Adolf Hitler - address to the Reichstag

To the German Volk!

Two years ago, on this day and at this very hour, National Socialism gained power and thus the responsibility in the German Reich, following a drive unequaled even in the history of parliamentary government.

Just as, not only in the recollections of living witnesses but for coming generations as well, the outbreak of the World War represents an historic transition, so does the accession of National Socialism represent such a transition for our German Volk.

It has put back on its feet a nation wasting away in dull despair and instilled in it a strong, believing faith in the inner worth and creative power of its own life.

And this is its greatest and most significant merit. The transition of the external symbols corresponded to the change in the people themselves! In joyful self-discipline, countless millions of our Volk have placed themselves at the service of the new idea. The soldiers of the Wehrmacht so rich in tradition took their places beside the zealous fighters of our revolutionary National Socialist Party. There came to be a mobilization of human forces of hitherto scarcely conceivable dimensions. From the throngs of millions of our youth up to the gigantic community of the mental and manual workers (Arbeiter der Stirn und Faust) united in a single front, we see the evidence of the National Socialist art of organization and work of organization.

The old world was not first destroyed to build the new; the new world on the rise has surpassed the old.

Not for a single second did a break interrupt our National Socialist Revolution. At no stage of our advance and our battles did chaos reign. It was the least bloody revolution in world history, but nevertheless one of its most farreaching! Thus the attempt to try to deny or falsify the character of our National Socialist Revolution by means of an international campaign of agitation and lies was ultimately futile.

Hundreds of thousands of men and women of all nations who have been placed, in the past two years, in a position to judge Germany with their own eyes have become witnesses to the greatness and discipline of the National Socialist uprising. And they remain the best witnesses to our work of reconstruction.

On January 30, 1933, I asked the German Volk for four years’ time to implement the first labor program, and now, in merely half that time, more than two thirds of what was promised has been delivered! Hence no democratic government in the world can submit itself with greater trust and greater confidence to the will of its people than the National Socialist Government of Germany! We did not carry out the revolution for the sake of a revolution; rather, our will to rebuild a new German Reich required the elimination of the old powers weighing it down. The overwhelming majority of all our former adversaries has long since apologized to us in their innermost heart of hearts.

What we have always hoped for has come to pass. They subjected our intentions and our work to a just examination and ultimately found in us and through us the fulfillment of everything they had not otherwise yearned for in the depths of their hearts: a Germany of honor, freedom and social good fortune. And if, this year, we are not commemorating this day with large-scale festivities, it is because of the feeling of sorrow which overcomes us in view of the death this past year of the man who, two years ago, entrusted to me and hence to the National Socialist Movement the leadership of Germany. Stirred most deeply, we are all mindful of the fate which led our Movement from the past to the future in so symbolic a fashion.

Furthermore, the greatest celebration of this year should not be a celebration commemorating the takeover of power, but a celebration of joy on the day the Germans of the Saar return. They will encounter a Volk worthy of them and a Reich in which it is once more a thing of good fortune for a German to live. They will encounter a Volksgemeinschaft in which innumerable millions of people, from the National Socialist fighter to the soldier, from the worker to the civil servant, are working together in true comradeship to honestly fulfill their duties in the reconstruction of a state and the education of a nation whose wish it is to be full of honor, peaceful and industrious in this world.

Berlin, January 30, 1935                                                                                                                                                                                                              Adolf Hitler