Himmler's Oct. 24, 1943 "Freedom Day" speech in Posen

Baltic Germans inspect their new home in Warthegau, Nov. 10, 1939. Many thousands have already moved into the regions freed from the former Polish occupiers after their 20-year interruption, and have begun building up. [This was the caption at the time.]

Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler

"Tag der Freiheit" (Freedom Day) speech
Posen, Warthegau, 24 October 1943

Translated by Carlos Whitlock Porter
Translation copyright 2016 Carolyn Yeager

INTRODUCTION by Carolyn Yeager

Reichsgau Wartheland, also called Warthegau, was a National Socialist German administrative district formed in 1939 from what had been Polish territory for the past 20 years, granted by the Versailles Treaty following WW1. The name derived from the main river, Warthe; the capital city was Posen. The Gauleiter (Party leader of a Gau or District) of the Warthegau from '39 to '45 was Arthur Greiser.

In 1921 (according to Wikipedia), the territory was inhabited by Poles and a German minority which was 16.7% of the total population. That there were fewer Germans by that time is a consequence of hundreds of thousands fleeing the persecution and economic hardship imposed on them by the ruling Polish regime since late 1918. Nearly a million ethnic Germans left the 2nd Polish Republic during its existence, either"voluntarily" or by force.

This speech was given on the 4th Anniversary of the founding of the Warthegau. "Gautag" is the day of celebration of the creation of a Gau and Himmler was asked by Greiser to speak in the District capital, Posen.

The transcript made of the speech is stamped "Secret"  and it says on the title page [shown right] he was speaking before Gauleiters, plus there would be other Party officials and certain trusted guests. Notice the sharp SS runes that were so often missing on documents used at Nuremberg. Across the top it says: Transcript of tape recording of SS-Standarte "Kurt Eggers."

Himmler spoke without a prepared text, as he always did. It's evident from the word structure and the casual tone in places. You will be able to notice it yourself.

In his talk, Himmler discusses racial questions almost entirely. The district was involved in bringing what had been a majority Polish area back to being a majority German area again. The problems involved in such a change are many and complex. His basic message is that German blood (genetics) produces people who are reliable, and who reliably display certain valuable characteristics as orderliness, cleanliness, loyalty, dependability, consistency. Those with Slavic blood (genetics), on the other hand, are not as reliable in that they can swing from one extreme to the other - can exhibit good behavior for a period of time in a supportive environment, but tend to have unreasonable, erratic, and even violent outbreaks due to the Mongolian mixture in their blood.

Like it or hate it, and many will hate it, this is what he says. Three quotes should suffice to show his firm belief in such a thing as Germanic blood, or Germanic genetics.

Becoming really German, for a Gau or a region, can only occur from inside out, based on one's blood.

How can one explain the racial composition of the Slavs? During the mass migration period, there was an infusion of Mongolian character and Mongolian race.

Well, I think we have to recognise that Slavic ethnicity runs the entire scale of feelings and characteristics, from the most sincere saintliness and good-heartedness, right down to cannibalism.

It is a brilliant talk – to me Himmler is a brilliant man – and fascinating all the way through. Imagine how it would be if events had turned out as he describes here. Compare it to what we have today. If you're honest, you'll admit the National Socialist plan for Europe wins hands down. Here is the speech.

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DEAR NATIONAL comrades, men and women, dear guests! Dear party comrade Greiser, I have been sincerely happy to accept your invitation to speak here at the Gautag. You know, and I'm not saying anything new here, the degree to which I have felt personally committed to the work of this Gau from the very beginning and above all how much I have felt personally committed to you, and always will.

I would now like to convey some personal thoughts which I have had, related to the present Gautag.

We Germans, everywhere in the Reich, are sometimes dissatisfied with the tempo of events; we are sometimes dissatisfied here and there when we hear that very hard fighting is going on here and there, and that no decision has been reached. Many people ask how much longer the war will last. Many people believe that this or that could have been done in a simpler way, or better or more quickly. Sometimes we forget that we are in the midst of one of the most gigantic national conflicts, in one of the most gigantic racial struggles for many centuries.

