Our Hitler 

Speeches in Honor of Hitler's Birthdays 

1933-1945 


Dr. Joseph Goebbels 






Adolf Hitler 


April 20 th 1889 



Our Hitler 

Speeches in Honor of Hitler's Birthdays 

1933-1945 


Joseph Goebbels 




Our Hitler 

Goebbels' 1933 Speech on Hitler's 44 th Birthday 


The source: I here use the published version of the text from Goebbels' book Signale der neuen Zeit. 
25 ausgewahlte Reden von Dr. Joseph Goebbels (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1934), pp. 141- 
149. 




The newspapers today are filled with congratulations for Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler. The 
nuances vary, depending on the tone, character, and attitude of the newspaper. All, 
however, agree on one thing: Hitler is a man of stature who has already accomplished 
historically important deeds and faces still greater challenges. He is the kind of statesman 
found only rarely in Germany. During his lifetime, he has the good fortune not only to be 
appreciated and loved by the overwhelming majority of the German people, but even more 
importantly to be understood by them. He is the only German politician of the post-war 
period who understood the situation and drew the necessary hard and firm conclusions. All 
the newspapers agree on this. It no longer needs to be said that he has taken up Bismarck's 
work and intends to complete it. There is enough proof of this even for those who do not 
believe, or who think ill of him. I therefore do not think it necessary for me to discuss the 
historical significance and still unknown impact of this man on the eve of the day on which, 
far from the bustle of the Reich capital, Adolf Hitler completes his 44th year. I feel a much 
deeper need to personally express my esteem for him, and in doing so I believe that I am 
speaking for many hundreds of thousands of National Socialists thoughout the country. We 
shall leave it to those who were our enemies only a few months ago and who then 
slandered then to praise him today with awkward words and embarrassing pathos. We 
know how little Adolf Hitler appreciates such attempts, and how much more the devoted 
loyalty and lasting support of his friends and fellow fighters corresponds to his nature. 

The mysterious magic that he exerts on all who come in contact with him cannot alone 
explain his historic personality. There is more that makes us love and esteem him. Through 
all the ups and downs of Adolf Hitler's career, from the beginning of his political activity to 
the crowning of his career as he seized power, he has always remained the same: a person 
among people, a friend to his comrades, an eager supporter of every ability and talent. He is 
a pathfinder for those who devoted themselves to his idea, a man who conquered the 
hearts of his comrades in the midst of battle and never released them. 

It seems to me that one thing has to be said in the midst of the profusion of feelings. Only a 
few know Hitler well. Most of the millions who look to him with faithful trust do so from a 
distance. He has become to them a symbol of their faith in the future. Normally the great 
men that we admire from a distance lose their magic when one knows them well. With 
Hitler the opposite is true. The longer one knows him, the more one admires him, and the 
more one is ready to give oneself fully to his cause. 

We will let others blow the trumpets. His friends and comrades gather round him to shake 
his hand and thank him for everything that he is to us, and that he has given to us. Let me 
say it once more: We love this man, and we know that he has earned all of our love and 
support. Never was a man more unjustly accused by the hate and slanders of his ill-wishers 
of other parties. Remember what they said about him! A mishmash of contradictory 
accusations! They did not fail to accuse him of every sin, to deny him every virtue. When he 
nonetheless overcame in the end the flood of lies, triumphing over his enemies and raising 



the National Socialist flag over Germany, fate showed its favor toward him to the entire 
world. It raised him from the mass of people and put him in the place he deserved because 
of his brilliant gifts and his pure and flawless humanity. 

I remember the years when — just released from prison — he began to rebuild his party. 
We passed a few wonderful vacation days with him on his beloved Obersalzburg high above 
Berchtesgaden. Below us was the quiet cemetery where his unforgettable friend Dietrich 
Eckart is buried. We walked through the mountains, discussed plans for the future, and 
talked about theories that today have long since become reality. He then sent me to Berlin. 
He gave me a difficult and challenging task, and I still thank him today that he gave me the 
job. 

A few months later we sat in a room in a small Berlin hotel. The party had just been banned 
by the Marxist-Jewish police department. Heavy blows were falling on it. The party was full 
of discouragement, bickering and quarreling. Everyone was complaining about everyone 
else. The whole organization seemed to have given up. 

Hitler, however, did not lose courage, but immediately began to organize a defense, and 
helped out where he was needed. Although he had his own personal and political 
difficulties, he found the time and strength to deal with the problems and support his 
friends in the Reich capital. 

One of his fine and noble traits is that he never gives up on someone who has won his 
confidence. The more his political opponents attack such a person, the more loyal is Adolf 
Hitler's support. He is not the kind of person who is afraid of strong associates. The harder 
and tougher a man is, the more Hitler likes him. If things fall apart, his capable hands put 
them together again. Who would have thought it possible that a mass organization that 
includes literally everything could be build in this nation of individualists? Doing that is 
Hitler's great accomplishment. His principles are firm and unshakable, but he is generous 
and understanding toward human weaknesses. He is a pitiless enemy of his opponents, but 
a good and warm-hearted friend to his comrades. That is Hitler. 

We saw him at the party's two large Nuremberg rallies, surrounded by the masses who saw 
in him Germany's hope. In the evenings, we sat with him in his hotel room. He was dressed 
in a simple brown shirt, the same as always, as if nothing had happened. Someone once said 
that the great is simple, and the simple is great. If that is true, it surely applies to Hitler. His 
nature and his whole philosophy is a brilliant simplification of the spiritual need and 
fragmentation that engulfed the German people after the war. He found the lowest 
common denominator. That is why his idea won: he modeled it, and through him the 
average man in the street saw its depth and significance. 



One has to have seen him in defeat as well as victory to understand what sort of man he is. 
He never broke. He never lost courage or faith. Hundreds came to him seeking new hope, 
and no one left without receiving renewed strength. 

On the day before 13 August 1932, we met in a small farm house outside Potsdam. We 
talked deep into the night, but not about our prospects for the next day, but rather about 
music, philosophy, and worldview issues. Then came the experiences one can only have 
with him. He spoke of the difficult years of his youth in Vienna and Munich, of his war 
experiences, of first years of the party. Few know how hard and bitterly he had to fight. 
Today he is surrounded by praise and thanks. Only fifteen years ago he was a lonely 
individual among millions. The only difference between him and they was his burning faith 
and his fanatic resolve to transform that faith into action. 

Those who believed that Hitler was finished after the party's defeat in November 1932 
failed to understand him. Only someone who did not know him at all could make such a 
mistake. Hitler is one of those persons who rises from his defeats. Friedrich Nietzsche's 
phrase fits him well: "That which does not destroy me only makes me stronger." 

This man, suffering under financial and party problems for years, assailed by the flood of lies 
from his enemies, wounded in the depths of his heart by the disloyalty of false friends, still 
found the limitless faith to lift his party from desperation to new victories. 

How many thousands of kilometers have I sat behind him in cars or airplanes on election 
campaigns. How often did I see the thankful look of a man on the street, or a mother lifting 
her child to show him, and how often have I seen joy and happiness when people 
recognized him. 

He kept his pockets filled with packages of cigarettes, each with a one or two mark coin. 
Every working lad he met got one. He had a friendly word for every mother and a warm 
handshake for every child. 

Not without reason does the German youth admire him. They know that this man is young 
at heart, and that their cause is in his good hands. Last Easter Monday we sat with him in his 
small house on the Obersalzberg. A group of young hikers from Braunau, where he was 
born, came by for a visit. How surprised these lads were when they got not only a friendly 
greeting, but all fifteen lads were invited in. They got a hurriedly prepared lunch, and had to 
tell him about his hometown of Braunau. 

The people have a fine sense for the truly great. Nothing impresses the people as deeply as 
when a person truly belongs to his people. Of whom but Hitler could this be true: As he 
returned from Berchtesgaden to Munich, people waved in every village. The children 
shouted Heil and threw bouquets of flowers into the car. The S.A. had closed the road in 
Traunstein. There was no moving either forward or back. Confidently and matter-of-factly. 



the S.A. Fuhrer walked up to the car and said: "My Fuhrer, an old party member is dying in 
the hospital, and his last wish is to see his Fuhrer." 

Mountains of work were waiting in Munich. But Hitler ordered the car to turn around, and 
sat for half an hour in the hospital at the bedside of his dying party comrade. 

The Marxist press claimed he was a tyrant who dominated his satraps. What is he really? Fie 
is the best friend of his comrades. Fie has an open heart for every sorrow and every need, 
he has human understanding. Fie knows each of his associates thoroughly, and nothing 
happens in their public or private lives of which he is not aware. If misfortune happens, he 
helps them to bear it, and rejoices more than anyone else at their successes. 

Never have I seen his two sides in anyone else. We had dinner together on the night of the 
Reichstag fire. We talked and listened to music. Hitler was a person among people. Twenty 
minutes later he stood in the smoldering, smoking ruins of the Reichstag building and gave 
piercing orders that led to the destruction of communism. Later he sat in an editorial office 
and dictated an article. 

For those who do not know Hitler, it seems a miracle that millions of people love and 
support him. For those who know him, it is only natural. The secret of his success is in the 
indescribable magic of his personality. Those who know him the best love and honor him 
the most. One who has sworn allegiance to him is devoted to him body and soul. 

I thought it was necessary tonight to say that, and to have it said by someone who really 
knows him, and who could find the courage to break through the barriers of reserve and 
speak of Hitler the man. 

Today he has left the bustle of the capital. He left the wreaths and hymns of praise in Berlin. 
He is somewhere in his beloved Bavaria, far from the noise of the streets, to find peace and 
quiet. Perhaps in a nearby room someone will turn on a loudspeaker. If that should happen, 
then let me say to him, and to all of Germany: My Fuhrer! Millions and millions of the best 
Germans send you their best wishes and give you their hearts. And we, your closest 
associates and friends, are gathered in honor and love. We know how little you like praise. 
But we must still say this: You have lifted Germany from its deepest disgrace to honor and 
dignity. You should know that behind you, and if necessary before you, a strong and 
determined group of fighters stands that is ready at any time to give its all for you and your 
idea. We wish both for your sake and ours that fate will preserve you for many decades, and 
that you may always remain our best friend and comrade. This is the wish of your fellow 
fighters and friends for your birthday. We offer your our hands and ask that you always 
remain for us what you are today: 


Our Hitler! 






Our Hitler 

Goebbels' 1935 Speech on Hitler's 46 th Birthday 


The source: Adolf Hitler. Bilder aus dem Leben des Fuhrers (Hamburg; Cigaretten Bilderdienst, 1936). 




Fellow citizens! Two years ago on 20 April 1933, only three months after Adolf Hitler came 
to power, I spoke to the German people on the occasion of the Fuhrer's birthday. It was not 
my goal then, nor is it now, to read out loud a passionate newspaper article. That I shall 
leave to better stylists. Nor will I praise Adolf Hitler's historic work. I intend today, on the 
Fuhrer's birthday, the very opposite. I believe it is time to portray to the entire nation the 
man Hitler, with all the magic of his personality, all the mysterious genius and irresistible 
power of his personality. There is probably no one left on the planet who does not know 
him as a statesman and as a remarkable popular leader. Only a few, however, have the 
pleasure of seeing him as a man each day from close up, to experience him, and as I might 
add, to come as a result to a deeper understanding and love for him. These few wonder how 
it is possible that a man who only three years ago was opposed by half of the nation stands 
today above any doubt and every criticism. Germany has found a unity which will never be 
shaken. Adolf Hitler is the man of fate, who has the calling to save the nation from terrible 
internal conflict and shameful foreign disgrace, to lead it to longed-for freedom. 

That one man has captured the hearts of the whole nation, despite the sometimes difficult 
and unpopular decisions he had to make, is perhaps the deepest, most amazing secret of 
our age. It cannot be explained only by his accomplishments, for it is just those who have 
had to make the heaviest sacrifices for him and for national reconstruction, indeed who 
must still bring them, who have sensed his mission in the deepest and most joyful way. They 
are the ones who have the most honest and passionate love for him as Fuhrer and as a man. 
That is the result of the magic of his personality and the deep mystery of his pure and 
honest humanity. 

It is of this humanity, which those who are nearest to him see most clearly, of which I speak 
today. 

All genuine humanity is characterized by simplicity and clarity in being and in action. It 
displays itself in the smallest as well as the greatest matters. The simple clarity that is 
evident in his political nature is also the dominating principle of his entire life. One cannot 
imagine him putting on a front. His people would not recognize him were he to do so. His 
daily meals are the simplest, most modest, imaginable. He dines no differently, whether it is 
with a small group of friends or at a state banquet. At a recent reception for officials of the 
Winter Relief program and old party member asked him if he could have an autographed 
copy of the menu as a souvenir. He paused for a moment and then laughed: "That's fine. 
The menu stays the same here; anyone is welcome to look it over." 

