On
this date, November 8, 1941, Adolf Hitler gave a speech in regards to the Siege of Leningrad.
I will post about the Speech from this internet source (http://der-fuehrer.org/reden/english/41-11-08.htm):
Adolf
Hitler on wanting war.
[PHOTO
SOURCE: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/551231]
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Adolf Hitler
– speech in the Löwenbräukeller
Munich, November
8, 1941
Party Comrades!
German Volksgenossen!
I have come here again for a few hours, true to the
old custom, in order to speak with you, my first followers and
comrades-in-arms, and to honor the men who at the time made the greatest
sacrifice that they could possibly make for our movement and for Germany. When
I stood before you the last time, behind us lay a glorious year of great
events.
The insane drunkard (wahnsinniger Saufer) who has been
controlling England for years now immediately regarded this as a new sign of my
weakness.
At the time, I was portrayed as a man who sees a bleak future and,
therefore, no longer dares to continue the struggle. But, I never imagined the
future to be any different from what actually came to pass. And, besides all
the glory, I anticipated the sacrifices, and I wanted to spare all sides these
sacrifices.
First, I wanted to spare our own Volk the sacrifice. But, toward the
rest of the world, I also felt that, as the victor, I could take responsibility
for extending my hand for reconciliation. As I said before, this was not
understood by those who never made a sacrifice in their own lives and had no
close contact with the sacrifices of their own people.
So we had no other choice than to fasten on the helmet for good and to
step out on that path which would free us for all time from the dangers
threatening not only Germany, but all of Europe.
When I spoke to you here the last time, my old party comrades, I did so
fully conscious of victory as hardly a mortal has been able to do before me. In
spite of this, a concern weighed heavily on me. It was clear to me that,
ultimately, behind this war was that incendiary who has always lived off the
quarrels of nations: the international Jew. I would no longer have been a
National Socialist had I ever distanced myself from this realization.
We followed his traces over many years. In this Reich, probably for the
first time, we scientifically resolved this problem for all time, according to
plan, and really understood the words of a great Jew who said that the racial
question was the key to world history. Therefore, we knew quite well-above all,
I knew-that the driving force behind these occurrences was the Jew. And that,
as always in history, there were blockheads ready to stand up for him: partly
spineless, paid characters, partly people who want to make deals and, at no
time, flinch from having blood spilled for these deals. I have come to know
these Jews as the incendiaries of the world.
After all, in the previous years, you saw how they slowly poisoned the
people via the press, radio, film, and theater. You saw how this poisoning
continued. You saw how their finances, their money transactions, had to work in
this sense. And, in the first days of the war, certain Englishmen-all of them
shareholders in the armament industry-said it openly: “The war must last three
years at least. It will not and must not end before three years.”-That is what
they said. That was only natural, since their capital was tied up and they
could not hope to secure an amortization in less than three years. Certainly,
my party comrades, for us National Socialists, this almost defies
comprehension.
But that is how things are in the democratic world. You can be prime
minister or minister of war and, at the same time, own portfolios of countless
shares in the armament industry. Interests are explained that way.
We once came to know this danger as the driving force in our domestic
struggle. We had this black-red-golden coalition in front of us;
this mixture of hypocrisy and abuse of religion on
the one hand, and financial interests on the other; and, finally, their truly
Jewish-Marxist goals. We completely finished off this coalition at home in a
hard struggle. Now, we stand facing this enemy abroad. He inspired this
international coalition against the German Volk and the German Reich.
First, he used Poland as a dummy, and later pressed France, Belgium,
Holland, and Norway to serve him. From the start, England was a driving force
here. Understandably, the power which would one day confront us is most clearly
ruled by this Jewish spirit: the Soviet Union. It happens to be the greatest
servant of Jewry.
Time meanwhile has proved what we National Socialists maintained for
many years: it is truly a state in which the whole national intelligentsia has
been slaughtered, and where only spiritless, forcibly proletarianized subhumans
remain. Above them, there is the gigantic organization of the Jewish
commissars, that is, established slaveowners. Frequently people wondered
whether, in the long run, nationalist tendencies would not be victorious there.
But they completely forgot that the bearers of a conscious nationalist
view no longer existed. That, in the end, the man who temporarily became the
ruler of this state, is nothing other than an instrument in the hands of this
almighty Jewry. If Stalin is on stage and steps in front of the curtain, then
Kaganovich and all those
Jews stand behind him, Jews who, in ten-thousandfold ramifications, control
this mighty empire.