I first would like to outline the situation four and a half years ago. Four and a half years ago. Four years ago was Freedom Day, the day of the birth of the Gau. Half a year before, the German border was still only 150 kilometres from the capital city of the German Reich. At that time, a modern adversary could reach the capital city of Germany with its bombers and fighter aircraft within 20 minutes – today, with the speeds reached by modern aircraft, inside ten minutes. Part of the Reich, East Prussia, was a small state, bravely defending itself, completely cut off from the Reich, but basically unviable. That was the situation four and half years ago.

Now four years ago, through the decree of the Führer, after the Polish campaign, the geographical concept of the Warthe-Land became the political-governmental administrative concept of the Warthegau, thereby introducing one of the best creations of the German Reich, as will certainly become clear in the future. A Gau with four and a half million inhabitants, barely 10 percent of whom were German, has now, after four years, become a Gau the capital city of which has regained a German face and in which barely 400,000 Germans have increased to over 800,000.

The Gauleiters and their collaborators were faced with the difficult problem: how do we make this Gau German? How does this occur? I should recall something else here: four years ago was a time in which many of you sitting here today were full of great melancholy. You had just said goodbye to your homeland. The first ones to leave their homes, at the request of the Führer, came from Estonia and Latvia; others who had to leave their homes in the following weeks and months were the Germans who made the great, later highly glamorised columns of farmers marching from Volhynia and Galicia, from the Narev region and other eastern lands.

The question now: how do we make this land German again? I would prefer to put it more exactly: how do we shift the German ethnic border outwards, solidly and reliably, by so and so many hundreds of kilometres? The German border was shifted outwards four years ago by the Führer, by drawing lines on maps, through the victory of arms, and by order of the Führer, by order of the Reich.

There are many ways to win over a country, to incorporate a country into a nation and people. I would like to describe two of them as particularly distinctive in the great ethnic struggle, and I would emphatically like to profess my clear belief in one of the two.

The first way, the older of the two, is the way countries were incorporated in the last hundred or two hundred years. They began by taking their old particularities and outwardly giving them different characteristics, through the schools, through education and above all through language. At the same time, it was repeatedly stated and stressed, "We took this man, who lived and dwelt here in this region, in the old provinces of Posen, and gave him a faultless education. We taught him to read, write, and do arithmetic; he was illiterate before. Now, through our German work, our German thoroughness, this same man has become, so to speak, an educated Central European. Furthermore: we drafted him into our barracks and taught him order, cleanliness, punctuality, obedience, even bravery, and everything else". Let's look at the year 1919. In 1919, the ethnic Germans here in Upper Silesia, the ethnic Germans in West Prussia, we ourselves in what remained of our small Reich territories in 1918-19, fought with partisan groups, with insurgents, with military units who unfortunately fought very well in many places. Who were our enemies? It was, as it was said, insurgents from the Western Frontier Association and similar organisations of the Polish nation. The units of these organisations which fought well were often led by men whose curriculum vitae could easily be established: this one won the Iron Cross First Class, this other one is a former Prussian non-commissioned officer, this one is an old Feldwebel [usually: Corporal First Class], educated in a German school; this one managed an estate for a German land owner; this one was an official in a small town, with an absolutely perfect record; he learned a lot, was highly capable, was always willing.

These were the most dangerous adversaries we ever came up against in the ethnic struggle: they were dangerous, on the one hand, first, because they were of our own blood, when that was true; and secondly, all these men learned their German obedience, their German order, from us; they were the most dangerous when they appeared on the other side. This example, which the Germans who still remained in Posen and in the Warthegau learned to their sorrow in the years 1919-23, and which the Germans who remained here experienced especially painfully in their own flesh in all the years up to 1939, should serve as a warning to us.

It would be foolish to repeat an error committed over the course of historical developments for the second time. We see, therefore, that in an age in which nations have awakened to the reality of communities of blood and race, and to an awareness of their value, their existence, the old method of granting citizenship, teaching foreigners to sing national anthems, giving them language lessons and providing them all a different "dressage" [training], is insufficient to truly appropriate a Gau, and turn it into part of the nation which now controls the area concerned. That was enough during the age of the cabinet wars, that was enough during the Middle Ages, it may have still been enough until the end of the 18th century. It wasn't enough even during the last century, and in our modern age it certainly cannot achieve any degree of success for the nation at all. We – party comrade Greiser, an excellent Gauleiter, with Wilhem Rees as Reichskommissar – have therefore uncompromisingly and unconditionally rejected precisely this method of earlier times for the Warthegau from the very outset. As National Socialists who are defenders of this ideology, not just in name and in words but men who believe out of the deepest conviction, on the deepest level, we view the world and attempt to solve its problems based on this foundation, and have decided to choose another path.

