749 lines
47 KiB
Plaintext
749 lines
47 KiB
Plaintext
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SPEECHES AND OTHER PUBLIC STATEMENTS BY POLITICAL LEADERS OF THE THIRD REICH
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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As soon as one turns to the topic of the "extermination of the
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Jews", one finds that fragments of speeches made by the leading political
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figures of the Third Reich, in particular, Hitler and Himmler, are
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frequently cited as evidence. The rather strong language used with regard
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to the Jews in certain passages of these speeches is simply taken at face
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value, and, therefore, assumes an importance it really does not deserve.
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Often such passages are taken out of context, and their significance in
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relation to the whole text ignored. That has also been done with spoken and
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written statements the German leaders of the period made on subjects other
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than the Jewish Question.
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Especially in the case of Hitler, such statements were made largely
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in response to the numerous threats to exterminate the German people
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uttered by Allied leaders and Jewish spokesmen. Perhaps the most vociferous
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of the latter was Theodore Nathan Kaufman. In a book entitled GERMANY MUST
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PERISH (1941), he expounded a plan to wipe out the German people by
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sterilizing German men and women. Even better known is the "Morgenthau
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Plan". Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of the US Treasury and a personal
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advisor to President Roosevelt, thought starvation and economic
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strangulation were the best means of getting rid of the German people, and
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Roosevelt himself endorsed this plan. Nor should one forget that it was
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Professor Friedrich Alexander Lindemann - later Lord Cherwell - who advised
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the plan on which the carpet bombing that annihilated countless German
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civilians was largely based. Finally, the Soviet "expert on international
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law", A.N. Trainin, set forth a plan aimed at wiping out the German "ruling
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class" and intelligentsia. His plan led to the London Charter, the basis
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for the "jurisdiction" of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal,
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which actually did condemn the German leaders to death and imprisonment.
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With the exception of Kaufmann's scheme, all these plans were at least
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partially executed. If they were not carried out in full, it was more for
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practical than humanitarian reasons.
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Besides these very concrete extermination plans, which had no
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counterpart on the German side, numerous general statements were made along
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the same lines. Only a few of these will be mentioned here.
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Perhaps the most famous exhortations to murder are those of
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Stalin's Jewish propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg, who expressed such sentiments
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as the following:
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No longer do we say: "Good morning" or "Good night". In the
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morning we say: "Kill a German", and in the evening: "Kill a
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German".
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Books, love, the stars no longer matter. The only thing that
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matters is to kill the Germans. To kill them all. To bury them...
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For us there is nothing more beautiful than German corpses. "Kill
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a German !" -this is what the old mother begs of you. "Kill a
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German!" -this is what a child implores. Germans are not human
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beings. Germans are biped animals, disgusting creatures, beasts.
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Germans are amoebae, soulless microbes, but equipped with
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machines, guns, mortars.
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If you have killed a German, kill another -nothing gladdens us
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more than German corpses.
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That Ehrenburg's exhortations to murder were not without their
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effect is well known. What is not well known is that these homicidal
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messages were translated into English for the benefit of the onward
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marching "Christian Soldiers".
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To be sure, his incitements to murder appeared at a time when the
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war was at its greatest intensity. But long before the outbreak of war
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threats to exterminate the German people were being broadcast around the
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world. That is something, by the way, which one ought to take into account
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when considering the question of "war guilt".
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As early as January 1934, Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of
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Revisionist Zionism, declared in the Jewish paper NASHA RETCH: "Our Jewish
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interests require the final destruction of Germany; the Germans, each and
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every one of them, are a danger to us". Likewise, on May 24, 1934, the
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publisher of THE AMERICAN HEBREW, a leading Zionist, reportedly told the
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American publicist Robert E. Edmondson that Jewry was "going to bring a war
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on Germany". And on April 16, 1936, the YOUNGSTOWN JEWISH TIMES
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(Youngstown, Ohio), commented that after the next war there would no longer
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be a Germany. It predicted that "on signal from Paris", France and Belgium,
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as well as the peoples of Czechoslovakia, would be set in motion to attack
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the "German colossus", and, in a "deadly pincermovement", sever Prussia
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from Bavaria, thus bringing Germany to extinction. (The only difference
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between this fantasy and the reality of post-war Germany is that the new
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borders were set elsewhere and the German people are not yet extinct,
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though they certainly seem to be heading in that direction). Not long
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after this article was published, THE AMERICAN HEBREW, in its issue of
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April 30, 1937, expressed the same idea in a more general way when it
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stated that Germany deserved to be eliminated from the family of nations.
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This statement was echoed by the British newspaper THE PEOPLE, which, on
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September 3, 1939, described the German people as the "mad dog of Europe",
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and demanded their destruction. On the very same day, Churchill purportedly
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declared in the House of Commons that this war was England's war and its
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aim the destruction of Germany, ending his outburst with the paradoxical
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battlecry: "Onward Christian Soldiers!"
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No German statesman ever spoke of another people in such terms as
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the British hate-monger Lord Vansittart used against the Germans when
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attempting to justify the terror bombings: "The only good Germans are dead
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Germans, so let the bombs fall!"
