fought for by an immense volitional effort and by the power of brave and fanatical decisions. I express this because there is the danger that those who have the least practical share in the success of German unification are only too likely to claim the deed of creating this empire as the most lucrative declamators, or the whole event of the year 1938 as a long overdue, but unfortunately accepted by National Socialism late accepted as matter of course.
To these elements, I would like to say that the enforcement of this year included a nervous force of which such weights do not have a trace! These are the old, incorrigible pessimists, skeptics, or indifferent people, whom we have always been able to miss as a positive element during our twenty-year struggle, but who now believe they must make their critical marginal notes after winning the nomination of the national experts.
REVIEW OF 1938
In a few sentences I give a factual account of the historical events of the memorable year 1938.
On Friday evening (March 11, 1938) the request was made to me, in order to prevent obvious inner confusion in this country, to give the order to invade the German troops. Already at 10 o'clock at night the border crossings took place in numerous places. From 6 o'clock in the morning began the general invasion, which took place under the immense rejoicing of a now finally liberated population.
Then came the Sudeten crisis.
The responsible man for that development, which gradually made Czechoslovakia the exponent of all hostile intentions directed against the Reich, was the former President of the Republic. Benesch. He has at the suggestion and with the participation of certain foreign circles In May of last year, the Czech mobilization was carried out, based on the intention to provoke firstly the German Reich and secondly to inflict on the German Reich a defeat in its international reputation.
The fictitious report of a
German mobilization allegedly forcing Czechoslovakia to mobilize its armed
forces was maintained and propagated, despite an official declaration twice
conveyed at my bidding to the Czech State President Benes, stating that Germany
had not mobilized even a single soldier, and in spite of identical
assertions to representatives of foreign powers. Insistent demands called for
Germany to countermand the fictitious mobilization order and to renounce its
pretenses. Benes labored to spread the rumor that the determined nature of the
steps he had taken had forced the German Reich back within its appropriate
borders. Since the Reich had neither mobilized its forces nor entertained any
intentions of attacking Czechoslovakia, this situation entailed without a
doubt a serious loss of prestige for the Reich.
Because of this unbearable
provocation, which was intensified by a truly infamous persecution and
terrorization of our Germans there, I decided to finally and now radically
resolve the Sudeten German question. I gave on May 28:
1. The order to prepare the military intervention against this state with the date of 2 October,
2. I ordered the massive and accelerated expansion of our defense front in the West.
For the confrontation with Mr. Benesch and for the protection of the Reich against other interference attempts or even threats the immediate mobilization of at first 96 divisions was intended, which could follow in a short time a larger number of further such federations.
If certain newspapers and politicians in the rest of the world now claim that Germany had thereby threatened other peoples with military blackmail, this is due to a gross distortion of the facts. In an area where neither Englishmen nor other Western nations have anything to look for, Germany has established the right of self-determination for ten million German nationals. It did not threaten anyone, it only defended itself against the attempt of third party intervention. And I do not need to assure you, my deputies, men of the German Reichstag, that we will not accept it in the future, that in certain matters, which are only for us, Western states simply try to get into it, to arrive at natural and sensible solutions by intervening prevent! We were all happy, therefore, that thanks to the initiative of our friend Benito Mussolini, and thanks to Chamberlain's and Daladier's high degree of appreciation, we succeeded in finding the elements of an agreement that allowed not only the peaceful resolution of an urgent matter, but beyond can be taken as an example for the possibility of a general rational treatment and resolution of certain vital problems. However, without the determination to resolve this problem one way or another, such an agreement of the European powers would not have come about. to find the elements of an agreement that not only allowed the peaceful resolution of an urgent matter, but could also serve as an example of the possibility of a general rational treatment and resolution of certain vital problems. However, without the determination to resolve this problem one way or another, such an agreement of the European powers would not have come about. to find the elements of an agreement that not only allowed the peaceful resolution of an urgent matter, but could also serve as an example of the possibility of a general rational treatment and resolution of certain vital problems. However, without the determination to resolve this problem one way or another, such an agreement of the European powers would not have come about.
1938: HISTORY MAKING MOMENT: THE UNIFICATION OF GERMANY
We have before us today a representation of the German people, which can claim to be regarded as a truly constitutional body.
The politically and socially disorganized German people of earlier decades has consumed most of their inherent powers in an inferior as well as unreasonable internal war. The so-called democratic freedom of living out of opinions and instincts did not lead to a development or even to the liberation of special values or powers, but only to their senseless waste and finally to the paralysis of any truly creative personality that still exists. By putting an end to this unfruitful struggle, National Socialism redeemed the forces that had hitherto been internally bound and made them free to represent the national interests of life in the sense of coping with great communal tasks within the Reich.