Becoming really German, for a Gau or a region, can only occur from inside out, based on one's blood. We can speak to a person who belongs to us racially. I can, of course, speak to a human being of any race, no matter what he looks like, he can be of any colour, in exactly the same way – now, don't be offended by a hard word here – just as any trainer can train a monkey. To speak to the heart, to his racial instincts which are born of his blood, is only possible with someone of our blood, someone with the same descent as ourselves, the same ancestors. With somebody like that your feelings can resonate, you can express them. These feelings are, in the end, alone of decisive importance in the struggle for a people: the values of the faith, a faith that moves mountains – loyalty, obedience and bravery.

For this reason, we have set about first recognising the real Germans and then making Reich citizens out of them. For some of them, this was merely a formal, very clear procedure, for those who fought here, people whose parents, father and mother and forefathers were all indisputably German.

Now came the difficult problems. You didn't need much cleverness or wisdom to recognise the first group. But the difficult problem was: what do we do now with those who have a German father and a Polish mother, or those who had a Polish father and a German mother? What do we do with those who had a German mother and a German father, where German is spoken in the family, but who have a Polish grandmother? What do we do with those who had three German grandparents, but where Polish is spoken in the house? You see, I have only picked out a couple of questions here. In reality, it's nowhere near as simple. These are only a couple of problems, a couple of possibilities, and you'll see right away how difficult the problems become. In my opinion, only a very sober decision can be crucial here. Namely, the decision of the blood. It is quite clear that those who have overwhelmingly German parents or grandparents generally belong to the German nation ethnically, and should be recognised as Germans. It's more difficult when Germans like this, who had German forefathers, have been completely absorbed by Polish state thinking. These are mostly the bravest, because they are equipped with German and Nordic characteristics. The bravest, toughest and stubbornest adversaries.

I must draw your attention to something here. The sentence, which I already spoke once before: the most dangerous enemies for us, on the opposite side, are enemies of our blood, and secondly, those with our upbringing. During the 18-day campaign against Poland, which, for the Polish state broke out like a natural disaster, a somewhat tougher and longer resistance broke out in several places. And where was that? A few names stand out here. In the Polish navy, which resisted the longest out of all the Polish armed forces, there was Admiral Unruh at Hela – a German, who nevertheless had a Polish mother. He was one of the ones with whom we had to fight the longest. A general Rommel, in Warsaw, originally a German. Another who stubbornly defended his fortress was General Thoma, probably a Huguenot émigré, in Modlin [a famous fortress in Warsaw].

I believe that we could extend the list almost to infinity if we took the trouble to compile them. I only picked them out because they were very obvious, and in so doing I would like to stress my remark that the most dangerous enemy is an enemy who shares our blood, when he fights on the other side. The bravest and toughest are those Germans who, through some accident of history, became members of a foreign nation and are now the defenders, advocates and, on the inside, the sons and daughters of a foreign ethnicity, with all the German stubbornness, all the German idealism. It's not enough here just to say – such weak people, forgetting their German ethnicity. It is so fearfully easy to explain. Let's take an example: a little German boy, with good parents, arrives in a foreign country. He hears only the foreign language. Those are the first sounds he utters. As a little boy, he learns only the foreign script. He reads only in this foreign language, reads only the intellectual products of this people. And this little boy, who might be descended from the bravest German parents, will become the bravest member of this foreign people.

In saying this, I mean to say something important: the good properties of our blood produce their very worst effects when they appear against us on the other side. I'd also like to say something else: I wish to explain the degree to which the ethnic question really gets difficult, and I wish to draw a conclusion from all this which is not suggested by our German thinking in the past, a problem to which we were not accustomed until now. Believe me, my party comrades, there is only one possibility here: either we win over the loyalty of a family like that, a man like that, mentally, for Germanness [ie., living and thinking like a German] , or we destroy him. [Translator's note: Written text: "oder wir verlieren ihn". Spoken text: "oder wir vernichten ihn"= we destroy him, kill him. - C.P.]