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Those bombs fell, exactly as intended, on women, children, and old
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people alike. This is the background against which one must consider the
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angry statements made by German leaders. Although they have inevitably been
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associated with the "extermination of the Jews", these statements were
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mostly made in response to a torrent of hatred against the German
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government and threats to annihilate the German people that was unleashed
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even before the war. "Wie man in den Wald hineinruft, so schallt es heraus"
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("As ye sow, so shall ye reap"; literally, "As you shout into the woods, so
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it echoes forth"). What is more, some of the remarks attributed to the
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German leaders are either spurious or have been misrepresented.
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There is a vast difference between words and deeds. The attrocities
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committed against Germans before, during, and after the war have been
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impeccably documented. They even received publicity at the time they
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occurred. The same cannot be said of the alleged murder of Jews -especially
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since the most prominent Jews, leaders of the Jewish intellectual elite and
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political leadership, who would have been the first victims of an actual
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extermination plan, survived internment in Auschwitz and other
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concentration camps.
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But enough of these preliminary remarks. We shall now examine the
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relatively few declarations relating to Germany's supposed ambition to
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"exterminate the Jews" that come directly from German leaders of the time.
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As we shall see, their statements were no worse than any made against the
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Germans by the other side.
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ADOLF HITLER
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Hitler quotations are usually introduced with the claim that Hitler
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announced his goal of exterminating the Jews by means of lethal gas in MEIN
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KAMPF. To support this claim, one cites the following sentences from his
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book:
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" Hatte man zu Kriegsbeginn und wahrend des Krieges einmal zwolf
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- oder funfzehntausend dieser hebraischen Volksverderber so unter
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Giftgas gehalten, wie Hunderttausende unserer allerbesten Arbeiter
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aus allen Schichten und Berufen es im Felde erdulden mu<6D>ten, dann
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ware das Millionenopfer der Front nicht vergeblich gewesen. Im
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Gegenteil: Zwolftausend Schurken zur rechten Zeit beseitigt,
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hatte vielleicht einer Million ordentlicher, fur die Zukunft
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wertvoller Deutscher das Leben gerettet. "
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" If at the beginning of the war and during the war twelve or
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fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corruptors of the people had
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been held under poision gas, as happened to hundreds of
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thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the
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sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.
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On the contrary: twelve thousand scoundrels eliminated in time
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might have saved the lives of a million real Germans, valuable
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for the future. "
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These statements are found in Chapter 15 of Volume II, which is
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entitled "The Right of Emergency Defense". Here Hitler was attacking
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international Marxism, in Germany then led primarily by Jews. He was not
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attacking Jews per se, still less advocating their general destruction.
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These lines, written in 1925, refer exclusively to a situation that existed
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at the end of World War I. From them one cannot infer that Hitler had some
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"general idea" of exterminating, let along gassing, the Jews, as Karl
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Dietrich Bracher, for example, would have us believe. To interpret them
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objectively, one must bear in mind that Hitler is referring to the past,
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and, moreover, is discussing a specific situation. These remarks can be
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explained only in terms of Hiter's view of why Germany collapsed at the end
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of World War I, as well as his own experience of gas warfare (which the
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English, by the way, initiated). They should be taken as an emotional
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outburst, not as an embryonic plan. Indeed, MEIN KAMPF is for the most part
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more propagandistic than programmatic.
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This passage from Hitler's book recalls the humanitarian sentiments
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that Kurt Tucholsky, a Jew, expressed towards members of the German
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middle-class who did not share his peculiar "pacifism":
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" Moge das Gas in die Spielstuben eurer Kinder schleichen. Mogen
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sie langsam umsinken, die Puppchen. Ich wunsche der Frau des
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Kirchenrats und des Chefredakteurs und der Mutter des Bildhauers
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und der Schwester des Bankiers, da<64> sie einen bitteren qualvollen
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Tod finden, alle zusammen. "
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" May the gas creep into the play-rooms of your children. They
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should drop dead slowly, the little dolls. I'd like to see the
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wife of the churchwarden and the editor-in-chief and the mother
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of the sculptor and the sister of the banker die a bitter,
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excruciating death, all of them, together. "
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Now, we certainly are not charging that Tucholsky planned or
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preached the murder-by-gassing of the German people. Yet it would be
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interesting to see how those who accuse Hitler, on the basis of the passage
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quoted above, of promoting the murder-by-gassing of the Jewish people would
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react to Tucholsky's far more drastic outburst.
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The first remarks in which Hitler specifically uses the word
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"annihilation" ("Vernichtung") and "eradication" ("Ausrottung") in relation
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to "the Jews" or "Jewry" were made in 1939. They were a reaction to world
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Jewry's anti-German campaign, which, by that time, had reached a pitch of
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frenzy, as shown at the beginning of this section. In particular, Hitler's
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Reichstag speech of January 30, 1939 is often cited. There he declared,
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inter alia:
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" Wenn es dem internationalen Finanzjudentum innerhalb und
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au<61>erhalb Europas gelingen sollte, die Volker noch einmal in
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einen Weltkrieg zu sturzen, dann wird das Ergebnis nicht die
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Bolschewisierung der Erde und damit der Sieg des Judentums sein,
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sondern die Vernichtung der judischen Rasse in Europa. "
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" If international finance-Jewry, inside and outside Europe, should
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once again succeed in plunging the nations into a world war, the
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result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and with that
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the victory of Jewry, but rather the annihilation of the Jewish
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race in Europe. "
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Obviously, this statement is nothing more than a response to the
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war threats that were constantly being made by influential Zionists. It was
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meant as an admonition to those war-mongers. Heinrich Hartle interprets
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this text as a sign of Hitler's deep committment to peace. He believes
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Hitler did not intend to cause a war in order to annihilate the Jews, but
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raised the spectre of their annihilation in order to prevent a war. In
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using the word "annihilation", Hitler was only borrowing from the
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vocabulary of his Zionist foes. Even if one rejects Hartle's
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interpretation, one must not jump to the conclusion that the opposite
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interpretation is correct. As noted above, angry words were part of the
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vocabulary of the times. The rhetoric of Churchill and Roosevelt was no
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less vehement.