MISSION AHEAD
It is nonsensical to think that obedience and discipline are necessary only for soldiers, but have little useful meaning in the rest of the peoples' lives. On the contrary, the disciplined and obediently popular community is capable of mobilizing forces that facilitate an easier assertion of the peoples' existence and thus serve the successful representation of the interests of all. However, such a community is primarily not created by the compulsion of violence, but only by the compelling power of an idea and thus by the efforts of a continuous education.
There are people to whom even the greatest and most devastating events can not overcome any inner thoughtfulness or even movement. These are personally internally dead and thus worthless for a community. They do not make history themselves, and you can not make history with them. In their narrowness or in their blatant decadence, they are a useless commodity of nature.
They find their own reassurance or satisfaction in the thought of a sublime attitude, or rather, ignorance, due to their supposed wisdom or wisdom over the events of time. One can very well imagine that a people does not possess a single such ignoramus, and thereby is capable of the greatest actions and deeds. But it is impossible to conceive of or even lead a nation that would consist in its majority of such ignoramuses, rather than the bloody mass of idealistic, believing, and affirming people. These are the only valuable elements of a national community. A thousand weaknesses are to be forgiven them, if they only have the one strength to give for an ideal or an idea - if necessary - even the last!
My honorable Members, we are still facing tremendous, enormous tasks! A new leadership layer of our people must be built. Their composition is racial. But it is also necessary, through the system and the nature of our education, to demand and ensure above all bravery and responsibility as a natural prerequisite for the assumption of every public office.
For the occupation of leading positions in state and party, the attitude of character is to be valued higher than the so-called merely scientific or supposed mental fitness.
For wherever there is a need to be led, it is not the abstract knowledge that decides, but the innate ability to lead and, consequently, a high degree of responsibility, and thus of determination, courage and perseverance.
Basically, there must be a recognition that the lack of a sense of responsibility can never be outweighed by a presumed first-class, testified scientific education. Knowledge and leadership, that means also energy, are not mutually exclusive. Wherever doubt arises, knowledge can under no circumstances be considered a substitute for attitude, courage, bravery, and determination. In the leadership of a national community in party and state these characteristics are the more important ones.
When I say this in front of you, Members of Parliament, I am under the impression of the one year of German history that has taught me more than all my life so far about how important and irreplaceable these virtues are, and how in the critical hours a single energetic man weighs more and more than 1000 clever weaklings! This new selection of leaders must be redeemed as a social phenomenon, but also from numerous prejudices, which I can really call no other than a lying and in the deepest nonsensical social morality.
There is no attitude that could not find its ultimate justification in the benefits it gives to the whole. What is unimportant or even harmful to the existence of the whole can not be regarded as morality in the service of a social order. And above all: a national community is only conceivable under the recognition of laws which are valid for all, ie it is not possible to expect or demand of one the following of principles which in the eyes of the others are either absurd, harmful or even seem unimportant.
GERMAN CONCEPT OF SOCIALISM
I have no understanding of the tendency of dying social strata to separate themselves from real life through a hedge of dried-up and unrealized civil status laws in order to artificially preserve themselves. On the other hand, as long as this only happens in order to ensure a peaceful cemetery for your own death, there is nothing wrong with it. But if you want to present a barrier to progressing life, then the storm of a youth with a rushing forwards will quickly eliminate this old scrub.
Today's German People's State knows no social prejudices. He therefore knows no social special morality. He only knows the laws of life and necessities conceived by reason and knowledge of man.
The unity of the German national body, whose guarantor you, my deputies, are and will be in the first place, gives me the certainty that, whatever tasks will be assigned to our people, the National Socialist State sooner or later will dissolve! However, whatever the difficulties we may face, the energy and courage of the leadership will master them.
1. We are really fighting a tremendous battle, using all the strength and energy of our people and people
2. We
will win this fight completely, yes we have already won it!
GERMANY STILL FACING GRAVE CRISIS
What is the cause of all our economic difficulties? In the overpopulation of our habitat! And here I can hold only one fact and one question to the gentlemen critics in the Western and non-European democracies, the fact that the German people live with 135 people on the square kilometer without any external help and without all the reserves of former times. Plundered by the rest of the world for one and a half decades, burdened with enormous debts, without colonies, it is still nourished and clothed and has no unemployed. And the question: Which of our so-called big democracies would be able to accomplish the same feat? -
Of course, if nature lets the bananas grow into their mouths, they have a better life-struggle than the German farmer, who has to toil all year to cultivate his field. All we are doing is confess that now such a carefree international banana picker criticizes the activities of the German farmer.
