Weimar -- Speech of November 6, 1938

WHAT seems to us almost a miracle as we look back upon it is nothing else than the reward for infinite and unwearying labor.... And now for that labor we have received from Providence our reward, just as the Germany of 1918 received its reward. At that time Germany shared in those blessings which we think of under the collective idea Democracy. But Germany has learned that democracy in practice is a different thing from democracy in theory. If today at times in foreign countries Parliamentarians or politicians venture to maintain that Germany has not kept her treaties, then we can give as our answer to these men: the greatest breach of a treaty that ever was practiced on the German people. Every promise which had been made to Germany in the Fourteen Points - those promises on the faith of which Germany had laid down her arms - was afterwards broken. In 1932 Germany was faced with final collapse. The German Reich and people both seemed lost. And then came the German resurrection. It began with a change of faith. While all the German parties before us believed in forces and ideals which lay outside of the German Reich and outside of our people, we National Socialists have resolutely championed belief in our own people, starting from that watchword of eternal validity: God helps only those who are prepared and determined to help themselves. In the place of all those international factors - Democracy, the Conscience of Peoples, the Conscience of the World, the League of Nations, and the like - we have set a single factor - our own people. . . . We were all convinced that a true community of the people is not produced overnight - it is not attained through theories or programs - but that through many decades, yes, and perhaps always and for all time the individual must be trained for this community. This work of education we have carried through ever since the Party was founded and especially since we came into power. But nothing is perfect in this world and no success can be felt to be finally satisfying. And so, even today, we have no wish to maintain that our achievement is already the realization of our ideal. We have an ideal which floats before our minds and in accordance with that ideal we educate Germans, generation after generation. So National Socialism will continually be transformed from a profession of political faith to a real education of the people.... The umbrella-carrying types of our former bourgeois world of parties are extinguished and they will never return... From the very first day I have proclaimed as a fundamental principle: 'the German is either the first soldier in the world or he is no soldier at all.' No soldiers at all we cannot be, and we do not wish to be. Therefore we shall be only the first. As one who is a lover of peace I have endeavored to create for the German people such an army and such munitions as are calculated to convince others, too, to seek peace. There are, it is true, people who abuse the hedgehog because it has spines. But they have only got to leave the animal in peace. No hedgehog has ever attacked anyone unless he was first threatened. That should be our position, too. Folk must not come too near us. We want nothing else than to be left in peace; we want the possibility of going on with our work, we claim for our people the right to live, the same right which others claim for themselves. And that the democratic States above all others should grasp and understand, for they never stop talking about equality of rights. If they keep talking about the rights of small peoples, how can they be outraged if in its turn a great people claims the same right? Our National Socialist Army serves to secure and guarantee this claim of right. It is with this in view that in foreign policy also I have initiated a change in our attitude and have drawn closer to those who like us were compelled to stand up for their rights. And when today I examine the results of this action of ours, then I am able to say: Judge all of you for yourselves: Have we not gained enormously through acting on these principles? But precisely for this reason we do not wish that we should ever forget what has made these successes of ours possible. When certain foreign newspapers write: 'But all that you could have gained by the way of negotiation,' we know very well that Germany before our day did nothing but negotiate continuously. For fifteen years they only negotiated and they lost everything for their pains. I, too, am ready to negotiate but I leave no one in any doubt that neither by way of negotiation nor by any other way will I allow the rights of Germany to be cut down. Never forget, German people, to what it is you owe your successes - to what Movement, to what ideas, and to what principles! And in the second place: always be cautious, be ever on your guard! It is very fine to talk of international peace and international disarmament, but I am mistrustful of a disarmament in weapons of war so long as there has been no disarmament of the spirit. There has been formed in the world the curious custom of dividing peoples into so-called 'authoritarian' States, that is disciplined States, and democratic States. In the authoritarian, that is, the disciplined States, it goes without saying that one does not abuse foreign peoples, does not lie about them, does not incite to war. But the democratic States are precisely 'democratic,' that is, that all this can happen there In the authoritarian States a war - agitation is of course impossible, for their Governments