The three viewpoints, which dominate our revolution, in no way contradict the interests of the rest of the world: First: prevention of the threatening communist revolt and building up a folk-state, which reconciles the various interests of classes and social strata and the preservation of the concept of property as the foundation of our culture. Second: solution of the most severe social problem through the return of the army of millions of our unfortunate unemployed to production. Third: reestablishment of a stable and authoritarian form of government, supported by the trust and will of the nation, will finally again make this great folk capable to negotiate with the world.
Speech of May 17, 1933 in Berlin
All attempts of our (then Marxist) governments to improve Germany’s situation in foreign affairs, I hence view as futile as long has the German folk has not domestically again been forged into a healthy, honorable community.
„Adolf Hitler’s Program“, Appeal for the election of July 31, 1932
It is...false to say that a folk shapes foreign policy; rather the folks regulate their relationships according to the strengths within them and according to the education for the use of these strengths.
Lecture of January 27, 1932 in Düsseldorf
It is in my view also false to say that Germany’s present life (before the National Socialist uprising) is only determined by foreign affairs viewpoints, that the primacy of foreign affairs today regulates our whole internal life. Certainly, a folk can get so far that foreign affairs conditions totally influence and determine its internal life. But one should not say that this condition is a natural one or one desired in advance. It is much more important that a folk creates the prerequisites for a change of this condition.
Lecture of January 27, 1932 in Düsseldorf
If I... consciously speak as a German National Socialist, then I wish to proclaim in the name of the national government and the whole national uprising that precisely we in this young Germany are filled with the deepest understanding for the same feelings and attitudes as well as for the founded life claims of other folks.
Speech of May 17, 1933 in Berlin
Precisely because we are nationalist-minded, we have respect for the national feeling of other folks. And our national pride does not mean: despise others, rather respect and love for our own folk!
Speech of August 1, 1923 in Munich
We cling in just as much boundless love to our folk as we wish with whole heart, from this love, an agreement with the other folks and, wherever it is possible for us, also try to reach it.
Speech of October 14, 1933 in Berlin
Not hatred toward other folks, rather love for the German nation!
Speech of October 24, 1933 in Berlin
This new idea obligates to just as great and fanatical devotion to the life and thus to the honor and freedom of the own folk as well as to respect for the honor and freedom of others. This idea can thus provide a substantially better basis for the striving for a genuine pacification of the world than the purely power-politically perceived and undertaken sorting of nations into victors and vanquished, into those with rights and those subjugated without rights.
Speech of January 30, 1934 in Berlin
In our opinion the times without the „League of Nations” have been far more honorable and humane. The others, however, claim conversely that we - have reached the highest time of culture.
Speech of April 13, 1923 in Munich
What we sign, we will keep, what we do not believe we can keep, we do not sign!
Speech of October 28, 1933 in Stuttgart
We want peace and agreement, nothing else! We want to reach out our hand to our former opponents, a line must be drawn again under the saddest period in world history.
Speech of November 10, 1933 in Berlin
But never has the defeated so honestly tried to help heal the wounds of his opponents as the German folk in the long years of the fulfillment of the diktat forced on it.
Speech of October 14, 1933 in Berlin
For fourteen years the German folk has tried along the path of a truly suicidal politics of fulfillment to reconcile irreconcilable enemies and to contribute its share to the establishment of a new European community of states. The results were extremely sad.
Speech of January 30, 1934 in Berlin
Germany has too many people in its area. It lies in the world’s interest not to withhold the required life possibilities from a great nation. The question of the allotment of colonial territories, regardless where, will, however, never become a question of war for us. We are of the conviction that we are just as able to administer and organize a colony as other folks. But we see in all these questions no problems at all, which somehow touch the world’s peace, since they are only to be solved along the path of negotiations.
Interview of October 18, 1933 in Berlin
The national government is ready to extend its hand for sincere agreement to any folk, which is willing to fundamentally close the sad past. The world’s need can only pass, if through stable political conditions the foundation is created and if the folks again gain trust among one another.
Speech of March 23, 1933 in Berlin
Whoever feels a whole folk in its entirety behind him, will be careful that he does not frivolously squander this blood, and he will constantly think of looking after the interests of the folk with the means of peace, of work and of culture.
Speech of February 26, 1934 in Munich
Whoever represents an entire folk, will thoroughly ponder the consequences, which a frivolously started conflict can bring!