When I spoke to you here last year, I was already weighed down by this
insight into a development that could no longer be misinterpreted.
Finally, the moment came when the Russian concentration became evident
in that-with the exception of a couple of divisions in Moscow, which were
apparently held back as a lever against their own people, and a few divisions
in the east-nothing was left that was not at the western front.
Today, I can say so for the first time: there was something else which
also cautioned us: In the year 1940, a number of so-called “secret sessions” of
the British House of Commons took place in London. And during these secret
sessions, the whisky-happy gentleman (whiskeyseliger Herr), Churchill,
revealed his thoughts, his hopes, and finally his conviction that Russia was on
its way to England. Mr. Cripps had given him absolute proof that it would take
one to one-and-a-half years at the most until Russia would appear. One would
have to endure another one to one-and-a-half more years at the most. That was
the reason behind the incomprehensible courage of this gentleman at the time.
We knew about this all the time. I have now drawn the consequences. First, we
freed our southeastern flank. After all we know today, I can only say that we
owe gratitude to Mussolini for attacking this festering sore as early as the
year 1940. Within a few weeks, we managed to solve this problem for good, with
the help of the European states at our side. By taking Crete and closing off
the Dardanelles, we victoriously concluded this undertaking.
I have often talked about the accomplishments of our Wehrmacht. It
proved gloriously successful in this campaign as well, the army as well as the
Luftwaffe.
After that, I watched every movement of our great enemy in the east.
Since April and May, I was constantly, I would say, at the observation post.
Without pause, I watched every occurrence, determined at any moment-once I
realized that the enemy was about to attack-to strike twenty-four hours earlier
if necessary. In mid-June, the signs became more threatening. By the second half of
June, no doubt was left that it was just a question of weeks, perhaps only
days. And so I gave orders that we should take the offensive on June 22.
Believe me, my old party comrades, this was the most difficult decision
of my life up to then. It was a decision which I knew would embroil us in a
very difficult struggle. However, I hoped that our chances to win it would be
the greater the quicker we defeated the others.
What was the situation at the time? The west was basically secured. To
come straight to the point: there are so-called ingenious politicians in the
camps of our enemies who now claim that I knew that we would not be attacked in
the west and, therefore, I had the courage to go for it in the east. I can only
tell these geniuses: they fail to appreciate my caution. I am so prepared in
the west that they can take the offensive at any time.
If the English gentlemen want to start an offensive, whether in Norway,
against our German coast, in Holland, in Belgium, or in France, we can only
tell them: fall in-you will fall out more quickly than you came! These coasts are
in a different state today than they were one year ago. We have worked there
with National Socialist thoroughness. The chief of the biggest part of this
work-to name only one man-was our Todt.
Naturally, work there continues. You know me from our time in the party.
I have never known rest. If there are ten batteries somewhere, then five will
be added. If there are fifteen, then five more will be added, and more still-
our enemy himself is delivering the guns!
We left sufficient forces everywhere in order to be
ready at any time. The enemy did not come. Fine! I do not wish to spill blood.
And even if they had come-as I said-they would be long gone by now. We were
secure here.
We also cleaned up the Balkans. In North Africa, our mutual efforts made
it possible to establish a stable order. Finland declared itself willing to
join our side. The same with Romania. Bulgaria likewise understood the danger.
Hungary recognized the great historic hour and arrived at a heroic
decision.
And so, on June 22, I believed that I could, in accordance with my
conscience, confront this danger, even if with a lead of a few days only.
Now, this struggle, my old party comrades, really is a struggle not only
for Germany, but also for all of Europe; a struggle of life and death! You know
our allies, beginning in the north: the brave little heroic people of Finland,
which has proved its worth so outstandingly again. They were joined by Slovaks,
Hungarians, Romanians, and, finally, allies from all over Europe: Italians,
Spaniards, Croats, Dutch, Danish volunteers, even French and Belgian
volunteers. I can truly say that, in the east, all of Europe is for the first
time fighting in a common realization: just as against the Huns back then, we
now fought against this Mongolian state of a second Genghis Khan. The goal of
this struggle was the following: 1. the destruction of the enemy power, that
is, the enemy’s armed forces, and 2. the capture of the enemy’s armament and
food-production centers.
Questions of prestige do not play any role with us. If somebody says
today: “You are on the defensive at Leningrad,” then I come and say: we were on
the offensive in front of Leningrad just as long as this was necessary in order
to encircle Leningrad. Now, we are on the defensive, and the other side has to
try to break out. But he will starve in Leningrad! I will surely not sacrifice
one more man than is absolutely necessary.
