Adolf Hitler – proclamation read by Gauleiter Adolf Wagner

Nuremberg, September 11, 1935

l. Jewish Marxism and parliamentary democracy related to it;

2. the politically and morally corrupting Center;

3. certain elements in a stubborn, dumb-reactionary bourgeoisie.

I would like to point out in this context that the battle against the inner enemies of the nation will never be frustrated by formal bureaucracy or its incompetence; where the formal bureaucracy of the State should prove ill-suited to solve a certain problem, the German nation will activate its more dynamic organization as an aid to asserting its vital necessities. For it is a grave error to suppose that the nation would exist only because of some formal phenomenon and that, moreover, when such a phenomenon is not capable of accomplishing the tasks assigned to it, the nation would capitulate in the face of these tasks.

On the contrary: what can be accomplished through the State will be accomplished through the State. But whatever the State is incapable of accomplishing, due to its very essence, will be accomplished by the Movement.

For the State as well is only one of the forms of organization in volkisch life, driven and controlled by the direct expression of the Volk’s will to live, by the Party, by the National Socialist Movement.

Under no circumstances will the National Socialist State tolerate that the politicization of the confessions be prolonged or even begun anew by any type of detour. And let no one delude himself as to the determination of the Movement and the State! We have already fought a battle against the political clergy and ousted it from the parliaments, and that after a long struggle in which we had no state authority and the other side had it all. Today we have this authority and will more easily be able to win the struggle for these principles. But we will never wage this battle as a battle against Christianity or even against one of the two confessions. But we will wage it in order to keep our public life pure and free of those priests who have mistaken their calling, those who should have become politicians and not clergymen.

After an incredible struggle for enlightenment, after endless sacrifices, we have succeeded in converting nine tenths of our Volk to subordinate themselves to one opinion and to one will. The last tenth comprises the remainder of thirtyseven parties, the confessions, the former associations-in short, that very chaos which thrust Germany into one disaster after another for centuries. And thus, when we calmly take in the perspective of what success recent years have given to our German Reich, in the end we must always recognize the most uplifting fact of all, namely: The most valuable thing is and remains the Movement, which has joined the nation to form a whole and which allows its desires to manifest themselves in one single will. What security, and what tranquillity reign in our Germany today! Wherever we look, we see everywhere around us the ferments of decomposition, the elements of dissolution.

Endless strikes, lockouts, street-fighting, destruction, hatred and civil war; rootless Jewish-international wandering scholars are infiltrating the nations, agitating against all healthy common sense and whipping up hostility among the people. Under the guise of representing the interests of the classes, they are putting a civil war in motion which will lead only to the utmost satisfaction of their own interests. And we are witnessing the consequences. In a world which should actually live in affluence, need reigns. Countries with a population of scarcely fifteen persons per square kilometer suffer from hunger, states which are blessed with every conceivable natural resource are simply incapable of reducing their armies of unemployed.

It is a triumph of the effectiveness of the National Socialist regime that it has succeeded-in a country in which 137 persons live in one square kilometer, in a country which has no colonies, which lacks most natural resources, which was drained to its very blood for fifteen years, which lost its entire foreign capital, paid more than fifty billion in reparation dues, which was confronted with the total ruin of its economy-that even given the worst problems, it succeeded in preserving a means of existence, in reducing the number of unemployed, so that today we are better off than many of the world’s richer countries.

Today we can admit it openly: the year 1934 was unfortunately a bad harvest year. We are still suffering from the aftereffects. But it was nevertheless possible to secure the German Volk’s supply of vitally important foodstuffs.

The fact that this was possible, in spite of the many restrictions, is an achievement of which the broad masses of our Volk have perhaps not been sufficiently aware. The difficulties connected with this harvest led many a time to a temporary shortage of this or that foodstuff. We were nonetheless determined that under no circumstances would we capitulate as a certain international press was ardently hoping. And we overcame the crisis. We were forced, in this context, to repeatedly halt with every means available attempts to compensate for the bad harvest by partly understandable but also partly unjustified price increases.

In this year we were-and will likewise be in future-motivated by the unshakeable desire to prevent the German Volk from stumbling unawares into a new inflation. But this would still be the unavoidable result of any increase in salaries or any increase in prices at present. So if today, too, irresponsible egoists or unthinking fools fancy that any kind of shortage-which can always arise- gives them the right to increase prices, this behavior would, if the Government were to let it, set the well-known vicious circle of 1921 to 1923 in motion, leaving the German Volk with an inflation on its hands for the second time around. For this reason we will attack such elements from now on with brutal ruthlessness and-if good intentions fail-will not shrink from using concentration camps to make them conform with and adapt to the national interest as a whole.