Friday, February 10, 2017

This Day in History [1933] - Hitler's First Public Speech as Chancellor

Disclaimer: this is not an endorsement of Adolf Hitler or the Nazis.  

When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933 he convinced President von Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag and call new elections, scheduled to be held on March 5th.  Eleven days later [February 10th] he made his first public speech at the Berlin Sportpalast.  It was a campaign speech but this one was different.  For once, the Nazis had all the resources of the government at their disposal.  This speech was filmed, and it was broadcast nationwide over German radio.  In practically every documentary I’ve seen about Hitler and Nazi Germany [and there have been many], there are excerpts from this speech.  It shows how Hitler could build tension in a room.  He begins quietly, as if making his audience shut up and pay attention.  Then as the speech continues, he becomes more animated – his audience is spellbound.  And when he finishes the entire arena erupts in ecstasy.  Hitler’s speeches during this campaign are pretty much the same – they all hit on the same themes.  They never provide any details about how Hitler is going to fix Germany.  They are clarion calls to make Germany great again.    

A good chunk of the speech was an indictment of what he called the ‘November parties’, the who ruled Germany in a variety of coalitions since the founding of the Weimar Republic: German Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Catholic Centre Party (Zentrum), and the liberal German Democratic Party (DDP).  In Hitler’s view, the November parties were responsible for all the misery the German people had suffered since the end of World War I in November 1918.  And by addressing all the November parties as Marxists, he lumps them together with the Communists, of whom many were afraid.  

“I have therefore rejected it ever come before this people, and make cheap promises. It can stand no one here against me and bear witness that I have ever said, the resurgence of Germany is only a matter of a few days. Again and again I preach, the resurgence of the German nation is the question of the recovery of the inner strength and health of the German people. So, as I even 14 years now worked, constantly and without becoming ever wavering in the development of the movement, and so how I managed seven man to these to come from 12 million, so I want and so we want to build and work on recovery of our German people.”  My interpretation: Hitler claims to have built the Nazi party from nothing into a huge national movement.  He can do the same for the German nation if given the chance.  And by the way, making Germany great again will take time; it won’t happen overnight.  

“I want to promise you that this resurrection of our people comes by itself. We want to work, but the people themselves, it must help. It should never believe that sudden freedom, happiness and life from heaven is given.”  My interpretation: if you want a better life, you’ll have to work for it.  

We want guide all of our work from a knowledge, a belief: faith never on anybody's help, never to help, which is located outside of our own nation, of our own people! The future of the German people themselves alone lies in us.”   This alludes to the Dawes and Young plans, which were meant to help Germany pay the war reparations as part of the Treaty of Versailles.  Hitler opposed both plans because the German economy cratered after October 1929, when American banks called in their loans after the stock market crash.  Hitler blamed the subsequent massive unemployment on the November parties, for they were the ones that agreed to the plans with the American banks.  

“The fourth item on our program dictates that we rebuild our Volk not according to theories hatched by some alien brain, but according to the eternal laws valid for all time. Not according to theories of class, not according to concepts of class.”  My interpretation:  the Communists don’t have the answer for Germany’s problems.  It took fourteen years for the Marxists to bring Germany to ruin.  They’ve had their chance to make things good and right and they blew it – why trust them again?  

“Never I will remove me from the task to eradicate Marxism and its side-effects from Germany. Never I will be here inclined to compromise. One must be winners here: either Marxism or the German people.”  No need for interpretation here – it’s “us” or the Marxists.  

“By I fight for the German future, I fight for the German place and must fight for the German farmers. He gives us the people in our towns and cities. He has been the eternal source for millennia, and it must be preserved. And I'm going to the second pillar of our nationhood, then further on to the German workers to that German workers that no stranger should be more, and may be in Germany in the future, and we want to return again in the community of our people, for, we will be blast the gates, that he moves with in the German community as a carrier of the German nation.”  Farmers and workers of Germany, the Nazis are your friends.  

"We combat the phenomena of our parliamentary democratic systems, so we go over immediately to a twelfth point: restore cleanliness in our people, cleanliness in all areas of our lives, cleanliness in our management, cleanliness in public life, but also cleanliness in our culture. We want to recover mainly the German honor, restore respect for it and the commitment to her and want to burn in our hearts the commitment to freedom, want to titillate but again our people so that a real German culture, with a German art, with its German architecture, a German music, which should reflect the soul. And we want to awaken the awe of the great tradition of our people, bring the deep reverence for the achievements of the past, the humble reminder of the great men of German history."  Hindsight is 20/20 - here he wants to rid German culture of non-German elements [Jewish elements, perhaps?].  

“We want to introduce our youth again in this wonderful realm of our past, the work and creativity of our ancestors; humbly she should bow before those who lived before us and have created, worked, and worked, that we can live on. And we want to educate these young people especially to the reverence for those who have made the heaviest sacrifices once for our people life and future of our people.”  Again hindsight being 20/20, he’s telegraphing the creation of the Hitler Youth here.  

After talking for almost an hour, he finally makes the sales pitch - For 14 years, have the parties of decay, of November, the revolution led the German people and abused, destroyed for 14 years, decomposed and resolved. It is not presumptuous when I step today before the nation and implore you: People of Germany, give us four years and then pass judgement upon us! People of Germany, give us four years and I swear to you: just as we, just as I have entered into this office, so will I leave it.”  
  

Coming February 27th:  The Reichstag Fire

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