If there were somebody there today to relieve Leningrad, I would give
orders to storm it, and we would take it by storm. Someone who has marched from
the East Prussian border up to ten kilometers outside of Leningrad can also
march those ten kilometers from outside Leningrad into the city.
But this is not necessary. The city is encircled. Nobody will enter it
anymore. It will fall into our hands. And when they say, “only as a heap of
ruins”-I am not interested in any city Leningrad, instead only in the
destruction of the industrial center Leningrad. If it pleases the Russians to
blow up their cities, then perhaps they are saving us a bit of work. Questions
of prestige-let me repeat this-do not play a role with us.
If, for example, someone asks: “Why aren’t we marching now?”-Because, at
the moment, it is raining or snowing, or perhaps we are not totally finished
with the railroads! The speed of this advance is not determined by those
wonderful British strategists who determine the speed of their retreats.
Instead, it is exclusively determined by us.
And, secondly, there is the occupation of the enemy’s armament and
foodproduction centers. Here, too, we will proceed according to plan!
Sometimes, it is enough to destroy one factory in order to bring many factories
to a standstill.
If I wanted to sum up the success of this campaign until now, then the
number of prisoners now stands at approximately three point six million, that
is, three million six hundred thousand prisoners. And please don’t tell me an
English blockhead says that this has not been confirmed. If a German military
office counts something, then it is correct! There is an essential difference
between a German officer and a British stockbroker! It is totally correct, just
as our numbers for French and English prisoners were correct! The English know
this quite well themselves because they always want to take care of their
prisoners. Now, if I look at three point six million prisoners on the one side
and I go by World War standards, then this means a corresponding number of
casualties. It would be a bad testimonial for Mr. Stalin if his people were
fighting less bravely now than they did in the World War. On the contrary, they
fight in part out of fear and in part with bestial, fanatical madness. And, if
I now assume that in Russia, as here with us, there are three to four wounded for
every fatal casualty, then the result is an absolute loss of at least eight to
ten million, without considering those only slightly wounded, who might be
cured and put back into action. My party comrades, no army in the world can
recover from this, not even the Russian.
Now that Stalin is suddenly saying that we lost
four-and-a-half million men, while Russia was missing only three hundred
seventy-eight thousand men in action-this would have to be the prisoners-three
hundred fifty thousand dead and one million wounded, then I can only ask: Why
did the Russians retreat one-and-a-half thousand kilometers if they only had
half the losses we had, especially considering the gigantic masses of their
troops? What this mighty man in the Kremlin says seems to me strikingly Jewish.
Besides, the prisoners are slowly moving in the direction of Europe.
Here, we will integrate them usefully in the production process, and we will
see that they are not three hundred seventy-eight thousand, but really three
point six million men.
The materiel booty we took in this period is immense. Right now, we have
over fifteen thousand planes, over twenty-two thousand tanks, over twentyseven
thousand guns. It is truly an enormous amount of materiel. The entire industry
of the world, including German industry, could only replace such amounts
slowly. In any event, our democrats’ industries will not replace it in the next
few years! And now I will speak of territorial matters. Until now, we have
occupied one million six hundred seventy thousand square kilometers. That is an
area three to four times as big as France and about five times as big as
England.
Sixty to seventy-five percent of all industries and all raw materials
that Russia possesses are situated in this area. I hope that shortly we will be
able to take a couple of further steps, slowly but surely, to cut them off cord
after cord.
Now somebody says, “Yes, but you are wrong on the time.”-These people
know exactly what a conception of time I have! We defeated France in around six
weeks; the occupied area is only a fraction of what we conquered in the east.
Now somebody comes and says that we had expected this to be done in the
east in a month-and-a-half. With all due respect to lightning warfare-you still
have to march! And what our infantry has accomplished in terms of marching is
truly unique in world history. Naturally, if you go from Dunkirk to Ostend and
then retreat from Ostend to Dunkirk again, this is much easier. I will admit
that. However, if you walk all the way from the German border to Rostov or the
Crimea, or Leningrad, then we are talking real distances, especially
considering the roads in the “paradise of workers and peasants.” I have never
used the word Blitzkrieg because it is a really stupid word.