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When quoted in context -as they seldom are- these remarks show that
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Hitler was not really suggesting the physical annihilation of the Jews.
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This is how he continued his speech:
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" Denn die Zeit der propagandistischen Wehrlosigkeit der
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nichtjudischen Volker ist zu Ende. Das nationalsozialistische
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Deutschland und das faschistische Italien besitzen jene
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Einrichtungen, die es gestatten, wenn notwendig, die Welt uber
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das Wesen einer Frage aufzuklaren, die vielen Volkern instinktiv
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bewu<77>t, nur wissenschaftlich unklar ist.
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Augenblicklich mag das Judentum in gewissen Staaten seine Hetze
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betreiben unter dem Schutz einer dort in seinen Handen
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befindlichen Presse, des Films, der Rundfunkpropaganda, der
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Theater, der Literatur usw. Wenn es diesem Volk aber noch einmal
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gelingen sollte, die Millionenmassen der Volker in einen fur
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diese ganzlich sinnlosen und nur judischen Interessen dienenden
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Kampf zu hetzen, dann wird sich die Wirksamkeit einer Aufklarung
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au<61>ern, der in Deutschland allein schon in wenigen Jahren das
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Judentum restlos erlegen ist. "
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" For the non-Jewish peoples are no longer without the weapon of
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propaganda. Both National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy
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have the equipment necessary to enlighten the world about the
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nature of a problem that many nations instinctively recognize,
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though they may lack a scientific view of it.
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For the time being, the Jews may carry on their agitations in
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certain states under the cover of the press, cinema, radio,
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theatre, literature, etc., which are in their hands. But if the
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Jewish nation should once again succeed in goading millions of
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people from other nations into a totally senseless war, to serve
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only Jewish interests, the efficacy of the kind of enlightenment
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that in just a few years utterly defeated the Jews in Germany
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will become manifest. "
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Thus Hitler's threat was that if another world war broke out,
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Zionism would be politically eliminated -by disclosing to the peoples of
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the world its role in that catastrophe. He started from the premise -and
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we may leave aside the question whether rightly or wrongly- that the
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preservation of world peace depended largely on the stance of international
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Jewry, which did indeed have an extraordinarily strong influence on nearly
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all governments.
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Even after the outbreak of war, Hitler continued to make such
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threats. These, too, are cited in the literature on our topic as "proof" of
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his ambition to exterminate the Jewish people, when, perhaps, they should
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be viewed in terms of his repeated attempts to bring the western Allies to
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their senses.
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For example, on January 30, 1941, Hitler allegedly threatened that,
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if another world war broke out, all European Jewry "would be done for" ("im
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Falle eines neuen Weltkrieges seine Rolle ausgespielt"). Likewise, in a
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speech delivered on January 30, 1942, he reportedly declared that the war
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would result in the "extermination of Jewry in Europe" ("die Vernichtung
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des Judentums in Europa"). And, on February 24, 1942, he is supposed to
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have "prophesied" that through this war Aryan man would not be
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exterminated, but the Jew extirpated ("durch diesen Krieg nicht die arische
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Menschheit vernichtet, sondern der Jude ausgerottet"). In other speeches,
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Hitler made similar untterances, but they are really not worth quoting.
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None of these remarks are particularly shocking when compared with
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the strongly worded statements Allied leaders and influential Zionists made
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along the same lines. As I have said, it was then customary to use strong
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language against one's opponents. In any case, Hitler's "prophesies" about
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the eradication of the Jews had scarcely been fulfilled at that time, or
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even at the end of the war. More importantly, in all of Hitler's speeches
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and statements one cannot find a single reference to the alleged homidical
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role of the concentration camps, in particular, Auschwitz-Birkenau,
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purportedly the center of "systematic mass extermination of the Jews".
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In the final analysis, all the allegations regarding Hitler's
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"extermination policy" are at odds with a statement he is said to have made
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towards the end of the war, on February 13, 1945:
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" Wenn ich den Krieg gewinne, so mache ich der judischen Herrschaft
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in der Welt ein Ende, ich versetze ihr den Todessto<74>. Und wenn
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ich diesen Krieg verliere, so werden sie dieses Sieges nicht
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froh. Denn die Juden werden daruber den Kopf verlieren. Sie
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werden ihre Uberheblichkeit bis zu einem solchen Grade steigern,
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da<64> sie selbst die Reaktion herausforden. "
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" If I win the war, I will put an end to Jewish domination of the
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world. I will deal it a death-blow. And if I lose this war, they
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will not rejoice in their victory. It will go to their heads.