are under an obligation to see to it that there is no such thing. In the democracies, on the other hand, the Governments have only one duty: to maintain democracy, and that means the liberty, if necessary, to incite to war.... Mr. Churchill had stated his view publicly, namely that the present regime in Germany must be overthrown with the aid of forces within Germany which would gladly co-operate. If Mr. Churchill would but spend less of his time in emigre circles, that is with traitors to their country maintained and paid abroad, and more of his time with Germans, then he would realize the utter madness and stupidity of his idle chatter. I can only assure this gentleman, who would appear to be living in the moon, of one thing: there is no such force in Germany which could turn against the present regime. I will not refuse to grant to this gentleman that, naturally we have no right to demand that the other peoples should alter their constitutions. But, as leader of the Germans, I have the duty to consider this constitution of theirs and the possibilities which result from it. When a few days ago in the House of Commons the Deputy Leader of the Opposition declared that he made no secret of the fact that he would welcome the destruction of Germany and Italy, then, of course, I cannot prevent it if perhaps this man on the basis of the democratic rules of the game should in fact with his party in one or two years become the Government. But of one thing I can assure him: I can prevent him from destroying Germany. And just as I am convinced that the German people will take care that the plans of these gentlemen so far as Germany is concerned will never succeed, so in precisely the same way Fascist Italy will, I know, take care for itself! I believe that for us all these international hopes can only teach us to stand firm together and to cling to our friends. The more that we in Germany form a single community, the less favorable will be the prospects of these inciters to war, and the closer we unite ourselves in particular with the State which is in a position similar to ours, with Italy, the less desire they will have to pick a quarrel with us! . . . Germany has become greater by the most natural way, by a way which could not be more morally unassailable.... When the rest of the world speaks of disarmament, then we too are ready for disarmament, but under one condition: the war-agitation must first be disarmed! So long as the others only talk of disarmament, while they infamously continue to incite to war, we must presume that they do but wish to steal from us our arms, in order once more to prepare for us the fate of 1918-19. And in that case, my only answer to Mr. Churchill and his like must be: That happens once only and it will not be repeated!

Weimar -- Speech of November 6, 1938

WHAT seems to us almost a miracle as we look back upon it is nothing else than the reward for infinite and unwearying labor.... And now for that labor we have received from Providence our reward, just as the Germany of 1918 received its reward. At that time Germany shared in those blessings which we think of under the collective idea Democracy. But Germany has learned that democracy in practice is a different thing from democracy in theory. If today at times in foreign countries Parliamentarians or politicians venture to maintain that Germany has not kept her treaties, then we can give as our answer to these men: the greatest breach of a treaty that ever was practiced on the German people. Every promise which had been made to Germany in the Fourteen Points - those promises on the faith of which Germany had laid down her arms - was afterwards broken. In 1932 Germany was faced with final collapse. The German Reich and people both seemed lost. And then came the German resurrection. It began with a change of faith. While all the German parties before us believed in forces and ideals which lay outside of the German Reich and outside of our people, we National Socialists have resolutely championed belief in our own people, starting from that watchword of eternal validity: God helps only those who are prepared and determined to help themselves. In the place of all those international factors - Democracy, the Conscience of Peoples, the Conscience of the World, the League of Nations, and the like - we have set a single factor - our own people. . . . We were all convinced that a true community of the people is not produced overnight - it is not attained through theories or programs - but that through many decades, yes, and perhaps always and for all time the individual must be trained for this community. This work of education we have carried through ever since the Party was founded and especially since we came into power. But nothing is perfect in this world and no success can be felt to be finally satisfying. And so, even today, we have no wish to maintain that our achievement is already the realization of our ideal. We have an ideal which floats before our minds and in accordance with that ideal we educate Germans, generation after generation. So National Socialism will continually be transformed from a profession of political faith to a real education of the people.... The umbrella-carrying types of our former bourgeois world of parties are extinguished and they will never return... From the very first day I have proclaimed as a fundamental principle: 'the German is either the first soldier in the world or he is no soldier at all.' No soldiers at all we cannot be, and we do not wish to be. Therefore we shall be only