Night Of The Nazi Werewolf: 6 Keynote Speeches 1939-41

prosecution

THE REICHSTAG MAY 31ST 1935

Members of the Reichstag:

The present session has been called to enable me to give you the explanation I feel is necessary to understand the attitude and the decision made by the German Government on the great problems of the time which concern us all. I am happy to be able to give such explanations from this place, because danger is thereby obviated to which conversations in a smaller circle are liable – namely, that of misinterpretation. I conceive it may duty to be perfectly frank and open in addressing the nation. I frequently hear from Anglo-Saxon tribe’s expressions of regret that Germany has departed from those principles of democracy, which in those countries are held particularly sacred.

This opinion is entirely erroneous. Germany, too, has a democratic Constitution. The present National Socialist government also has been appointed by the people and feels itself responsible to the people. The German people have elected with 38,000,000 votes one single Deputy as their representative. This is perhaps the sole essential difference between the German Reich and other countries. It means, however, that I feel just as much responsibility to the people as any Parliament can. As Fuehrer-Chancellor and chief of the Reich government, I have often to make decisions, which are weighty enough, but the weight of which is made still heavier by the fact that I cannot share my responsibility or shift it to other shoulders. When the late Reich President called me on January. 30, 1933, to form a new government to take over the affairs of the State, millions of our people doubted whether the undertaking could succeed. Our situation was such that our enemies were filled with hope and our friends with sadness. After four years of disastrous war, a dictated peace left us with a situation which can be summed up as follows:

The nation had a surplus labor capacity; it was short of the necessities of life, food and raw materials. The foreign markets available to us too small and were getting smaller.

The result thereof was paralyzed industry annihilated agriculture, ruined bourgeoisie, devastated trade, terrific debt burdens, shattered public finances and 6,500,000 registered unemployed, who is reality, however, exceeded 7,500,000.

Sometime the course of the World War and its sequels will be recognized as classical refutation of the naive view unfortunately held by many statesmen before the war that the welfare of one European State is best served by the economic destruction of another. We all are convinced the economic autarchy of all States, as seems threatened now, is unwise and can only be detrimental in the end to all. If it is allowed to go on, the consequences to Europe will be exceedingly mischievous.

Restrictions on imports and the self-manufacture of substitutes for foreign raw materials call for a planned economy, which is a dangerous undertaking because every planned economy only too easily leads to bureaucratization.

We cannot wish for an economic system that borders on communism and benumbs productive energy. It substitutes an inferior average for the law of survival of the fittest and going to the wall of the weaker. Yet, knowing all this, we embarked upon this procedure under the hardest pressure of circumstances. What we achieved was only possible because the living energy of the whole nations was behind it. First, we had to halt the ever shifting wages and price movements; then we had to reconstruct the whole fabric of the State by removing all employer and the employee organizations. The essential factors were maintenance of internal quiet and the time element.

We can only regret the world still refrains from taking the trouble to examine objectively what has been achieved here in the last two and half years, or study a weltanschauung [world view] to which these achievements are wholly due.

If present-day Germany stands for peace, it is neither because of weakness nor of cowardice. National Socialism rejects any ideas of national assimilation. It is not our desire orientation to take away the nationality, culture or language of any peoples or Germanize them by force. We do not order any Germanization of non-German names. We do not believe that in present-day Europe denationalization is possible anyway.

The permanent state of war that is called into being by such procedures may seem useful to different political and business interests; for the peoples it spells only burdens and misery. The blood that has been split on the European continent in three hundred years stand in no proportion to the results obtained.

After all, France remained France; Germany, Germany; Poland, Poland; Italy, Italy. What dynastic egoism, political passions and patriotic delusions achieved by shedding oceans of blood has, after all, only scratched the surface of peoples.

How much better results would have been achieved if the nations had applied a fraction of their sacrifices to more useful purposes? Every war means a drain of the best elements. Victory can only mean a numerical addition to the victor nation’s population; how much better if the increase of population could be brought about the natural means, a national will be produce children of its own!