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They will increase their arrogance to such a degree that they
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themselves will provoke a reaction. "
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These remarks are extremely interesting. If the "re-education"
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literature is to be believed, the Jews in the German sphere of influence
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had already been largely exterminated. According to this statement,
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however, Hitler planned merely to end "Jewish domination of the world"
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-something quite different from physically destroying the entire race. Thus
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even as the war drew to an end, the "extermination of the Jews" could not
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have been Hitler's goal. This is also evident from the text of Hitler's
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Political Testament that was published by the Nuremberg International
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Military Tribunal (Nuremberg Document 3569-PS). Among other things, this
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document states:
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" Ich habe aber auch keinen Zweiful daruber gelassen, da<64> wenn die
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Volker Europas wieder nur als Aktienpakete dieser internationalen
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Geld- und Finanzverschworer angesehen werden, dann auch jenes
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Volk zur Verantwortung gezogen werden wird, das der eigentlich
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Schuldige an diesem morderischen Ringen ist: das internationale
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Judentum! Ich habe weiter keinen daruber in Unklaren gelassen,
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da<64> dieses Mal nicht nur Millionen Kinder von Europaren der
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arischen Volker verhungern werden, nicht nur Millionen
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erwachsener Manner den Tod erleiden und nicht nur Hunderttausende
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an Frauen und Kindern in der Stadten verbrannt und zu Tode
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bombardiert werden durften, ohne da<64> der eigentlich Schuldige,
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wenn auch durch humanere Mittel, seine Schuld zu bu<62>en hat. "
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" I also made it clear that, if the nations of Europe were again to
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be regarded merely as shares to be bought and sold by these
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international conspirators of money and finance, then that nation
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which is the real guitly part in this murderous struggle
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- international Jewry - would be called to account. Moreover, I
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made it clear to everybody that this time not only would millions
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of children in the European Aryan nations starve to death, not
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only would millions of grown men meet their death, and not only
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would millions of women and children be burnt and bombed to death
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in the cities, but the real culprit would have to pay for his
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guilt as well, even though by more human means than war. "
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Two things are worth noting here. First, even shortly before his
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death Hitler apparently knew nothing about a mass extermination of Jews in
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"death camps", for otherwise he would have worded his Political Testament
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differently. Second, if Hitler aimed at exterminating the Jews and this had
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actually been accomplished, it would have been characteristic of him to
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boast triumphantly of the accomplishment. But he only says that the "real
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guilty party in this murderous struggle", "international Jewry" -but not
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"the Jews" as such- would have to pay for its guilt, "even though by more
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humane means than war". Thus Hitler was not reffering to any possibility of
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physically eliminating the Jewish people, but anticipating that the Jewish
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leader-stratum would receive some kind of punishment, which, in his own
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words, would be more "humane" than the slaughter of European soldiers and
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civilians in the war. His remarks could apply to the period after the
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victory for which he may still have entertained some hope. If so, it should
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be understood as a warning to the Jewish leaders and an assignment for his
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successors.
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HEINRICH HIMMLER
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----------------
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After Hitler's speeches, it is mainly the speeches of Himmler in
|
||
which one seeks to find circumstantial evidence for the alleged racially
|
||
motivated murder of the Jews. Speeches and excerpts of speeches of his
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supposedly relating to this subject have been published with a commentary
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||
by Agnes F. Peterson and Bradley F. Smith under the rather sensational
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||
title HEINRICH HIMMLER: GEHEIMREDEN 1933 BIS 1945. Of course, it is absurd
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||
to call a speech delivered before a relatively large audience "secret". Nor
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||
is it known whether Himmler ever designated any of his speeches so.
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||
Evidently the title was chosen in the hope of selling more copies of the
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book.
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||
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||
According to the "Remarks on the Edition" at the end of the book
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||
these speeches were discovered in the files of the "Personal Staff of the
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Reichsfuhrer-SS", which the Americans seized as war booty. Today they are
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||
reportedly in the Bundesarchiv in Coblenz. Before they were returned, they
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||
were microfilmed. Whether they are entirely genuine is open to question.
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||
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||
Himmler was in the habit of formulating his speeches as he went
|
||
along, using notes that he had written down himself, which often consisted
|
||
of no more than a dozen phrases. According to Peterson and Smith, there are
|
||
only four or five completely prepared texts among the documents published
|
||
in their collection, but they do not specifiy which one. From the end of
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||
1942, Himmler's speeches were frequently -though not always-
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||
phonographically recorded with two machines. These devices are said to have
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||
worked poorly, leaving big gaps in the recordings. Beginning in 1943,
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||
SS-Untersturmfuhrer Werner Alfred Venn was solely responsible for making
|
||
and keeping the transcripts of Himmler's speeches. It is not clear just who
|
||
had this duty before. Venn is supposed to have taken down and typed out the
|
||
speeches - even making "corrections" (!) in the text, but changing the
|
||
meaning "barely or not at all".
|
||
|
||
One can well imagine the possibilities for error involved in the
|
||
preparation of these "documents". What is more, the American officials who
|
||
"evaluated" the staff files of the Reichsfuhrer-SS had ample opportunities
|
||
to manipulate the papers, and probably took advantage of them, for some of
|
||
Himmler's speeches were presented in evidence at the Nuremberg IMT trial.