the first. As one who is a lover of peace I have endeavored to create for the German people such an army and such munitions as are calculated to convince others, too, to seek peace. There are, it is true, people who abuse the hedgehog because it has spines. But they have only got to leave the animal in peace. No hedgehog has ever attacked anyone unless he was first threatened. That should be our position, too. Folk must not come too near us. We want nothing else than to be left in peace; we want the possibility of going on with our work, we claim for our people the right to live, the same right which others claim for themselves. And that the democratic States above all others should grasp and understand, for they never stop talking about equality of rights. If they keep talking about the rights of small peoples, how can they be outraged if in its turn a great people claims the same right? Our National Socialist Army serves to secure and guarantee this claim of right. It is with this in view that in foreign policy also I have initiated a change in our attitude and have drawn closer to those who like us were compelled to stand up for their rights. And when today I examine the results of this action of ours, then I am able to say: Judge all of you for yourselves: Have we not gained enormously through acting on these principles? But precisely for this reason we do not wish that we should ever forget what has made these successes of ours possible. When certain foreign newspapers write: 'But all that you could have gained by the way of negotiation,' we know very well that Germany before our day did nothing but negotiate continuously. For fifteen years they only negotiated and they lost everything for their pains. I, too, am ready to negotiate but I leave no one in any doubt that neither by way of negotiation nor by any other way will I allow the rights of Germany to be cut down. Never forget, German people, to what it is you owe your successes - to what Movement, to what ideas, and to what principles! And in the second place: always be cautious, be ever on your guard! It is very fine to talk of international peace and international disarmament, but I am mistrustful of a disarmament in weapons of war so long as there has been no disarmament of the spirit. There has been formed in the world the curious custom of dividing peoples into so-called 'authoritarian' States, that is disciplined States, and democratic States. In the authoritarian, that is, the disciplined States, it goes without saying that one does not abuse foreign peoples, does not lie about them, does not incite to war. But the democratic States are precisely 'democratic,' that is, that all this can happen there In the authoritarian States a war - agitation is of course impossible, for their Governments are under an obligation to see to it that there is no such thing. In the democracies, on the other hand, the Governments have only one duty: to maintain democracy, and that means the liberty, if necessary, to incite to war.... Mr. Churchill had stated his view publicly, namely that the present regime in Germany must be overthrown with the aid of forces within Germany which would gladly co-operate. If Mr. Churchill would but spend less of his time in emigre circles, that is with traitors to their country maintained and paid abroad, and more of his time with Germans, then he would realize the utter madness and stupidity of his idle chatter. I can only assure this gentleman, who would appear to be living in the moon, of one thing: there is no such force in Germany which could turn against the present regime. I will not refuse to grant to this gentleman that, naturally we have no right to demand that the other peoples should alter their constitutions. But, as leader of the Germans, I have the duty to consider this constitution of theirs and the possibilities which result from it. When a few days ago in the House of Commons the Deputy Leader of the Opposition declared that he made no secret of the fact that he would welcome the destruction of Germany and Italy, then, of course, I cannot prevent it if perhaps this man on the basis of the democratic rules of the game should in fact with his party in one or two years become the Government. But of one thing I can assure him: I can prevent him from destroying Germany. And just as I am convinced that the German people will take care that the plans of these gentlemen so far as Germany is concerned will never succeed, so in precisely the same way Fascist Italy will, I know, take care for itself! I believe that for us all these international hopes can only teach us to stand firm together and to cling to our friends. The more that we in Germany form a single community, the less favorable will be the prospects of these inciters to war, and the closer we unite ourselves in particular with the State which is in a position similar to ours, with Italy, the less desire they will have to pick a quarrel with us! . . . Germany has become greater by the most natural way, by a way which could not be more morally unassailable.... When the rest of the world speaks of disarmament, then we too are ready for disarmament, but under one condition: the war-agitation must first be disarmed! So long as the others only talk of disarmament, while they infamously continue to incite to war, we must presume that they do but wish to steal from us our arms, in order once more to prepare for us the fate of 1918-19. And in that case, my only answer to Mr. Churchill and his like must be: That happens once only and it will not be repeated!