The then occurring state can only be overcome in two ways:
1. By additional imports of foodstuffs, ie an increase in the export of German products, taking into account that some of the raw materials for these products must be imported from abroad, leaving only part of the trade results for the purchase of food, or
2. The expansion of the living space of our people in order to ensure the problem of German nutrition in the internal cycle of our economy.
Since the second solution is not given at the moment due to the continuing blindness of the former victorious powers, we are forced to deal with the first one, ie we have to export to buy food and, secondly, we have to, partly because of this export Raw materials that we do not own ourselves need to be exported even more in order to additionally secure these raw materials for our economy.
This constraint is therefore not a capitalist, as may be the case in other countries, but the hardships that can hit a people, namely the concern for the daily bread.
And if here by foreign statesmen with, I do not know for what, economic countermeasures threatened, so I can only assure you that in such a case, an economic desperate struggle would begin, which is very easy to fight through for us. Easier, than for the oversaturated other nations, because the motive for our economic struggle would be a very simple, namely: German people live, ie export or die. And I can assure all international doubters, the German people will not die, by no means, but it will live! If necessary, it will provide its leadership with the entire workforce of the new National Socialist community in order to take up and fight through such a struggle. But as far as leadership is concerned,
However, a final solution to this problem, and in a reasonable sense, will only come when general human reason prevails over the greed of individual peoples, that is, when one has come to understand that insistence on injustice is not only political also economically useless, indeed insane.
Under the circumstances that now exist, there is no other way for us than to continue an economic policy that must try to bring out of the given living space the highest. This requires an ever greater increase in our services and an increase in production. This forces us to intensify our four-year plan. But it also leads to the mobilization of more and more workers. This brings us closer to a new phase of German economic policy.
While the goal of our economic management in the first six years of our seizure of power was to bring all idle labor into some useful employment, it is the task in the years ahead to undertake a careful survey of our workforce, to regularize their use by one Rationalization and, above all, technically better organization of our working conditions with the same work effort to achieve increased benefits and thus also save labor for new additional productions.
This, in turn, forces us to release the capital market to a greater extent for the technical expansion of our enterprises and thus relieve us of the state requirements.
But all of this again leads to the need for a sharp combination of economy and finance. It is my decision to conclude the path already taken since January 30, 1937, of transforming the German Reichsbank from an internationally-influenced banking company into the music institute of the German Reich.
If the rest of the world complains in part that another German enterprise would lose the traits of an international nature, it is only said that it is our inexorable decision to lend all facilities of our life first and foremost German, that is, National Socialist traits , And the rest of the world would only have to see how absurd it is to reproach us, we wish to impose German ideas on the other world, and how much more justified it would be if National Socialist Germany tried to lament that the other world was still trying to to impose their views on us.
I now see it, my deputies of the Reichstag, as the duty of every German man and every German woman to understand the leadership of the Reich in its economic policy and to support it by all means. In town and country, above all, it should be borne in mind that the basis of German economic policy is not to be found in any financial theories at all, but in a very primitive production knowledge, that is, in understanding of the all-important level of goods production. It is regrettable, but not changeable, that additional tasks have to be set for us, that is, that we must employ a large percentage of our national labor for the in itself inefficient armaments of our people.
NEED FOR GERMAN MILITARY POWER
Ultimately, the economy of today's empire stands and falls with foreign policy security. It is better to see this in good time than too late.
I therefore consider it the supreme task of the National Socialist leadership to do everything humanly possible to strengthen our military strength. I build on the insight of the German people and especially on his memory.
We have no right to suppose that if Germany ever succumbed to another seizure in the future, its fate would take on a different shape; on the contrary, it is in part even the same men who once threw into the world the great war fire and the to endeavor today, as driving forces or as driven agents in the service of international sedition, to increase enmities so as to prepare a new fight.
And above all you, especially my deputies, men of the Reichstag, do not forget one thing:
In certain democracies, it seems that one of the special prerogatives of political-democratic life is the artificially breeding of hatred of the so-called totalitarian states, that is to raise public opinion against peoples that displace others through a flood of partly disfiguring, partly even fictitious reports Did not harm people and did not want to harm them, who were at most themselves deprived of grave injustice for decades.
If we defend ourselves against such war apostles as Mr. Duff Cooper, Mr. Eden, Churchill or Mr. Ikes, etc., then this is considered an interference in the sacred rights of democracies. In the opinion of these gentlemen, they have the right to attack other peoples and their leaders, but no one has the right to resist it.
I do not need to assure them that as long as the German Reich is a sovereign state, the state leadership will not allow an English or American politician to forbid them to respond to such attacks. But the fact that we remain a sovereign state will be ensured in the future by the weapons we are forging, and we will ensure that through the number of our friends.