There is no half-way measure. It would be crazy for us – we would be killing our own blood – if we left our enemies someone with a capable head on his shoulders, someone of our blood, to fight against us later. You will perhaps say: what you are demanding, what you are proposing to do here, is endlessly cruel. I can only answer there are only two possibilities here: Either the man produces his effects on the other side, in which case our sons will have to die, and probably several of them, or he does not produce his effects, in which case only one person dies – just him [dann stirbt einer allein].

Now back to the ethnicity question. We drew up ethnic lists at that time: those that were born here in the Warthegau, are listed under racial lists 1,2, 3 and 4. There has been a lot of talk about racial list 3. Many applications have been made to me, saying I should finally give in. For example, a certain man is said to have been employed in an armaments factory for a year, or spent a year at the front, and did a decent job, and if he doesn't receive irrevocable German nationality right now, at long last, then he'll no longer take any pleasure in the whole matter. In that case we'd have an unwilling armaments worker or official or soldier.

Here, I believe we must decide once and for all between a momentary question, which is putting us in a tight spot, and an overall decision, in which case we would be placing an obstacle in our way forever after. I believe that, in a time of tight spots and burdens, such as the fifth year of a war must always be, we must, in all cases of necessity, we must solve the daily crises or the day-to-day problems, but we must avoid making decisions based on comfortable, small-minded cowardice, which may perhaps be useful to us now, but which would be an obstacle when it comes to building the nation with a view to the course of centuries.

With men who are to be accepted into the body of the people – and that includes as an exterior formality the rights of a citizen – it is exactly like a poison, or it can act exactly like a poison once it is ingested into the blood. Once it's in there no force on earth, no force of nature, can get it back out again, until the person affected by this poison sooner or later shrivels and dies.

A human being, as an individual organism, is exactly like the people as an organism. Let everybody think about that, everybody who demands, out of small-minded comfort, that such a person be accepted because they'd like their administrative district to be German; of course, but they've got a German grandmother, too, of course, them, too – German, racial list 3 after one year, if he hasn't already stolen from the company cash box. OK, of course he'll be accepted as a German citizen, he'll get all the rights of a German citizen.

That might be comfortable for us. Here, I just say: perhaps. Let nobody believe that, in a moment of stress, such as is brought about by a world war, and will continue to be brought about – since we're entering the final stresses and final phases of the struggle -- we can have a truly loyal region, but rather, in such a region we would have men to whom we have given German rights against reason, good sense and right, and who will then shoot us in the back in the enjoyment of such privileges.

I furthermore believe that we Germans must all learn something from all this. The fact that we still have so many things to learn is related to the fact, which we tend to forget, that the German Reich only came into existence 72 years ago. Only 72 years ago did we become a German Reich, and we've only had a Greater German Reich for 5 years now. For centuries, particularly here in the north and east, administratively, we lived all crammed together, we were poor as beggars and – that is the historical service of this Prussia – we only climbed out and fought our way upwards out of the period of misery, the squalor of the Thirty Years War, through endless living strength, back to order and a governmental personality. But as I say, we were in a tight spot nationally, and there were a lot of things we couldn't learn in the Old Reich. We weren't familiar with the problem of how to handle foreign ethnic problems, because we had had no occasion to do so. We often misunderstood the value, this truly holy value, this holy greatness contained in the concept of "The Reich". Precisely the ethnic Germans from outside understood it much, much, better than we did.

In the Middle Ages, when one spoke of the Reich [Empire], there was only one possibility, that was the German Reich [the Holy Roman Empire]. There was no other Reich in Europe. You may rest assured that after the present war in Europe there won't be any other Reich then either. This Reich will be a truly holy myth: the peacekeeping power in Europe, the leading people of the overall Germanic Reich. And that will be drawn up after the war. It will gradually be united; this Germanic Reich will impress its stamp upon Europe, will lead the white race in Europe, and prepare it for the great racial struggles which surely – we won't be around to see it – will be fought out between the continents within a few generations. [How more prescient could Himmler be? -cy]

Now, when we think of the greatness of this Reich, then we should be ashamed if we were therefore unable to maintain discipline over a half-Polish, half-German worker, who, because Mr. Manager for all I know cannot sufficiently assert himself in his business; because a company commander can't keep order in his company by force of personality; that we, for this reason, due to the defects of individual persons – as I admit – ought to chase after difficult cases and say: "Ach, do you want to accept Reich citizenship? Please be so kind, please accept it. No, no, naturally, you'll get all the rights that we've had for 70 or 80 years".

