Adolf Hitler - speech to the Hitler Youth

September 12, 1936

My German Youth!

You have the good fortune of witnessing a time of both upheaval and greatness. That is a fate not bestowed upon all generations. When I think back on the youth of my own time and on the time of my own youth, it seems truly empty to me compared to what fills today’s time and in it, today’s youth as well; what tasks today’s time is faced with, and what tasks are facing today’s youth. It is really wonderful to live in such an age and to be allowed to grow and mature in it. And this great good fortune is yours! You are not experiencing the reconstruction of a state, for you did not know the old Reich. You are experiencing the birth of a great age you can judge in comparison to our surroundings!

Perhaps that is the greatest miracle of our time: buildings are being erected, factories founded, roads built, train stations constructed-but beyond all this, a new German being is maturing! When I look at you, filled with the happiest sentiments, when I meet your gaze, I know that my life-struggle has not been fought in vain, the effort has not been made for nothing! With this flag and in its young bearers, it will live on, and a worthy generation will one day stand prepared to relieve you.

You will be men, just as was the great generation of the war. You will be brave and courageous, just as were your older brothers and your fathers. You will be as loyal as Germans can be. Yet you will see the Vaterland with completely different eyes than we, unfortunately, had to see it with. You will learn a different kind of dedication to the eternal Reich and the eternal Volk.

Now five years have passed since your leader, my old Party Comrade Schirach, himself once a member of the Youth, took over training and forming you. Back then a weak, small beginning-already today a miraculous accomplishment! Let that be a reminder and a comfort to us for the future: if we have been able to achieve this miracle in five years, the coming five, ten, twenty and one hundred years will certainly reinforce this miracle! Generation after generation will take turns in the tasks and their accomplishment; again and again a new youth will assemble here in this city.

It will be constantly stronger, more powerful and more healthy, and give living generations ever greater hopes for the future. We want to join our wishes for this future, that it may bring our Volk blessings and good fortune, that it may be allowed to live and thwart all those who wish to unsettle this life.

Today we are in the midst of a turbulent age. Yet we do not complain. We are accustomed to fighting, for it was the struggle that brought us forth. We are determined to keep our feet planted firmly on our ground, and we shall parry every attack. And you shall stand beside me if this hour should ever come! You shall stand in front of me, at my side and behind me, and shall hold our banners high! Then let our old adversary try to march against us and raise his head once more. Though he might carry his Soviet symbol before him-with our symbol we shall triumph once again!

Adolf Hitler – speech at the annual meeting

of the German Labor Front

September 12, 1936

If the Urals with their vast wealth of raw materials, Siberia with its rich forests, and the Ukraine with its vast fields of grain were in Germany, it would be swimming in surplus under National Socialist leadership. We would produce-and every single German would have more than enough to live on.

But in Russia the population is starving in these huge areas because a Jewish- Bolshevist leadership is incapable of organizing production and thus according the worker practical help. [-] In Moscow they build a subway and then invite the world to tour it, saying, “Look what we’ve accomplished!” We do not even mention such accomplishments. We build our subways just in passing!191 In the same time they need to construct eleven kilometers of subway lines in Moscow, we construct 7,000 kilometers of Reich autobahns-and that not only eighteen or twenty years after our revolution, but in the fourth year, and in another four years the entire network will be finished!

We will never say that the problems cannot be solved. Problems that arise can also be solved, and they will be solved! Naturally this requires boldness, initiative, determination, and great faith. But a much greater boldness and a much greater faith were required for a single man to take up the battle eighteen years ago against a whole world of ideas and foes! When I say today that we will have solved this or that problem in four years, it all seems much easier to me than it seemed to me then to strike out as a lone wanderer on the path from nothing, all the way to the top of the German nation. Therefore, may no one stand up against me and say, “That won’t work!” No one can and no one will say that to me. I am not one of those men who let themselves be told, “It won’t work.” It must work, for Germany must live.

Naturally we will only solve the problems if we are one front. [-] When I see you standing before me as the front line of German labor, then please grasp the meaning of the word “front.” Front means one will, it means one resolve; front means one goal and one deed!