Background: Goebbels gave a speech every year on the
eve of Hitler's birthday. The 1941 speech was given two months
before the attack on the Soviet Union. It takes a less personal
tone than previous speeches, presenting Hitler as a superhuman
figure.
Good treatments of the development of the Hitler myth are
provided by Bramsted and Kerhsaw. I here
use the published version of the text from Goebbels' wartime
book Die Zeit ohne Beispiel (Munich: Zentralverlag der
NSDAP, 1941). The text of the speech is also available in any
German newspaper of 20 April 1941.
Our Hitler
Goebbels' 1941 Speech on Hitler's
Birthday
We Germans do not have sufficient historical distance to evaluate
the full scope of the age in which we are living. We are children
of our age. We have been formed by our age, and we in turn are
forming it. It will be the task of later generations to evaluate
it properly and to determine what is really admirable and what
is simply normal. Future generations will surely envy the fact
that we have lived a life of struggle, that we had the good fortune
to have political passion, a passion that Heinrich von Treitschke
once said finds little room in the hearts of most people.
There are rare moments in the middle of the pressures of daily
life when we suddenly are struck by the feeling that everything
before us is history, and that a new world is now being born.
We experience the birth pangs of all that is young and new, and
realize that this new world is replacing the old and sinking
one, with all its peculiarities, tenseness and prejudice. If
there are men who make history, if great historical developments
are the product of individual personalities, then the riddle
of our era is to be explained only by the grace of a brilliant
human being. It is no cliche to say that everything we experience
today and for which we expend our best energies would not be,
or at least would be very different, were it not for one man
who forged the path and showed the way, giving meaning, content
and direction to our age. We are experiencing the greatest miracle
that history offers: a genius is building a new world.
When is this more evident than today, as the entire German
nation and countless millions beyond its borders send their thanks,
their honor, their admiration, their deepest hopes and their
unshakable faith in him and his historic mission, to the Führer
on his 52nd birthday? They are the feelings that most deeply
move each German above all. There will be in this hard year of
war no noisy popular festivals, no parades, no splendid public
performances. But these feelings are expressed even more deeply
and warmly by those who do their daily duty, be it by our best
fighting men at the front or at home in the armaments industries.
The German people honors the Führer on his birthday by pledging
redoubled efforts to support his work. Our love and honor for
him give wings to our struggle and to our work for victory.
Two years ago we celebrated his 50th birthday with the most
splendid parade that the Reich capital had ever seen. The German
people saw clearly for the first time how strong the Reich had
become under six years of National Socialist government. We hoped
then that the Führer's efforts to preserve peace for our
nation and the world would succeed. Already the fanfares of hatred
were sounding from London and Paris, calling for war at any price.
We knew that if our enemies once more forced the Reich to fight
for its national existence, the German people for the first time
in their history would be united in all their branches, prepared
spiritually, economically and militarily, ready to present the
world with a miracle of strength, manliness, sovereign political
and spiritual superiority, military power and precision.
Our eternal enemies declared war on us in September of that
year, and since then the German miracle has become reality. The
German soldier defeated the enemy wherever he met him. In breathtaking
victories unique in history, brilliant offensives defeated Poland,
Norway, Holland, Belgium and France. England has been thrown
from the continent, and the British Empire is receiving powerful
blows in the homeland, on the Atlantic and in North Africa that
are shaking its foundations. If one asks how our enemies could
declare war on the Reich under such conditions, the only answer
is that they did not believe in the enormous power of a great
personality nor in the strength of his work. They still thought
of Germany as it had been in November 1918, cowardly, exhausted,
defenseless against the false promises of its enemies, with no
knowledge of its national mission and without determined and
strong leadership. They did not think it possible that one man
could bring about a miracle that would lift this people from
the pit to which it had fallen and lead a wonderful regeneration
that made it once more conscious of its strengths. Only rarely
have the German people experienced a true national task. While
other nations in the world did what was necessary to secure their
political and economic security by establishing the necessary
military bases and reserves of raw materials, we Germans poured
out our blood chasing phantoms. For the first time in this war,
Germany is a strong power, defending its interests, which are
not the increased profits of a capitalist ruling class, rather
the preservation of its national existence.
Each of us knows this today. We gave no illusions as we fight
the war. We all know what it is about. We know that its outcome
will determine our national life. We know that it must be won
by the whole people for the whole people, and that a German victory
will mean that the Reich is firmly guarded on all sides and that
Germany's national existence is secured. That will give our people
the possibility to live and work politically and economically.