In itself one could
dismiss the assertion that Germany intends to attack America with a single
laugh. And one would like to ignore the continuous propaganda campaign of
certain British war apostles, but we must not neglect the following:
1. These democracies are states whose political construction makes it possible that just a few months later these worst warmongers can hold in their hands the leadership of the government.
2. Therefore, we owe it to the security of the Reich to enlighten the German people in good time about these men. Since the German people felt no hatred of England, America, or France, but wanted their peace and quiet, but these peoples continued to be spurred on by their Jewish or non-Jewish agitators against Germany and the German people, in the event of the intentions of these Advocates of war our own people into a psychologically unprepared and therefore inexplicable situation.
I therefore think it necessary that from now on in our propaganda and in our press the attacks should always be answered and, above all, brought to the attention of the German people.
It must know who the men are who want to break a war under all circumstances. I am of the conviction that the calculation of these elements is a false one, for when the National Socialist propaganda first passes to the answer, we will be as successful as we in the inner Germany even by the compelling force of our propaganda thrown the Jewish enemy of the world to the ground to have.
The peoples will realize in a short time that National Socialist Germany does not want hostility to other peoples, that all the assertions about the intentions of our people to attack foreign peoples are either morbidly hysterical or out of the personal self-preservation addiction of individual politicians, but that lies In certain states conscienceless thieves should serve to save their finances, and that, above all, international Jewry may hope to achieve satisfaction in their vindictiveness and greed for profit, but that they represent the monstrous slander that can be done to a great and peace-loving people.
AMERICAN AGGRESSION VS. GERMANY IN WORLD WAR I
For example, German soldiers have never fought on American soil except in the service of American independence and liberation struggles, but American soldiers have been brought to Europe to help stifle a great nation struggling to free itself. It was not Germany that attacked America, but America Germany, and as the commission of inquiry of the American House of Representatives has stated: without any compelling cause, only for capitalist reasons.
JEWISH QUESTION AND WESTERN HYPOCRISY ABOUT JEWISH IMMIGRATION
Everyone should be aware of one thing: these attempts, above all, can not in the least affect Germany in the settlement of his Jewish question.
I would like to say the following about the Jewish question:
It is a shameful spectacle to see today how the whole world drags pity on democracy, and how hardhearted it is for the poor and tormented Jewish people in view of the obvious duty to help. The arguments used to apologize for non-assistance speak only for us Germans and Italians.
Because one says:
1. 'We' the democracies - 'are not in a position to take in the Jews!' There are still 10 people per square kilometer in these world empires, while Germany has 135 to feed on the square kilometer, but still be able to do so.
2. It is asserted: We can not take you unless you get from Germany a certain amount of capital to immigration.
However, Germany was good enough to absorb these elements for centuries, even though they had nothing but contagious political and sanitary diseases. What this people has today, it has acquired at the expense of the not so cunning German people through the worst manipulations.
Today we only make up for what has caused this people themselves.
WESTERN MURDER OF GERMAN CIVILIANS AND OTHER WAR CRIMES
When the rest of the world took away the foreign capital of the German people, when they took all the colonial possessions, the philanthropic considerations of the democratic statesmen apparently had no decisive influence.
Today, I can only assure these gentlemen that, thanks to the brutal education that the democracies have bestowed upon us for fifteen years, we are completely hardened to all sentimental tendencies.
We have seen that, after more than 800,000 children died of hunger and food shortages at the end of the war, almost a million pieces of dairy cows were driven away after the cruel paragraphs of a dictate imposed by the democratic, humane world apostles impose us as a peace treaty.
We have seen that one year after the end of the war, more than one million German prisoners of war were detained without any reason in captivity. We had to endure that far more than one and a half million Germans from their frontier areas were being wrenched from their belongings and whipped almost exclusively with what they carried on their bodies.
We have endured the loss of millions of our fellow citizens without hearing them, or giving them even the slightest chance of further preserving their lives.
I could add dozens of the most gruesome examples to those examples. So stay tuned with humanity. The German people do not want their interests to be determined and governed by a foreign people. France to the French, England to the English, America to the Americans and Germany to the Germans!
MORE ON JEWISH QUESTION
We are determined to stop the nesting of a foreign people that has been able to seize all leadership and to deport this people. Because we are willing to educate our own people for these leadership positions.
We have hundreds of thousands of the brightest peasant and working children. We will have them educated, and we are already educating them, and we would like them to once occupy the leading positions in the state with our other educated classes, not the families of a people we do not know.
Above all, however, German culture is, as its name implies, German and not Jewish, and its administration and care are therefore placed in the hands of our people. But if the rest of the world cries out with hypocritical expression over this barbaric expulsion of such an irreplaceable, culturally valuable element from Germany, then we can only be amazed at the consequences that are drawn from it.