Adolf Hitler is one of the few state leaders who avoids medals and decorations. He wears 
only a single high medal that he earned as a simple personal solider displaying the greatest 
personal bravery. That is proof of modesty, but also of pride. There is no one worthy to 
decorate him, other then he himself. Any form of ostentation is foreign to him, but when he 
represents the state and his people, he does so with impressive and appropriate grace. 
Behind all that he is and does are the words of the great soldier Schlieffen, who wrote: "Be 



more than you seem!" His industry and determination in reaching his goal far exceed 
normal human strength. Several days ago I returned to Berlin at 1 a.m. after several hard 
days and was ready for sleep, but he wanted a report from me. At 2 a.m. he was still alert, 
still at work all alone in his home. For two hours he listened to a report on the construction 
of the national highways, a theme that would seem distant from the great international 
problems with which he had been occupied the entire day from early in the morning to late 
at night. Before the last Nuremberg rally, I was his guest for a week in Obersalzburg. The 
light shone from his window each night until 6 or 7 a.m. He was dictating the great speeches 
he would give a few days later at the rally. His cabinet approves no law that he has not 
studied to the smallest detail. His military knowledge is comprehensive; he knows the 
details of each weapon, each machine gun as well as any specialist. When he gives a speech 
he knows each detail. His working method is entirely clear. Nothing is further from him than 
nervousness or hysterical tension. He knows better than anyone else that there are a 
hundred problems to be solved. He chooses the two or three he finds most central and 
works on them, undistracted by the remaining ones, for he know that if he solves the great 
problems, the problems of second or third magnitude will solve themselves. 

His approach to problems shows both the determination necessary to deal with essentials 
and the flexibility essential in the choice of methods. He has principles and beliefs, but he 
knows how to reach them by careful selection of methods and approaches. He has never 
changed his basic goals. He does today what he determined to do in 1919. But he has always 
been flexible in the methods he used to realize his goals. When he was offered the vice 
chancellorship in August 1932, he rejected the offer. He had the feeling that the time was 
not yet ripe and that the ground offered to him was too small to stand on. But when he was 
offered a wider door to power on 30 January 1933, he walked courageously through it. It 
was not the full responsibility he wanted, but he knew that the ground he know stood upon 
was sufficient to begin the fight for full power. The know-it-alls understood neither decision. 
Today they must reluctantly grant that he was superior not only in his tactics, but also in the 
strategic use of the principles in ways they short-sightedly failed to see. 

Two pictures last summer vividly showed the Fuhrer in all his aloneness. The first showed 
him greeting the Wehrmacht just after he was forced to bloodily put down the treason and 
mutiny of 30 June. His face showed the bitterness of the difficult hours he had experienced. 
The second photograph was of him leaving the house of the dying marshall and Reich 
president in Neudeck. His expression shows the shadow of pain and sorrow in the face of 
pitiless death that in a few hours would tear from him his fatherly friend. With almost 
prophetic foresight to told us in his innermost circle on New Year's Eve that 1934 would be a 
dangerous year, one which would likely see the death of Hindenburg. Now the inevitable 
had happened. One thing was plain in his granite face: the pain of an entire nation, a pain 
that would not descend to mere complaining. 



The entirely nation not only honors him, it loves him deeply and fervently, for it has the 
feeling that he belongs to them. He is flesh of its flesh and spirit of its spirit. That shows 
itself in the smallest aspects of everyday life. It is plain in the camaraderie in the Reich 
Chancellery between the least SS man and the Fuhrer. When he travels, he sleeps in the 
same hotel and under the same conditions as everyone else. Is it any wonder that the least 
of those around him are the most loyal?! They have the instinctive feeling that his is no 
facade, but rather the result of his inner and obvious spiritual nature. 

Several weeks ago, 50 young German girls from abroad, who had completed a year of 
schooling and were now about to return to their suffering home countries, visited the 
chancellor, hoping to see him for a moment. He invited them all to dinner. For hours they 
had to tell him of their modest lives. As they were leaving, they suddenly sang the song "If 
All Become Untrue," and tears flowed from their eyes. In the midst of them stood the man 
who has become the incarnation of eternal Germany, giving them friendly and good-hearted 
consolation to encourage them on their difficult journey. 

He came from the people and remains a part of them. He who negotiated for two 15-hour 
days at a conference with diplomats of mighty England, who mastered arguments and facts 
on the great questions of Europe, can speak with complete ease to ordinary people, and can 
with a comradely "Du" restore the confidence of a fellow war veteran who greets him with a 
nervous heart after perhaps days of wondering how to greet him and what to say. The 
weakest approach him with confidence, for they sense that he is their friend and protector. 
The entire nation loves him, because it feels as safe in his arms as a child in the arms of its 
mother. 

This man is a fanatic in his cause. He has sacrificed his personal happiness and private life. 
He knows nothing other than the work that he does as the truest servant of the Reich. 

An artist becomes a statesman, and his historic work reveals his remarkable abilities. He 
needs no external honors; his greatest honor is the enduring permanence of his labors. But 
we who have the good fortune to be near him each day receive light from his light and want 
only to be obedient followers behind his flag. Many times he has told the circle of his oldest 
fellow fighters and closest friends: "It will be terrible when the first of us dies and there is an 
empty place here that can no longer be filled." May a gracious fate ordain that he live the 
longest, that for many decades the nation will continue under his leadership along the path 
to new freedom, greatness and power. That is the honest and passionate wish that the 
entire German nation lays in thankfulness at his feet. Not only we who stand near him, but 
the last man in the most distant village, join in saying: 


"He is now what he always was, and always will be: Our Hitler!" 







Our Fuhrer 

Goebbels' 1936 Speech on Hitler's 47 th Birthday 


The source: Joseph Goebbels, "Unser Fuhrer. Rundfunkansprache Dr. Goebbels zum Geburtstag 
Adolf Hitlers," Volkischer Beobachter, April 1936, p. 2. 




My German comrades! 


Tomorrow, Monday, the Fuhrer celebrates his 47th birthday. 

As in previous years since the takeover of power, I take the opportunity on this festive 
occasion to speak to the whole German nation. On this day, our people thinks with rare 
unanimity and unique determination about the man who has become the personification of 
Germany's resurrection for all Germans, whether in the Reich or throughout the world, and 
who is the symbol of a strong and revitalized Reich. 

Tomorrow morning, this whole people wishes to proclaim its love and honor to the Fuhrer, 
but also its thankfulness for his impact on humanity and on history. Among them are those 
countless millions who cast their votes for him on 29 March of this year, and thus 
ceremonially affirmed that they saw him as the embodiment of faith in our national future, 
and of the security and honor of the Reich. Never before in history has one man so 
embodied the confidence and feeling of togetherness of a whole people. I am happy that 
tonight I am the interpreter of all these feelings. 

We are still in the midst of the Fuhrer's constructive work. Each of us has enough troubles 
and challenges to face, and there are countless tasks that confront us. And, of course, Adolf 
Hitler has not resolved all the tensions and differences, all the misunderstandings and 
frictions within the German people. But on this we can all agree: that Germany's leadership 
is in the best, most loyal and most dependable hands of Adolf Hitler, and that in him, in his 
person, and in his human and political impact, there is the assurance that these remaining 
problems will in good time find an appropriate organic solution. Like a rock in the ocean, he 
stands firm against all the troubles and difficulties of everyday life, the peaceful place in the 
flood of events. 

The impact of his historic acts are already so deeply driven into the heart and soul of the 
whole German people that it seems entirely unnecessary to waste even a word about them. 
And that is not the reason that I wish to speak this evening about his birthday tomorrow. I 
want to speak personally about him. The whole world knows him as a statesman and 
Fuhrer: Few have the privilege of seeing him close up as a person and to sense daily his 
personal force. 

Millions of Germans were deeply moved by the gripping words of his speech on the election 
of 29 March of his year. They heard him say that he had given the German people strength 
for three years, and that now the German people must give him strength. He had often 
strengthened the nation's faith; now the nation had to strengthen his faith. 

Over the past three years, those of us who are close to him have often seen how necessary 
strength and faith are to his work. No day or night, no hour, passed that did not bring for 
him a mass of work and challenges. It is often the case that a people comes to take the 
successes of its policies in a matter-of-fact way, that it gradually gets used to them. 



It has no idea of the effort, of the courage, of the responsibility that are necessary to make 
those successes possible. Most people only become aware of that when dangers surface 
alongside the successes, the dangers that a far-sighted statesman has always seen and 
taken into account, which he has struggled with alone during long, sleepless nights. As great 
as the miracle of Germany's rebirth seems to us, greater still is the miracle of how one man, 
in a time when complete hopelessness had seized the widest circles of his people, found the 
courage and the strong and unshakeable heart that were needed. It is not easy to lift a 
people up from the ground; it takes not only intelligence, but also daring. 

But even more, what does it mean when a man takes on the burdens of Atlas upon himself 
and earns not only the confidence and love of his own people, but becomes a factor in the 
morale of the entire world! 

Over these three years, the Fuhrer has had the courage to face a Europe that was in danger 
of collapse because of its senile dishonesty, giving it the truth that was at first bitter and 
painful, but which in the end restored its honor. He gave a sterile system new movement. 
He became in foreign policy what he had long been in domestic policy: a great simplifier 
who took the most complicated and intricate problems that Europe was incapable of 
solving, and found natural and understandable approaches. 

The peace plan that he recently presented to the world is a masterpiece of constructive and 
simplifying work. It is European in the broadest and most modern sense. Future historians 
will undoubtedly see it as a deep and liberating breath on the part of the world that was 
trapped in its contradictions, and had become lifeless. 

All of this assures the Fuhrer of the confidence and blind allegiance of the broad masses of 
our people. The love that they bring him is directed above all to his person, to his deep and 
powerful humanity, that comes to expression in all of his words and deeds. On the 
afternoon of 29 March the first surprising election results came over the wires, reaching the 
whole world through the ether and giving powerful expression to the German miracle. 
There was hardly a politically aware person not only in Germany, but throughout the world, 
who did not think of the man who was the creator and builder of this miracle. He was at his 
home in Berlin with a group of young girls from the BDM [the Nazi organization for girls] 
who had come from every corner of the Reich to the Wilhelmplatz [the seat of Hitler's 
government] to express their love and support with modest bouquets of flowers. They had 
coffee with him, and he let them talk of their joys and sorrows. He gave their every word 
and gesture his full attention, not leaving them for even a second. That is the miracle of a 
man who will transform the small and apparently insignificant into a new world, and who 
gathers from the small and apparently insignificant the strength to do great things that 
move the world. 

Before him, the German people was really never a world people in the real sense of the 
word. He gave them the will for that. The calm dignity he shows in representing the Reich is 



a model for the entire nation. The simplicity of his character is bound to the monumentality 
of his historic impact, displaying generosity in matters and things that deserve it, paired with 
determination toward things and people that require it. He is not only called the Fuhrer, he 
is the Fuhrer. 

His relationship to children never ceases to move and amaze us. They approach him with 
complete trust, and he meets them with the same trust. Children must have the natural 
ability to know that he belongs to them with heart and soul. Perhaps they realize dimly that 
he alone is to be thanked for the fact that for German children, a German life has once again 
become worth living. 

When the Fuhrer made his last appeal to the German people from Cologne on 28 March, 
the eve of the great day of German affirmation, the whole nation was deeply moved. One 
had the sense that all of Germany, every class, occupation and religious confession, had 
become one great, all-encompassing house of God, a place where their advocate 
approached the throne of the Almighty to bear witness of their will and deeds, and to ask 
his grace and protection for a future that was still uncertain and unclear to us. It was a call 
to fate, one never heard before in the German language with such monumentality. In 
Cologne, we saw hard and strong men who had faced many a danger break out in tears at 
the Fuhrer's final words. It seemed to us that heaven could not fail to hear the cry of a 
people for freedom and peace. 

That was religion in the deepest and most mysterious sense. A nation affirmed God through 
its advocate, and put its fate and its life confidently in his hands. 

Afterwards, we took a short, deserted route to the railway station and sat in a dark 
compartment of the almost silent train, watching silently as we passed the cities and villages 
of this productive German province. In the distance we could see the chimneys and furnaces 
of the Ruhr. Thousands and thousand of lights glittered across the fields. Beneath us, 
hammers thundered, machines sang, drills rattled and sirens wailed. It was the song of labor 
that even now did not slumber. Masses of people were gathered at the stations where we 
made brief stops. They were probably following a mysterious, silent inner force, waving and 
cheering once again to the man whose voice had called them. But he sat silently at the 
window of his compartment and traveled through his land, through his people, and 
probably had the happy feeling of resting deeply and comfortably in the heart of his nation. 

And the next day, this heart broke forth. People went to the voting booths with firm and 
confident step, to the north and south, the east and west, young and old, high and low, and 
helped him to build the unshakable foundation he needed to speak to the world in the 
name of this whole people in defense of its national right to life. Where else on this broad 
planet is there a statesman as firm and confident as he? 



Respected in the whole world, but loved by his own people! That is the highest that a 
person can achieve in this earthly life. 


Tomorrow, from wherever Germans dwell, their best wishes will rise to him. May a gracious 
fate keep him healthy and strong, and grant him a blessed hand. And may he be with us for 
a long, long time, for if he is with us, all is well. 

He is for us what was for us, and he will remain for us what he is for us: 

Our Hitler! 




