Adolf Hitler - speech in Berlin

February 2, 1933

We have taken on the task of government in perhaps the most difficult period in German history. It requires a strong belief not to succumb to doubt in such an hour, but rather to look ahead to the future with confidence and hope.

Three factors make up our motivation: first of all, we have confidence in the strength and the industriousness of the German Volk; secondly, we are confident in the capabilities of this Volk and its ingenuity which has, throughout history, repeatedly found ways to survive; lastly, in spite of all the crises and catastrophes, we see before us German soil, German land. And if past generations were able, in defiance of the vicissitudes of fate, ultimately to create from these three sources of strength this great Reich we once witnessed, then it must be possible, and the new government is convinced of this, it must be possible for us as well to nurture this same greatness from these same roots and one day create it anew.

In doing so, we do not only want to use these eternal foundations as the basis for our völkisch existence; we also naturally want to use all of the accomplishments and traditions developed in the course of recent history as our basis. We prefer not to see these accomplishments and traditions only in the isolated areas of culture or economics, but naturally in the field of our civic life as well. We do not want to disregard the building blocks which many centuries of German history have created for this Reich; on the contrary: we do not, for instance, want to make the mistake of regulating and centralizing everything which can be regulated and centralized, but rather wish to keep in mind that only those things are to be accomplished uniformly which are absolutely necessary. We would be grateful to be able to count on the assistance of the Länder; we do not want lip-service, we want real support; and we are determined to do everything possible in return, in order to maintain the viability of these historic building blocks of the German Reich. This will become all the more possible the more the Reich and the Länder join forces in the great realization of the urgent need of our time. I myself come from the south, am a citizen of a Northern German State, but I regard myself as a German and live in German history. I do not want to blindly ignore the great and historic deeds and accomplishments of this history but on the contrary, wish to respect everything which past generations have accomplished, including the historical formation of our nation, in the hope that so many more coming generations will also respect what it is we propose to accomplish.[1]