For how should we be thankful that we release these magnificent cultural bearers and make them available to the other world? She can not, according to her own statements, give a reason for apology, which is why she refuses to admit these most valuable people to her countries.
It is also difficult to see why the members of this race are otherwise being expected to serve the German people, but in the countries so swarming for these 'splendid people', they suddenly refuse to accept it under all possible excuses. I believe that this problem will be solved all the better.
Because Europe can not calm down until the Jewish question is resolved.
It may very well be that sooner or later there will be an agreement in Europe on this problem, even between nations that would otherwise not find their way together. The world has sufficient settlement space, but it must finally be broken with the opinion that the Jewish people are destined by God to be, in a certain percentage, benefactors of the body and of the productive work of other peoples.
Judaism will have to adapt to solid building activity as other peoples do, or it will sooner or later succumb to a crisis of unimaginable proportions.
And one thing I would like to say at this perhaps not only for us Germans memorable days: I've been a prophet in my life very often and was mostly laughed at. At the time of my struggle for power, it was primarily the Jewish people who only accepted my prophecies with laughter. Once in Germany I would take over the leadership of the state and thus of the entire people and then, among many others, the Jewish problem Bring solution. I believe that this laudable laughter, meanwhile, has stifled Judaism in Germany already in the throat.
THREAT TO KILL JEWS
Today I want to be a prophet again: If international financial Jewry in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the peoples once again into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth and thus the victory of Judaism, but annihilation the Jewish race in Europe.
For the time of the propagandistic defencelessness of non-Jewish peoples is over. National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy possess those institutions which, if necessary, may enlighten the world of the nature of a question which is instinctively conscious to many peoples and only scientifically unclear.
At present, Judaism may, in certain states, conduct its incitement under the protection of a press, film, radio propaganda, the theater, literature, etc., which it holds in its possession. But if this people succeeds again, the masses of millions of peoples should be united To rush for this completely meaningless and only Jewish interests fight, then the effectiveness of an enlightenment will express itself, which is completely succumbed to the Judaism in Germany already in few years.
The peoples no longer want to die on the battlefields to earn this rootless international race in the business of war and satisfy their Old Testament vengeance. On the Jewish slogan 'proletarians of all countries, unite' will win a higher realization, namely: creating members of all nations, recognize your common enemy!
NOT OPPOSED TO CHURCHES
One of the allegations
raised in the so-called democracies against Germany is that National Socialist
Germany is an anti-religious state. I would like to make the following solemn
declaration to the entire German people:
1. In Germany no one has
been persecuted because of his religious attitude, nor will anyone be
prosecuted.
2. Since
January 30, 1933, the National Socialist State has made the following sums
available to the two churches in terms of public tax revenues through its state
organs:
in the financial year 1933: RM 130 million,
in the financial year 1934: RM 170 million,
in the financial year 1935: RM 250 million,
in the financial year 1936: RM 320 million,
in the financial year 1937: RM 400 million,
in the financial year 1938: RM 500 million.
In addition, about 85 million Reichsmark annually from grants from the Länder and about 7 million Reichsmark from grants from the municipalities and associations of municipalities.
Besides, the churches are the largest landowners in the state. The value of their land and forestry possessions exceeds about 10 billion Reichsmarks. The income from this property is estimated at over 300 million a year.
In addition there are the countless donations, testamentary assignments and, above all, the results of their church collections. Likewise, the Church in the National Socialist State is tax-privileged in various fields and has tax exemptions for donations, bequests etc.
It is therefore - to say the least - an outrage, especially when foreign politicians are in charge of talking about hostility to religion in the Third Reich.
But if the German churches really regard this situation as unbearable for them, then the National Socialist State is always prepared to make a clear separation of church and state, as is the case in France, America and other countries.
I would now like to ask
myself the question: what amounts have France, England or [the] USA in the same
period? delivered to their churches by the state through public funds?
3. The
National Socialist State has neither closed a church nor prevented a service,
nor has it ever exerted any influence on the form of a service. He did not
influence the teaching nor the confession of any denomination. In the National
Socialist state, everyone can be saved in his own way.
However, the National Socialist state will unblinkingly convince priests, who, instead of being servants of God, want to see their mission in the vilification of our present Reich, its institutions or its leading minds, that no one tolerates the destruction of this state, and that priests, as soon as they are outside the law, will be held accountable by law as much as any other German citizen.
However, it must be stated
here that there are tens of thousands and tens of thousands of priests of all
Christian denominations who fulfill their ecclesiastical duties as well or
probably better than the political agitators, without ever having been in
conflict with state laws. To protect these, the state regards as its task. To
destroy the enemies of the state is his duty!
4 . The National Socialist state is neither prude nor false. But there are certain moral principles that are in the interest of the biological health of a people, which we therefore do not allow to shake. Pederasty or child molesting are punishable by law in this state, no matter who commits these crimes.
