Adolf Hitler's speech at the 1927 Nuremberg Rally

This ia a partial text of Adolf Hitler's Speech at the 1927 Party Rally in Nuremberg. It is translated by Randall Bytwerk; taken from this page at the Calvin German Propaganda Archive. Enlarge image

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What is the nature of a nation's internal power? Three things are involved: First, a people has intrinsic value in its race. That is the primal value. A people that has the best blood but does not understand it, squandering it, receives no protection from its intrinsic value. And the purity of blood means nothing if the nation can be persuaded of the absurdity that its blood is worthless. Such a deepest value can be present, but not recognized. Individual people today are placed in large groups that no longer enable them to see this value. To the contrary, their program almost claims that there is no value in blood. They see race as completely insignificant.

Second, internal power depends, aside from the value of blood, on the abilities that such a nation still has. A nation cannot be called impotent as long as it is able to produce the minds that are necessary to solve the problems crying out for solution. We can measure the greatness of a people by the minds it produces. That too is a value, but only when it is recognized as a value. If a nation has the ability to produce great minds a thousand times over, but has no appreciation for the value of these minds and excludes them from its political life, these great men are of no use. It can therefore collapse, in the best case perhaps passing on its inventions and ideas to the minds of other nations, teaching these nations, but no longer is it a nation called to lead itself.

The third value hidden within a nation is the drive to self assertion. A people that has lost this has almost given up its place in the world, in which each living creature owes its existence only to the eternal striving to rise higher. If a nation today proclaims the theory that it will find happiness in lasting peace, and attempts to live according to that theory, it will one day inevitably succumb to this most basic form of cowardice. Pacifism is the clearest form of cowardice, possessing no willingness to fight for anything at all.

The same person today who preaches limiting the number of children to the nation murders others so that he himself may live.

He therefore eliminates the second form of intrinsic strength, namely the possibility of producing more minds at all. A people that limits the number of its children cannot demand of fate that it give it great minds from the few children who are born. More likely, such a people will hatch the most unworthy offspring and will attempt to preserve them at any price. Such a nation has first born, but no longer any great men.

Truly these three points that form the intrinsic strength of a people are no longer regarded in Germany. The opposite. As I have said, today one places no value on our blood, on the intrinsic value of our race, but rather apostles proclaim that it is completely irrelevant whether one is Chinese, Kaffir or Indian. If a nation internalizes such thinking, its own values are of no use. It has renounced the protection of its values, for they too must be protected and encouraged. A people that sees its blood as worthless cannot possess the intrinsic will to withstand the competitive struggles of this world. It needs no great minds, does not even want them any more. It will inevitably believe that all people are equal in terms of blood, and will no longer have a need to rise above the others. That is why one needs great minds. It will no longer desire to rise, and that is why one needs great spirits. Since such peoples no longer value their race and see themselves as the same as everyone else, and no longer feel the inner need for happiness or great men, they can no longer struggle, nor do they desire to.

That leads to what the large parties proclaim, namely to a nation that thinks internationally, follows the path of democracy, rejects struggle and preaches pacifism. A people that has accepted these three human burdens, that has given up its racial values, preaches internationalism, that limits its great minds, and has replaced them with the majority, that is inability in all areas, rejecting the individual mind and praising human brotherhood, such a people has lost its intrinsic values. Such a people is incapable of policies that could bring a rising population in line with its territory, or better said: adjust the territory to the population.

Our party comrade says one must give the people territory. In Germany, unfortunately, we must first give the territory a people. We see before us today Marxist masses, no longer a German people.

All this would be in vain if the fundamental values were not there. The only thing we may be proud of is this: We have this value, we have our blood-building value, the best proof of which is the great men of world history over the millennia. We have this value of race and personality. We have a third value: a sense of battle. It is there, it is only buried under a pile of foreign doctrines. A large and strong party is attempting to prove the opposite, until suddenly an ordinary military band begins to play. Then the sleeper awakes from his dreams and begins to feel himself a member of a people that is on the march, and he marches along. That is how it is today. We only need to show our people the better way. They see: we are marching already! The German people will come to a knowledge of their intrinsic values when the systematic organized poisoning of their values is replaced by their systematic organized defense.

http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/rpt27c.htm