If it can be applied to any campaign at all,
however, then to this one! Never before has a gigantic empire been shattered
and defeated in a shorter time than the Soviet Union has been this time. This
could occur and succeed only thanks to the unheard-of, unique bravery and
willingness to sacrifice of our German Wehrmacht, which takes upon itself
unimaginable strains.
What all the German arms have accomplished here cannot be expressed by
words. We can only bow deeply before our heroes.
I already said in Berlin that it does not matter whom we take: our
panzer gunners, our engineers, our artillery, our reconnaissance troops, our
pilots, our dive-bombers, our fighter or reconnaissance planes, or our navy-in
the end, the result is always the same: The crown belongs to the German
infantryman, the German front-line soldier! He marches across endless expanses
on rough trails, through morass, through swamps. He marches in the heat of the
sun across the endless fields of the Ukraine, or in the rain, in snow and
frost, and he defeats bunker after bunker. With his storm engineers, he tears
up front after front. It is truly a heroic song that he is singing for himself.
Behind this front, there is a second front. It is the German homeland.
And behind this German homeland, there is a third front. Its name is Europe.
And when I am told, as so often lately, that the democrats are now arming, then
I must say that I have also repeatedly mentioned that we are not doing nothing.
I did not stop German armament in the years 1939-1940 and 1941. What we
have achieved in this sphere up to now is something. And we continue to arm.
I have merely concentrated armament in a few special spheres. When the
gentlemen keep talking of figures-I do not speak of figures, but I will say one
thing: They will be surprised with what we will line up one day.
My old party comrades, we have already experienced this at home. Every
year we heard what the democrats were doing, what the Social Democrats were
doing, what the Center or the Bavarian People’s Party was doing, what-for all I
care-the bourgeois or other groups were doing, even what the Communists were
doing. But, we were also doing something. And, in the end, it was more than
this entire coalition together: we knocked them to the ground! They tell me:
“Yes, but there is America with a hundred twenty-five million people.”-The
Reich territory together with the Reich protectorate and the General-Government
also has a hundred twenty-five million people! The area that works directly for
us today contains far more than two hundred fifty million people. The area in
Europe that works indirectly for this struggle now already contains over three
hundred fifty million! Insofar as the area in question is German, areas which
we occupy, and areas in which we have taken over the administration-let no one
doubt that we will manage to recruit these areas completely for this task. They
can believe us! It is not the German Volk of the World War that is doing the
fighting today. It is a completely different German Volk! And it is the
misfortune of our enemies that they have not understood this and that they run
after these Jewish blockheads who declare time and again, “You just have to do
exactly the same thing that you did once.”-I do not think this even of our
enemies, although I do not consider them too intelligent. I myself never do the
same thing twice; instead, I always do something different. They should finally
give up for good placing their hopes on the old thing! Now, for instance, they
say, “At this stage, a revolt will break out.” Perhaps, listening to English
broadcast, some fool might suddenly react. But not for long! We can deal with
such matters! You should not delude yourselves; such attempts quickly collapse.
Today, you are not confronting a bourgeois Germany with kid gloves, but a
National Socialist one, and it has strong fists! We are very polite and decent
toward the civilian population wherever we occupy areas. Sometimes, perhaps, we
are too decent, too obliging. We do not rape anyone over there, for many
reasons. Nor are there any break-ins by German soldiers in order to steal and
pillage. Something like that is punished more severely there than at home. We
protect this population.
But if somebody believes he can resist the occupation, or upset it by a
treacherous assassination, then we will strike as we did at home in the years
when our enemies believed that they could terrorize us. In the end, we dealt
with their terror. We created the organizations necessary for it. We will also
deal with the terror of our present enemies! And then comes the most stupid
hope: namely, that an uprising, a revolution, will break out in Germany. The
people who could start a revolution here are no longer here. They have been in
England, in America, in Canada, and so on, for a long time already. However,
the people who perhaps would want to start a revolution are so few and so
unimportant that it is ridiculous to hope for their assistance. Should somebody
seriously hope to disturb our front here-irrespective of where he is coming
from, from which camp he is-then you know my method: I will watch him for a
certain time.
That is his period of probation. But the time will come when I will
strike like lightning to remove all that quickly. And then no disguise will be
of any use, not even the disguise of religion. But, as I said, that will not be
necessary with us, because, above all, this entire German Volk is today
organized in one movement. Our enemies have simply not understood that it is a
movement which reaches into every house, and which jealously watches so that
November 1918 will never happen again. I have been a prophet so often in my
life, and they always laughed at me, but I was always right in the end. I want
to be one again: Never will November 1918 be repeated in Germany! It cannot
repeat itself! Everything is conceivable but only one thing is not: that
Germany will ever capitulate! If our enemies say, “Well, then the war will last
until the year 1942!”--The war can last as long as it wants-but the last
battalion on the field will be a German one!