None of our practical plans will be completed before ten or twenty years to come; none of our idealistic objects will come to fulfillment in fifty or perhaps a hundred years. We all shall only live to see the first beginnings of this vast revolutionary development. What could I wish but peace and quiet? If any one says this is only the wish of leadership, I can reply, the people themselves have never wished for war. Germany needs and wills peace? If Mr. Eden says such assurances mean nothing and that a signature under collective treaties is the sole guarantee of sincerity, I beg him to reflect that in every case it is a matter of what is assurance. It is often far easier to put one’s signature under a treaty with mental reservations as to what action to take later than to champion a pacific policy before the whole nation, because that nation rejects war.

I could have signed ten treaties, but that would not have the weight of the declaration made to France at the time of the Saar plebiscite. If I, as Fuehrer, give my assurance that with the Saar problem settled we will make no further territorial demands on France, this assurance is a contribution to peace which is more important than many a signature under many a pact. I believe that with this solemn declaration a quarrel of long duration between two nations really ought to be ended.

It is a queer thing that in the historical life of peoples there are veritable inflation’s of conceptions, which can only with difficulty stand in the face of exact examination by reason.

For some time, for instance, the world has lived in a veritable mania of collective effort, collective security, collective obligations; all of which terms at first blush seem to have concrete contents, but on closer examination afford the possibility of at least many interpretations. What does collective, cooperative effort mean? Who determines what collective cooperation is and what it is not? Has not the conception of collective cooperation for seventeen years been interpreted in the most different ways?

I believe I am putting if right when I saw that in addition to many their rights the victor states of the Versailles treaty also arrogated to themselves the right to define without contradiction what constitutes collective cooperation and what does not constitute cooperation… If here and now I undertake to criticize this procedure, I do it because thereby is the best possible way to make clear the inner necessity of the last decisions of the Reich government and to awaken an understanding of our real intentions. The present-day idea of collective cooperation of nations is essentially the spiritual property of the American President, Wilson.

The policies of the period before the war were rather more determined by the idea of alliances of nations brought together by common interests. Rightly or wrongly, this policy at one time was made responsible for the outbreak of the World War. Its end, as far as Germany was concerned, was hastened by the doctrine of the fourteen points of Wilson and three points which later complemented them. In them were contained essentially the following ideas for preventing the recurrence of a similar catastrophe to humanity : Peace was not to be one of the one-sided right, but a peace of general equality, thereby of general right. It was to be a peace of reconciliation, of disarmament of all and thereby of security for all. From it was to result, as its crowning glory, the idea of international collective, cooperative effort of all States and nations in the League of Nations. I must from this place once more state emphatically there was no people anywhere who more eagerly took up these ideas than the Germans.

When in the year 1919 the peace of Versailles was dictated to the German people the death sentence had already been pronounced on collective cooperative of peoples. For, instead of equality of all, came classification into victors and vanquished; in place of equal rights, differentiation between those entitled to rights and those without rights; in place of reconciliation of all, punishment of the vanquished; in place of international disarmament, disarmament for defeated.

Germany, fairly renouncing herself, on her part created all the conditions for cooperation of a collective nature to meet the ideas of the American President. Well, at least after this German disarmament had taken place, the world in its part ought to have taken the same for restoring equality. What, however, happened? While Germany loyally fulfilled the obligations of the treaty dictated to her, the so-called victory States failed to fulfil what the treaty obliged them subsequently to fulfil. If one attempts today to apologize for the negligence through excuses, then it is not difficult to contradict these lame explanations. We know here, to our surprise, from the mouths of foreign statesmen, the intention for fulfillment existed, but the time for doing so had not yet come. But how? All conditions for disarmament of other States existed at that time without exception. Germany had disarmed.

Politically, too, the conditions were ripe, for Germany was then a democracy if ever there was one. Everything was copied exactly and was dutifully likened to its existing great models. The time was ripe, but disarmament was nonexistent. Not only have these other States not disarmed, but, to the contrary, they have in the most extraordinary manner completed, improved and thereby increased their armaments.

The objection has no weight in that connection that partial limitation of personnel has taken place. For this personal limitation is more than equalized by technical and planned improvement of the most modern weapons of war. Besides, this limitation could very easily at any time be caught up with.

Germany had destroyed all her airplanes. Germany became not only defenseless as regards active aerial weapons, but also defenseless as regards the passive means of air protection. During the same time, however, not only did the contracting parties fail to destroy existing planes but, to the contrary, continued to develop them extraordinarily. Instead of destroying existing bombing planes, as did Germany, these were most industriously improved, developed and replaced by ever larger and more complete types. The number of flying fields and airdromes was not only not reduced but everywhere increased. Warships were equipped with airplanes.