|
||
|
||
Peterson and Smith claim that Venn sent his transcripts of the
|
||
speeches to Himmler, who then revised them slightly. Nobody asks whether
|
||
this would have made any sense. If these were "secret speeches", there was
|
||
little possibility of their ever being published. Moreover, it is doubtful
|
||
whether Himmler had the time to go over his speeches carefully. Since they
|
||
had already been delivered, that must have seemed a useless undertaking.
|
||
How Peterson and Smith discovered these intimate details is a mystery.
|
||
|
||
There is considerable doubt as to whether the versions of the
|
||
speeches that were presented to a horrified world after the fall of the
|
||
Third Reich were identical with speeches Himmler may have actually have
|
||
delivered. Nevertheless, we are bound to discuss here those passages which
|
||
are cited in support of the extermination thesis. Although they are
|
||
constantly used to "substantiate" the charge that murders-by-gassing
|
||
ocurred at Auschwitz, they contain no mention of Auschwitz or any other
|
||
alleged "extermination camp".
|
||
|
||
Most frequently cited is an address Himmler delivered on October 4,
|
||
1943 before a gathering of SS-Gruppenfuhrer at Posen. Though basically a
|
||
survey of the situation at the beginning of the fifth year of the war, it
|
||
contains a discussion -relatively brief- of "The Clearing out of the Jews"
|
||
("Die Judenevakuierung"). At any rate, that is the heading this passage of
|
||
the transcript was given when it was presented in evidence at the Nuremberg
|
||
IMT trial (Nuremberg Document 1919-PS). According to this document, Himmler
|
||
declared:
|
||
|
||
" I also want to talk to you, quite frankly, on a very grave
|
||
matter. Among ourselves it should be mentioned quite frankly, and
|
||
yet we will never speak of it publicly ... I mean the clearing
|
||
out of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race. It's one
|
||
of those things it is easy to talk about - "The Jewish race is
|
||
being exterminated", says one party member, "that's quite clear,
|
||
it's in our program - elimination of the Jews, and we're doing
|
||
it, exterminating them". And then they come, 80 million worthy
|
||
Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. Of course the others
|
||
are vermin, but this one is an A-1 Jew. Not one of all those who
|
||
talk this way has witnessed it, not one of them has been through
|
||
it. Most of you know what it means when 100 corpses are lying
|
||
side by side, or 500 or 1000. To have stuck it out and at the
|
||
same time - apart from exceptions caused by human weakness - to
|
||
have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This
|
||
is a page of glory in our history which has never been written
|
||
and is never to be written, for we know how difficult we should
|
||
have made it ourselves if - with the bombing raids, the burdens
|
||
and the deprivations of war - we still had Jews today in every
|
||
town as secret saboteurs, agitators and trouble-mongers. We would
|
||
now probably have reached the 1916/17 stage when the Jews were
|
||
still in the German national body.
|
||
We have taken their wealth from them. I have issued a strict
|
||
order, which SS-Obergruppfuhrer Pohl has carried out, that this
|
||
wealth should, as a matter of course, be handed over to the Reich
|
||
without reserve. We have taken none of it for ourselves.
|
||
Individual men who have lapsed will be punished in accordance
|
||
with an order I issued at the beginning, which gave this warning;
|
||
Whoever takes so much as a mark of it, is a dead man. A number of
|
||
SS men - there are not very many of them - have fallen short, and
|
||
they will die, without mercy. We had the moral right, we had the
|
||
duty to our people, to destroy this people which wanted to
|
||
destroy us. But we have not the right to enrich ourselves with so
|
||
much as a fur, a watch, a mark, or a cigarette or anything else.
|
||
Because we have exterminated a bacterium we do not want, in the
|
||
end, to be infected by the bacterium and die of it. I will not
|
||
see so much as a small area of the sepsis appear here or gain a
|
||
foothold. Wherever it may form, we will cauterize it. Altogether,
|
||
however, we can say that we have fulfilled this most difficult
|
||
duty for the love of our people. And our spirit, our soul, our
|
||
character has not suffered injury from it. "
|
||
|
||
|
||
All of this may come as a shock to the unbiased but uninitiated
|
||
reader, who might get the impression that Himmler was actually talking
|
||
about ideologically motivated, systematic murder of Jews. But those who are
|
||
acquainted with the facts of this period in history will find it difficult
|
||
to believe that Himmler made all these remarks, some of which are utterly
|
||
nonsensical. A fair guess is that certain passages necessary to the
|
||
continuity of the document are missing, for no logical connection really
|
||
exists between the things Himmler purportedly discussed in this speech. He
|
||
seems to be talking about several different matters, viz., the evacuation
|
||
of the Jews, the efforts of the Einsatzgruppen to combat guerilla warfare,
|
||
the suppression of Jewish mutinies in Sobibor, Treblinka (autumn 1943),
|
||
and, most especially, the Warsaw Ghetto (April-May 1943). That Himmler is
|
||
not referring to large-scale, systematic murder of the Jews -even when he
|
||
is apparently discussing executions- is evident from the comparatively
|
||
small number of "corpses" he mentions: 100, 500 or 1,000. Far greater
|
||
numbers of people are usually said to have perished in the "gas chambers"
|
||
at any one time.
|
||
|
||
Let us examine some details of Himmler's alleged statements which
|
||
not only indicate that the passage quoted above is incomplete, but also add
|
||
to the suspicion that it may be forged.