Speech of February 26, 1934 in Munich
One should not think of me that I would be so crazy as to want a war.
Speech of November 10, 1933 in Berlin
I know exactly what war is. I have seen it with my own eyes, in great difference to many statesmen who did not experience it themselves. Certainly, I do not reject it as traitor, rather I reject it as a decent German, who was also decent as a soldier and who is the future as well is willing to be decent. I will not, on that account, surrender the life right of the German folk or German honor.
Speech of November 6, 1933 in Elbing
The meaning of our political fighting and struggling is... not the winning or even conquest of foreign folks, rather the preservation and security of our own folk.
Speech of October 2, 1933 in Hameln
If we today demand the ultimate from everybody, then only in order to again be able to give him and his child the highest thing: freedom and the respect of the rest of the world.
Speech on April 24, 1923 in Munich
We realized, that... a slave-folk... will never be a paradise, rather always and eternally only hell or colony.
Speech of April 12, 1922 in Munich
We do not want to subjugate any foreign folks, rather we want to stand up for our homeland, which we will not allow to be put down and scolded.
Speech of October 28, 1933 in Stuttgart
In that we cling to our own folkdom with boundless love and loyalty, we also respect the rights of other folks based on the same attitude and desire with from innermost heart to live with them in peace and friendship.
Speech of May 5, 1933 in Berlin
The German folk has a right to insist on the fulfillment of the treaty and hence demand equal rights. The German folk has no other wish than to live in peace and friendship with the other folks.
Speech of November 6, 1933 in Elbing
Toward the world...we want, measuring the sacrifice of the past war, to be upright friends of a peace, which should finally heal the wounds under which all suffer.
Speech of March 21, 1933 in Potsdam
Neither politically nor economically could the use of any kind of force produce a more favorable situation in Europe than exists today. Even with a decisive success of a new European solution by force, the end result would be an enlargement of the disruption of the European balance of power and so one way or another the seeds would be planted for later, new conflicts and new entanglements. New wars, new uncertainty and a new economic distress would be the result. The outbreak of such an insanity without end, however, must lead to the collapse of the present social and political order. A Europe sinking into communist chaos would conjure up a crisis of unforeseeable extent and of unknown duration.
Speech of May 17, 1933 in Berlin
The German government wishes to peacefully discuss all difficult issues with the nations. It knows that any military action in Europe, even if entirely successful, would, measured against the sacrifices, not stand in any relation to the gain.
Speech of May 17, 1933 in Berlin
It is my will to obtain close and upright connections between Germany and the foreign powers.
Address of September 12, 1934 in Berlin
As far as it is up to Germany, there will be no new war!
Interview of August 5, 1934 in Berlin
When another world believes it can dispute our folk’s love of peace, then nothing speaks for this real and genuine spirit of our folk more convincingly and forcibly than the relationship of the German folk’s possession of living space compared to the possessions of other nations. Seventy million people lived even before the war in a more than limited area. That they lived and how they lived, they really owe only to their abilities and their work!
Speech of May 1, 1934 in Berlin
For the next century it will not be necessary for the German folk to restore its military honor.
Speech of August 7, 1934 in Tannenberg
The German folk does not lust for war, quite the opposite, because it loves peace, it fights for its life right and stands up for the prerequisites of the existence of our 65 million folk. Germany and the German folk have no reason to wish for a war in order to restore the honor of the nation, the honor of its men and of its soldiers. Our goal is to make our folk happy again in that we secure its daily bread, a tremendous work, and the world should leave us in peace in the process!
Speech of October 22, 1933 in Kelheim
The fixed goal of our politics is: to make Germany a firm refuge of peace.
Address of September 9, 1934 in Berlin
The Reich government, however, will precisely for that reason use all means to stand up for the final elimination of the division of the earth's folks into two categories.
Speech of March 23, 1933 in Berlin
We want to have peace with all. But we also want that the others to finally draw the conclusions from this, and indeed very clear conclusions.
Speech of October 24, 1933 in Berlin
We do not want to allow ourselves to be treated like a second- class nation any longer.
Speech of October 24, 1933 in Berlin
Through the conscious denial of the real, moral and objective equal rights of Germany, the German folk and its governments were again and again most deeply humiliated.