Our Hitler 

Goebbels' 1938 Speech on Hitler's 49 th Birthday 


The source: Joseph Goebbels, '"Es gibt Manner, die man achtet, bewundert und verehrt — den 
Fuhrer aber lieben wir.' Die Rundfunkrede des Reichsministers Dr. Goebbels am Vorabend des 
Geburtstages des Fuhrers," Votkischer Beobachter, 21 April 1938. 




The Fuhrer has probably never had so many happy people gathered about him for his 
birthday as in this year. All the 75 million people of the Greater German Reich stand before 
him to express their heartfelt best wishes and deepest thanks to him. In the truest sense of 
the word, this is a holiday for the entire nation. The banners of National Socialism fly from 
north to south and east to west. And beyond our borders, millions upon millions of our 
ethnic clan join with the citizens of the Reich in a unique affirmation of loyalty, 
connectedness and faithful attachment. 

The highest form of joy there is on this earth is to make other people happy. Who has had 
this joy in fuller measure than the Fuhrer himself. The unhappiest people on whom God's 
sun shone has become the happiest in this wide 

world. Not one German in our great fatherland would wish to be a member of another 
people or a citizen of another state. That for which all good Germans have always longed 
and hoped has now become reality under the blessed hand of the Fuhrer: a single people in 
a great, free and strong Reich. 

However justified it is for us Germans to rejoice in this new national good fortune, to be 
always aware of it, we may also not forget that it did not just fall into our laps like a ripe 
fruit, but rather that we had to earn it through difficult battle with hard and sometimes 
bitter sacrifices. 

The success that we as a nation may so happily enjoy is the result of great challenges, 
endless work, and deep responsibility. The Fuhrer was the one who over the past years had 
to bear most of the challenges, work and responsibility. 

People realize this instinctively. In recent weeks, the broad masses of our people joined 
spontaneously and ever more loudly in the cry: We thank our Fuhrer! They were joined by 
those in German Austria, and soon it was as if a fanfare resounded throughout the whole 
Reich. This had a deeper significance. People found their own way of expressing a feeling of 
thanks that today is shared by all people of German blood. It is a feeling of thanks that can 
no longer be put into words, but rather it can only call to action. 

Often we sat next to the Fuhrer on the terrace of his home on the Obersalzberg. Far in the 
distance between the mountains, German Salzburg would appear in the silvery sunlight. His 
mind at least, with all its cares and longings, leapt over the distance and sensed what history 
would bring, making for a moment reality of imagination. Long columns of people stood 
outside the Berghof [Hitler's mountain home], waiting to march past the Fuhrer. They came 
from all parts of our great Reich, bringing flowers and mementos, and were heartened by 
being able to look into the beloved face of the man whom they saw as the embodiment of 
all our national hope. 

It always brought tears when groups or individuals from German Austria came. They usually 
did not say very much; only rarely was there a shout from their ranks. Usually they marched 



past the Fuhrer in deep silence. If he called for some of them to come to him, they could 
rarely answer his questions because their voices became lost in tears. 

In these moving moments, we saw in the Fuhrer's face that the pain of his people was his 
pain, that he shared their pain and misery, that no one could suffer more for his homeland 
than he. 

We remember those nighttime hours of a Wednesday in March, already part of history, in 
which the former Flerr Schuschnigg gave his treasonous speech in Innsbruck, and the first 
alarming reports reached Berlin. The Fuhrer strode with long steps across the room, and his 
face displayed godly anger and holy fervor. Flere was the best German, whose cradle was in 
Austria, and who had a far greater right to speak in the name of German Austria than the 
then spokesman for this so-called independent state. Fie was deeply wounded by cowardly 
treachery. This was the decisive turn in events. There was no going back: either 
Schnuschnigg would succeed once again in legitimizing his terror regime through an election 
swindle, or the people itself would rise up and appeal to heaven for its rights. 

Flere we learned the Fuhrer's true greatness. The two days of nervous tension that followed 
showed him at the height of his tactical and strategic command of the means and methods 
of a well planned and considered political program. 

The people still had no idea of what was taking place. They went about as if nothing had 
happened, walking down WilhelmstralSe to Wilhelmplatz with only a shy and respectful 
glance toward the Reich Chancellery. Flere the Fuhrer lived, here he worked, here he bore 
all the burdens and responsibility. 

Until the decisive Friday when things finally started rolling, and the Fuhrer gave the order to 
march late in the night. 

None of us would have been embarrassed by our tears as after midnight we heard on the 
radio the Florst Wessel Song being sung for the first time in Vienna. The hour of salvation 
had come. 

If one were to ask me what the greatest difference between a parliamentary democracy and 
an authoritarian system was, I would answer: 

The greater the danger, the more a parliamentary democracy is inclined to pull back, but the 
more a true leadership personality faces it. It was never a question for the Fuhrer that he 
had to be with his people at the hour of liberation, and indeed, there where the decision 
itself was happening. 

It is but one proof more of his deep political instinct, rooted in his connection to national 
feeling and thought, that the hour of greatest danger was also the hour of his greatest 
triumph. 



How moving it was as he crossed the Innsbruck bridge, entering his hometown and 
birthplace Braunau for the first time in many years. We saw pictures in the newspapers of 
women giving him flowers as he stepped on Austrian soil. 

The eyes of these women shone with the deepest and purest joy, such that one cannot 
imagine more beautiful human faces. We saw a picture of a man who climbed onto the 
Fuhrer's automobile with his hands raised as if in prayer, and we had the sense that here 
the depths of the human soul came to the most perfect expression. 

Probably never before have the hearts of all Germans beat faster or more passionately than 
in these afternoon and evening hours. The nation knew that the Fuhrer was on the soil of 
our German Austria, and never did his beloved voice seem warmer and nearer than on this 
evening, when he spoke in Linz for the first time in his homeland. Hundreds and hundreds of 
kilometers from us, and yet near to us all, he spoke of the joy that filled his heart. 

That was the Fuhrer as a person, the same man who then spoke in Vienna as a statesman 
and ruler of the national fate as he made his greatest announcement to the German people 
[that Austria had been incorporated into the German Reich], How he must have felt then, he 
who as a young man had so often demonstrated in Vienna's streets for the Greater German 
Reich, and who was therefore persecuted, mistreated and arrested by the dwarfs of the 
Hapsburg regime. 

The dreams of his youth had been realized. He had entered the soul of his people as a man 
and as the Fuhrer. 

Bringing a miracle that was no miracle, only the result of tireless work blessed by 
the hand of the Almighty. 

Perhaps it is also a religious act to put his whole life in the service of his people, and to work 
and act for the happiness of people. It is a religion without empty phrases and dogma, which 
nonetheless springs from the deepest depths of our soul. That is how our people 
understands it. We Germans are today perhaps more faithful and pious than others who, 
though they never tire of praising God with their lips, have hearts that are cold and empty. 

It is therefore no empty phrase when all of us in our great Reich join with those beyond its 
borders, across seas and continents, in asking the Almighty to grant the Fuhrer long years of 
health, strength, and a blessed hand. That is the deepest and holiest wish of all the children 
of our ethnic group and of our blood. May the ether bring through my voice this national 
prayer of a people to the furthest corner of the earth where Germans dwell, live, and 
breathe. It is a deep prayer, full of hope, faith, and national pride. 

There are men one respects, men one admires, and men one honors. We love the Fuhrer. 
He is the great symbol of the resurrection of our people, towering over our age. 

He is to us what he was to us, and he will remain to us what he is to us: Our Fuhrer! 




Our Hitler 

Goebbels' 1939 Speech on Hitler's 50 th Birthday 


The source: Die Zeit Ohne Beispiel (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1941). 




In an unsettled and confused world, Germany tomorrow celebrates a national holiday in the 
truest sense of the word. It is a holiday for the entire nation. The German people celebrate 
the day entirely as a matter of the heart, not of the understanding. 

Tomorrow the Fuhrer finishes his fiftieth year. The entire German nation takes pride in this 
day, a pride in which those peoples who are friendly with us also take deep and hearty part. 
Even those who are neutral or oppose us cannot ignore the strong impact of the events. 
Adolf Hitler's name is a political program for the entire world. He is almost a legend. His 
name is a dividing line. No one on earth can remain indifferent to his name. For some, he 
represents hope, faith, and the future, for others he is an exemplar of confused hatred, base 
lies, and cowardly slander. 

The highest that a person can achieve is to give his name to an historical era, to stamp his 
personality indelibly on his age. Certainly the Fuhrer has done that. One cannot imagine 
today's world without him. 

Treitschke once said that men make history. If this is true, when more so than in our era? He 
has shown his simplicity and depth in the most wonderful way. Adolf Hitler has influenced 
not only the historical development of his country, but one can say without fear of 
exaggeration that he has given all of European history a new direction, that he is the 
towering guarantee of a new order for Europe. 

Our part of the world looks vastly different today that it would without him, not to mention 
his impact on our own people and nation. He has given the German nation an entirely new 
face through revolutionary internal transformations. 

Someone who saw Germany for the last time in 1918 would scarcely recognize it today. The 
people and nation are entirely different. What seemed like a miracle only a short while ago 
is self-evident today. 

About a year ago, the Fuhrer solved the problem of joining Austria to the Reich. The whole 
people celebrated his 49th birthday then. 7 1/2 million Germans had returned to the Reich. 
A Central European problem one almost believed to be unsolvable was miraculously solved. 

On the eve of his 50th birthday, we can happily see that once again the map of Europe has 
changed in the Reich's favor, and — unique in world history — this change has occurred 
without bloodshed. It came as the result of a clear desire to establish peace in an area of 
Europe in which the contradictions were so severe that there was danger that they sooner 
or later would cause a general European conflagration. 

This new peace in the threatened areas is not a peace of tired, moralistic theories that are 
endangered as often as the false bourgeois democrats praise them. It is much more a peace 
that is built on practical realities 



Such a peace could be built only on the foundations of a higher, instinctive understanding 
growing from the knowledge that only strength gives a people the opportunity to finally 
resolve problems. 

Successful policies require both imagination and reality. Imagination as such is constructive. 
It alone provides the strength for powerful, flexible historical conceptions. Realism on the 
other hands brings the ideas of political fantasy in agreement with hard reality. 

The Fuhrer possesses both characteristics in a unique harmony seldom seen in history. 
Imagination and reality join in him to determine the goals and methods of political policy. 
His contemporaries are constantly astonished and amazed by seeing how he brilliantly 
brings goals and methods together to influence history. He has no stubborn ideas, no tired 
tactical doctrines, to dim his vision and reduce his political imagination. His inflexible 
principles are joined with changing and flexible political methods that have lead to the 
greatest and most unexpected successes for Germany. 

That is nothing new for us old National Socialists. We learned to admire the Fuhrer's 
political abilities in the earliest phases of our party's hard struggle for power in the Reich. 
They were demonstrated in many small and apparently unimportant ways at the time, 
though they were then for us and the movement as important as the goals and problems of 
today. 

Then too there were doubters who failed to see the greatness and brilliance of the Fuhrer's 
decisions during the struggle for power. They favored the false wisdom that Clausewitz 
discussed: they wanted nothing but to escape danger. We are therefore not surprised or 
anxious to see the same or similar happenings in internal German politics that we earlier 
saw in the National Socialist movement. 

The only thing that has changed over the years is the scale of the Fuhrer's actions; his 
methods and goals have remained the same. Back then we saw in him the political instincts 
of a truly historic genius, able to understand problems and find the simplest and clearest 
solution to them from his own greatness and certainty. That is why we were then his most 
loyal and obedient servants of this man and his work, entirely aside from the human 
element. 

So what we see today is nothing new for us old National Socialists. We therefore have no 
doubt of the outcome of Germany's current battle for its national existence. Our whole 
people has the same instinctive feelings, which are the cause of the blind and unshakable 
confidence it places in the Fuhrer. 

The man in the street is usually not in a position to understand the entire political situation. 
He lacks the practice, the experience and above all the background necessary to form a clear 
and certain judgment. It is therefore entirely understandable why he dislikes theories and 
programs, and prefers to place his firm and confident faith in a personality. 



A nation inclines to doctrines only when it is poor in personalities. But when a man of 
historic greatness stands at its head, one who not only wants to lead but is able to do so, the 
people will follow him with its whole heart, giving him its willing and obedient allegiance. 
Even more, it will put all of its love and their blind confidence behind him and his work. 

A nation is willing to sacrifice when it knows what it is sacrificing for and why it is necessary. 
That is true in Germany today. None of the numerous slogans that the broad masses of our 
people heard in the years after 1918 has had such powerful effect on the entire nation as 
the phrase "One People, one Reich, one Fuhrer!" 

The first two phrases were heard for the first time in 1937 at a singing festival in Breslau. 
The Fuhrer stood high on the platform against the gathering darkness. Hundreds of 
thousands of people had gathered from every corner of the nation and from everywhere in 
Europe where Germans dwell to hear him speak. Suddenly, from the corner of this army of 
hundreds of thousands where the Austrians stood came the call "One people, one Reich." It 
gripped and fascinated the whole crowd, and for the first time gave concise but clear 
expression to a program. 