|
||
|
||
Above all, it is astonishing that Himmler should have had no qualms
|
||
about defining "evacuation of the Jews" as "extermination of the Jewish
|
||
people". Of course, one may claim that he was simply employing the
|
||
"code-words" purportedly used by functionaires involved in the
|
||
"extermination program", but, as we have noted, there is no proof that such
|
||
a jargon existed. The audience for this speech was definitely not composed
|
||
of those SS leaders who might have been involved in the "secret
|
||
extermination of the Jews" -assuming for a moment there was such a plan. If
|
||
they had been, Himmler surely would have commented in greater detail on
|
||
this subject, instead of limiting himself to generalities. All things
|
||
considered, it is quite improbable that he would have suddenly confronted an
|
||
unprepared audience with the "real" meaning of the term "evacuation of the
|
||
Jews". If the "extermination of the Jews" were, as is usually claimed, so
|
||
highly secret that Hitler personally communicated to Himmler the order to
|
||
carry it out, would Himmler have discussed this matter before a large
|
||
assembly of men who had little or nothing to do with it? Here one recalls
|
||
that it is frequently alleged, on the basis of statements made by Rudolf
|
||
Hoss, that Himmler personally transmitted Hitler's "secret order" for the
|
||
"extermination of the Jews" to Hoss, the commandant of Auschwitz,
|
||
instructing him to keep absolutely silent about it. If this were so,
|
||
Himmler would not have enlarged the circle of initiates to any great
|
||
extent, even without going into details. Hence this portion of the speech
|
||
cannot be authentic.
|
||
|
||
It seems strange, too, that Himmler should allude to the
|
||
"elimination" ("Ausrottung") of the Jews as being contained in the party
|
||
program of the NSDAP, since it is neither mentioned nor implied there.
|
||
Himmler's supposed claim to the contrary, no level-headed Party Comrade
|
||
would never have seriously advocated such a thing. That Himmler uttered
|
||
this nonsense in front of high-ranking SS leaders, who were perfectly
|
||
familiar with the NSDAP program, is virtually impossible. Somebody who had
|
||
not the faintest inkling of the actual contents of the NSDAP program must
|
||
have slipped these remarks into the speech.
|
||
|
||
Just as incongruous is the statement in the second paragraph of the
|
||
address: "We had the moral right, we had the duty to our people, to destroy
|
||
this people which wanted to destroy us" ("Wir hatten das moralische Recht,
|
||
wir hatten die Pflicht gegenuber unserem Volk, dieses Volk, das uns
|
||
umbringen wollte, umzubringen"). Himmler allegedly said this when
|
||
discussing the confiscation of the evacuated Jews' wealth. In that context,
|
||
it stands out as a foreign body. Since the Jews still residing in Germany
|
||
and German-occupied territory were -considering that a war was going on-
|
||
undoubtedly a security risk, as Himmler pointed out, their evacuation and
|
||
internment in camps or ghettos was perhaps necessary, but not their murder,
|
||
which is what the word "umbringen" ("destroy", "kill") denotes. It may be
|
||
argued that the Jews were quarantined out of racial hatred, not for any
|
||
logical reason. But that would not explain why Himmler had no reservations
|
||
about discussing an "extermination plan" when the official line was that
|
||
Jews were simply being "evacuated" eastwards. To say that this was, after
|
||
all, a "secret speech" is to beg the question.
|
||
|
||
Quite possibly, the words "Ausrottung" (which can mean either
|
||
"extermination or "uprooting") and "umbringen" (which can mean either
|
||
"destroy" or kill") were mistranslated -deliberately or accidentally- in
|
||
the passage of the speech that appears in English under the heading "The
|
||
Clearing Out of the Jews" (see above) if indeed Himmler used these words.
|
||
Deliberate mistranslations are nothing new. When President Roosevelt, who
|
||
saw the mutual defense pact between Germany and Japan as the "back door"
|
||
through which an unwilling American people could be herded into the
|
||
European conflict, was zealously attempting to provoke a war with Japan, a
|
||
U.S. government agency deliberately mistranslated a Japanese official
|
||
document. Thanks to Professor Rassinier, we know that distorted
|
||
translations were employed in the Nurember IMT trial. For example, in a
|
||
retroversion of the English translation of the "Wannsee Protocol" the
|
||
phrase "Zuruckdrangung der Juden" ("pushing back the Jews", ie., to the
|
||
East European countries from whence they came to Germany) was rendered as
|
||
"Vernichtung" ("extermination"). To give another instance, the American
|
||
Chief Prosecutor cited a translation in which the expression "Ausrottung
|
||
des Judentums" ("eradication of Jewry" or "Judaism") was made into
|
||
"extermination of the Jews" -which, of course, is something altogether
|
||
different. For as Rassinier has pointed out, Jewry is, among other things,
|
||
an idea, or, to put it in other words, an expression of a common mentality,
|
||
just as is Christianity (or Christendom). When one speaks of eradicating an
|
||
idea, that does not necessarily mean physically exterminating the bearers
|
||
of that idea, in this case, individual Jews. At least, one should not jump
|
||
to that conclusion. Rassinier maintains that in this speech of Himmlers's
|
||
the term "Ausrottung" is used not in the sense of "extermination", but
|
||
rather "exclusion", or "elimination of the influence", of the Jews.