Foreign visitors who visit the Reich during the war are amazed
at the calm with which the German people look at current and
coming events. Nothing would be more false than to assume this
was the result of indifference of lack of interest. Our confidence
rests on security. Our people do not know, and do not even want
to know, what the Führer is planning and how he will gain
victory. They simply trust him. He will chose the right way,
as he has always done. Our people had no worries before the Western
offensive as to how the Führer would break through the Maginot
Line to attack France. They simply believed that he had a plan
and the means. When Holland, Belgium and France were defeated
within six weeks as the world held its breath, the German people
were more pleased than surprised. They saw only renewed confirmation
of their faith in the Führer. Our people know that if the
nation is loyal, obedient and dutiful, and if each does his job,
Germany is unbeatable and victory after victory will accompany
our troops.
What enormous strength lies in this confidence! How childish
and silly, to the contrary, are the repeated stupid efforts by
British plutocracy to shake this confidence, to bring the people
in conflict with the Führer, to weaken the fighting spirit
of our army by lying rumors. Every German soldier today knows
that we have only been defeated when we succumbed to such a temptation,
and that Germany has always been triumphant which it was conscious
of its strength and directed it outwardly, not inwardly.
The winter in which London placed such great hopes is long
over. We filled it with feverish preparations. The entire nation
worked day and night to supply our army with a surplus of weapons
and munitions. The internal organization of our national life
continues to function flawlessly, and the burdens war brings
with it are fairly distributed and bearable for everyone. The
attempts of British plutocracy to win victories on the periphery
or to cause the German people to doubt or lose courage during
the long waiting period have been in vain. These attempts had
no impact on us. The German people did not only wait during the
winter, they also fought and worked. We did not make as much
noise about it as did the English. The enemy has already seen
the results of our preparations in the campaign in the Southeast,
in North Africa, in the Battle of the Atlantic, and in the air
war against the English Motherland. That all goes to show that
wars are not won through newspaper articles, rather with ideas,
soldiers, weapons and munitions. A people wins when it has the
prerequisites to victory, when it wants to win and when it must
win. All that is true for us.
This evening we look back along the path we have followed
since September 1939, and forward to what is still shrouded in
darkness, illuminated by the light of our faith. It is the path
to final victory. We have never believed in it as firmly as we
do today. The Führer leads us, and that is the best foundation
of our confidence.
When Mr. Churchill spoke recently about the outcome of this
war, he declared that England would win, he just did not know
how. We reply: The Führer will win because he also knows
how he will win. He has filled the nation with his spirit. It
is tuned to his will. This time, they will survive the great
test of faith that will decide their future, ending the 400-year
series of German mistakes and failures. That is why this age
is so great for us Germans and why, despite the war, it is so
encouraging. Our people have a chance, one that we will use.
An armed people, led by one will and filled with fanaticismthat
is victory!
A man who has created such things stands far above any words
of praise. The nation can only bow in thankfulness before him.
We all do that in this hour. We thank the fate that sent us the
Führer in the midst of our deepest need. We, his old fighting
companions throughout the German Reich and our soldiers at the
Front above all are grateful to fate that it gave us in our early
years the strength and insight to recognize his greatness and
to be with him from the beginning along his eventful way to victory
and triumph. Who among us would chose to miss even one day of
these last hard years, always filled with battle and work? Who
among us does not think it his highest good fortune, indeed the
real meaning and fulfillment of his life, to have been with him
as he won the revolution, and to be with him now as he is winning
the great war for Germany's life and freedom? We have fought
at his side long enough to know both from experience and knowledge
that victory is as good as certain. We only must remain strong,
faithful, brave and upright, striding with heads high toward
the hour of our proudest triumph.
Thus we greet him on the eve of his birthday. The entire nation
joins in this greeting, and in expressing its deepest and most
profound thankfulness for him. Our soldiers bear his names on
their lips, wherever they may stand or march. Our workers sing
his name as they work. Our men on the battle fronts, above all
those in the Southeast and North Africa who defend the nation's
security, our officers and soldiers of the air force who carry
death and destruction to the British Isles, our men in the navy
who have set an iron ring around Great Britain, they all greet
him as their supreme commander. Our farmers and workers greet
him as their Führer and our women thank him for fighting
for the future of their children. The German youth gives him
their strongest faith. He is ours. He has made this people what
it is today. Where would we be if he had not come?
We ask a gracious God to keep him healthy and to grant success
to his work for the freedom of our people. Then we need not fear
the future. Then the German people can face the proudest period
of their historical development. Once the flags of our revolution
fluttered over the entire Reich. Now we long for that happy day,
and fight for it with all our might, when the flags of our victory
will fly over the entire Reich.
Tomorrow we celebrate his fanatic devotion to his work. Despite
the war, a festive air fills the whole nation. It is his day,
and it is our day. It reminds us once more what our lives have
become because of him. We therefore wish him what we have always
wished for: may he remain for us what he was and is:
Our Hitler!
[Page copyright © 1998 by Randall
Bytwerk. No unauthorized reproduction.]
Go to
the Goebbels Page.
Go to
1933-1945 Page.
Go to
the German Propaganda Archive Home Page.
|