A year later we saw the Fuhrer on a hot Sunday afternoon standing on the platform at the 
SchlolSplatz in Breslau once again. German gymnasts performed before him. As the racial 
comrades from the Sudetenland passed before him, without command or order, they 
suddenly formed a wall before him. These people who had come from the Sudetenland to 
Breslau only to see his face, refused to move. Weeping women seized his hand. One could 
not understand what they were trying to say, since tears drowned their voices. 

Once again, it was only a few months before the problem they had brought to the Fuhrer 
was solved. 

The Greater German Reich, in the truest sense of the word, has now become a reality. Even 
more, the Fuhrer has given his peace to Central Europe. It is clear that this is not to the 
pleasure of those democratic enviers of the National Socialist Reich. Through the Treaty of 
Versailles they had build a ring of trouble spots around Germany that they could use to keep 
the Reich in constant difficulties. 

A man has come from the broad masses of the German people who removed these trouble 
spots with the firmest measures. Democracy sees its hopes vanishing. That explains their 
rage and moralistic disappointments. Their hypocritical prayers came too late. The enemies 
of the Reich are at the end of their rope. They look ridiculous, and cannot understand why. 

We greet their hysterical cries with sovereign contempt, a sovereign contempt shared by 
the entire German people. The German people know that the Fuhrer has restored it to its 
rightful position in the world. The Reich stands in the shadow of the German sword. 
Germany's economy, culture and popular life are blooming under a security guaranteed by 
the army. The nation, once sunk into impotence, has risen to new greatness. 



We remember all of this as we begin to celebrate the 50th birthday of the man whom we 
thank for our nation's might and our people's greatness. No German at home or anywhere 
else in the world can fail to take the deepest and heartiest pleasure in participation. It is a 
holiday of the nation, and we want to celebrate it as such. 

A people fighting for its fate must now and again stop in the midst of the tumult of events to 
remind itself of its situation, methods and goals. Today is such a time. The nation puts on its 
best clothing and stands before its Fuhrer united in loyalty and brotherhood, to bring him 
their heartiest best wishes on his 50th birthday. These are the wishes of all Germans in the 
Reich, as well as those in every other nation and continent. Germans throughout the world 
join with us who have the good fortune to live in the Reich in these warm and thankful 
wishes. To this choir of a hundred million are joined the voices of all those peoples want 
true peace and order in Europe, who love its history and its culture. 

As we begin to celebrate the Fuhrer's 50th birthday in this festive hour as a great national 
community, we join in a fervent prayer to Almighty God that he graciously preserve in the 
future his life and work. May he grant the German people's deepest wish and keep the 
Fuhrer in health and strength for many more years and decades. Then we will not need to 
fear for the future of the Reich. The fate of the German nation rests in a strong and sure 
hand. 

We, the Fuhrer's oldest followers and fellow fighters join together at this festive hour with 
the hearty wish that we have always had on the birthday of this man: May he remain for us 
what he is and always was: 


Our Hitler! 




Our Hitler 

Goebbels' 1940 Speech on Hitler's 51 st Birthday 


The source: I use the published version of the text from Goebbels' wartime book Die Zeit ohne 
Beispiel (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1941). The text of the speech is also available in any 
German newspaper of 20 April 1940. 




On 3 September last year, two hours after English plutocracy declared war on the German 
Reich, the British Prime Minister Chamberlain gave a radio speech to the German people in 
the most broken German. One might call it the first English act of war, and it proved to be 
the first, worst, and most fateful psychological error that the British plutocracy could make. 
Chamberlain did not betray who had given him the right to speak to the German nation. He 
was of the opinion that the German people he was attempting to speak to was in about the 
same intellectual and spiritual condition as it was after the capitulation of 9 November 
1918, when it gave itself up to the arbitrary lust for revenge of the Western powers. The 
point of the speech was that England had no intention of waging war against the German 
people, but rather intended to help them. Germany needed only to accept the simple British 
proposal to get rid of the Fuhrer or so-called Hitlerism, and the result would be a quick and 
easy peace. We can remark in passing that during the seven months of the war, British 
plutocracy had long since stopped telling the world such hypocritical platitudes. Its best and 
most eloquent publicists have long since made it clear that the goal of British plutocracy is 
to destroy the German people and the German Reich. They wish to return it to its state after 
the Peace of Westphalia in the year 1648. 

At the beginning of the war, however, they sang the same old song. It was a bit too familiar 
to our ears to be effective. Its melody was dull and worn out. British plutocracy had tried to 
persuade the Boers during the South African war of the same thing. Britain was only fighting 
Krugerism. As is well known, that did not stop them from allowing countless thousands of 
women and children to starve in English concentration camps. During the World War as 
well, England was supposedly fighting only against the Kaiser, not the German people. Yet 
after we fell for the British swindle, we were forced at Versailles in 1919 to accept the most 
disgraceful and humiliating peace treaty of modern history. 

But that is aside from the point. If the German people took any notice at all of the whining 
remarks of the English prime minister, it observed the lying tone even in the first days of the 
war. It took only a psychological interest in the speech. Mr. Chamberlain probably did not 
realize that the German people were fully aware that their struggle for existence had begun, 
and that they would think it infamous and entirely foolish for the head British plutocrat, of 
all people, to attempt to persuade them to give up their sharpest and best defensive 
weapon, namely the relationship between the Fuhrer and the nation. It was really the most 
stupid thing that London could have done at that critical time. In his encouragement to 
separate from the Fuhrer, Chamberlain hit the most sensitive part of the German people's 
soul. One might just as well try to persuade a believing and trusting child that he should 
leave his parents in the lurch at a moment of danger. 

It is really more proof of the unlimited stubbornness with which the leading and governing 
English plutocratic class likes to see the world outside England. It has not the least idea of 
the transformation the German people has undergone since 1918, and particularly in the 
last seven years. It may be that in more peaceful times our people have debated minor and 



trivial issues heatedly, even fought about them. One likes something, the next one does not. 
We Germans obviously come from the most varied political camps. We adult Germans were 
around before National Socialism. We had rather vague political positions and worldviews. 
Countless Germans were then members of other parties and adherents of other 
worldviews. It is even possible that some of us still have remnants of former views. That 
may be true, and is not all that bad. We Germans do all agree on one thing, though: There is 
nothing that can separate us from the love, obedience and confidence we have in and for 
the Fuhrer. We all know that that is the strongest weapon that the German nation has in its 
battle for existence. 

For the first time in German history, the political instinct of our people finds its expression 
and fulfillment in a leading personality. That is why the connection we feel to the Fuhrer is 
to deeply rooted, and why particularly in challenging times this relationship of confidence 
between Fuhrer and people reaches a degree that is incomprehensible to the so-called 
democratic peoples. 

We face a hard test today. Modern war is fought not only with weapons. We see in the 
recent past a growing comprehensiveness to military thinking. War today is waged on all 
fronts, on the economic front and above all on the front of the struggle for the souls of 
nations. This war is a gigantic struggle that affects every area of popular life. It is not 
unknown to us that the British plutocratic class has won its past victories by destroying the 
spiritual foundations of its enemies, using selfish and dirty means to advance its own 
interests. 

That is why London has always been particularly active in the battle for the popular soul. It 
does not cost much, and saves a lot of blood and money. Until the arrival of National 
Socialism, the German people were particularly susceptible in this regard. That explains why 
we first failed spiritually on 9 November 1918, collapsing only after that in all other areas. 
The Fuhrer's educational work has made the German people forever immune to such 
attempts in the future. Plutocratic England is whistling in the wind when it even attempts to 
speak to the German people, which explains why it increasingly is giving up the numbing 
and seductive phrases it tried during the first weeks of the war. The German people simply 
laughs at them. It will accept neither orders nor advice or even good cheer from London. 
The whole flood of lies that London has unleashed against the Reich vanishes without 
having any effect at all. 

Instead, the German people see in the Fuhrer the incarnation of its national strength and a 
shining example of its national goals. He is a people's leader in the truest sense of the word. 
We recall a scene from a newsreel from the first weeks of the Polish campaign. The Fuhrer 
and his generals are gathered around a map in a conference room. Ideas are weighed and 
plans forced. Anyone can see immediately that serious military problems are being 
discussed. The camera moves slowly away from the generals and focuses on the Fuhrer, off 
to one side. The eye is struck by the man to whom we all look, his face worn with cares. 



weighed down by his thoughts, an historical personality, great and alone. We saw this scene 
from the Polish campaign much later at the premiere of the Luftwaffe film "Baptism of Fire" 
in a large Berlin theater. One generally does not credit the Berliners with much respect for 
their leaders, but as the Fuhrer's face appeared on the screen, a deep, quiet, silent 
movement spread through the packed theater. No one said a word, but all felt the same. 
Millions of people have seen the picture since then, and still this picture has a deep 
impression on viewers, as countless letters and messages tell us. 

During the Polish campaign, people quickly browsed through the columns covering the huge 
battle of annihilation against the Polish army, then looked for information about where the 
Fuhrer was, how he was feeling, what he was doing. Seldom has a people been so interested 
in the life and thoughts and wishes of a man. That is entirely natural, indeed it could not be 
otherwise. Every German instinctively senses the seriousness and dangers of the hour. His 
word, even his wish, is for we Germans an order. 

How could an English merchant's soul understand that? Mr. Chamberlain recently said at an 
opulent breakfast held in his honor by the City of London that the polite applause he 
received was not the result of orders, as was the fashion in Germany. We could only laugh. 
How little the present British prime minister understands the German people that he has in 
a careless moment unscrupulously compelled to fight for its existence, and how this people 
will disappoint him and the British plutocratic class that stands behind him! He is leading an 
old and sinking world against a young and modern people, a people that since 1918 has 
survived a terrible lesson and has finally found itself. It is deeply conscious of its good 
fortune in having found in National Socialism the realization of its political faith and in the 
Fuhrer the embodiment of its desire for a leading personality. 

We are living in a great and decisive age. The German nation is gathering its whole strength 
together to defend its national life. The front and the homeland form a closed unity in 
common brotherhood, knowing that the fate of the German people is at stake. That is why, 
as foreign observers and reporters constantly note with astonishment, all Germans are filled 
with a calm, almost sovereign confidence. Today, we are fighting and working, that is all. No 
one complains and no one asks why. Our people certainly as war-related burdens and 
difficulties to deal with. All wait nonetheless for the Fuhrer's order. When he calls, all are 
there. 

We want to trust him and follow him! That is what the German people say today. This 
resolve gives us as a people and a nation enormous power, which other countries call the 
German miracle. It is a riddle to the world, but obvious to us! We can hardly imagine how 
things once were or how they could be any different. 

Tomorrow we celebrate the 51st birthday of the man who brought this miracle about. We 
will not do so in loud and noisy parties, but rather as a people in the midst of battle and 
work. In the past, in Berlin above all, we gathered along the sidewalks of the east-west 



avenue to watch his soldiers march past, and greeted him with storms of heils. This time 
there will be no parade, no uproar. Yet the love that binds us to him and the confidence we 
gave him is even more passionate, even deeper. 

Tomorrow he may see in spirit a great parade of our people march past, both from the Front 
and the homeland — soldiers, farmers, and workers — all, all those who are filled with his 
spirit and who are defending Germany's life. 

One wish fills the entire nation, whether at the front or at home, be they German soldiers in 
Norway and Denmark or the men of our U-boats and warships, or the soldiers up against the 
Western Front or the millions in the bunkers and interior positions, or the dead-tired flyer 
high in the heavens, or the farmer plowing his field, or the worker at the roaring machine, or 
the thinkers of the mind and spirit, or above all the millions of German mothers and their 
children: 

The entire people has one thought: Long live the Fuhrer! 

May he lead us as he always has though grave and difficult times to a shining German 
victory. May he remain what he is to us and always was: 

Our Hitler! 




Our Hitler 

Goebbels' 1941 Speech on Hitler's 52 nd Birthday 


The source: Die Zeit ohne Beispiel (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1941). 




We Germans do not have sufficient historical distance to evaluate the full scope of the age 
in which we are living. We are children of our age. We have been formed by our age, and we 
in turn are forming it. It will be the task of later generations to evaluate it properly and to 
determine what is really admirable and what is simply normal. Future generations will surely 
envy the fact that we have lived a life of struggle, that we had the good fortune to have 
political passion, a passion that Heinrich von Treitschke once said finds little room in the 
hearts of most people. 

There are rare moments in the middle of the pressures of daily life when we suddenly are 
struck by the feeling that everything before us is history, and that a new world is now being 
born. We experience the birth pangs of all that is young and new, and realize that this new 
world is replacing the old and sinking one, with all its peculiarities, tenseness and prejudice. 
If there are men who make history, if great historical developments are the product of 
individual personalities, then the riddle of our era is to be explained only by the grace of a 
brilliant human being. It is no cliche to say that everything we experience today and for 
which we expend our best energies would not be, or at least would be very different, were 
it not for one man who forged the path and showed the way, giving meaning, content, and 
direction to our age. We are experiencing the greatest miracle that history offers: a genius is 
building a new world. 