|
||
|
||
Be that as it may, Nuremberg Document 1919-PS must be considered
|
||
highly suspect, especially the part of it quoted above. It contains so many
|
||
muddled, incongruous, and utterly nonsensical remarks that even in the
|
||
post-war "re-education" literature it is usually cited only by the
|
||
sentence. In their collection of "secret speeches", Peterson and Smith make
|
||
only a brief mention of this address. Instead of reproducing it, they give
|
||
the full text of another of Himmler's speeches, delivered two days later,
|
||
on October 6, 1943, before a meeting of Reichsleiter and Gauleiter in
|
||
Posen. It also contains a discussion of the "Jewish Question", which
|
||
Peterson and Smith describe as the "most open and characteristic passage on
|
||
the extermination of the Jews". In point of fact, the train of thought is
|
||
much the same as in Nuremberg Document 1919-PS, though this speech is
|
||
somewhat better organized than the earlier one and lacks its crass
|
||
absurdities. According to this text, Himmler made the following remarks on
|
||
the "Jewish Question":
|
||
|
||
" In this connection, I may comment before this very tightly knit
|
||
group on a matter which you, my Party Comrades, all take for
|
||
granted, and which is the most difficult task I have ever faced
|
||
in my life, the Jewish problem. All of you gladly take it for
|
||
granted that there are no longer any Jews in your administrative
|
||
districts. All Germans - with a few individual exceptions - are
|
||
aware that we could not have endured the bombings, the hardships
|
||
of the fourth year of the war, and could not endure fifth and
|
||
sixth years of war that are perhaps yet to come, if we still had
|
||
this demoralizing pest in our national body. "The Jews must be
|
||
eradicated". This brief sentence is easily said. But for the man
|
||
who must carry out what it calls for, it is the gravest and
|
||
hardest thing in existence. Now, look, after all they're Jews,
|
||
only Jews. That's plain enough. But just think about how many
|
||
people - including Party comrades - have addressed to me and
|
||
other officials those famous petitions of theirs in which they
|
||
say: The Jews are all bastards, of course, but so-and-so is a
|
||
good Jew and should be left alone. I daresay, judging by the
|
||
number of such appeals and the number of people who express such
|
||
opinions, the number of "good Jews" in Germany must have exceeded
|
||
the total Jewish population! In Germany we have millions and
|
||
millions of people who each have their "one good Jew". I mention
|
||
this only because you can see in the vital field of your own
|
||
administrative districts how many respected and upright National
|
||
Socialists have their "good Jew".
|
||
I ask you assembled here pay attention to what I have to say,
|
||
but not repeat it. The question came up: Well, what about the
|
||
women and children? - I came to a determinedly simple conclusion
|
||
about that, too. I did not believe that I had the right to wipe
|
||
out the men - rather I should say, kill them or have them killed
|
||
- and let their children grow up to avenge themselves on our sons
|
||
and grandsons. The hard decision to wipe this people off the face
|
||
of the earth had to be made. For us, the organization that had to
|
||
carry out this task, it was the most difficult one we ever had.
|
||
But it was accomplished, and without - I believe I can say - our
|
||
men and their leaders suffering any mental or spiritual damage.
|
||
That was clearly a danger. To become too brutal, too heartless,
|
||
and lose respect for human life, or to be too soft and bring
|
||
oneself to the point of a nervous breakdown - the path between
|
||
these two ever-present possibilities is incredibly narrow, the
|
||
course between Scylla and Charybdis.
|
||
We have turned over to the Reich Ministry of Economics all the
|
||
wealth we confiscated from the Jews - the sums were staggering -
|
||
right down to very last penny. I have always maintained: We have
|
||
a duty to our people, to our race, we have a duty to a leader
|
||
such as has been given to our people only once in 2,000 years,
|
||
not to be pretty here, but to go the limit, as we must do in all
|
||
things if we are to win the war. Yet we do not have the right to
|
||
take even one penny of the wealth confiscated from the Jews. At
|
||
the outset, I laid down the line: Any SS men who take so much as
|
||
a mark of it are as good as dead. In the past few days, I've had
|
||
to sign a number of death sentences - I might as well say it,
|
||
there were about a dozen. One has to be strict here, or everyone
|
||
will suffer. I considered in my duty to speak very openly to you
|
||
- the highest bearers of the will, the highest dignitaries, of
|
||
the Party, of this political order, of this political instrument
|
||
of the Fuhrer - about this matter and to give the facts as they
|
||
are. By the end of the year, the Jewish problem in the lands we
|
||
have occupied will be solved. There will be left only remnants,
|
||
individual Jews who are in hiding. The problem of Jews who are
|
||
partners in mixed marriages and the problem of half-Jews will, in
|
||
accordance with this policy, be rationally examined, decided
|
||
upon, and resolved.
|
||
Believe me, I've had lots of trouble with many units of the
|
||
economic apparatus. I cleared out big Jewish ghettos in the lines
|
||
of communication areas. In Warsaw, we had four weeks of
|
||
street-fighting in the ghetto. Four weeks! We had to clean out
|
||
around 700 bunkers. The whole ghetto was making fur coats,
|
||
dresses, and the like. Time was, if you tried to lay a hand on
|
||
that place, you'd be told: Stop! You're interfering with the war
|
||
effort. Stop! This is part of the armaments industry. - Of
|
||
course, Party Comrade Speer had nothing to do with that. There is
|
||
nothing you people can do about it. It is a part of the so-called
|
||
armaments industry that Comrade Speer and I will be cleaning up
|
||
in the forthcoming weeks and months. We will do this quite
|
||
unsentimentally, as all things must be done in the fifth year of
|
||
the war, without sentiment but with a stout heart for Germany.
