Continuing the "Hitler Speeches" series, the title "The Tasks of the Movement" speaks for itself:
* In his speech delivered in Munich on 24 February 1935 - the Anniversary of the Founding of the Party - Hitler outlined his vision of the future tasks of the State and the Party. He said:
"We have laid firm foundations for the new State, we have raised no merely external building, we have sown seeds that have sunk deep. It is not enough to define a Weltanschauung in a programme that one can give as a birth certificate to the new State. This Weltanschauung must be anchored in the people. In essential questions one must fuse a whole people into a single view. But that one can never do if one day one merely dictates such an opinion: the opinion must be part of a people's own experience. One must mediate to men the new idea, bring it to a people's consciousness through so long a period that at length the people itself becomes the bearer and the propagator of the new idea. (...)
"The State of today is secure not because we give to it laws: it is secure because in the heart of the nation our law finds its affirmation. . . it is not laws which protect a State: it is the living will, the faith, the confidence, and the courage of a people which are its true protection. . . I have conquered the democracy through its own madness. No democrat can overthrow us. For the coming centuries we have destroyed the conditions necessary for starting afresh any such game as that. (...)
"All of us still suffer from the shadow of the past; we are all tied to the past. But there are young generations coming after us. They are free of the past. . . And they will complete in its fullness that which we see before us only with the prophet's eye."
* In his speech delivered in Berlin on 1 May 1937 Hitler said:
"(W)hat centuries have built up in prejudices and unreason cannot in four years be destroyed so as to leave no trace behind. The task cannot be accomplished once for all. But the will to be quit of the past, that we have, and with this will we shall never capitulate! (...)
"In these four years we have created order; we have taken care that the man who is not prepared to act decently shall not in the last resort pocket the salary; but that the millions of the honest hard-working masses in town and country shall be able to come to their own. We in Germany have really broken with a world of prejudices. (...)
"By my side stand Germans from all walks of life who to-day are amongst the leaders of the nation: men who once were workers on the land are now governing German States in the name of the Reich, former metal-workers are Governors of German shires and so on. It is true that men who came from the bourgeoisie and former aristocrats have their place in this Movement. But to us it matters nothing whence they come if only they can work to the profit of our people. That is the decisive test. We have not broken down classes in order to set new ones in their place: we have broken down classes to make way for the German people as a whole. (...)
"But our education also trains men to respect intellectual achievement: we bring one to respect the spade, another to respect the compass or the pen. All now are but German fellow-countrymen and it is their achievement which determines their value. (...)
"For what is the meaning of Socialism and democracy? Can there be anything finer than an organization which draws from the people its most capable personalities and places them in positions of leadership? Is it not wonderful for every humble mother amongst our people and for every father to know that perhaps their boy may become anything - God knows what! - if only he has the necessary talent?"
* In his closing speech to the Nuremberg Congress on 12 September 1938 Hitler said:
"If the question is still asked to-day why National Socialism combats the Jewish element in Germany so fanatically, and has pressed and still presses so urgently for its removal, the answer can only be, because National Socialism wishes to establish a real community of the people. . . Since we are National Socialists, we cannot permit an alien race, which has no connection with us, to impose itself upon our working people as their leaders. (...)
"Therefore the strongest evidence for the truly Socialist character of the National Socialist Movement is its struggle against an alien leadership which has not sprung from its own people."
* In the speech which closed the Nuremberg Parteitag of September 1934 Hitler said:
"The Party will for all time form the picked body of the leaders of the German people. It will develop a State of political apostles and combatants who then as obedient officers, true to their duty, will serve the Movement. It will be that great school which attracts to itself the millions of our people, educates them and then sends them out into the world. In it there will develop a tradition in the art of leading a people which will not permit that men of alien spirit should ever again confuse the brain and the heart of the German. (...)
"(I)n the early days it was dangerous to become a National Socialist, and for this reason we gained the best fighters. Now it is profitable for folk to 'co-ordinate' themselves with us, and we must therefore be on our guard lest those hasten to join us who under the symbol of our fight and our sacrifices do but wish to do business cheaply. In the early days our opponents took good care that through waves of vetoes and persecutions the Movement should from time to time go through a fresh 'combing out' process, and we thus got rid of the light trash that began to find its way into our ranks. To-day we ourselves must hold a muster and must reject what has proven itself to be base and which therefore does not in any true sense belong to us. (...)