It is useless to try to intimidate me! You know
that I can remain silent on certain matters for months, even years. This does
not mean that I am not considering it, that I am not aware of it. If today ever
new threats against Germany are made, especially in America, then I have taken
them into account in good time. I declared one year ago: Whatever ship brings
war materiel, materiel to kill people, will be torpedoed! If the American
President Roosevelt-who was responsible for Poland’s entry into the war and
who, as today we can support by documentary evidence, determined that France
should enter the war-if he believes he can weary me by an order to fire,
then I can make only one reply to this gentleman:
Mr. President Roosevelt has ordered his ships to fire if they sight a German
ship.
And I have ordered German ships, if they sight American ones, not to
fire, but to defend themselves if they are attacked. A German officer who does
not defend himself will be court-martialed by me.
If, on the President’s order, an American ship fires, then it does this
at its own risk. The German ship will defend itself, and our torpedoes will not
miss.
I do not feel like wasting much time on these ridiculous falsifications,
for example, that I had German experts manufacture a map. I can only tell Mr.
Roosevelt: I have no experts at all.
For me, my head is good enough! I do not need a
brain trust to assist me. If there truly needs to be a change somewhere, then
it first has to take place in my brain and not in the brains of others, not
even in the brains of experts. I am not a high-school student who draws maps on
his school atlas. For all I care, South America is as far away as the moon.
These are really stupid claims.
Or let us take the second falsification-that we wished to eliminate all
the world’s religions. I am fifty-two years old now, and I have something
better to do than to deal with this child’s play and stupidity. Besides that,
it does not interest me how many kinds of religion there are in the world and
how the people adhere to these religions. This interests only the American
President Roosevelt. In the German Reich, according to our view, each may live
after his own fashion! I have read that in the United States a preacher is not
allowed to speak against the state and that soldiers are not allowed to attend
such sermons. It is the same here with us. But there is a difference: namely,
that the denominations in the German Reich receive nearly 900 million
Reichsmark annually from the state, and not a penny in America! No priest has
ever been persecuted in the German Reich because of his doctrine of faith
unless, because of his doctrine of faith, he interfered with the doctrine of
state. But this only a very few did. The great majority stands behind the
German state in this struggle. It knows quite well that if this struggle is
lost for the German Reich, religion would fare far worse in a Stalinist protectorate
than it does in ours.
All attempts to influence the German Volk from abroad are childish and
ridiculous. The German Volk has known the National Socialist regime for twenty
years now as a party, for eight years as the leader of the state. And I believe
that there has never been an era in German history in which such gigantic
things have been achieved as within the eight years the German Reich has been
led by the National Socialist movement. The best witnesses for the work of our
movement will be the men who return from the front and who have been able to
compare the effects of twenty-three years of Communist rule to ours.
They can judge what National Socialism has accomplished and what Europe
would face if this other world won. They understand our great ambition: that in
this struggle we finally want to free Europe of the danger posed by the east,
and that, at the same time, we prevent the east, with its immeasurable
fertility, its immeasurable riches in raw materials and ores, from being
mobilized against Europe, and instead place it in the service of Europe.
This is truly a gigantic goal, which reaches far beyond the frontiers of
our German Reich-gigantic not only in terms of accomplishments, but also
gigantic in its consequences. The situation as it is now is madness-this Europe
where in some areas nearly two hundred sixty people live on one square
kilometer-and that is just the west! I see all these things from a higher point
of view, if I may say so. I differentiate between the French and their Jews,
between the Belgians and their Jews, between the Dutch and their Jews. I know
that countless people live there who are also the victims of this crazy
European construction, according to which the genuinely richest part of Europe
is constantly mobilized against that part of Europe where the people living
there possess not even the most primitive standard of living. Our soldiers saw
this: in a country where the soil is virtually brimming with fertility; in a
country, where a fraction of the work could result in as many times the profit
as it makes here; there people have barely enough to call a pot their own; they
dwell in miserable huts, neglected, full of lice, and dirty.
