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.

Nuremberg -- Speech of September 14, 1936

I CAN come to no terms with a Weltanschhauung [bolshevism] 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 countrysides 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 funda- mental 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.

Nuremberg, Labor-Front -- Speech of September 12, 1936

HOW Germany has to work to wrest a few square kilometers from the ocean and from the swamps while others are swimming in a superfluity of land! If I had the Ural Mountains with their incalculable store of treasures in raw materials, Siberia with its vast forests, and the Ukraine with its tremendous wheat fields, Germany and the National Socialist leadership, would swim in plenty! . . . There was sometimes advanced as an excuse for Russia that she had been through war and through revolution. Well, we stood against twenty-six States in the war and we had a revolution, but I have taken as my fundamental law not to destroy anything. Had I done so there would have been an excuse for rebuilding during another eighteen years. But that was not our plan. We wanted additional work for our unemployed and the use of the volume of their increased production to increase every man's share in consumption. Wages are not based on production; production itself is the wage. If I had wished I could have substituted officials for employers, but nature and reality select best. We do not wish bureaucratic economics as in Russia, nor do we wish to establish economic democracy here. Yet that does not mean either that we wish to let things drift as they please. Our fundamental economic principles are, first, to unite all the forces existing, and secondly, to educate our people better in their use. This Labor Front is the greatest element in such education. You are servants of the nation, but you alone are nothing. As part of the organic whole you are everything.... It is hard to build up a new life out of your poverty, but I am not complaining. On the contrary, I find it wonderful to face difficult problems. Some people say, 'He has brought out another plan.' When he had completed the first, why couldn't he leave us in peace? Now he is tackling problems that cannot be solved.' I say that they can be solved; there is no problem that cannot be, but faith is necessary. Think of the faith I had to have eighteen years ago, a single man on a lonely path. Yet I have come to leadership of the German people.... People complain of a shortage of this and that - for instance, of a shortage of cotton. I say that in the next four years we shall produce our own German cloth. Others raise the question of rubber. I tell you that factories will spring from the earth and that in four years we shall ride on our own German rubber tires. It may then be asked, 'With what motive power will you drive you cars?' I say that we shall take gasoline from our own oil and coal. Whenever I see the Labor Front I am impressed by the word 'front.' It signifies one will, one goal of achievement. Life is hard for many, but it is hardest if you are unhappy and have no faith. Have faith. We are not a helpless State. Nothing can make me change my own belief. I am convinced that the unworthiest among us is he who cannot master his ill fortune.