When is this more evident than today, as the entire German nation and countless millions 
beyond its borders send their thanks, their honor, their admiration, their deepest hopes and 
their unshakable faith in him and his historic mission, to the Fuhrer on his 52nd birthday? 
They are the feelings that most deeply move each German above all. There will be in this 
hard year of war no noisy popular festivals, no parades, no splendid public performances. 
But these feelings are expressed even more deeply and warmly by those who do their daily 
duty, be it by our best fighting men at the front or at home in the armaments industries. The 
German people honors the Fuhrer on his birthday by pledging redoubled efforts to support 
his work. Our love and honor for him give wings to our struggle and to our work for victory. 

Two years ago we celebrated his 50th birthday with the most splendid parade that the Reich 
capital had ever seen. The German people saw clearly for the first time how strong the Reich 
had become under six years of National Socialist government. We hoped then that the 
Fuhrer's efforts to preserve peace for our nation and the world would succeed. Already the 
fanfares of hatred were sounding from London and Paris, calling for war at any price. We 
knew that if our enemies once more forced the Reich to fight for its national existence, the 
German people for the first time in their history would be united in all their branches, 
prepared spiritually, economically and militarily, ready to present the world with a miracle 
of strength, manliness, sovereign political and spiritual superiority, military power and 
precision. 

Our eternal enemies declared war on us in September of that year, and since then the 
German miracle has become reality. The German soldier defeated the enemy wherever he 



met him. In breathtaking victories unique in history, brilliant offensives defeated Poland, 
Norway, Holland, Belgium and France. England has been thrown from the continent, and 
the British Empire is receiving powerful blows in the homeland, on the Atlantic and in North 
Africa that are shaking its foundations. If one asks how our enemies could declare war on 
the Reich under such conditions, the only answer is that they did not believe in the 
enormous power of a great personality nor in the strength of his work. They still thought of 
Germany as it had been in November 1918, cowardly, exhausted, defenseless against the 
false promises of its enemies, with no knowledge of its national mission and without 
determined and strong leadership. They did not think it possible that one man could bring 
about a miracle that would lift this people from the pit to which it had fallen and lead a 
wonderful regeneration that made it once more conscious of its strengths. Only rarely have 
the German people experienced a true national task. While other nations in the world did 
what was necessary to secure their political and economic security by establishing the 
necessary military bases and reserves of raw materials, we Germans poured out our blood 
chasing phantoms. For the first time in this war, Germany is a strong power, defending its 
interests, which are not the increased profits of a capitalist ruling class, but rather the 
preservation of its national existence. 

Each of us knows this today. We gave no illusions as we fight the war. We all know what it is 
about. We know that its outcome will determine our national life. We know that it must be 
won by the whole people for the whole people, and that a German victory will mean that 
the Reich is firmly guarded on all sides and that Germany's national existence is secured. 
That will give our people the possibility to live and work politically and economically. 

Foreign visitors who visit the Reich during the war are amazed at the calm with which the 
German people look at current and coming events. Nothing would be more false than to 
assume this was the result of indifference of lack of interest. Our confidence rests on 
security. Our people do not know, and do not even want to know, what the Fuhrer is 
planning and how he will gain victory. They simply trust him. He will chose the right way, as 
he has always done. Our people had no worries before the Western offensive as to how the 
Fuhrer would break through the Maginot Line to attack France. They simply believed that he 
had a plan and the means. When Holland, Belgium and France were defeated within six 
weeks as the world held its breath, the German people were more pleased than surprised. 
They saw only renewed confirmation of their faith in the Fuhrer. Our people know that if the 
nation is loyal, obedient and dutiful, and if each does his job, Germany is unbeatable and 
victory after victory will accompany our troops. 

What enormous strength lies in this confidence! How childish and silly, to the contrary, are 
the repeated stupid efforts by British plutocracy to shake this confidence, to bring the 
people in conflict with the Fuhrer, to weaken the fighting spirit of our army by lying rumors. 
Every German soldier today knows that we have only been defeated when we succumbed 



to such a temptation, and that Germany has always been triumphant which it was conscious 
of its strength and directed it outwardly, not inwardly. 

The winter in which London placed such great hopes is long over. We filled it with feverish 
preparations. The entire nation worked day and night to supply our army with a surplus of 
weapons and munitions. The internal organization of our national life continues to function 
flawlessly, and the burdens war brings with it are fairly distributed and bearable for 
everyone. The attempts of British plutocracy to win victories on the periphery or to cause 
the German people to doubt or lose courage during the long waiting period have been in 
vain. These attempts had no impact on us. The German people did not only wait during the 
winter, they also fought and worked. We did not make as much noise about it as did the 
English. The enemy has already seen the results of our preparations in the campaign in the 
Southeast, in North Africa, in the Battle of the Atlantic, and in the air war against the English 
motherland. That all goes to show that wars are not won through newspaper articles, but 
rather with ideas, soldiers, weapons, and munitions. A people wins when it has the 
prerequisites to victory, when it wants to win, and when it must win. All that is true for us. 

This evening we look back along the path we have followed since September 1939, and 
forward to what is still shrouded in darkness, illuminated by the light of our faith. It is the 
path to final victory. We have never believed in it as firmly as we do today. The Fuhrer leads 
us, and that is the best foundation of our confidence. 

When Mr. Churchill spoke recently about the outcome of this war, he declared that England 
would win, he just did not know how. We reply: The Fuhrer will win because he also knows 
how he will win. He has filled the nation with his spirit. It is tuned to his will. This time, they 
will survive the great test of faith that will decide their future, ending the 400-year series of 
German mistakes and failures. That is why this age is so great for us Germans and why, 
despite the war, it is so encouraging. Our people have a chance, one that we will use. An 
armed people, led by one will and filled with fanaticism — that is victory! 

A man who has created such things stands far above any words of praise. The nation can 
only bow in thankfulness before him. We all do that in this hour. We thank the fate that sent 
us the Fuhrer in the midst of our deepest need. We, his old fighting companions throughout 
the German Reich and our soldiers at the Front above all are grateful to fate that it gave us 
in our early years the strength and insight to recognize his greatness and to be with him 
from the beginning along his eventful way to victory and triumph. Who among us would 
chose to miss even one day of these last hard years, always filled with battle and work? 
Who among us does not think it his highest good fortune, indeed the real meaning and 
fulfillment of his life, to have been with him as he won the revolution, and to be with him 
now as he is winning the great war for Germany's life and freedom? We have fought at his 
side long enough to know both from experience and knowledge that victory is as good as 
certain. We only must remain strong, faithful, brave and upright, striding with heads high 
toward the hour of our proudest triumph. 



Thus we greet him on the eve of his birthday. The entire nation joins in this greeting, and in 
expressing its deepest and most profound thankfulness for him. Our soldiers bear his names 
on their lips, wherever they may stand or march. Our workers sing his name as they work. 
Our men on the battle fronts, above all those in the Southeast and North Africa who defend 
the nation's security, our officers and soldiers of the air force who carry death and 
destruction to the British Isles, our men in the navy who have set an iron ring around Great 
Britain, they all greet him as their supreme commander. Our farmers and workers greet him 
as their Fuhrer and our women thank him for fighting for the future of their children. The 
German youth gives him their strongest faith. He is ours. He has made this people what it is 
today. Where would we be if he had not come? 

We ask a gracious God to keep him healthy and to grant success to his work for the freedom 
of our people. Then we need not fear the future. Then the German people can face the 
proudest period of their historical development. Once the flags of our revolution fluttered 
over the entire Reich. Now we long for that happy day, and fight for it with all our might, 
when the flags of our victory will fly over the entire Reich. 

Tomorrow we celebrate his fanatic devotion to his work. Despite the war, a festive air fills 
the whole nation. It is his day, and it is our day. It reminds us once more what our lives have 
become because of him. We therefore wish him what we have always wished for: May he 
remain for us what he was and is: 


Our Hitler! 




Our Hitler 

Goebbels' 1942 Speech on Hitler's 53 rd Birthday 


The source: "Fuhrergeburtstag 1942/' Das eherne Herz (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1943), pp. 
286-294. 




The film "The Great King" is playing in the movie theaters of the Reich. It treats the hard 
trials and historic challenges that Frederick the Great endured during the critical phase of 
the Seven Years War, before he led his army to final victory over his enemies. The film takes 
the unique figure of this great Prussian king off his pedestal and removes the anecdotal 
incrustations in order to show us how things really were and what really happened. The film 
avoids the usual portrayal of the attributes of this historic figure, instead giving us a 
personal and human picture of a unique statesman and military genius. As curious as it may 
sound, today he seems to us even greater in his defeats than in his victories. 

Shallow popular accounts of the great Prussian king sometimes make it seem as if he dealt 
easily with the difficulties and problems of warfare. In this film, however, we see a 
struggling titan with a deep heart who endured for seven years an inferno of sorrow, pain of 
every conceivable physical and spiritual nature, the deepest human disappointments and 
the hardest tests. He was alone, deserted, almost toothless, the wreck of a man plagued 
with gout. Then came the day when Berlin jubilantly received its returning king. He sat in 
tears in the Charlottenburg Palace chapel after an almost inconceivable release from the 
nameless miseries and anxieties he had faced as the thundering tones of Grauns' "Te deum" 
resounded from the organ. 

It is clear that such a portrayal of the life and struggles of our greatest Prussian-German king 
is somewhat risky, even if it is more historically accurate and more educational for our day. 
It is more pleasant to present historical persons and events in a way pleasing to the average 
person. Nothing is easier to believe than that the great victories in history were the result of 
military and political superiority, that the goddess of war ever smiles, even to think that 
presenting an occasional danger or threat defames the reputation of historical personages. 

This film presents history from a different standpoint. It shows the human side of a true 
genius as a way of emphasizing his superhuman attributes. The greatness of this historic 
figures grows not from themselves, but rather from the weight of fate they bear. The 
physical suffering, the spiritual burdens and the temptations of the heart allow the 
character of a great man to stand out more vividly, they mark his outline more clearly. The 
film shows why Frederick II earned the right, uniquely, to bear the name "Great." Despite 
the numbing blows of fate that often drove him to the edge of the abyss, he found the 
strength to rise triumphant above the trials and defeats. He set a shining example of 
steadfastness in misfortune to his people, his soldiers, his doubting generals, wavering 
ministers, conspiring relatives and protesting civil servants. 

This film proves the sound political and historical instincts of our people. It makes no 
compromises, presenting unadulterated historical truth. It is not the usual historical 
romance. Despite what one might expect, the broad masses have taken it as a wakeup call, 
making it into a success with hardly a precedent in the history of German film. No one fails 
to be moved deeply by this film. The parallels to the present, the words that great king 
speaks, the spiritual crises that he and his people overcame through battle and passion. 



sometimes seem so striking that the makers of this film felt obliged to remark that it was 
planned not just before Christmas for educational purposes, but rather in the early summer 
of 1940, with no idea of today's duties and challenges. The contemporary significance of the 
words and the resemblance of many events to those of today is not the result of conscious 
propaganda, but rather of deep historical laws. 

That is the truth. Each century has its historical mission. They do not repeat themselves, 
indeed are so bound to their era that posterity can hardly bring more than historical 
understanding for the political problems of past epochs. What remains is the ways in which 
history is made, the style and manner of expression that a statesman or military genius uses, 
the resistance that raises him far above his era, above all the superhuman strength with 
which he meets the challenge. How can the fact that Frederick defeated the Austrians be 
relevant to our day? His value for the present generation is in the worth of his personality, 
in the powerful strength of his historic genius, in his faith that moved mountains, in his 
steadfastness in misfortune, in the completeness with which he fulfilled his secular mission 
and in the heroic isolation with which he bore the dark shadows of his fate. He was the one 
who said that he who wants to transform the world cannot at the same time enjoy it. 

We are living in a time that is being transformed, one that therefore cannot be enjoyed. As 
perhaps never before in history, the fate of our people is in the hands of a single generation. 
Its desire for life, for self-assertion must decide whether we are at the beginning of new and 
unprecedented age for our people, or whether we perhaps stand at the end of our history. 
Such moments in the rise and fall of nations always exert a powerful magic on brave and 
manly people. They see in the dangers and burdens a change to prove their mettle, which 
they know they must do if they are not to be weighed in the balance of fate and found 
wanting. The path to victory leads ever through the depths of danger and historical testing. 
A people must withstand many trials during a war. It must be armed against the tricks of a 
fickle fate that likes to subject its favorites to hard and bitter testing, until it finally wears 
the wreath of victory on its brow. 

A generation blessed with a great personality in such dangerous times is to be envied. In the 
course of this war people have found all sorts of causes that might bring victory. Some 
thought of greater economic and military resources, or a higher population, or a better 
geographical position, or the famed bravery of soldiers or tough civilian morale. One pitted 
system against system and world view against world view, seeking whose chances of 
success were better. We believe, however, that victory will fall to the side with the better 
leadership, as it always has. Leadership is crucial. If it also has the better material resources 
at its command, no power in the world can keep victory from it. 