Saarbruecken -- Speech of October 9, 1938

German Folk! If in the midst of these great days and their occurrences I have come into your district, then it was done in the conviction that nobody can evince greater appreciation of these last weeks and days than yourself. You may, men and women of Saarland, you have experienced for yourselves what it means to be separated from the Reich and you yourselves have gone through the joy of being reunited. You, too, suffered all this woe for two decades, and you, too, were supremely happy when the hour of reunion struck and you could return to the common Reich. Exactly that same thing was experienced and participated in by millions of Germans. The same joy seized them that once stirred you. At the beginning of this year, the twentieth after our collapse, I made a decision to lead back into the Reich 10,000,000 Germans who still stood outside. It was perfectly clear to me that this return could be compelled only by our own strength. The rest of the world, for the largest part, had no understanding. It neither saw nor wanted to see that here, 10,000,000 humans, in violation of the so-called right of self-determination of peoples, had been separated from the German people and the Reich and had been maltreated. But it has not understood that these human beings had but one great yearning, namely, to return to the Reich. These international world citizens have compassion indeed, for every scoundrel who is called to account in Germany, but they are deaf to the sufferings of millions. That world is still filled with the spirit of Versailles. It did not free itself from it. No, Germany has liberated herself from it. Even today it still is a mixture of terrible inconsiderateness and appalling ignorance for these countries to overlook justice and give lasting effect to injustice. And so these world democracies remained deaf for twenty years to all the sufferings and demands of 10,000,000 Germans. Accordingly, a hard decision had to be made. Among us, too, there were weak characters who did not understand this. It is selfevident, however, that statesmen conscious of their responsibility made it a point of honor to take responsibility. The following were the preconditions for bringing about and carrying through solutions: First, internal unity of the nation. I am convinced I am Leader of a manly people. I know what probably many in the rest of the world and even isolated ones in Germany do not seem as yet to know - namely, that the people of the year 1938 are not the people of 1918. Only those who were blind concerning National Socialism could overlook the tremendous work of education that the good philosophy of life has accomplished. There has been created today a community of spirit throughout our people of power and strength such as Germany never before has known. This was the first precondition for the undertaking, and for the success of this task. Second was national rearmament, which I sponsored fanatically for six years. I am of the opinion that it is cheaper to prepare one's self before events than to lie prostrate unprepared for events and then pay the foreign country. The third thing was rendering secure the Reich, and here you yourselves are witnesses to the tremendous work that is being accomplished in your very neighborhood. I need tell you no details about it. I will give expression, however, to but one conviction: NO POWER IN THE WORLD WILL BE ABLE TO PUSH THROUGH THIS WALL. Fourth, we have gained foreign friends. That axis that people in other countries so often think they can ridicule has, during the last two and a half years, not only proved durable but has proved that even in the worst hours it con- tinues to function. Nevertheless, we are especially happy that this task of the year 1938 of again joining 10,000,000 Germans and about 110,000 square kilometers [42,470 square miles] to the Reich could be accomplished in peace. We are all so happy no blood was shed over this despite the hopes of so many international agitators and profiteers. If I mention the help of the rest of the world in bringing about this peaceful solution, I must again and again place at the head of it our only real friend whom we possess today - Benito Mussolini. I know, and I know that you know what we owe this man. I should like also to mention two other statesmen who tried hard to find a way to peace and who, together with the great Italian and us have concluded an agreement that secured justice for 10,000,000 Germans and peace for the world. I am happy these millions of Germans are free, that they belong to us and that peace has been secured. Nevertheless, the experiences, especially of the last eight months, must strengthen our resolve to be careful and never to leave anything undone that must be done for the protection of the Reich. Opposite us are statesmen who - that, we must believe of them - also want peace. HOWEVER, THEY GOVERN IN COUNTRIES WHOSE INTERNAL CONSTRUCTION MAKES IT POSSIBLE FOR THEM AT ANY TIME TO BE SUPPLANTED BY OTHERS WHO DO NOT AIM AT PEACE. THESE OTHERS ARE THERE. IN ENGLAND, IT MERELY IS NECESSARY THAT INSTEAD OF CHAMBERLAIN, A DUFF COOPER OR AN EDEN OR A CHURCHILL COME INTO POWER. WE KNOW THAT THE AIM OF THESE MEN WOULD BE TO START WAR. They do not attempt to hide it. That obligates us to be on the watch to think of the protection of the Reich. We know further that now, as before, there is lurking threateningly that Jewish-international world enemy who has found a living expression in bolshevism. We also know the power of the international press that lives solely on lies and calumniation. In view of this peculiarity of the world about us and of these forces we must be careful about the future. We must at all times have a will for peace but be ready for defense. I have, therefore, decided to continue construction of our fortifications in the west with increased energy as already indicated in my Nuremberg speech. Also, I shall include large districts that hitherto lay before our fortifications namely the Aachen region and Saarbruecken region, in this belt of fortifications. That will be done for the protection of the Reich. As for the rest, I am happy now to be able within the next few days to rescind those measures that we have projected or been compelled to introduce during critical months and weeks. I am happy