I often find myself in dialogue with perfectly nice, peaceful, considerate patriots who see eye to eye with me on practically every issue and dimensions of our current spiritual struggle but who respond with a hair-trigger, virulent rejection the moment the Führer is mentioned. They find it next to impossible to concede emotionally that Adolf Hitler could possibly have had even a smidgen of legitimacy, even living and struggling as he did in his times and chafing under threats, vilifications and obstacles far worse than what we are experiencing today which have caused so many patriots to look for some sane and ethically defensible solution.
When I ask them how their opinions of Adolf Hitler were formed, as often as not it turns out that they came from such sources as the History Channel - which served them a wildly gesticulating, screaming Hitler practically morning, noon and night, juxtaposed by well-known images of Auschwitz.
Therefore, I thought some balance was in order. Barring dramatic Revisionist developments that need to be addressed in "Breaking news" fashion, for the next 12 days or so my ZGrams will contain excerpts of documented Hitler interviews and speeches. I am asking my readers to make up their own minds if the Hitler they thought they knew is the Führer they will come to know for the next two weeks or so.
Here is Part I:
* In his speech in the Reichstag on 23 March 1933, two months after he took power, Hitler said:
"Hardly ever has a revolution on such a large scale been carried out in so disciplined and bloodless a fashion as this renaissance of the German people in the last few weeks."
* In his speech to Leaders of the Party delivered at Munich on 22 April 1933 Hitler said that what distinguished this revolution from others was that it had been successfully kept under discipline in the hands of leaders fully conscious of their aims.
* In his speech in the Sportpalast, Berlin, on 24 October 1933 Hitler replied to the charges of excesses and atrocities brought by the foreign press; he said:
"When has there ever been a revolution so free from excesses as ours? In the days when there was revolution in Germany there was greater order than in many countries where there was no revolution. (...)
"I go any day amongst the people without any cordon of police. People can always know where I am and where I am going. I have not the least fear that the people may attack me ...Even with the worst elements we have only kept them apart from the nation. Unfortunately the rest of the world declines to take them from us; we would so gladly put them at their disposal."
* In his New Year Proclamation of 1 January 1934 Hitler said:
"Without the organization of our SA and SS, we should have all fallen victim to the Red Terror...And it is not because of any fear of blood that we have carried through this revolution without bloodshed, but only because of our profound sympathy with those whom we have always regarded only as misled, as seduced by lies.."
* On the character of the National Socialist Revolution in a speech delivered at Munich on 19 March 1934 Hitler said:
"History will never be able to lay to our charge that we wrought blind havoc. I believe that no revolution in the history of the world has proceeded and been conducted with more caution and skill than ours. Everything had been considered ten times over and we have taken not one step too many. . . If our enemies of the Red Flag had come to power, then in Germany as elsewhere we should have seen only a heap of smoking ruins. But today we see in Germany vigorous life."
* In his Proclamation (30 January 1935) issued on the second anniversary of the assumption of power by the National Socialists Hitler said, speaking of the Revolution of 1933:
"It was not that an old world was broken in pieces but rather that a new world arose and superseded the old...In no stage of our National Socialist advance, in no stage of our fighting, did chaos rule. It was the most bloodless revolution in the history of the world and yet the most decisive."
* In his speech in the Lustgarten, Berlin, on 1 May 1936 Hitler said:
"Although Germany outwardly presented a picture of the profoundest peace, yet internally there was carried through the greatest upheaval in the whole of German history - a revolution which was legalized through the people's confidence, a revolution which really did but sweep away that which in itself was already in ruins."
* In his speech to the Reichstag on 30 January 1937 Hitler said:
"(D)uring the last four years a revolution of the most momentous character has passed like a storm over Germany. . . When the Party took over power in Germany, after overthrowing the very formidable obstacles that stood in its way, it did so without causing any damage whatsoever to property. I can say with a certain amount of pride that this was the first revolution in which not even a window-pane was broken.
"Don't misunderstand me, however. If this revolution was bloodless, that was not because we were not manly enough to look at blood. . . we did not consider it as part of the programme of the National Socialist Revolution to destroy human life or material goods, but rather to build up a new and better life...Only in those cases where the murderous lust of the Bolsheviks, even after the 30th of January 1933, led them to think that by the use of brute force they could prevent the success and realization of the National Socialist ideal - only then did we answer violence with violence, and naturally we did it promptly. (...)
"This absence of bloodshed and destruction was made possible solely because we had adopted a principle which not only guided our conduct in the past but which we shall also never forget in the future. This principle was that the purpose of a revolution, or of any general change in the condition of public affairs, cannot be to produce chaos but only to replace that which is bad by substituting something better. In such cases, however, something better must be ready at hand. (...)
"As soon as the Party had taken over power, and this new condition of affairs was consolidated, I looked upon it as a matter of course that the Revolution should be transformed into an evolution."
Tomorrow: The Movement and the Opposition.
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Thought for the Day:
"This war against Germany, now decided upon, is a holy war. It must be waged against Germany until its demise, until its complete destruction."
(Samuel Untermeyer, New York Times, August 7, 1933)