When heads of the National Socialist Party were guilty of these crimes five years ago, they were shot. If other persons of public or private life or even priests commit the same offenses, they will be punished according to the law with prison or penitentiary. We are not interested in transgressions of priests against their other vows of chastity, etc. There has never been a word in our press about it.
Incidentally, this state intervened only once in the internal order of the churches, namely, when I tried in 1933 to unite the powerless, splintered Protestant churches in Germany into a large and powerful Protestant imperial church. This failed because of the resistance of individual state bishops. Thus this attempt has also been abandoned; After all, it is not our task to defend or strengthen the Protestant church by force against its own bearers.
WESTERN SILENCE ABOUT SOVIET MASS MURDERS
If foreign countries, and especially certain democratic statesmen, advocate so much for individual German priests, then this can have only one political reason. For the same statesmen were silent when hundreds of thousands of priests had been slaughtered or burnt in Russia; they remained silent when in Spain tens of thousands of priests and nuns were slaughtered in the most vivacious ways, or given to fire in a living body.
They could not deny these facts, but they remained silent and silent silently, while - I must reproach this to the democratic statesmen - on the basis of these massacres numerous National Socialist and fascist volunteers made available to General Franco to further expand this Bolshevist bloodlust over Europe and help prevent it over the majority of civilized humanity.
For it was the concern for European culture and for the real civilization that made Germany take sides in this struggle of national Spain against its Bolshevik destroyers. It is a sad sign of the mentality in different countries that one can not imagine acting on such unselfish motives. However, National Socialist Germany took part in the uprising of General Franco only on the hot wish that he would be able to save his country from a danger that would almost have succumbed to Germany itself.
It can not be the sympathy or pity for persecuted servants of God, which mobilizes the interest of democratic citizens in some in Germany with the law conflicting priests, but it is the interest in the German public enemy.
But here one may take note of one thing:
We will protect the German priest as servant of God, we will destroy the priest as a political enemy of the German Reich!
We believe this most likely to prevent a development that - as the experience in Spain shows - would otherwise only lead to a defense of unpredictable extent.
I would basically like to explain the following:
There seems to be a certain belief in certain circles abroad that the particularly loud statement of sympathy for elements that have come into conflict with the law in Germany could bring relief to their situation. Perhaps one has the hope of being able to exert a terrorist influence in this sense by means of certain journalistic methods on the German government. The opinion is based on a capital mistake.
In overseas support of certain state-directed companies, we see the final confirmation of their treasonable character!
For the mere opposition to a regime has never forced sympathy for this democratic foreign country. Nor the persecution or punishment of such a political evildoer. For when was there a stronger opposition in Germany than the National Socialist? Never has an opposition been suppressed, pursued and hounded by more mean means than that of the National Socialist Party. For our own good, we may say that we have never participated in the pity or even the support of such a foreign power.
This support seems to be intended only for those who intend to destroy the German Reich. For this reason, in every single case, we will see in it only a compelling reason for an intensification of our measures.
GERMAN ALLIANCE WITH ITALY AND JAPAN
In view of the dangers threatening us, I now find it very fortunate that I have found states in Europe and outside of Europe that, like the German people, must fiercely fight for the assertion of their existence: Italy and Japan.
In today's occidental world, the Italians are the descendants of ancient Rome, and we Germans, the descendants of the Germanic tribes of the time, are the oldest and thus the longest in touch with each other. In my address at the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, on the occasion of my visit to Italy, I explained that it was a misfortune that the most powerful civilized people of the old world and the young people were forming a new, by the absence of a natural separation and by conditioned by many other circumstances, had to endure centuries of fruitless conflicts. But from this thousand-year-old contact arose a community, which not only is linked by numerous ties in blood, but above all became historically and culturally of immense importance.
What Germanism owes in the field of its state organization and thus also its national development and in the field of the general culture of antiquity, is in detail not measurable, in the whole monstrous. Since then almost two millennia have passed. We too have now made a considerable contribution to culture. But we have always remained spiritually close to the Italian people, their cultural and historical past.
The 19th century brought a stunning same state unification process. The German tribes united in the German Reich, the Italian states in the Kingdom of Italy. In one year, 1866, fate has let both nations fight together for their state reorganization.
Today, for the second time, we are experiencing this similar development. A man of secular proportions was the first to succeed in successfully confronting the democratic intellectual world that had become barren in his people with a new idea and to lead it to victory in a few years' time. What fascism means for Italy is difficult to estimate. What he has done to preserve human culture is the stars.
Who is not crushed on a walk through Rome or Florence by the thought of what fate would have happened to these unique documents of human art and culture if Mussolini and his fascism had failed to save Italy from Bolshevism?