Germany, in accordance with the obligations imposed upon her, destroyed her World War tanks. Thereby she also, true to the treaty, destroyed and scrapped an offensive weapon. It should have been the duty of other States on their part to begin destroying their tanks. However, not only did they fail to destroy them, but they continuously improved them, both as regards speed and their ability to resist attack. The speed of World War tanks, 4 to 12 kilometers increased to 30, 40, 50 and finally 60 kilometers an hour. Within the same time in which Germany has destroyed her tanks and waited for the fulfillment of the destruction of others, these others built over 30,000 new tanks and improved and enlarged them into ever more terrible weapons.

Germany had to destroy her entire heavy artillery according to the provisions of the Versailles treaty. This was done, too!

But while Germany’s howitzers and cannons were cut by blow-torches and went in as scrap iron to the blast furnaces, the other treaty partners not only failed to destroy their heavy artillery but, on the contrary even, there followed construction, development, improvement and perfection. Gas weapons: as a prerequisite for a disarmament treaty, the partners of Germany had her destroy her entire gas weapons, according to the Versailles Treaty, and she did it. In other States the people were busy in chemical laboratories, not to scrap this weapons, but, to the contrary, in improving it in an unheard of manner.

Submarines: Here, too, Germany had faithfully fulfilled her obligations in accordance with the letter or Versailles, to make possible international disarmament. The world about her not only has not followed this example, has not even merely preserved her stock left over from the war, but on the contrary, has constantly completed, improved and increased it. The increase in displacement was finally augmented to a 3,000-ton boat. Armaments increased to 20-centimeter cannon.

This, then, was the contribution to the disarmament on the part of States who in the Versailles Treaty obligated themselves, on their part, to follow the German example and destroy the submarine weapon. If all this is not an open breach of the treaty, and a one-sided one at that, coming as it does after the other partner had without exception fulfilled his obligation, it will be difficult to see how in the future the signing of treaties can have any meaning whatsoever.

No, for this there is no extenuation, no excuse! For Germany, with her complete defenseless, was anything but a danger to other States. Although Germany waited in vain for years for the other side to make good its obligations under the treaty, Germany, nevertheless, was ready still not to withhold her hand for a real collective, cooperative effort. It was not Germany that made the plan for an army of 200,000 men for all European States impossible of realization, but it was the other States that did not want to disarm.

The hope sometimes is expressed nowadays that Germany might herself advance a constructive plan. Well, I have made such proposals not once but repeatedly. Had my constructive plan for a 300,000 man army been accepted, perhaps many a worry today would be less onerous, many a load lighter. But there is almost no purpose in proposing constructive plans if their rejection can be regarded as certain to begin with. If, nevertheless, I decide to give an outline of our ideas, I do it merely from a feeling of duty not to leave anything untried that might restore to European peoples the feelings of solidarity.

Inasmuch as hitherto not only the fulfillment of the obligations of other States to disarm had failed to materialize, but also all proposals for limitation of armaments had been rejected. I, as leader of the German nation, considered myself obligated before God and my conscience, in view of the formation of new military alliances and after receipt of notification that France was proceeding to the introduction, of the two-year term of service, now to reestablish Germany’s equality, which had been internationally denied her. It was not Germany who thereby broke the obligation laid on her, but those States, which compelled us to undertake this independent action.

I cannot refrain here from expressing my astonishment at the definition by the British Premier Macdonald who, referring to the restoration of the German Army, opined that the other States, after all, had been right in holding back their disarmament, if such ideas are to be generally accepted, what is to be expected from the future ? For, according to this, every breach of the treaty will find later justification by the assumption the other party will probably break the treaty, too.

It is said Germany is threatened by nobody; there is no reason why Germany should rearm at all. Why did not the others, then, disarm? From disarmed Germany they had nothing to fear. There is the choice of only two things: either armaments are a menace to peace – then they are that in the case of all countries – or armaments are not a menace to peace. Then that applies the same way. It will not do for one group of States to represent their disarmament’s as an olive branch and the others their armaments as an instrument of Satan. A tank is a tank; a bomb is a bomb.

Germany refuses to be regarded and treated for all time as a second-class or inferior nation. Our love of peace perhaps