We have come through a winter whose hardness and length have no equal in human 
history. It posed challenges to our leaders, to the front and to the homeland that we only 
now realize. Later generations of historians will write the accounts of this most moving 
chapter of the great battle. No one among us can doubt the almost legendary heroism 



German soldiers demonstrated. If ever our people have shown that we are not only able 
along with our allies to assume the leading role on our continent, but that we have a 
historical right to do so, it was here. The German people proved its merit this past winter. A 
nation that survives such a test is destined for victory. 

How often in these last hard weeks and months the German people looked in spirit to the 
Fuhrer. Never has the whole nation felt so bound to him as in these hard times, which have 
spared no one. We felt as if we had to see him, be it only in a photograph, to gain the 
strength each needs to overcome the difficult daily tasks we all face. Each of us has felt 
obligated to him! Each word that he spoke to the nation was for every man woman and 
child, for every solder, worker and farmer an order! All were with him, without many words 
and without being told! The whole nation lived in the unspoken assurance that while we 
were dealing with our lesser or greater troubles, he was fighting his gigantic battle in the 
East. He planned until late into the night, weighing and risking, standing watch at his 
headquarters. From there his will flowed to the most distant part of the battle field, filling 
even the last soldier in the most embattled unit. 

The power of his personality is felt nowhere more powerfully than at the front. A soldier 
must feel led, else he cannot endure the daily risk of life. When does he need that more 
than in those hours when he must risk his life for that of the nation, far from his 
commander, following the leading of duty and conscience. This is where the value of a great 
and powerful personality is proven, that which as Goethe says is the highest blessing among 
mankind. The confidence that there is one who stand above all, who knows all and weighs 
all, who knows the sorrow and pain of his people even without daily contact, who feels each 
individual loss that touches a mother, a women, or children, yet still is able to summon the 
strength to advance the greater national life of his people — this confidence lets one endure 
all the sacrifices and burdens of the day more easily. 

Nothing is harder than to accept the responsibility for the future of a great nation. It 
requires not only courage, the readiness to risk all, bravery of soul and steadfastness of the 
heart, but above all renunciation. From this renunciation grows the historical personality 
able to endure the lonely heights at which the sole duty is to serve the cause. 

This is how the German people saw the Fuhrer in the past winter. Surrounded by his aides, 
politicians and generals, surrounded by the love of countless millions of people, and yet in 
the end relying on himself, carrying the heavy burden of responsibility on his shoulders 
alone, fighting for the life and fate of his people. No matter how high we may climb, 
whatever the burdens we may carry, each of us has at least one who is still above him, on 
whom we may rely, whom we may obey, because he leads and orders, because he takes the 
heaviest weight from us when it grows too great for us, who fills us with new strength when 
we lose courage, begin to doubt, or tire. He reminds us of the great lessons of our time, of 
our world view, and gives us new life. Whether we have the great fortune who work in his 
vicinity or even with him personally, or whether we are called to fight for him as unknown 



soldiers, workers or farmers, we all feel a strength that supports and sustains us. We feel 
ourselves safe in the protection of a man who has changed our century. We need only 
follow. His task is to show the way. He stands alone, waging a titanic battle with fate for the 
life of our people. 

On the eve of his 53rd birthday, the whole nation gathers around the loudspeaker. It is far 
more than a festive event. It confirms what all Germans sense and feel, indeed more deeply 
and with greater obligation than ever before. In some sense it is a renewal of our loyalty and 
faith, proven already a million-fold through deeds, through uncounted sacrifices, at the risk 
of body and life, in a multitude of bitter deaths. It does not need words. 

If ever the German people has felt united in thought and will, then it is in this: to serve him 
and to obey his commands. The sounds of heroic and titanic music streaming from every 
German heart raises our confession to a solemn and holy height. When we finish our 
celebration, the voices of men and the sounds of instruments will join in the great 
conclusion to the Ninth Symphony. As the powerful Ode to Joy sounds and a sense of the 
greatness and scope of these times reaches even to the most remote German hut, as its 
sounds reach to distant countries where German forces stand watch, each of us, man or 
woman, child or soldier, farmer or worker or civil servant will know both the seriousness of 
the hour and the joy of being a witness and a participant in this great historical epoch of our 
people. 

We call the eternal power that rules over us the Almighty or God or Fate or the Good 
Father, he who as the Ninth Symphony says, lives beyond the stars. We ask the Almighty to 
preserve the Fuhrer, to give him strength and blessing, to favor his work, to increase our 
faith, to make our hearts steadfast and our souls strong, to give our people victory after its 
battles and sacrifices, to bring the times to fulfillment. 

There is no greater good fortune on earth than to serve a brilliant leader, to do his work. 
May we do that each day. The difficulty of our day is also its greatness. We would change 
places with on one. 

In gratitude and loyalty, we send the Fuhrer our greetings. An unbreakable band unites the 
front and the homeland. Germans throughout the world are united in the fervent wish that 
we bring each year on the eve of his birthday: 

May he remain to us what he was and is: 


Our Hitler! 




Our Hitler 

Goebbels' 1943 Speech on Hitler's 54 th Birthday 


The source: The German text of the speech is available in any German newspaper of 20 April 1943. 




The German people celebrate the Fuhrer's birthday this year in a particularly somber 
manner. This fourth year of the war has been the hardest yet, and an escape from its 
burdens and sorrows, or its end, is nowhere in sight. Its enormous political and military 
events span all five continents. Wherever one looks, peoples and nations are affected by its 
pains and sacrifices. Hardly a nation that has been spared the grave political and economic 
impacts of this vast military drama. 

Here and there critics of weak nerve and character, usually from those nations least 
impacted by the war, question whether human culture and civilization will be able to survive 
the war at all, and make worried calculations as to what part of humanity's proud 
inheritance will remain once the war is over. 

In the midst of the trials and burdens of the moment, it is all too easy to forget that this war, 
in contrast to those of the past, has a thoroughly national or racist character. That is why 
both sides fight with such bitter determination. The participant peoples know that this time 
it is not a matter of a more or less significant change in national boundaries, but rather a 
matter of national survival. 

A small event has had world-wide effects. But it would be false to see the real cause in that 
event. Back then our opponents had a thousand chances to meet our just demands, without 
in the least harming their own power, image, or prestige. The enemy did not want it that 
way. They wanted war, because as the English prime minister said as early as 1936, 
Germany had become too strong. 

Now and again we must remind ourselves to look back on the start of this war to 
understand its progress to the present state. A hypocritical enemy propaganda is constantly 
at work to conceal the war's true causes, to make people forget the liberal-democratic 
phrases of yesterday and accept the seductive ones of today, to make the guilty seem 
innocent and the innocent seem the cause of this great misfortune. 

We need only to recall the Fuhrer's many unfortunately unsuccessful attempts to prevent 
this war by limiting armaments to a rational level. He made every conceivable effort to 
prevent the clash of nations that he foresaw. And how often he has tried to end this war at 
the earliest possible moment. 

It was all in vain. The wicked forces that wanted this war cynically and frivolously desired, 
and still desire, all out war. What are the misery and misfortune of the world's peoples, 
their own included, to them? They want only their personal enrichment and unlimited 
power over all the nations and continents. They did not come from the people, as we did. 
They therefore will never understand the real needs of their people. 

Their brutal cynicism, the result of their alien, indeed their perfidious attitudes, causes them 
to passionately hate the National Socialist people's movement and the National Socialist 
German people and nation, and above all the Fuhrer himself. They see him as a newcomer 



to the business of leadership, which to them always means the betrayal of the people under 
the rule of money. 

Just as the enemy's hated world is personified for us by certain men, so, too, certain men 
personify the world we love and defend. By the nature of such an enormous war, he who 
leads it gives it its mark. And not only that. Just as he feels its good fortune and successes 
with double or triple depth, so too he feels two or three times as deeply the misfortunes of 
grim fate. Naive people may imagine that leadership in times of peace is easy and pleasant, 
but even they sense that in war, with the heavy responsibilities it brings, those at the 
bottom who need only follow orders have it much easier than those at the top who must 
give the orders. They are the Atlases who bear the world on their shoulders. 

Every great figure in history has at times been filled with the intoxicating feeling of holding, 
like God, the fate of the nations in his hands. Much more common, however, are long hours 
of bitter and passionate struggles for historical responsibility, of silent and desperate battles 
with forces that sometimes seem superhuman, of struggles against an unjust and hard fate 
which sometimes brings to ruin carefully made plans and destroys hopes that once seemed 
near. 

It is easy to speak and write about the beginning or the end of military crises. Only he is in 
the position to judge who has himself faced a crisis with only the strength of his own strong 
heart. Long days and long nights over weeks and months leave their unmistakable marks on 
his face. The sorrow and pain of individual people pile up around him as a mountain of 
sorrows and pain of the entire people. 

While the normal individual must master only his own fate, however difficult it may be, the 
Fuhrer bears the fate of the entire nation. During critical moments, millions of eyes look 
toward him. They gain consolation and hope from his face, from the firmness of his manner, 
from the certainty of his gestures, from the confidence of his appearance. 

People often say that the Fuhrer is the image of the German people. That is true in a way 
deeper than we often think. If one could watch the face of our nation change during this 
war, we would see the same transformation that we see with serious pride in the face of the 
Fuhrer. The lines, the hardness, the decisiveness, but also the deep passion for the people 
and, in a broader sense for a humanity forced into so much bitter difficulty against his will 
and plans, are unmistakable. 

How cynical in contrast are the stupid and frivolous grins of the current leader of Britain 
during his public appearances. One hardly has to ask which of these two enjoys war, and 
who therefore wanted and provoked it. The face of the guilty one betrays him. 

Despite all their shouting, our enemies have not been able to weaken the magic force of the 
Fuhrer's personality. It grows in power every day. In a time like ours, so short of great men, 
the presence of such a man on our side amazes even our enemies. 



It is clear why Anglo-Saxon agitators spread their lies and slanders about the Fuhrer and his 
work. They realize that his programs and aims are reaching the whole world, even their own 
nations. A nation has no greater possession than such a powerful, timeless personality who 
casts his spell on both friend and foe. 

Even some in Germany may complain that the Fuhrer is totally absorbed in his work during 
the war, though it is the decisive factor in all that is happening. His behavior is in eloquent 
contrast to that of his counterparts with the enemy, who never miss an opportunity to stand 
in the spotlight. They apparently need that, perhaps because they sense that their lives and 
work will not last all that long. 

Men of real historical stature are above such behavior. They do not draw their strength 
from the changing applause of publicity, but rather from their historical mission which 
fulfills a higher law. We know of no great historical achievement that did not involve the 
hardest blows of fate. Indeed, the hardness and bitterness of the tests demonstrates their 
true worth. 

When we look back on the past two fearful winters when the Fuhrer stood at the head of 
the army to meet and overcome an almost unconquerable fate, we remember Prussian- 
German history. Fie and we do not need to shy away from the comparison. The German 
people, betrayed by its entirely cowardly leadership in the late fall of 1918, became weak, 
and the hardest fate fell upon it. In the past two winters, however, the Fuhrer and his 
people have proven that they are prepared to overcome historical failures and to pay the 
price of a great victory. 

It is not easy for me, in his fourth birthday of the war, to portray the personality of the 
Fuhrer in its proper relationship to the sweeping events we are witnessing. Fie himself is 
entirely absorbed in his work, the end of which he foresees. Though we may sometimes 
regret his intense commitment, his modest style and nature bring him even closer to our 
hearts. In the great, breathtaking victorious phase of the war, we admired and honored him. 
Today we have learned to love him from the depths of our hearts as we have seen him 
overcome with bitter determination the hard and painful blows of fate. What a consolation 
it is for a nation to have as its leader a man who embodies for all an unshakable confidence 
in victory! Fie shows no trace of the chattering that our enemies love so much, but rather 
we see only a realism driven by deep fanaticism. 

Often in the course of this war people have praised the technical weapons and claimed that 
the final victory would be determined by the amount and quality of material. We do not 
want to underestimate their importance. Even more important, however, is the spiritual 
readiness of a warring nation to bear all, even the worst, rather than to bow to the strength 
of the enemy. The Fuhrer embodies this attitude for us. Before he gave his all to the cause 
of peace; now he gives it all to the cause of war. 



He did not want war, and did everything in his power to prevent it. Now that it has been 
forced upon him, he stands at the head of his people to wage it with every means. How 
often in the history of our movement have we seen him avoid a conflict that he thought 
unnecessary or harmful, but once it became unavoidable he fought to victory, whatever the 
obstacles. So it is today. 

We gather on the evening before his 54th birthday, according to our custom. We do so as a 
united and determined nation, bring him greetings of honor, thankfulness, and every 
possible good wish for his person and for his historic mission. We do it this year with 
particular confidence. 

The danger that surrounds us has not weakened us, but rather made us fully alert. When a 
people must take the greatest risks to ensure its survival, it is well advised to banish the 
devils of doubt and discord so as to concentrate completely on its historical mission. It is not 
possible to make this clear in all its details to every citizen. It must therefore find expression 
in the will and the orders of the Fuhrer. 