|
||
With this I'll wind up my discussion of the Jewish problem. You
|
||
now have the necessary information, and you will keep it to
|
||
yourselves. At some much later date, one may consider the
|
||
possibility of telling the German people a little more. I believe
|
||
that it is better that we all bear this together for our people,
|
||
as we have done, and take the responsibility on ourselves (the
|
||
responsibility for a deed, not just for an idea) and take this
|
||
secret with us to our graves. "
|
||
|
||
|
||
The "re-education" scribblers are fond on quoting this speech. In
|
||
contrast to them, I have reproduced this passage in its entirety, so that
|
||
Himmler's remarks can be seen in context. Even if it seems more polished
|
||
than the Posen address, and, above all, does not contain as many glaring
|
||
absurdities, this speech cannot be judged in any different terms. It is
|
||
quite improbable that Himmler would have used such remarks to inform
|
||
Reichsleiter and Gauleiter of the genocide supposedly carried out by the SS
|
||
on his orders.
|
||
|
||
No doubt the first and third paragraphs of this excerpt concern the
|
||
evacuation of the Jews from Germany and the occupied Western European
|
||
countries. This is especially true of the last part of the third paragraph
|
||
(after the dashes), which, incidentally, contains an echo of the "Wannsee
|
||
Protocol" in its approach to the problem of mixed marriages and persons of
|
||
mixed parentage. Since Himmler mentions "remnants" who are "in hiding", he
|
||
can only be referring here to the evacuation of the Jews from Germany and
|
||
the occupied European countries. He could not be referring to the
|
||
subsequent fate of Jews evacuated to the eastern ghettos and concentration
|
||
camps, for there they would find no place to "hide". The sentence "The Jews
|
||
must be eradicated" ("Die Juden mussen ausgerottet werden"), in the first
|
||
paragraph, is an absurdity, and was probably forged into the text. Inasmuch
|
||
as nobody in Germany had at that time heard anything about the "eradication
|
||
of the Jews", Himmler would have had to provide these high-ranking national
|
||
and regional administrators with some explanation of the term. Otherwise,
|
||
these men, who were acknowledged leaders of the Party, would have been
|
||
puzzled by it. In fact, if Himmler had discussed such a thing as killing
|
||
off the Jews, he would most likely have chosen a word like "elimination"
|
||
rather than "eradication".
|
||
|
||
When I asked two former Gauleiter, Karl Wahl and Rudolf Jordan,
|
||
whether they had ever heard something from Himmler, directly or indirectly,
|
||
about "this type of solution to the Jewish Question" (as I put it to Wahl)
|
||
or something about the "mass murder of the Jewish people" (as I put it to
|
||
Jordan), neither of them could recall anything. And neither of them could
|
||
remember specific details of the meeting at Posen on October 6, 1943.
|
||
Gauleiter Wahl believes it is possible that he missed the conference
|
||
because of illness. He told me: "In 17 long years" - that is how long Wahl
|
||
served as Gauleiter - "I never heard him say anything that was not humane
|
||
or moral ... I cannot conceive of Himmler's being so stupid as to make any
|
||
such remarks, or, if he did, which I do not believe, to preserve them so
|
||
that these literary shysters could publish them 30 years later". This last
|
||
point is remarkably well taken. It casts doubt on the authenticity of
|
||
Himmler's alleged discourse on the "Jewish Question", especially the final
|
||
paragraph of it. For how can any rational person believe that Himmler would
|
||
have had his remarks written down for posterity if he wanted to take the
|
||
"secret" of the "Final Solution" with him to the grave, and advised his
|
||
listeners to do the same? The real author of these lines must have
|
||
believed - and it seems with good reason - that the human race is awfully
|
||
gullible.
|
||
|
||
Gauleiter Jordan told me that during the war he heard "some
|
||
executions took place in connection with tactical problems of combating
|
||
guerilla warfare", but these had nothing to do with the so-called Final
|
||
Solution; they were "necessary wartime measures". I brought up this
|
||
interpretation when discussing Himmler's address of October 4, 1943 to the
|
||
SS-Gruppenfuhrer, and I think the second paragraph indisputably confirms
|
||
it. As I have pointed out, the second paragraph of the excerpt has no
|
||
discernible relation to the first paragraph. Some of Himmler's later
|
||
speeches clarify and corroborate the fact thatthis reference must be to
|
||
executions carried out against partisans.
|
||
|
||
Even if Wahl and Jordan did not attend the meeting at which Himmler
|
||
delivered this talk, they no doubt would have heard, in some way or other,
|
||
of his remarks on the "Jewish problem" had he actually made them. Their
|
||
statements on this subject are therefore very pertinent. In my estimation,
|
||
they are satisfactory proof that Himmler did not express the notions
|
||
attributed to him in the present version of the speech of October 6, 1943.
|
||
It would be a cheap shot to impugn the veracity of these two contemporary
|
||
witnesses because of their former rank in the NSDAP - particularly since
|
||
Himmler, as I already pointed out, would have had no reason to discuss the
|
||
"Final Solution" with outsiders like Wahl and Jordan.
|
||
|
||
|