hundreds of thousands of men can go home and reservists can be discharged. I am happy to be able to thank them for doing their duty. I am particularly happy to be able to thank the German people for having conducted itself in so wonderfully manly a manner. Especially do I thank a hundred thousand German workers, engineers and others of whom 10,000 are standing in your midst - men who helped build fortifications. You have helped, my comrades, to secure peace for Germany, and so, as a strong State, we are ready at all times to embark upon a policy of understanding with the world about us. We can do that. We want nothing from others. We have no wishes or demands. We want peace. There is only one thing - THIS REFERS TO OUR RELATIONS TO ENGLAND: IT WOULD BE GOOD IF IN ENGLAND CERTAIN MANNERISMS HELD OVER FROM THE VERSAILLES PERIOD WERE DISCARDED. WE JUST CANNOT STAND FOR A GOVERNESS-LIKE GUARDIANSHIP OF GERMANY. Inquiries by British statesmen or Parliamentarians concerning the fate of the Reich's subjects inside Germany are out of order. We do not bother about similar things in England. The rest of the world would sometimes have had reason enough to bother about international happenings - happenings in Palestine. We leave this to those who feel themselves pre-ordained by God to solve these problems. And we observe with amazement how they do solve them. We must, however, give these gentlemen advice to attend even more to the solution of their own problems and to leave us in peace. It also is part of the task of securing world peace that responsible statesmen and politicians look after their own affairs and refrain from constantly meddling talk with the problems of other countries and peoples. By such mutual considerateness, preconditions are really created for durable peace, of which no one is more earnestly desirous than the German people. We have great tasks facing us, great cultural tasks. Economic problems must be solved. No people can make better use of peace than we. However, no people knows better than we what it means to be weak and be at the mercy of others for better or for worse.

Sportpalast, Berlin -- Speech of October 5, 1938

WHEN six years ago I took over the leadership of the Reich one of our so-called 'statesmen' of that day said: 'Now this man has taken the decisive step. Up to now he has been popular, because he has been in opposition. Now he must govern and we shall see in six or eight weeks how his popularity will look'! Six years - not six weeks only - have passed and I believe that they have been the most decisive years for German history. The most characteristic feature of this period is the close unity of the German people. What I have achieved in these six years was possible only because I had standing behind me the whole German people. The problems which faced us no single man could solve unaided: only when he could speak and, if necessary, also act in the name of the whole German people could he master these questions.... During the last few months and weeks I have had in my foreign policy a great helper and previously, in my last speech in this hall [the Sportpalast], I expressed my thanks to the man who took his stand in support of Germany as a true, great friend, Benito Mussolini. He has thrown into the scale of a just solution the entire force not only of his own genius but of the power which stands behind him. I must also thank the two other great statesmen who at the last minute recognized the historical hour, declared themselves ready to give their support to the solution of one of Europe's most burning problems and who thereby made it possible for me, too, to offer the hand towards an understanding. But above all my thanks fly to the German people which in these long months has never deserted me. . . .. I am proud of my German people! I hope that in a few days the problem of the Sudeten Germans will be finally solved. By October 10 we shall have occupied all the areas which belong to us. Thus one of Europe's most serious crises will be ended, and all of us, not only in Germany but those far beyond our frontiers, will then in this year for the first time really rejoice at the Christmas festival. It should for us all be a true Festival of Peace.... Above us all stands the motto: 'no one in the world will help us if we do not help ourselves.' This programme of self-help is a proud and manly programme. It is a different programme from that of my predecessors who continually ran round through the world, going a-begging now in Versailles, then in Geneva, now in Lausanne or at some conference or other elsewhere. It is a prouder thing that to-day we Germans are determined to solve our own problems and to help ourselves. . . . We have been witnesses of a great turning-point in history. At this moment we must bethink ourselves, too, of those who through twenty years in an apparently hopeless state still nursed a fanatical faith in Germany and never surrendered their *Deutschtum*-their life as Germans. It is so easy here in the heart of the Empire to profess one's belief in Germany. But it is inexpressibly difficult, in the face of an unceasing persecution, not to allow oneself to be drawn away from this faith - to remain fanatically true to it, as though redemption were coming the next day. But now the hour of redemption has come. I have just had my first sight of these areas and what moved me so profoundly was two impressions. First: I have often known the jubilation and the enthusiasm of joy, but here for the first time I have seen hundreds of thousands shedding tears of joy. And secondly I saw appalling distress. When in England a Duff Cooper or a Mr. Eden say that injustice has been done to the Czechs, then these men should just for once see what in reality has happened there. How can one so pervert the truth! I have seen here whole villages undernourished, whole towns reduced to ruin. My fellow-countrymen, you have a great debt of honor to pay! . . . I expect of you that the Winter Help Contribution of 1938-39 shall correspond with the historical greatness of this year. In the history of our people the year 1938 will be a great, incomparable, proud year.... Later historians will show that the German nation found its way back again to the position of an honourable great nation - that our history has once more become a worthy history. . .