Germany faced this same danger. Here National Socialism has accomplished the miracle of salvation. The belief in a new renaissance of our time now clings to these two states in the intellectual imagination of innumerable people of all races.
The solidarity of these two regimes is therefore more than a matter of selfish expediency. In this solidarity lies the salvation of Europe from the looming Bolshevist annihilation.
When Italy broke through his heroic fight for his right to live in Abyssinia, Germany was his friend. In 1938, fascist Italy repaid this friendship to us in ample measure. May no one in the world err in the decision National Socialist Germany has made towards this friend.
Peace can be useful only if there is no doubt that a war against today's Italy, regardless of its motives, will call Germany to the side of her friend.
Above all, one should not be advised otherwise by those who in every country vegetate as isolated bourgeois weaklings and can not understand that in the life of nations, as adviser of prudence, there can be courage and honor, in addition to cowardice. As far as National Socialist Germany is concerned, it knows what fate would befall him if an international force ever succeeded in suppressing fascist Italy, no matter what its motivations.
We recognize the consequences that would result from this and look them icy cold.
The fate of Prussia from 1805 to 1806 will not be repeated a second time in German history. The weaklings, who were the counselors of the King of Prussia in 1805, have no advice in today's Germany. The National Socialist state recognizes the danger and is determined to prepare for its defense.
I know that not only our own Wehrmacht can cope with the highest military demands, but also the military power of Italy. For as little as the present German army can be judged, according to the old army of the Federal Republic, about the time of 1848, modern fascist Italy can scarcely be considered after the period of Italian state turmoil. Only a hysterical, as incorrigible, as well as tactless, but extremely malignant press can have forgotten in such a short time that only a few years ago it was just as thoroughly embarrassing with its prophecies about the outcome of the Italian campaign in Abyssinia as now again in the evaluation of Franco's national forces in the Spanish campaign.
Men make the story!
But they also forge the instruments that are appropriate for the design of history, and above all, they give them their breath. But tall men themselves are only the strongest, most concentrated representation of a people.
National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy are strong enough to ensure peace against anyone, or to resolve decisively and successfully a conflict that was irresponsibly broken up by irresponsible forces!
This does not mean that we Germans - as written in an irresponsible press every day - want war, but it just means that we
1. to understand that other peoples also want to secure their share in the world's goods, which is due to them by virtue of their number, courage, and worth, and that we
2. In recognition of these rights, are determined to share common interests.
But above all, that under no circumstances will we ever shrink from extortionate threats!
Our relationship with Japan, too, is determined by the realization and the determination to put an end to the threatening Bolshevization of a blind world with the utmost determination. The Anti-Comintern Treaty may one day become the focal point of a group of forces whose ultimate goal is none other than to parry the threat to world peace and culture with a satanic phenomenon.
The Japanese people, who have given us so many examples of brilliant heroism in these last two years, are undoubtedly a fencer at the service of human civilization at one end of the world.
Its collapse would not benefit the European or other cultural nations, but would only lead to the secure Bolshevization of East Asia. Apart from international Judaism interested in it, no people can wish for such a development.
If in the past years the tremendous endeavors finally reached their goal peacefully, then, as we said at the beginning, we would like to thank our thanks to Mussolini for the other two statesmen, who valued the value of peace during the critical hours Maintaining a wrong. Germany has no territorial claims against England and France except for the reproduction of our colonies. As much as a solution to this question would help to calm the world, these are not problems that alone could cause a warlike conflict.
If there are any tensions in Europe today, it is primarily attributable to the irresponsible activities of an unscrupulous press, which hardly takes a day to pass without disturbing mankind with alarm messages that are as stupid as they are hypocritical.
What various organs allow for world well poisoning here can only be counted as a criminal crime. Recently, attempts have been made to put the radio in the service of this international hate. I would like to give a warning here:
If the broadcasts from certain countries to Germany do not stop, we will answer them soon. Hopefully then the statesmen of these countries will not come in a short time with the urgent desire to return to their normal state.
For I still believe that our enlightenment will be more effective than the lying campaign of these Jewish racers. The announcement of American film companies to make anti-Nazi, ie anti-German, films can only move us to have anti-Semitic films produced in our German production in the future. Again, one should not be fooled about the effect. There will be many states and peoples who will have great understanding for such additional instruction in such an important area!
I believe that if the Jewish international press and propaganda laws were to be stopped, the understanding between the peoples would be established very quickly. Only these elements are constantly hoping for a war. But I believe in a long peace.