A few days ago, I read that lice had been found on a German prisoner of
war in the east. Mr. Stalin is circulating this. I assume that he wants to make
believe that this prisoner of war brought the lice all the way from Munich or
Berlin to Russia. In the Soviet paradise, the most miserable type of slavery
exists that the world has ever seen: millions of frightened, oppressed,
neglected people, half-starved! Above them, there is the regime of commissars,
ninety percent of whom are of Jewish descent, who control this whole slave
state.
It will be a great relief for Europe not only if this danger disappears,
but also if the fertility of this soil benefits all of Europe.
This is a gigantic task posed to us. However, I am so much a materialist
that I regard it as far more important than worrying about what religions are
predominant in what countries.
We have a goal. It spans this continent. Primarily, there is our
Fatherland, then come all those who live in the same misery as we do. And I am
convinced that this continent will not be second in the world, but that it will
remain the first.
And if Mr. Willkie, this man of honor, declares that there are only two possibilities:
either Berlin will become the capital of the world or Washington, then I can
only say: Berlin does not want to be the capital of the world, and Washington
will never be the capital of the world. I believe that, in Europe at least,
hundreds of medium-sized towns would protest against such a burdening of human
civilization.
Basically, our great goal in the east is the final part of our program.
In accordance with this sober program, we once began to place man’s work and,
thereby, man himself at the center of our actions, aspirations, and
performance.
Against the terms “gold” and “capital,” we set the terms “man,
Volksgenosse,” and “work.” Today, too, we set man and his work against these
terms. With this, we embrace all those who are allied with us today and who
suffer hardships as great as Germany does, and even greater in part: Italy. The
Duce- I know he feels no differently about this struggle than we do: his
country also is poor, overpopulated, always disadvantaged, and it does not know
from where it will take its daily bread. He has sworn himself to me, and this
union cannot be dissolved by any power on earth! There are two revolutions
which started out at different times, in different forms, but with the same
goals. Together, they will reach these goals. A number of other European states
have joined us. We can say that almost all of southeastern Europe is in our
camp today. And the greater part of the remainder of Europe also stands at our
front in sentiment, even if not in public.
So, today, we do not fight alone as National Socialists, but together
with a gigantic European front. And at the end of this year, we can say that
the gravest danger has already been parried by this European front.
When I spoke in Berlin the other day, we were just about to land one
last gigantic blow. It succeeded beyond all measure.
About seventy-five divisions were eliminated and
destroyed in one blow.
And the leaders and executors of this struggle will not tire and will
not slacken. The heroism of this front is immortal. As men who believe in
Providence, we can assume that for such an immortal feat, there will be undying
recompense! We may not doubt that this period will determine the fate of Europe
for the next thousand years. We can all be happy that we initiated this period.
You, my friends from the old days, you can be proud that you followed
me, whom Providence has predestined to stride forth on this path, at the time
when I set out on my path in this city, as an unknown man.
We may step up to the graves of our old comrades with even greater pride
in this year. In the past year, we felt somewhat burdened before them. We no
longer fought against the Red front because fate had forced us to make a truce
with it. I honestly upheld this truce. The other side relieved me of this duty.
This year, I look with something almost like relief at the graves of our
party comrades because I know that they once had the same goal: the struggle
against this Marxist enemy of the world and his allies. At the time, they fell
victim to the bullets of this front which stretches all the way from a stupid
reaction to the zealous insanity of Bolshevism.
Especially in this year, we think of the fallen with particular emotion
and particular grief. You will understand my feelings.
It is only for a few hours that I am in this city again from which I
once set out. But I am so happy to see you here again, my old companions, my
old comrades in arms. And you may believe me when I say that this year a great
weight was taken from my heart. I do feel the sacrifice that we had to make:
all our young and old friends, they who again had to pay with their own blood
for Germany’s salvation and perhaps will still have to pay.
Alas, it is the old, eternal argument and the old, eternal fight. It
just did not end in the year 1918. We were swindled out of the victory at the
time. We sacrificed two million dead at the time, we had seven-and-a-half
million wounded, and, in spite of this, the insanity of an internal revolution
cheated us out of the victory.
But it was only the beginning, the first part of this drama. The second
part and the end are now being written. This time, we will take what we were
swindled out of. Point for point, position for position, we will put it on the
bill and cash it in.
The hour will come when we can step up to the graves of the fallen of
the Great War and we can say: Comrades, you did not die in vain! What we once
said in front of the Feldherrnhalle we will be able to pronounce with a
thousand fold greater right in front of the graves of our World War soldiers:
Comrades, you won after all!
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