Appeal of October 14, 1933
The disqualification of a great folk to a nation of second rank and second class was proclaimed at the moment when a federation of nations was supposed to be baptized. This treatment of Germany could as a result not lead to the world’s pacification. The thus considered necessary disarmament and making defenseless of the vanquished, an unprecedented event in the history of European nations, was even less suited to reduce the general dangers and conflicts, rather led only to the condition of eternal threats, demands and sanctions, which as a continuous unrest and uncertainty threatened to become the grave of the whole economy. If in the life of folks every consideration regarding the risk of certain actions is missing, unreasonableness will all too easily triumph over reason. The League of Nations, leastwise so far, has on such occasions been unable to provide any noticeable help to the weak, the unarmed.
Speech of May 17, 1933 in Berlin
Treaties, which were concluded for the pacification of the life of folks, only then have an inner meaning, if they proceed from real and upright equal rights. Precisely therein lies the chief reason for the discontent dominating the world for years.
Speech of May 17, 1933 in Berlin
Should we perhaps have less honor, because it was once possible for 26 states to defeat us?
Speech of October 30, 1933 in Frankfurt am Main
In this world very many wars have already been lost. If after each lost war in the past one took away forever from the unfortunate loser his honor and his equal rights, then the League of Nations would already today have to make do with nothing but unequal and this in the final analysis dishonored and inferior nations. For there is, after all, hardly a state or a nation, which did not once have the misfortune, even if it was in the right a thousandfold, to be defeated by a stronger opponent or a stronger coalition.
Interview of January 17, 1935 in Munich
The disqualification of a great folk cannot be historically perpetuated forever, rather it must one day come to an end. For how long does one believe to be able to commit such an injustice against a great nation? What does the advantage of the moment mean against the continuing development of the centuries? The German folk will remain just like the French.
Speech of May 17, 1933 in Berlin
We will never renounce those rights, which are inalienable for a great nation and could only be sold off by a small clique of petty politicians. These politicians, however, were mortal, and Germany is eternal!
Proclamation of September 5, 1934 in Nuremberg
The German government and the German folk...will under no circumstances let themselves be forced to any signature, which would mean the perpetuation of Germany’s disqualification. The attempt to influence that through threats against government and folk will not be able to make any impression. It is conceivable that one rapes Germany in violation of every right and in violation of every morality, but it is inconceivable and impossible that such an act could receive legal justification from us ourselves through a signature.
Speech of May 17, 1933 in Berlin
You can do what you want to do! But never will you bend us, never force us to accept a yoke! You will no longer be able to eliminate from our folk the call for equal rights!
Speech of May 1, 1933 in Berlin
We want to be peaceable, but under no circumstances without honor!
Interview in January 16, 1935 in Berchtesgaden
The German folk declares itself in this struggle for its equal rights and honor entirely identical with its government, ...both are most deeply filled with no other wish...than to help to end a human epoch of tragic erring, regrettable quarreling and fighting between those who - as inhabitants of the culturally most significant continent - in the future have a common mission to fulfill for all mankind.
Speech of October 14, 1933 in Berlin
One cannot in the long-run build a life community between nations, which do not have equal rights.
Speech of October 24, 1933 in Berlin
Germany demands equal rights. Nobody in the world has the right to deny these to a great nation, and nobody will have the strength to prevent them in the long-run.
Speech of January 30, 1934 in Berlin
Whether eighty million people in this world morally have equal rights or not, cannot, in the final analysis, be answered by anybody except at most the affected folk itself!
Interview of January 17, 1935 in Munich
Just as it was not possible for previous governments in Germany, by means of their external force, to break the psychology strength and the inner bond of National Socialists, so little can force from outside manage that either.
Speech of May 27, 1933 to the folk comrades in Danzig
I can... just repeat to the world one more time that no threat and no force will ever move the German folk to renounce those rights, which cannot be disputed for a sovereign nation. But I can also assure that this sovereign nation has no other wish than to happily employ the strength and the weight of its political, moral and economic assets not only for the healing of the wounds, which a past time inflicted on the human community, rather also in the service of the cooperation of those moral, cultured nations.
Speech of January 30, 1934 in Berlin
As unconditional as our love of peace is, as little as Germany wants a war, so fanatically will we stand up for German freedom and the honor of our folk. The world must know: the time of diktats is past!
Speech of June 18, 1934 in Gera
I quite openly state two affirmations: first, Germany for its part will never break the peace, and second, whoever seizes us, grabs thorns and needles. For just as we love peace, do we love freedom!