Nuremberg -- Speech of September 6, 1938

THE proof of the endowment of a true artist is always to be found in the fact that his work of art expresses the general will of a period. Perhaps that is most clearly shown in architecture.... The religious mystical world of the Christian Middle Ages, turning inwards upon itself, found forms of expression which were possible only for that world - for that world alone could they be of service. A Gothic stadium is as unthinkable as a Romanesque railway station or a Byzantine market hall. The way in which the artist of the Middle Ages, of the beginnings of the modern world, found the artistic solution for the buildings which he was commissioned to create is in the highest degree striking and admirable. That way, however, is no evidence that the conception of the content of life held by the folk of his day was in itself either absolutely right or absolutely wrong; it is evidence only that works of art have rightly mirrored the inner mind of a past age. It is therefore quite comprehensible that insofar as the attempt is made to carry on the life of that past age, those who search for solutions of artistic problems can still seek and find there fruitful suggestions. Thus one can easily imagine that, for instance, in the sphere of religion men will always work backwards to the form-language of a period in which Christianity in its view of the world appeared to meet every need. On the other hand, at the present moment the expression of a new view of the world which is determined by the conception of race will return to those ages which in the past have already possessed a similar freedom of the spirit, of the will, and of the mind. Thus, naturally, the manifestation in art of a European conception of the State will not be possible through civilizations, as, for example, the civilization of the Far East, which - because foreign to us - have no message for our day, but will rather be influenced in a thousand ways through the evidences and memories of that mighty imperial Power of antiquity which, although in fact destroyed fifteen hundred years ago, still as an ideal force lives on and works on in the imaginations of men. The more nearly the modern State approaches to the imperial idea of the ancient World-Power, so more and more will the general character of that civilization be manifested in its influence upon the formation of the style of our own day. National Socialism is not a cult-movement - a movement for worship; it is exclusively a 'volkic' political doctrine based upon racial principles. In its purpose there is no mystic cult, only the care and leadership of a people defined by a common blood-relationship. Therefore we have no rooms for worship, but only halls for the people - no open spaces for worship, but spaces for assemblies and parades. We have no religious retreats, but arenas for sports and playing-fields, and the characteristic feature of our places of assembly is not the mystical gloom of a cathedral, but the brightness and light of a room or hall which combines beauty with fitness for its purpose. In these halls no acts of worship are celebrated, they are exclusively devoted to gatherings of the people of the kind which we have come to know in the course of our long struggle; to such gatherings we have become accustomed and we wish to maintain them. We will not allow mystically-minded occult folk with a passion for exploring the secrets of the world beyond to steal into our Movement. Such folk are not National Socialists, but something else - in any case, something which has nothing to do with us. At the head of our program there stand no secret surmisings but clear-cut perception and straightforward profession of belief. But since we set as the central point of this perception and of this profession of belief the maintenance and hence the security for the future of a being formed by God, we thus serve the maintenance of a divine work and fulfill a divine will - not in the secret twilight of a new house of worship, but openly before the face of the Lord. There were times when a half-light was the necessary condition for the effectiveness of certain teachings: we live in an age when light is for us the fundamental condition of successful action. It will be a sorry day when through the stealing in of obscure mystic elements the Movement or the State itself issues obscure commissions.... It is even dangerous to issue any commission for a so-called place of worship, for with the building will arise the necessity for thinking out so-called religious recreations or religious rites, which have nothing to do with National Socialism. Our worship is exclusively the cultivation of the natural, and for that reason, because natural, therefore God-willed. Our humility is the unconditional submission before the divine laws of existence so far as they are known to us men: it is to these we pay our respect. Our commandment is the courageous fulfillment of the duties arising