Adolf Hitler – speech in the Lustgarten

Berlin, May 1, 1936

We ourselves have been able to deal with our internal difficulties without detriment to any other people. Solve your own problems, and do not attempt to involve others in what are your own quarrels. In Germany we do not need- and I can say this today to you above all, my Volksgenossen:

I do not need to perform some glorious deed which will bring death to millions in order to obtain esteem and respect from my Volk. I have that anyway! I am not standing on shaky ground; I do not need to lead millions of our people to the sacrificial altar so that millions of others might perhaps believe in me! In these three years we have done nothing that could possibly have caused suffering to another people; we have taken not a single step that might harm anyone. We have not reached out our hands to grasp anything that did not belong to us. We have remained within our borders, we have offered our hand to the others in friendship dozens of times.-What more could one expect? During these three-and-a-quarter years, the German Volk has become strong and determined internally. Yet it has never abused its determination to perhaps threaten anyone else. Quite the opposite: in these three-and-a-quarter years, we have attempted to introduce this determination to European life as a factor toward its stability. How can we help it if others do not agree? We have witnessed it during these past few weeks. Only recently we made the world a generous offer,116 not schemed up by a handful of legal experts and lawyers but issuing from healthy common sense, simple and clear-cut. If there is a will, that is the way Europe can be given inner peace and a feeling of security. But what happens to us? At the same time we declare that we are prepared, regardless of past or present, to offer our hand in friendship to all peoples, to conclude treaties with them, we see yet another smear campaign breaking out. Once again lies are being spread about that Germany will invade Austria tomorrow or the day after. I ask myself: who are these elements who have no desire for tranquility, for peace, for understanding; who have a need to constantly agitate and sow the seeds of mistrust, who are these people? (Cries of “The Jews!”) I know (Applause lasting several minutes),117 I know it is not the millions who would have to take up arms were these agitators to succeed in their plans. They are not the ones! Not in any nation! It is a small faction of interests (Interessenklungel), an international clique that lives off stirring up other peoples by agitation. We know these fellows from our own country, and we see their tracks between the peoples. Thus it is all the more necessary for us to cling more than ever-and for this reason most of all- to our own unity and consolidation.

How splendid it is in Germany to have a Volk that leads itself, orders itself and guides itself instead of being governed by the rubber truncheon! How splendid it is today to have people here who are not attempting to mutually make their lives difficult and bitter, but who are beginning to show more and more consideration for one another! We are so fortunate to be able to live amongst these people, and I am proud to be your Fuhrer. So proud that I cannot imagine anything in this world capable of convincing me to trade it for something else. I would sooner, a thousand times sooner, be the last Volksgenosse among you than a king anywhere else.118 And this pride fills me today above all. When I was driving through these long streets earlier and saw to the left and right these hundreds of thousands and millions of Volksgenossen who had come from their plants and workshops, from our factories and counting houses, my heart was about to burst, I truly felt it: that is our Germany! That is our Volk, our marvelous German Volk and our dear German Reich! In this hour I believe we can have but one desire: let the other peoples cast a single glance in here, let them only see this Volk of peace and labor and I believe they would take those rabble-rousers and throw them out! Then they would understand and comprehend why this most sacred national community is and will always be both the most sacred guarantor of a genuinely European order and thus of a truly human culture and civilization. Therefore, I ask you in this hour to take heart and allow your spirit to gaze back upon the past and share in feeling the good fortune we have come to enjoy by virtue of having found our way back to one community, to one Volk. And let us pledge our dedication to this Volk on this first of May of work and of the Volksgemeinschaft with our old vow: to our German Volk and our German Reich:

Sieg Heil!