Interview of January 17, 1935 in Munich
Only the equal rights of folks alone can in the long-run form the basis of a real and true peace. In that we wage this struggle, we not only fight for ourselves, rather in the final analysis also for the community of folks.
Speech of October 30, 1933 in Frankfurt am Main
We wish nothing better for our folk than a life in honor and peace.
Appeal to the NSDAP of January 1, 1935
It is not true, when you declare that this folk wants to start a war out of hatred and revenge. No, it wants to be left alone, to have peace, but it also wants to have its honor and it wants its clear right!
Speech of November 6, 1933 in Kiel
Germany waited in vain for years for the keeping of the disarmament promise given us. It is the upright wish of the national government to be able to refrain from an enlargement of the German army and our arms, insofar as the rest of the world is finally also inclined to fulfill its promise of a radical disarmament. For Germany wants nothing but equal life rights and equal freedom.
Speech of March 23, 1933 in Berlin
The German government... is... convinced that there can today be only one great task: to secure the world’s peace. I feel obligated to state that the reason for the present armaments of France or Poland can under no circumstances be these nations’ fear of a German invasion. For this fear would only have its justification in the existence of those modern offensive weapons. Precisely these modern offensive weapons, however, Germany does not possess at all, neither heavy artillery nor tanks nor bomber-planes nor poison gases.
Speech of May 17, 1933 in Berlin
Germany has in the past taken over all the security obligations, which result from the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, entry into the League of Nations, the Locarno Pact, the Kellogg Pact, the arbitration court treaties, the War Prevention Pact, the No Force Pact etc. What are the concrete assurances, which Germany can still make? What assurances does Germany have?
Speech of May 17, 1933 in Berlin
According to the information of the League of Nations, France alone possesses in active service 3 046 airplanes, Belgium 350, Poland 700, Czechoslovakia 670. In addition to that are immeasurable quantities of reserve airplanes, thousands of tanks, thousands of heavy guns as well as all the technical means for the waging of war with poison gases. Does not Germany, in its defenselessness and lack of arms, have more justification to demand security than that of armed states bound together in a coalition?
Speech of May 17, 1933 in Berlin
Nonetheless, Germany is ready at any time to take upon itself additional security obligations of an international kind, if all nations for their part are ready to do so and this benefits Germany. Germany would be ready without further ado to dissolve its entire military institution and destroy the smallest remnants of the weapons it still has, if the neighboring nations completely do likewise. But if the other states are not willing to carry out the disarmament terms, which the Treaty of Versailles obligates them to as well, then Germany must at least insist on its demand for equal rights.
Speech of May 17, 1933 in Berlin
One first made an unreasonable treaty and then had the feeling that for the prevention of this monstrous treaty huge armies were necessary.
Speech of October 24, 1933 in Berlin
It is not so that all these states are afraid of Germany - that honors us too much. No, they do not disarm among themselves!
Speech of October 24, 1933 in Berlin
The illegal condition of unilateral disarmament and Germany’s resultant national insecurity can go on no longer.
Speech of March 23, 1933 in Berlin
One will be able to suggest that I only try to win time in order to complete my preparations. To that I reply the work plan is such that the man who can reach the goal, which I have given myself, will deserve a far greater monument from the gratitude of his folk than a glorious leader after numerous victories could deserve.
Interview in November 1934 for the French National Association of Former Front-Fighters
Nobody would be happier, if the world disarmed, than I.
Interview on April 3, 1934 in Berlin
The young, new, German generation passionately demands actual equal rights for our folk as with other cultured nations.
Open Letter to Brüning of October 14, 1931
Toward our brother folk in Austria we have the feeling of empathy with its cares and needs.
Speech of March 23, 1933 in Berlin
I believe I today still know my homeland (German-Austria) well enough in order to know that the pulse beat, which fills 65 million Germans in the Reich, moves their hearts and senses as well.
Speech of January 30, 1934 in Berlin
(We feel) ... with special gratitude the understanding kindness with which Germany’s national uprising was greeted in Italy. We wish and hope that the sameness of the spiritual ideals will be the basis for a firm deepening of the friendly relations between both lands.
Speech of March 23, 1933 in Berlin
We are...of the conviction that an... arrangement in our relationship to France is possible, if both governments take up the problems affecting them with real farsightedness.
Speech of March 23, 1933 in Berlin
After the return of the Saar region to the Reich only a lunatic could think of the possibility of a war between both states.
