Hitler on the Nazi Rise to Power, World War I and Versailles

My German countrymen, changes of government occur frequently in history.

There have been many such changes in the history of our own people.

Surely, however, there has never been a change of government with such profound consequences as the one eight years ago.

The situation of the Reich was desperate back then.

Concentration camps were not invented in Germany.

The English invented them. They used these institutions to break the backbone of other people slowly, to wear their national resistance down and to dissolve it in order to make them accept the British yoke of democracy.

The World War, which shook Europe from nineteen fourteen to nineteen eighteen, was the willful product of British statesmanship.

And although the whole world was then mobilized against Germany, Germany was never actually vanquished.

We can calmly state this today. I should not wish to criticize the past unless I have myself done a better job.

Today, however, as a man who has done a better job, I can critically appraise the past and judge it.

And I can only say the success of the year nineteen eighteen is the exclusive result of a rare accumulation of personal incompetence in the leadership of our people, a unique accumulation which never before happened in history,

nor will it repeat itself in the future, believe me.

And if the English today come and think that it is enough to insert the old propaganda player roles of the year nineteen seventeen to nineteen eighteen in the phonograph, then all I can say is they have forgotten nothing.

And to their misfortune, they have not learned anything either.

And that is how they differ from the German people.

The German people has learned something since then, and it has not forgotten anything either.

We do not wish to be petty here. Promises have been broken before in history, but what happened in the years nineteen eighteen, nineteen nineteen, nineteen twenty, nineteen twenty-one was no longer a broken promise.

It was one broken promise after another.

It was the greatest inner struggle ever in our history.

We have the same opponents, those who always confronted us abroad, a mixture of all international feeling, thinking, and acting persons from all countries.

My countrymen, you know the coalitions which faced us then, and I can say today, in this mental struggle, we have emerged as masters everywhere.

Since after I was finally called to power, I came to power legally under the right presidency of Field Marshal von Hindenburg because of the strength of the movement which stood behind me.

That means the so-called National Socialist revolution vanquished democracy in a democracy with democracy.

As everywhere, I followed the path of instruction, education, and slow adaptation, for it was my pride to have brought about this revolution in Germany without a single glass pane shattering, a revolution which led to the greatest upheaval ever seen on Earth.

It did not destroy even the least of values, but instead slowly set things straight, set the course until finally the great community has found its new form.

That was our goal, and it was the same in foreign policy.

I stated my platform, elimination of Versailles.

One should not be silly in the outside world today, should not pretend that I had only discovered this platform in the years nineteen thirty-three, nineteen thirty-five, or nineteen thirty-seven.

Instead of listening to the foolish talk of the emigrants, the gentleman would have done well to read what I wrote, what I wrote over a thousand times.

No man ever declared and wrote down more often what he wanted than I did, and time and time again I wrote, "Elimination of Versailles."

And when I came to power, I did not then say to myself as democratic politicians do, "Never expect gratitude once you've served your purpose."

Instead, I made the solemn resolve, "I thank you, Lord God, for bringing me to where I can finally realize my platform." And here too, I did not want to realize this platform by force. Instead, I spoke. I spoke as much as a man can.

My speeches before the Reichstag are evidence of this.

No democratic statesman can swindle history from them.

The offers which I made them, how often did I ask them to be reasonable and not to take from a great people the foundations of its life and existence?

How often did I prove to them that this was not to their advantage, that it was senseless, and yes, that it was to their detriment?

The things I did over the years to ease the way to an understanding for them, never would it have been necessary to enter into this arms race had the others not wanted it. I placed many proposals before them.

However, every proposal which came from me sufficed to agitate a certain Jewish internationalist capitalist clique immediately, just as had been the case in Germany, my countrymen, where any reasoned proposal from National Socialist was rejected primarily because we had made it.

However, we had no reason to bow to this outside world.

Or do these English truly believe that I have some sort of inferiority complex about England? They betrayed us with their swindle and a lie back then.

But the British soldiers did not defeat us, and it does not look today as though things have changed.

It was clear to me that if nothing could be achieved by means of voluntary discussion and negotiation in Geneva, we had to leave Geneva.

Never in my life have I imposed on anyone.

Whoever does not want to speak to me does not have to.

I don't care. We are eighty-five million Germans, and these Germans do not need that.

They have a mighty historic past. They already had an empire when England was only a small island, and that for more than three hundred years.

For England, these colonies are useless.

It has forty million square kilometers. What is it doing with them?

Nothing at all. It is the avarice of old usurers who do not want to give away what they possess.

They are sick creatures. If they see that their neighbor has nothing to eat, they would still rather throw what they possess into the sea than give it away, even if they cannot use it themselves.

They get ill at the thought that they could lose something.

And I did not even ask for anything that belonged to the English.

I asked only for what they robbed us of and stole from us in the years nineteen eighteen and nineteen nineteen.

Robbery and theft, contrary to the solemn assurances of the American President Wilson.

We did not ask anything of them. We did not make any demands.

Again and again, I stretched my hand out to them, and still everything was in vain.

The reasons are clear to us. For one, it is German unification as such.

They hate this, our state, irrespective of what it looks like, whether it is imperial or National Socialist, democratic or authoritarian.