GERMAN HOPE FOR PEACE WITH ENGLAND AND FRANCE
For what conflicts of interest exist between England and Germany? I have stated more than enough that there is no German, and especially no National Socialist, who even in his thoughts had the intention of trying to cause trouble for the English Empire. And we also hear from England the voices of reasonably minded people who express the same attitude towards Germany. It would be good luck for the whole world if the two peoples could come to a trusting cooperation. The same applies to our relationship with France.
These days marks the fifth anniversary of the conclusion of our non-aggression pact with Poland. There is hardly any difference of opinion among the real peacemakers today about the value of this agreement. All you have to do is ask where Europe might have come if this truly redeemable agreement had been broken five years ago. The great Polish Marshal and Patriot [Pilsudski] has rendered his people as great a service as the National Socialist government has done to the Germans. Even in the turbulent months of last year, German-Polish friendship was one of the reassuring aspects of European political life.
Our relationship with Hungary is based on long-established friendship, shared interests and a traditional mutual esteem. Germany has been pleased to be involved in the reparation of the misfortune that had once been inflicted on Hungary.
A state that has been increasingly in the focus of our people since the Great War is Yugoslavia. The esteem that German soldiers once felt for this brave people has since deepened and developed into a sincere friendship. Our economic relations here, as well as with the friendly Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Turkey, are in a rising upswing. The most important reason for this is to seek in the natural supplementing possibility of these countries with Germany.
Germany is happy to have pacified borders today in the west, south and north.
Our relations with the states of the West and the North, ie Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Baltic States, are all the more gratifying, the more the tendencies of turning away from certain war-pregnant in these countries League of Nations pacts.
Nobody can be more appreciative of knowing truly friendly neutral states at their borders than Germany. May Czechoslovakia also succeed in finding a way to inner peace and order, which is a relapse into the tendencies of the former President Dr. Ing. Benesch excludes.
The accession of Hungary and Manchukuo to the Anti-Comintern Pact is a pleasing symptom of the consolidation of world resistance against the Jewish-international-Bolshevik threat to the people.
The relations between the German Reich and the South American countries are pleasing and are experiencing an increasing economic revival.
Our relationship with the North American Union suffers from a campaign of slander on the pretext that Germany is threatening American independence or the freedom to oppress an entire continent in the service of transparent political or financial interests against the popular-minded states of Europe.
But we all do not believe that these attempts are identical with the will of the millions of American citizens, who, in spite of opposite gigantic Jewish-capitalist press, radio and film propaganda, can not doubt that all these claims are not true words.
Germany wishes, as with all countries, including America, peace and friendship. It refuses to interfere in American relations and, however, resolutely refuses any American interference in the German.
Whether Germany, for example, maintains economic relations with South or Central American states and conducts business, nobody cares about except these states and us. Germany is certainly a sovereign and great empire and is not subject to the supervision of American politicians. For the rest, I believe that all states today have so many inner problems to solve that it would be a blessing for the peoples if the responsible statesmen were only concerned with their own affairs.
CONCLUSION: GERMANY NOW UNITED FOR FIRST TIME IN HISTORY
As far as Germany is concerned, I know from my own experience that the tasks assigned are so great that they almost exceed the capacity of the insight and energy of an individual man. Therefore, I can only assure myself and all my co-workers that we see our life's work solely in the care and preservation of our people and empire, both of which look back on a millennial glorious history .
My deputies! Men of the first Reichstag in Greater Germany!
Now when I conclude my declarations today before them, my gaze glides back to the years of struggle and fulfillment behind us. For most, they signify the meaning and content of the whole existence. We know that greater things can no longer be granted to our people and thus to our own lives.
Without blood sacrifice we have finally succeeded in establishing the great empire of the German people. Nevertheless, we do not want to forget that this process was also associated with painful sacrifices for some. Many beloved traditions, some expensive memories and symbols had to be eliminated by us. Countries have been extinguished, their flags confiscated, their traditions have become less important, but it may help to reassure all that no generation, which has worked on Germany in our history, has been spared similar painful feelings.
Since the earliest German dukes tried to form higher units of wild tribes, this one had to move beyond their pursuit of cherished institutions, expensive memories, male allegiance, and so on.
This process lasted almost 2,000 years, until a scattered tribes became a people, and from countless countries and states a kingdom became. Now this career of the German nation may essentially be regarded as finished. But with that, the Greater German Reich encloses the whole millennial struggle of our people.
Just as in him flow all flows of the German blood, so in him all past traditions, their symbols and standards, but above all all the great men, the German people once had reason to be proud.
For in whatever camp they stood in their times, the daring dukes and great kings, the generals and mighty emperors, and around them the enlightened spirits and heroes of the past, they were but the instruments of providence in the process of the birth of a nation.
By embracing them in grateful reverence in this great empire, the glorious wealth of German history opens up to us.
Let us thank God the Almighty for having blessed our generation and us to experience this time and hour.