Speech of October 14, 1933 in Berlin
We and the whole German folk would all be happy with the idea of sparing our children and grandchildren what we ourselves as honorable men had to see in suffering and pain and ourselves endure in bitter long years. As a National Socialist I, together with all my supporters, on the basis of our national principles reject gaining people of a foreign folk, who do not like us anyway, with the blood and life of those who are dear and precious to us.
Speech of October 14, 1933 in Berlin
Your decision, German folk comrades of the Saar, today gives me the opportunity to make the declaration regarding our so sacrifice-rich historical contribution to Europe’s so necessary pacification, that after the completion of your return the German Reich will make no more further territorial demands on France!
Words of gratitude to the Germans of the Saar on the occasion of the election victory of January 15, 1935
It would be a gigantic event for all of mankind, if both folks would forever banish violence from their common life. The German folk is ready for that.
Speech of October 14, 1933 in Berlin
I was once on August 4, 1914 deeply unhappy that now both great Germanic folks (Germans and Englishmen), who had lived peacefully next to each through all the erring and confusion of human history for centuries, were pulled into the war. I would be happy, if finally this unholy psychosis would come to an end and both related nations again return to the old friendship.
Interview of October 18, 1933 in Berlin
Our relationship with the great states beyond the ocean: with which Germany has long been bound by friendly bonds and economic interests.
Speech of March 23, 1933 in Berlin
We greet it...the effort for a stabilization of relations in the east through a system of pacts, if the leading points are less of tactical-political nature and are much more supposed to serve the strengthening of peace.
Speech of January 30, 1934 in Berlin
For this reason and in order to correspond to these intentions, the German government has endeavored from the first year on to find a new and better relationship with the Polish state.
Speech of January 30, 1934 in Berlin
There are Germans in Europe, there are Poles in Europe. Both will have to get accustomed to living next to and with each other and to get along. Neither the Poles can wish away the German folk from the European map nor are we unreasonable enough to perhaps want to think away the Poles. We know both are there, they must live with each other.
Speech of October 24, 1933 in Berlin
None of us think of starting a war with Poland over the corridor. But we all want to hope that both nations will one day dispassionately discuss and negotiate the issues affecting them. It can only be left to the future, whether a path possible for both folks and a solution bearable for both is found.
Interview of October 18, 1933 in Berlin
The German government was hence happy to find with the leader of the present Polish state, Marshal Pilsudski, the same generous view and to set down this mutual realization in a treaty, which...also represents a great contribution to the preservation of general peace.
Speech of January 30, 1934 in Berlin
Toward the Soviet Union the Reich government is willing to nurture friendly, for both sides beneficial relations. Precisely the government of the national revolution sees itself capable of such a positive policy toward Soviet Russia. The fight against communism in Germany is our internal affair, in which we will never tolerate inference from outside. The state-political relations to other powers, with which common interests connect us, are not touched by that.
Speech of March 23, 1933 in Berlin
Fundamentally, the German government proceeds from the idea that it is naturally meaningless for the formation of our relations to other lands, what kind of constitution or form of government the folks want to give themselves.
Speech of January 30, 1934 in Berlin
But there as well, where the reciprocal relations...are encumbered with difficulties, we will strive for an arrangement.
Speech of March 23, 1933 in Berlin
As through our action...at the end a reconciliation came between those in Germany who were hostile toward each other... so, too, will a reconciliation come between the folks who are still agitated against each other by slanderous elements.
Speech of November 9, 1933 in Munich
If we today turn against an irresponsible agitation, then also only because not the agitators, rather, unfortunately, the folks must atone with their blood for these sins of this world poisoning.
Speech of October 14, 1933 in Berlin
It is a rootless international clique, which agitates the folks against each other. Those are the people who are at home everywhere and nowhere.
Speech of November 10, 1933 in Berlin
Those are the same elements who drove our folk to the internal fight of brother against brother and who today agitate the folks of the world against each other.
Speech of November 6, 1933 in Kiel
I do not know how many of the foreign statesmen took part in the war as soldiers at all. I take part in it. I know it. But of those who today agitate against Germany and slander the German folk, this I know, of them not one ever even heard a bullet whistle.
Speech of November 10, 1933 in Berlin
There is no better guarantor for peace than the fanatical unity of the German nation.
Speech of October 22, 1933 in Kelheim