from those laws. But for religious rites we are not the authorities, but the churches! If anyone should believe that these tasks of ours are not enough for him, that they do not correspond with his convictions, then it is for him to prove that God desires to use him to change things for the better. In no event can National Socialism or the National Socialist State give to German art other tasks than those which accord with our view of the world. The only sphere in which the Jewish international newspapers still today think that they can attack the new Reich is the cultural sphere. Here they attempt, by a constant appeal to the sentimentality - untroubled by any sort of knowledge - of the world-citizens of democracy to bewail the downfall of German culture: in other words, they lament the commercial closing-down of those elements which, as the heralds and exponents of the November Republic, forced their cultural characteristics, as unnatural as they were deplorable, upon the period between the two Empires; and which have now played out their role for good and all.... Fortunately, however, despite the short time which the National Socialist leadership has been able to allot to works of culture, positive facts, here too, speak louder than any negative criticism. We Germans can today speak with justice of a new awakening of our cultural life, which finds its confirmation not in mutual compliments and literary phrases, but rather in positive evidences of cultural creative force. German architecture, sculpture, painting, drama, and the rest bring today documentary proof of a creative period in art, which for richness and impetuosity has rarely been matched in the course of human history. And although the Jewish-democratic press magnates in their effrontery even today seek brazenly to turn these facts upside down, we know that the cultural achievements of Germany will in a few years have won from the world respect and appreciation far more unstinted even than that which they now accord to our work in the material field. The buildings which are arising in the Reich today will speak a language that endures, a language, above all, more compelling than the Yiddish gabblings of the democratic, international judges of our culture. What the fingers of these poor wretches have penned or are penning the world will - perhaps unfortunately - forget, as it has forgotten so much else. But the gigantic works of the Third Reich are a token of its cultural renascence and shall one day belong to the inalienable cultural heritage of the Western world, just as the great cultural achievements of this world in the past belong to us today. Moreover, it is naturally not decisive what attitude, if any, foreign peoples take toward our works of culture, for we have no doubt that cultural creative work, since it is the most sensitive expression of a talent conditioned by blood, cannot be understood, far less appreciated, by individuals or races who are not of the same or related blood. Therefore we do not trouble in any way to make German art and culture suit the tastes of international Jewry.... The art of Greece is not merely a formal reproduction of the Greek mode of life, of the landscapes and inhabitants of Greece; no, it is a proclamation of the Greek body and of the essential Greek spirit. It does not make propaganda for an individual work, for the subject, or for the artist; it makes propaganda for the Greek world as such, which confronts us in Hellenism.... And so art today will in the same way announce and herald that common mental attitude, that common view of life, which governs the present age. It will do this not because this age entrusts commissions to artists, but because the execution of these commissions can meet with understanding only if it reveals in itself the true essence of the spirit of this age. The mysticism of Christianity, at the period of its greatest intensity, demanded for the buildings which it ordered an architectonic form which not only did not contradict the spirit of the age, but rather helped it to attain that mysterious gloom which made men the more ready to submit to renunciation of self. The growing protest against this crushing of the freedom of the soul and of the will, which had lasted for centuries, immediately opened the way to new forms of expression in artistic creation. The mystic narrowness and gloom of the cathedrals began to recede and, to match the free life of the spirit, buildings became spacious and flooded with light. Mystical twilight gave way before increasing brightness. The unsteady, groping transition of the nineteenth century led finally in our days to that crisis which in one way or another had to find its solution. Jewry, with its bolshevist onslaught, might smash the Aryan States and destroy those native strata of the people whose blood destined them for leadership, and in that case the culture which had hitherto sprung from these roots would be brought to the same destruction.