There I say no, there's no question of that. I don't view this question just from the current point of view of the present period of misery, the current period of stress, but rather from the point of view of after the war. When we've won – and we will win, I am convinced – then precisely all those who cannot do enough now handing out the rights and privileges of the Reich, in hindsight will be the 150 percenters [Translator's note: presumably, people who over-compensate] and will have egg on their faces.

I believe, because we don't wish to deceive ourselves, that we must be rational and economical in all the concessions which can reasonably be made; the persons concerned will get exactly as much to eat, he'll get exactly the same wage, he'll have the use of his property, but we have certain reservations; we don't want to look just at him, the man, who is a soldier. Of course, he may be brave, but we also want to look at his wife, his children. What do I get in return when I give irrevocable German citizenship to a man and his whole family, and later I find out that he was a real good soldier, of course, as long as he was in his company, as long as he was in a whole crowd of purely German comrades, as long as he was led by a squadron commander who kept him in line, as long as he had a platoon commander who stopped him occasionally when he spoke his mind too openly – but his wife wouldn't even dream of learning German, and his children all speak Polish! Then you've got a German citizen you can really be "proud" of.

In these matters, we wish to go carefully and slowly, the way we once evolved as peasants, and I wouldn't even dream of allowing myself to be pushed into things. At the end of this year, in the various Gaus, Upper Silesia, Warthegau, West Prussia and South-East Prussia, we will have a percentage – or count per thousand, as we prefer to say – reflecting German population numbers and the number of people in List 3. If I have to have a couple hundred men who won the Iron Cross 1st Class in the field – I've made that a precondition – or some otherwise very distinctive decoration for bravery – we'll give them irrevocable German citizenship. That may mean 4 or 5 hundred here, and 500 in Upper Silesia. But this citizenship is to be granted or awarded to the family in a ceremony in the villages concerned or in the city concerned, and the others will be told: you see, you could have earned it as well, earlier, but make an effort, you have to learn this and that and so on, beginning with the cleanliness of your house, get rid of all the Polish dirt, and watch out for the language your children speak, until you have a corresponding performance that in crisis, under all the strain, doesn't fluctuate all over the place; so that, in these war years, we'll see that the family is stable, they've acknowledged it inwardly.

For some people there should be very high degree of clemency and distinction – you can take me at my word: it ought to be a favour from the Reich, when this powerful Reich gives a little guy like that, who never cared about the Reich originally, when we give him Reich citizenship after only three years, and it is an act of generosity of the Reich, when we give it to this other guy after ten years.

We want to see things as they are – not just straighten out a picture frame, or cobble together an edifice we won't be happy with later, just out of momentary emergency considerations and pressure.

The best way to make a Gau German is, obviously, to fetch German people and bring them there. I already said, four years ago many of you were sad about taking leave of your old homelands, packing your suitcases, then being on the road and in camps, with all the unpleasant coming and going, with your luggage getting lost, with the uncertainty – where are we going to end up?

Today, you've overcome that difficult period, it's over for you, and believe you me, that's why I feel so much at home here, because I see how this work, which was also difficult at that time, has come along. I've been approached by many people, and I've received a lot of letters of complaint about how slowly it's all coming along, and here, for the Reich Germans, the ethnic Germans from Latvia and Estonia, from Volhynia, but I see the way in which it's already coming along, with their youth.

These people are no longer Germans from Volhynia, and no longer just Reich Germans, but rather Wartheland Germans – a new people who are growing together, rubbing the rough edges off, a people who from the heritage which each person brought with him from his own region and from his own Germanic tribe, each one has inherited some part of it. But they're becoming a new tribe; the inhabitants of the Warthegau.

It's so beautiful the way these inhabitants put down roots and – as sad as it is – the way their first dead are planted in the earth. These are the best roots: where you've got your family's graves, that's where your home is. The first cradles are filling up and have already been filled up. The first children have been born here, and the other children are growing up into youths, and have put their farmyards in order economically. Harvests are increasing, the wasteful, sloppy Polish economy is gradually being replaced by German businesses, and here and there we see a model German economy. Commercial economies are thriving, a certain well-being is coming into existence, a certain wealth; and gradually those who came here are beginning to feel at home in the new, and yet so old, German home of the Warthegau.