Confidence is the best moral weapon of war. When it begins to fail, the beginning of the end 
has arrived. No matter where we look, we see no cause for such concern. It exists only in the 
propaganda dreams of our enemy. The more hopes they put in the moral weakness of the 
German people, the greater will be their disappointment. 

The fact that we do not speak of Germany's confidence every day is no reason to believe 
that it is absent. One usually does not need to talk about the obvious. If anything has 
become obvious to we Germans, it is the loyalty and absolute subordination of all at the 
front and at home to the man who embodies for us not only the German present, but also 
our expectations for Germany's future. 

I say this in the name of the entire German people, the spokesman of whom I now feel 
myself more than ever to be. I say it in the name of millions of soldiers in every branch of 
the armed forces who are fulfilling their hard duty at the front, in the name of millions of 
workers, farmers and artists, of millions of women, who bear the difficulties of the war with 
patience and bravery, and in the name of the German youth, who bear his name with pride. 

As a nation of 90 million, we lay before him our faith. We believe in a German victory 
because we believe in him. Our good wishes for him rise from the deepest depths of our 
heart. God grant him health and strength and his grace. Loyally and faithfully we want to 
follow him, wherever he may lead. He is our faith and our proud hope. We will walk firmly 
into the future his hand points toward. 

A people that calls such a leader its own, that follows him with such unconditional loyalty, is 
destined for greatness. It need only desire that greatness. 



We, the Fuhrer's old fighting comrades gather around him now as always in the decisive 
moments of our struggle. We belong to him. We were the first he called. How often we 
walked with him through trials and dangers. At the end of the way was always the shining 
goal. 

So it is today. We never want to lose sight of it. With our gaze fixed on the goal we will fight 
and work on. We are the example of faith, of bravery, of unchanging conviction. We are the 
old guard of the party that never wavers. 

As the first soldiers of our people, our wish for the Fuhrer on his birthday is the same one 
that has always moved our hearts. May he remain in the future what he is today and always 
will be: 

Our Hitler! 




Our Hitler 

Goebbels' 1944 Speech on Hitler's 55 th Birthday 


The source: The German text can be found in any German paper dated 20 April 1944. 




German citizens! 


Not only fortune, but also reputation is always shifting during a war between great men and 
nations. It is therefore difficult, perhaps even impossible, to determine the political and 
military importance of individual events in the midst of war. What yesterday seemed a 
brilliant move can within several weeks or months prove a major mistake, and that which 
seemed short-sighted and mistaken can later become a decision of deep wisdom. Only 
when a war is over, and usually some time after that, once its lasting results have become 
clear to all, is it possible to objectively weigh and evaluate its individual events. 

That was true of every past war, and presumably of this one as well. The war can be 
evaluated only as a whole. Beside the events of the moment, a war has larger historical 
significance. Only a trained and practiced eye can understand that larger significance during 
the war itself. For example, consider the vast differences in Frederick the Great's reputation 
during the Seven Year War, particularly from 1760 to 1763. His personal reputation and that 
of his work during his day was influenced by partisan considerations, but today we evaluate 
him historically, that is, objectively and justly. His individual actions and decisions were 
evaluated in various ways. Given the circumstances of the time, some seemed to lead to 
victory, others to defeat. Even those in his entourage could not properly evaluate them. 

A genius acts from instinct, sometimes consciously but often unconsciously, which raises his 
actions out of the ordinary sphere. Great, timeless personalities have to fulfill not only the 
tasks of the moment, but larger historical missions as well. Unfortunately, the two do not 
always agree. A war of vast historical significance brings with it the heaviest sacrifices and 
burdens. The less these problems are seen by people in their broader historical significance, 
the likelier the struggling generation will be misunderstand them, or even to think them 
avoidable. 

This explains why those at the time and posterity evaluate historical events differently. We 
can think of numerous historical examples. We can hardly understand today why the 
contemporaries of Alexander the Great or Caesar or Frederick the Great did not understand 
their true significance. To us there are no secrets any more. 

It is somewhat surprising that those who may get the most excited about historical 
misunderstandingss are also the ones who are least able to make the proper historical 
judgment regarding their own day. They are people who have the ability to evaluate the 
events and developments of earlier eras, but who lack the capacity to judge the historical 
happenings of their own era in a way that posterity will respect. 

Which of the events of the present war will be significant in a hundred years? It is difficult to 
judge individual events, but even today one can with some assurance predict the factors 
that will influence posterity's evaluation of this great drama of the European peoples. It is 
not a matter of things whose traces, even by our present understanding, will have vanished 



several years after the war is over. For example, few signs of the damage to Germany's cities 
caused by enemy air terror are likely to remain ten years after peace comes. What is likely 
to be recalled are the attitudes and behavior of those who withstood the terror. 

Whether Europe becomes Bolshevist or whether we succeed in rescuing our continent and 
its people from this deadly threat will influence the future of many, perhaps all, future 
generations. This is the decisive historical significance of this war. The man who in the end 
frees our continent from its spiritual and military difficulties will be at the conclusion of the 
vast struggle, from the standpoint of history, the man of the war. 

That does not change the fact that his opponents have done and are doing everything in 
their power to hinder the historical mission of the man who stands above his times. They 
are using their material superiority in population and weapons in an attempt to bring his 
work to naught. But all this will only increase the honor history will give him and add 
immortal fame to his name. Once the foul mist of vile and despicable wartime polemics has 
lifted, he will suddenly appear as the great historical figure of this enormous international 
drama, both to the living and even more to the coming generations. 

And what of his opponents, who were ready and willing to throw the two thousand year 
history and civilization of our continent into chaos? They will be of interest only as the dark 
background to the greatness and foresight of this shining figure. 

Was not this also true when we were fighting for power? How often did the Fuhrer battle 
long-forgotten political parties when rescuing the Fatherland? How often did cowardly 
journalists attempt to persuade us that they were not only his equal, but his political 
superiors! Today even their names are forgotten. All that remains is the historical 
personality, one who stands above his times, and who despite all the challenges that 
sometimes seemed insurmountable found the solution to the German dilemma and saved 
the nation. 

Victory determined everything then, as it will today. The end of this war will bring with it 
either the end of European history and any historical meaning from our point of view, or our 
victory will give our continent a chance for a new beginning. The fame belongs alone to the 
man who saved Europe from its most terrible danger, who despite the turns of triumph and 
defeat came through at the end and thereby saved not only his own nation, but the 
continent. This conclusion springs not from any desire for fame or national superiority, 
which is granted nonetheless by the sense of justice of the best in every nation who 
understand the graveness of the hour. 

I am sure that I speak to the heart not only of every old National Socialist, but to that of 
every German. We all feel part of a historic mission. For us, the goal of the war is not only 
clear, it is also unalterable and unchangeable. The longer the war lasts, the more fanatically 
and committedly we pursue it. To seek the goal means to follow the Fuhrer, to do his work 



with loyalty and devotion, to turn in the midst of the storms of the war every personal 
thought and deed toward him. We are happy to have him on our side, for he incorporates 
not only our firm faith in victory, but also the constancy of our national leadership, the 
character of our war outlook, and the integrity of our war aims. 

We only need to look over our borders to foreign and enemy peoples to see what he means 
to the nation and what he is to us all. It is easy and comfortable during times of great 
national successes, especially when they have been achieved without great cost of blood 
and sacrifice, to join the crowds of those shouting praises for the accomplishments of the 
national leadership, which everyone can see. It is harder to stay loyal to the cause in the 
middle of a long struggle for a nation's very existence. Such a struggle demands the full 
energy of those who are not spared periods of sleeplessness or even occasional nervous 
exhaustion. But the harder and more bitter the circumstances, the more their deeper 
historical significance is revealed. 

We old National Socialists have never seen the Fuhrer in a different role. Our greatest honor 
was always to stand by him in such hours, to protect his rear as he stepped forward into still 
unknown and dangerous territory, to give him the certainly that he was never alone. The 
National Socialist movement, the core of our present national community, developed in 
circumstances like these. The virtues of our movement, which overcame all barriers and 
obstacles during the hard years of the struggle for power, have become during this war the 
virtues of our fighting people, tested a million-fold by trial and danger: Our loyalty to 
ourselves finds its most visible but also its deepest expression in our loyalty to the Fuhrer. 

When has there ever been such a fruitful relationship between a people and its leader, and 
vice versa? 

People of other countries see their leaders as the representatives of class interests, of 
parliamentary majorities more or less cleverly constructed, as necessary evils in the absence 
of a better alternative, or as the result of blind mass terror that stands upon millions of 
corpses. 

For us, the Fuhrer is the spokesman and the agent of the will of the whole nation. Despite all 
the prophecies of the enemy, there has not been a single case, from the beginning of the 
war until today, in which a soldier broke his oath to the Fuhrer or in which a worker in the 
home front renounced his loyalty to the Fuhrer by ceasing his labors. 

We know that the enemy is unable to understand this, and attributes it to force or violence. 
But what we as a people and leadership have accomplished cannot be brought about by 
such methods. Other forces must be at work, forces of loyalty and community that cannot 
be understood by people who are unable to perceive them. That which we sowed before 
the war begun has grown to fruition: the rich harvest of solidarity between the leadership 
and the whole people. 



Permit me the freedom in this speech to say some things to the entire German people, at 
home and at the front, about the Fuhrer personally. I have had the good fortune to be at his 
side during the period of struggle for power and during this great war, to be present at 
many, indeed most, of the particularly happy and critical hours. I never saw him doubt or 
waver. He always followed the call of his blood, and where it called he went, regardless of 
the difficulties. He stands above all other statesmen of our time in that he recognized 
danger at the proper time and took courageous action. The German people thanks him for 
that today, as will one day all of civilized humanity. 

If there is a divine gift to leading peoples and nations which allows great historical leaders to 
perceive instinctively the necessary and right, and to combine this knowledge with an 
unerring sense of what needs to be done at the moment, he is that blessed man. That the 
parliamentary mayflies on the other side fail to realize this is more a proof of his abilities 
than of their absence. Even the best leadership sometimes suffers defeats and reverses. 
They are in fact the test that proves its merits. For all people and nations, war is a hard and 
pitiless force that separates the strong from the weak and the industrious from the lazy. 

Has the Reich and its leadership ever failed the test? Have we ever stood confused and 
desperate before an approaching fate, unsure of what to do? We have always stood ready. 
A man always stood at the head of our people who was a bright and shining example. Even 
under the hardest blows he stood firm and the confidence of his heart turned the greatest 
misfortunes to our advantage. 

We don't speak about it often, but we all know it. Never has the German people looked with 
such faith toward its Fuhrer as in the days and hours when it knew the full gravity of the 
situation. It did not lose heart, but rather affirmed even more firmly and strongly its goals. 

When we looked back on November 1918, we could not rid ourselves of the bitter feeling 
that it was in part our own responsibility. But this time we have earned victory, and the 
goddess of history will not withhold it from us. The price of our coming victory is our loyalty. 
The war is not an occasion for loose talk and empty promises. It is a time to realize what we 
have so often said in the past. It depends on our oath to the flag and on the silent oath in 
our hearts. 

Wherever in Europe our soldiers stand in battle or on watch, wherever Germans work, 
wherever German farmers sow and harvest, wherever inventors, artists, and scholars 
ponder with crinkled brow the future of the Reich, wherever mothers pray for victory and 
children trust in it with quiet confidence, in distant nations and continents, on every ocean, 
wherever Germans breathe, the warmest wishes from the truest hearts for the Fuhrer rise 
to the heavens. 



The fact that he stands at the head of our nation is for us all the surest sign of coming 
victory. Never was he so near to us as in the moment of danger, never were we so bound to 
him as when we felt that he needed us as we needed him. 

Through this we have dashed the great hopes of our enemy. They hoped that we would do 
what they could not. It was the only way we could be defeated. We have done what is 
necessary for victory. 

I am happy to speak to the German people at this hour. We have affirmed in the past year 
our support and our confidence in the Fuhrer's work. On his birthday we want also to speak 
the words that come from the depths of our heart. We want to tell him what he is to us all, 
both in the trials of the moment and in the shining future. 

We all wish him health and strength and a blessed hand. He must know that he can always 
rely on his people. When trial and danger is before him, we will stand more firmly behind 
him. We believe in him and in his historical mission, and believe that in the end he will be 
crowned with victory. He will be the man of the century, not his opponents. He gave this 
century its meaning, its content, its goal. Affirming the meaning and understanding the 
content, we will reach the goal. He points the way. He commands, we follow. We, his old 
and tested comrades, march in the first row behind him. We are tested by danger, steeled 
by misfortune, hardened by storm and trial, but also crowned with the first victories and 
successes of the coming new world. We are at the head of a countless multitude who carry 
and defend the future of the Reich. 

We defend the cause of the nation, which has found its visible form in the Fuhrer. 

In this battle between life and death, he is and will remain for us what he always was: 


Our Hitler! 




Our Hitler 

Goebbels' 1945 Speech on Hitler's 56 th Birthday 


The source: This was printed in most German newspapers on 20 April 1945. 




German citizens! 


