Adolf Hitler - speech to the Hitler Youth

(Short excerptions)

Nuremberg, September 11, 1937

My Youth!

This morning I learned from our weather forecasters that, at present, we have the meteorological condition “V b.” That is supposed to be a mixture between very bad and bad. Now, my boys and girls, Germany has had this meteorological condition for fifteen years! And the Party had this meteorological condition, too! For the space of a decade, the sun did not shine upon this Movement. It was a battle in which only hope could be victorious, the hope that in the end the sun would rise over Germany after all. And risen it has! And as you are standing here today, it is also a good thing that the sun is not smiling down on you. For we want to raise a race not only for sunny, but also for stormy days! I would hold all of the training that National Socialism accomplishes to be in vain if the result of this training were not a nation which can prevail at all times, even in the worst of times. And in the future, my youth, you yourselves will be that nation! What you do not learn today you will not know in the future! We have conceived of other ideals for youth than those held in times past.

Once-this is something you do not know-a boy of eighteen or twenty looked different from today. And girls were raised differently, too, than they are now.

That has changed. In place of a youth that was formerly raised on pleasure, today a youth is growing up who will be raised on forbearance and sacrifice, and above all raised to breed a healthy, robust body, for as you know, we believe that without such a body, even a healthy spirit cannot rule the nation for any length of time.

That is why, for us National Socialists, the time of struggle back then was good, although the sun did not shine on us; actually, it may well be that in human life one remembers the days of battle and storms longer than the days of sunshine. And I am of the conviction that you will remember this day, too, perhaps for the very reason that it rained, and you are standing here in spite of it.

That is the wonderful thing: that you complete the training cycle of our Volk. With you it has begun, and only when the last German sinks into the grave will it end! Never before in German history has there existed such an inner unity of spirit, of formation of will and of leadership. That is something many generations before us have yearned for, and we are the fortunate witnesses of its fulfillment. But in you, my boys and girls, I see this thousand-year-old dream coming true most marvelously! Just as you are standing before me here today, year for year, centuries from now the young generation will stand before their respective Fuhrers to come. And will again and again pledge that vow to the Germany we have secured today.

Deutschland Sieg Heil!

Adolf Hitler - speech to the German Labor Front

(Short excerptions)

September 11, 1937

Party Comrades! My German Volksgenossen!

The fact that I have come to you somewhat late is due to the obligations which are part and parcel of the Party Congress. Therefore, I have asked my friend, Party Comrade Goring, to speak to you in my stead. For I must conserve my voice a little. Now that the weather has become worse, and much speaking must be done outdoors, that wears somewhat on the vocal cords. Now that does not necessarily have to awaken in our foreign correspondents178 the joyful hope that I have cancer and my voice is gone for good. They will still be hearing it quite often and quite frequently. But basically it makes no difference at all which of us is talking. Because each of us will say the same thing. What we have to say is much more than merely a memorized speech. It is the rendering of our profession of faith.

If we go so far as to believe that we will have educated everyone or perhaps had educated everyone, others will come after them who need to be educated.

That is the same as in the military. One class of recruits has finally, finally been brought to the point that it can stand and walk alone. And then it moves on, and then the next class comes, and then it starts all over again. But that is not such a misfortune after all: on the contrary. The mission of educating is always the best of all. For it is an eternal one, a lasting one.

We had ranks in former times, too, in which the consciousness of rank was hammered (eingepaukt) into the people. Now we are hammering into them a consciousness of the Volk in certain organizations. Those are ranks, too. One of these ranks is the Labor Front. Its job is to help hammer home to German Volksgenossen the consciousness of the Volk. It is a consciousness of rank, too! Namely, the consciousness of belonging to the ranks of German Volkstum! At the moment, this is perhaps inconvenient for some. But when a recruit reports to the barracks for duty, he, too, finds a number of things inconvenient.

First he needs a good rubbing-down until he has dispensed with what he had before. And he is usually most attached to what he should not be attached to at all, because it gives him no reason to be proud. It is so difficult to teach him even, let us say, about cleanliness. And things are no different on a larger scale.

People are so very attached primarily to what is not at all worth one’s having such an affinity with. All of this now needs to he removed. And that is a wonderful task.

And if someone says to me, that has not been accomplished yet-well, we are only in the fifth year of our calendar. Just give us one or two hundred years’ time.

[…]

This morning I saw some of our youth join the Party. And I must say so myself: it is really wonderful. That is a magnificent young generation we are now getting. And above all, they are coming to the Party from all walks of life.

And seriously, one wouldn’t know it from seeing them: they have the same brown shirt. No one asks where they come from. But they all look as alike as peas in a pod. Here are children of the proletariat, there are former sons of the bourgeoisie and of entrepreneurs and employees and peasants, etc. But they all look exactly alike. And that is the wonderful thing. They are already growing up like that. And our other organizations will help to cultivate that slowly but surely. That is what the Party is for, and its organizations, the SA and the SS.

And then comes the Labor Service. And then comes the military. And thus the individual German is kneaded until he gradually learns to come into actual contact with his neighbor. And all of this takes place not so much perhaps under the heading “ideal.” No, no, all of this goes by a much more simple heading, namely the word, “reason.”

I might not be standing before you now, that is to say I would certainly not be standing before you, had I not once been a soldier and, as a soldier, acquired this absolute faith in the value of my Volk, my Volksgenossen, and above all the workers. For you yourselves know that one could so often hear from bourgeois quarters, “Oh, those people are good for nothing, they’re just riff-raff, pure and simple, etc.” I have always said that was not true at all.

Those people are comrades. I have experienced that myself many a time.

Those are the comrades who, God knows, have risked their lives so often for this Germany. They are all decent people. They are all men who are prepared, if necessary, to sacrifice everything, even their lives, for an ideal-and that too is an ideal, if someone goes out on the battlefield for Germany.