Nuremberg Rally: Closing Speech
January 14, 1936
Caution: Adolf Hitler was completely wrong about absolutely everything...usually. When Hitler said something that was actually correct, it was merely to set up the next lie. As with all good propagandists—and he certainly was that—he would begin with a few obvious, documented facts, and then proceed to distort them horribly. At any rate, the infamous German Führer’s worm-tongue rhetoric is NOT to be taken seriously, except as a classic example of the sort of masterful demagoguery from which appropriate lessons may hopefully be learned.As always, read with an abundant degree of cautious skepticism.
I can come to no terms with a [Bolshevist] Weltanschauung which everywhere as its first act after gaining power is - not the liberation of the working people - but the liberation of the scum of humanity, the asocial creatures concentrated in the prisons - and then the letting loose of these wild beasts upon the terrified and helpless world about them. Bolshevism turns flourishing country-sides into sinister wastes of ruins; National Socialism transforms a Reich of destruction and misery into a healthy State and a flourishing economic life. ....
Russia planned a world revolution and German workmen would be used but as cannon-fodder for bolshevist imperialism. But we National Socialists do not wish that our military resources should be employed to impose by force on other peoples what those peoples themselves do not want. Our army does not swear on oath that it will with bloodshed extend the National Socialist idea over other peoples, but that it will with its own blood defend the National Socialist idea and thereby the German Reich, its security and freedom, from the aggression of other peoples. ....
The German people as soldiers is one of the best peoples in the world: It would have become a veritable 'Fight to the Death Brigade' for the bloody purposes of these international disseminators of strife. We have removed this danger, through the National Socialist Revolution, from our own people and from other peoples. These are only some of the grounds for the antagonisms which separate us from communism. I confess: these antagonisms cannot be bridged. Here are really two worlds which do but grow further apart from each other and can never unite. When in an English newspaper a Parliamentarian complains that we wish to divide Europe into two parts, then unfortunately we are bound to inform this Robinson Crusoe living on his happy British island that - however unwelcome it may be - this division is already an accomplished fact. ....
That one should refuse to see a thing does not mean that it is not there. For many a year in Germany I have been laughed to scorn as a prophet; for many a year my warnings and my prophecies were regarded as the illusions of a mind diseased. Bolshevism has attacked the foundations of our whole human order, alike in State and society, the foundations of our conception of civilization, of our faith and of our morals: all alike are at stake. If this bolshevism would be content to promote this doctrine in a single land, then other countries might remain unconcerned, but its supreme principle is its internationalism and that means the confession of faith that these views must be carried to triumph throughout the whole world, i.e., that the world as we know it must be turned upside down. That a British headline-writer refuses to recognize this signifies about as much as if in the fifteenth century a humanist in Vienna should have refused to admit the intention of Mohammedanism to extend its influence in Europe and should have objected that this would be to tear the world asunder - to divide it into East and West.
Unfortunately I cannot escape the impression that most of those who doubt the danger to the world of bolshevism come themselves from the East. As yet politicians in England have not come to know bolshevism in their own country; we know it already. Since I have fought against these Jewish Soviet ideas in Germany, since I have conquered and stamped out this peril, I fancy that I possess a better comprehension of its character than do men who have only at best had to deal with it in the field of literature.... I have won my successes simply because in the first place I endeavored to see things as they are and not as one would like them to be; secondly, when once I had formed my own opinion I never allowed weaklings to talk me out of it or to cause me to abandon it; and thirdly, because I was always determined in all circumstances to yield to a necessity when once it had been recognized. Today when fate has granted me such great successes I will not be disloyal to these fundamental principles of mine.
It is not necessary for me to strengthen the fame of the National Socialist Movement, far less that of the German Army, through military triumphs. He who is undertaking such great economic and cultural tasks as we are and is so determined to carry them through can find his fairest memorial only in peace. ...
But this bolshevism which as we learned only a few months since intends to equip its army so that it may with violence, if necessary, open the gate to revolution amongst other peoples - this bolshevism should know that before the gate of Germany stands the new German Army.... I believe that as a National Socialist I appear in the eyes of many bourgeois democrats as only a wild man. But as a wild man I still believe myself to be a better European, in any event a more sensible one, than they. It is with grave anxiety that I see the possibility in Europe of some such development as this: democracy may continuously disintegrate the European States, may make them internally ever more uncertain in their judgment of the dangers which confront them, may above all cripple all power for resolute resistance. Democracy is the canal through which bolshevism lets its poisons flow into the separate countries and lets them work there long enough for these infections to lead to a crippling of intelligence and of the force of resistance. I regard it as possible that then - in order to avoid something still worse - coalition governments, masked as Popular Fronts or the like, will be formed and that these will endeavor to destroy - and perhaps will successfully destroy - in these peoples the last forces which remain, either in organization or in mental outlook, which could offer opposition to bolshevism.
The brutal mass-slaughters of National Socialist fighters, the burning of the wives of National Socialist officers after petrol had been poured over them, the massacre of children and of babies of National Socialist parents, e.g. in Spain, are intended to serve as a warning to forces in other lands which represent views akin to those of National Socialism: such forces are to be intimidated so that in a similar position they offer no resistance. If these methods are successful: if the modern Girondins are succeeded by Jacobins, if Kerensky's Popular Front gives place to the Bolshevists, then Europe will sink into a sea of blood and mourning.
Fuehrer Adolf Hitler <—Yeesh! What a wearying, insufferable bore.
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Hitler and Göring were arguing about the Jews, with Göring stating that they were quite clever people and Hitler vehemently denying they were any such thing. Finally Göring told Hitler that they should go shopping in Berlin and Göring would show Hitler it was true. Hitler agreed, so they disguised themselves and went out on the street.
Göring took Hitler into a shop, went up to the counter, and asked the clerk: "Do you have any left-handed teacups?" The clerk stared at Göring for a moment and then said no, mein herr, I do not.
The two left with Hitler complaining that he did not understand what the point of this was and Göring telling him to be patient. They went to another shop and Göring gave the same act: "Do you have any left-handed teacups?" The clerk stared and shrugged his shoulders.
They left with Hitler becoming incensed over this nonsense and Göring begging for patience. Finally they went into a Jewish shop; Göring again asked the clerk: "Do you have any left-handed teacups?"
The clerk smiled graciously, went into the back room and made a show of rummaging around, brought out a saucer and teacup, set down the saucer, and carefully placed the cup with the handle pointed so Göring could pick it with his left hand. "There you are, mein herr!" the clerk said.
Göring bought the teacup, thanked the clerk, and the two men left. Göring turned to Hitler and said: "See, I told you the Jews were very clever people."
"I don't see what was so clever about that," Hitler snapped. "He just happened to have one in stock!"