"A young generation is growing up and it has never experienced the infection of our poisonous party politics, it has never experienced the corruption of our parliamentary-democratic system; all this is alien to our youth; it is from the outset incomprehensible. Those of advanced years may still have their doubts, but youth is devoted to us; it has joined us in body and in soul. Youth lives in this proud Germany of the swastika, and that symbol it will never more be able to tear from its heart. Youth loves the singleness of purpose, the resolution of our leadership, and would not understand if suddenly a mummified past were to come with utterances which even in their language are drawn from alien sources."
"It is not as an idle talker that I come before the German people. I can say: These ideas have guided me for three years and they have guided me well. When I took over the Government three years ago the German people in Europe was surrounded by nothing but hostilities. And the worst of it was that this mentality seemed on all sides to be based upon so little real deliberation: neither in this country nor elsewhere had the problems been thought out with sufficient consideration. Men let themselves be driven into hatred, ill-will, fear, and jealousy. I have tried to bring reason into Germany's relations with her neighbors. I have tried to build up our relations on principles which have always proved to be right - on the community of man and human co-operation. I have endeavored to make clear to the world and to the German people that Europe is a small idea, that for centuries past within this small Europe profound displacements have not taken place, that here in Europe we have to deal with a single family of peoples, that the individual members of this family have each become consolidated to an infinite degree - that they represent nations, filled with traditions looking back on a great past, each regarding its own culture as its peculiar property and facing the future with pride and hope. (...)
"People tell me that if I am a German Nationalist I must necessarily wish for military triumphs. I can only say that my ambition is to win triumphs of a very different kind. I am a German Nationalist and I will represent my people with all the fanaticism of a soldier of the great army of former days. I have the ambition to raise for myself one day a monument in the German people, but I know that it is better to raise this monument in peace than in a war. The aim of my ambition is rather that we should create in Germany the best institutions for the education of our people; my wish is that we in Germany should get the finest stadia, that our road system should be developed, our culture elevated and ennobled. I wish that our towns should be made beautiful. I wish to place Germany among the first in all spheres of human culture and human effort. That is my ambition!
"I want the working-strength of my people not to lie fallow, I wish it to be turned into money to create for us once more new values. I want this working-strength to be transformed into beauty for our people - into life and joy for our people. My aim shall be that these people shall live, so far as possible, a life free from care, that the goods of this life shall be distributed as reasonably as possible. But I will not allow another to interfere or think that he can rob us of anything! (...)
"I live only for countless millions who work so hard and have so few of life's gifts, who so often have to struggle with cares and so seldom have their share of happiness. The National Socialist Movement desires only to help these men; it will endeavor to lighten their lot, to bring into it some beauty. To that end, to the service of the maintenance of the people's life, it will devote all its powers of work, all its genius and all its skills of organization."
* In his speech to the German Youth at Nuremberg on 10 September 1938 Hitler said:
"Immeasurable are the tasks which are set before us, but, whatever be those tasks, they can be solved only by a people closely united into one body, and such a body cannot be formed by wishes and by hopes, but only by education. By that alone can we create for ourselves the people that we require, the people that they will need who are to make history when we are dead . . . In this community of destiny you are enrolled.
"When Providence one day takes me from my people, I shall leave to the future Leader a people welded fast together, bound up together as with iron bands, a people which can nevermore be sundered and torn apart, standing unshakably together, joyful in happy times and defiant in disaster! (...)
"When the time comes for us to close our eyes in death, then those who come after us will receive something different from that which was given into our hands nineteen years ago!"
Tomorrow: The Years in Retrospect as Hitler saw them -
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Thought for the Day:
"It is our mission to organize the moral and cultural boycott of Germany and to draw and quarter this nation. It is our mission to finally achieve a war without mercy."
(Bernard Lecache-Lifschitz, December 18, 1938)