At the moment of the war when — so it seems — all forces of hate and destruction have 
been gathered once again, perhaps for the final time, in the west, the east, the southeast 
and the south, seeking to break through our front and give the death blow to the Reich, I 
once again speak to the German people on the eve of 20 April about the Fuhrer, just as I 
have done every year since 1933. That has happened at good and bad times in the past. But 
never before did things stand on such a knife's edge, never before did the German people 
have to defend their very lives under such enormous danger, never before did the Reich 
have to draw on its last strength to protect its threatened self. 

Times such as these are rare in history. They are unique and unparalleled for the fighting 
generation that must survive them. Historical events of similar nature and extent fade in our 
memory under the pain that we bear, under the sorrows that almost overwhelm us, under 
tortured questions about our own future and that of our brave, sorely-tested people... 

This is not the time to speak of the Fuhrer's birthday in the usual way or to present him with 
the usual best wishes. More must be said today, and by one who was won the right both 
from the Fuhrer and the people. I have been at the Fuhrer's side for more than twenty 
years. I have seen his rise and that of his movement from the smallest and most improbable 
beginnings up to the seizure of power, and gave my best efforts to them as well. I have 
shared joy and sorrow with the Fuhrer, from unprecedented historic victories to the terrible 
setbacks in the remarkable years from 1939 until now. I stand beside him today as fate 
challenges him and his people with its last, most severe test. I am confident that fate will 
give him and his people the laurel wreath of victory. The fact that Germany yet lives, that 
Europe and the civilized world have not yet fallen into the dark abyss that looms before us, 
is thanks to him alone. 

He will be the man of this century — who was sure of himself despite terrible pain and 
suffering — who showed the way to victory. He is the only one who remained true to 
himself, who did not cheaply sell his faith and his ideals, who always and without doubt 
followed his straight path toward his goal. That goal may today be hidden behind the piles 
of rubble that our hate-filled enemies have wrought across our once-proud continent, but 
which will once again shine before our burning eyes once the rubble has been cleared. 

Times like those we experience today demand more of a leader than insight, wisdom and 
drive. They demand a toughness and endurance, a steadfastness of heart and soul, that 
appear only rarely in history, but that, when they do appear, produce the most admirable 
achievements of human genius. Burkhardt said in his "Observations on World History": "The 
fates of people and of states, of entire civilizations, can depend on whether an extraordinary 
person can bring forth the proper strength of soul and action. Normal minds and spirits, no 
matter how numerous, cannot replace such a person." 



Who can deny that only the Fuhrer has the right to feel these words apply to him and his 
deeds in our and many coming generations? What can enemy statesmen say in response? 
They have nothing but superior numbers, their stupid and insane destructiveness and their 
diabolical lust for annihilation, behind which lurk the chaos of the collapse of civilized 
humanity. What has come of their loud and emotional theses of happiness, what of their 
Atlantic Charter and their Four Freedoms? Only hunger, misery, pestilence and mass death. 
A whole raped part of the earth cries out against them. Once flourishing cities and villages in 
every nation of Europe have been transformed into fields of craters, and hundreds of 
thousands, even millions of women and children in the north, east and southeast of the 
continent sigh and weep under the raging scourge of Bolshevism. 

The most shining culture the earth has ever seen sinks in ruins and leaves only memories of 
the greatness of an age destroyed by Satanic powers. The peoples are shaken by the most 
severe economic and social crises, which are but foretastes of the terrible events to come. 
Our enemies claim that the Fuhrer's soldiers marched as conquerors through the lands of 
Europe — but wherever they came, they brought prosperity and happiness, peace, order, 
reliable conditions, a plenitude of work, and therefore a decent life. Our enemies claim their 
soldiers came to the same lands as liberators — but wherever they come there is poverty 
and misery, chaos, devastation and destruction, unemployment, hunger and mass death. 
And what remains of their so-called freedom is a life that no one would dare call decent 
even in the darkest corners of Africa. 

Flere is a clear broad outline of a program of construction that has proved itself useful, 
humane and beneficial, positive and forward-looking, in its own as well as in all the other 
lands of Europe. It stands against the fantasies of Jewish-Plutocratic-Bolshevist destruction. 
Flere stands a man, sure of himself, having a clear and firm will, against the unnatural 
coalition of enemy statesmen who are only the lackeys and tools of this world conspiracy. 
Europe once had the choice between these two. It chose concealed anarchy, and must 
today pay for its mistake with million-fold agony. It will not have much time any more to 
choose its fate a second time. It is a matter of life or death I 

A British newspaper wrote a few days ago that the result of the insane policies of the enemy 
powers would surely be a revolution of the European peoples against the Anglo-American 
plutocracy, and that FHitler was the man who was hindered by the same plutocracy through 
an unholy alliance with Asiatic Bolshevism as he began to bring Europe political and 
economic happiness. That is how it is, and nothing can whitewash our plutocratic enemies 
of their crimes. 

Opposing this apparently all-powerful coalition of destructive satanic forces brings with it 
tests and burdens of superhuman nature, but that is not dishonorable — the opposite in 
fact! To bravely accept a battle that is unavoidable and inescapable, to wage it in the name 
of divine providence, to have confidence in it and its eventual blessing, to stand before fate 
with a pure conscience and clean hands, to bear all suffering and every test, never even 



thinking of being untrue to one's historic mission, never wavering even in the most difficult 
hours of the final battle — that is not only manly, it is also German in the best sense of the 
word! Would our people not accept this task and not fight for it as if it were the word of 
god, it would not deserve to live any longer, and would lose any possibility of further life. 

What we experience today is the last act of a powerful drama that began on 1 August 1914 
and which we Germans gave up on on 9 November 1918 just before the end. That is why we 
had to begin again on 1 September 1939. What we hoped to spare ourselves in November 
1918 we have paid for two- or threefold today. There is no escape — unless the German 
people surrenders any kind of decent human life and is ready to forever live in a way that 
would shame even the most primitive African tribes. 

If it is manly and German as Fuhrer of a great and brave people to depend wholly on oneself 
in this struggle, relying on one's own own strength and certainty as well as the help of god in 
the face of an enemy who threatens with overwhelming numbers, to fight rather than to 
capitulate, then it is just as manly and German for a people to follow such a Fuhrer, 
unconditionally and loyally, without excuse or reservation, to shake off all feelings of 
weakness and uncertainty, to trust in the good star that is above him and us all. This is all 
the more true when that star at times is covered by a black cloud. Misfortune must not 
make us cowardly, but rather resistant, never giving a mocking watching world the 
appearance of wavering. Rather than hoisting the white flag of surrender that the enemy 
expects, raise the old swastika banner of a fanatic and wild resistance, renewing the oath 
that we swore so often in the happy and safe days of peace, thanking god again and again 
that he gave us a true leader for these terrible times, feeling bound in our hearts to his 
sorrows and trials, thus showing the enemy world that they can wound but not kill us, that 
they can beat us bloody but not force us down, torture us, but not demoralize us! 

Is there a single German who disagrees? After six years of battle, could our people debase 
itself so low as to forget honor and duty, surrendering in the turmoil of the moment its holy 
and inalienable right to its great coming life for a pot of soup? Who would dare suggest 
that? Who holds us in such contempt that he believes that now, just as we stand before the 
final and decisive round of the war, we would be untrue to all our sworn ideals, that we 
would throw all our hopes for the future of our Reich overboard, giving up in the midst of 
the confusion of misfortune that has overcome us on ourselves, our land and people and 
the lives of our children and children's children? 

The world speaks of loyalty as a German virtue. Flow could our people have withstood the 
tests of this war without it, and how could it survive the war's coming end without it? For it 
is ending! The war is nearing its end. The insanity that the enemy powers of unleashed on 
humanity has gone beyond all bounds. The whole world feels only shame and disgust. The 
perverse coalition between plutocracy and bolshevism is collapsing! Fate has taken the head 
of the enemy conspiracy [U.S. President Roosevelt had died the week before]. It is the same 
fate that the Fuhrer escaped on 20 July 1944 [the date of an assassination attempt on 



Hitler], amidst the dead, the wounded and the ruins, so that he could finish his work — 
through pain and trials it is true, but nonetheless as providence ordained. 

Once more the armies of the enemy powers storm against our defensive fronts. Behind 
them is the slavering force of International Jewry that wants no peace until it has reached its 
satanic goal of world destruction. But its hopes are in vain! As he has done so often before, 
god will throw Lucifer back into the abyss even as he stands before the gates of power over 
all the peoples. A man of truly timeless greatness, of unique courage, of a steadfastness that 
elevates the hearts of some and shakes those of others, will be his tool. Who will maintain 
that this man can be found in the leadership of Bolshevism or plutocracy? No, the German 
people bore him. It chose him, it by free election made him Fuhrer. It knows his works of 
peace and now wants to bear and fight the war that was forced upon him until its successful 
end. 

Within a few years after the war, Germany will flourish as never before. Its ruined 
landscapes and provinces will be filled with new, more beautiful cities and villages in which 
happy people dwell. All of Europe will share in this prosperity. We will again be friends of all 
peoples of good will, and will work together with them to repair the grave wounds that scar 
the face of our noble continent. Our daily bread will grow on rich fields of grain, stilling the 
hunger of the millions who today suffer and starve. There will be jobs in plenitude, the 
deepest source of human happiness, from which will come blessing and strength for all. 
Chaos will vanish. The underworld will not rule this part of the world, but rather order, 
peace, and prosperity. 

That was always our goal! It is our goal today. If the enemy powers had their way, humanity 
would drown in a sea of blood and tears. War would follow war and revolution would follow 
revolution, finally destroying the last remnants of a world that was once beautiful and 
lovely, and that will be so again. 

But if we achieve our goals, the project of social construction begun in Germany in 1933 and 
was rudely interrupted in 1939 will be taken up again with renewed strength. Other peoples 
will join in — not because we force them to, but rather of their own free will — because 
there is no other way out of the world crisis. Who could show the way save the Fuhrer! His 
work is the work of order. His enemies have only a devil's work of anarchy and devastation 
to set against his work. 

German history is not rich in great statesmen. But where one has appeared, he mostly had 
something to say and give not only to his own people, but to the world. What would there 
be European about Europe had not German kaisers and kings, counts and generals and their 
armies ever again withstood the onslaughts from the east! Usually only a disunited 
continent stood behind them that either did not understood or even fell upon Germany in 
the midst of its saving work for Europe. Why should it be any different today? At the present 
state of things, which the war is just before, or perhaps even in the midst of, a peripeteia, it 



is difficult to understand this great battle between peoples. One thing, however, can no 
longer be disputed: If there had been no Adolf Hitler, if Germany had been led by a 
government like those in Finland, Bulgaria or Rumania, it would long since have become the 
prey of Bolshevism. Lenin once said the path to world revolution leads though Poland and 
the Reich. Poland is already in the possession of the Kremlin, despite all the attempts of the 
Anglo-Americans to conceal it. If Germany had followed, or would follow, what would 
become of the rest of our continent? 

To ask the question is to answer it. The Soviets would probably already be at the Atlantic 
coast, and England sooner or later would receive its just reward for its betrayal of Europe 
that finds its most wretched expression in its marriage with Bolshevism. In the United States 
too, one would soon think differently of the dreadful world phenomenon that a Jewish press 
entirely and fully conceals from the American public. 

If the world still lives, and not only our world but the rest of it as well, whom has it to thank 
other than the Fuhrer? It may defame and slander him today, persecuting him with its base 
hatred, but it will have to revise this standpoint or bitterly regret it! He is the core of 
resistance to the collapse of the world. He is Germany's bravest heart and our people's most 
passionate will. I permit myself to make a judgment that must be made today: If the nation 
still breaths, if it still has the chance of victory, if there is still an escape from the deadly 
danger it faces — it is thanks to him. He is steadfastness itself. I have never seen him fail or 
falter, or weaken or tire. He will go his way to the end, and there awaits not the end of his 
people, but rather a new and happy beginning to an era in which Germandom will flourish 
as never before. 

Listen, Germans! Millions of people look to this man from every land on the earth, still 
doubting and questioning whether he knows the way out of the great misfortune that has 
befallen the world. He will show the peoples that way, but we look to him full of hope and 
with a deep, unshakable faith. We stand behind him with fortitude and courage: soldier and 
civilian, man, woman and child — a people determined to do all to defend its life and honor. 
He may look his enemies in the eye, for we promise him that he does not need to look 
behind him. We will not waver or weaken. We will never desert him, no matter how 
desperate and dangerous the hour. We stand with him, as he stands with us — in Germanic 
loyalty as we have sworn, as we shall fulfill. We do not need to tell him, for he knows and 
must know: Fuhrer command! — We will follow! We feel him in us and around us. God give 
him strength and health and preserve him from every danger. We will do the rest. 

Our misfortune has made us mature, but not robbed us of our character. Germany is still the 
land of loyalty. It will celebrate its greatest triumphs in the midst of danger. Never will 
history record that in these days a people deserted its Fuhrer or a Fuhrer deserted his 
people. And that is victory. We have often wished the Fuhrer in happy times our best on this 
evening. Today in the midst of suffering and danger, our greeting is much deeper and more 
profound. May he remain what he is to us and always was — Our Hitler!