Now, I would like come to a question which we will tackle after the war. It is obvious that we will not content ourselves with the fact that out of 4 and 1/2 million approximately 800,000 are German. That is obvious – I believe that no one who knows us assumes that. We will tackle the problem after the war, and I believe that we will solve it in an unbelievably short period of time. Among the people who live here and are not of our nationality, there is a large quantity of blood that would be harmful to us if it belonged to our ethnic group. We will tackle the question after the war, and you may rest assured that all those who are of really good blood, i.e., Nordic-Germanic blood, will be given promotions and possibilities to enter this Reich and become part of the German people.

I would like to put it this way for a start: I believe that I must furthermore say the following: I consider it best not to speak of this matter at length at Party congresses today, since otherwise we would introduce an unnecessary disturbance in the Polish population whose work and whose willingness to work will be sorely needed by ourselves to win the war.

I would now like to take a short position on another big question. That is the second part of what I wanted to say. What is the attitude of the Germans towards a foreign population, let's say, the Slavs? We see here – for a start, I will indicate the two crassest contradictions – two types, which we experience all over the place out there, from the Front all the way here on the Reich border. One of them says, "No compulsion, we want to win these people over". That is, be friendly, real friendly. This one's doing what the Slav never tolerates, and what one should never do with Slavs. He's treating them as equals, as comrades, as companions, as friends, he often tells them: "You see, now, how good my intentions are towards you; we only want the best for you, after all." And many go so far as to wish to create a state for every single Slavic tribe. Those are the guys on one side. The pal collector.

The others – it is always this way, always extreme opposites, pendulum swings all the way to the left, all the way to the right. Others take a cruder approach. They hang something like a sign on themselves, saying "I am a Herrenmensch" or "We are a Herrenvolk", so that everybody can read it, since maybe they wouldn't have noticed it otherwise. And govern only with brutal force. Some of them say, "You're Slavs, you're inferior trash".

And we move back and forth between these two extremes. Perhaps it's often purely a matter of luck where one ends up on this scale. Sometimes things are very uncomfortable and harmful, but one must understand them precisely based on our historical development. We can be certain of one thing: the English could not manage their colonies as perfectly 300 years ago as they do today. They accumulated experience over a period of 300 years, and turned their experience to account in their education, forming a certain tradition based upon it.

And now if you wish to be quite clear about it: what should our attitude be towards a foreign ethnic group, the Slavic ethnic group, since we must first form an idea about them? How has this ethnic group arisen?

You will naturally, and quite correctly tell me, or object: "Yes, do you know, in the Ukraine we have an Eastern worker who is Ukrainian. She's a girl who quite clearly looks 100% German".

I admit it. In exactly the same way, I can show you a couple of villages not far away in the Ukraine, and I can show you a few Ukrainian girls there who look 100% Mongolian. And then, with all Slavs – whether they're Serbs or Czechs or Slovaks or Poles or Russians, Ukrainians, or whatever, they can call themselves whatever they want, in the end it's always the same story of historical development – you'll find all types and variant forms of mixtures. From the purely Germanic types, which have maintained themselves and evolved in individual cases, or in individual villages somewhere along the line, right down to the purely Mongolian type. You can find everything there.

I would like to come to the psychological effects of these mixtures right away. Some of you will say, "Look, I have a Polish or Russian work crew here, I have an old worker, he's the most good-natured fellow you'll ever find anywhere. A pious man who as a Catholic prays to the Mother of God, in the Catholic way." You'll find so many Russians who pray to the Mother of God of Kazan. You'll never find anybody so devout among us Germans. And then somebody else will say: "Look, I've heard Cossacks choirs sing. The Russians can really sing." I believe it. Wonderful. Magnificent.

Then still another will say, "Basically, they're all good natured. They're like big children. Share everything. Brotherly love. They all embrace each other". OK. I'll gladly concede that.

May I present the other side of the account? There are also those who torture people quite horribly, men of bestial cruelty. Then there are a few who are good and true, loyal boys for a year or two. Suddenly, in the third year, they get the idea of murdering their superior by tossing a hand grenade under him, or something like that. In the midst of all their loyal allegiance you get a little incident like that. That's usually quite uncomfortable for the superior if he doesn't look out.

Then there are a few -- I'd like to give a couple of examples. How do you explain this? One day before Stalingrad was taken by the Russians, 2,000 Russians, I believe, deserted from the besieging army to the few hundred German defenders. Nobody can explain it, since reason has nothing to do with it. The besieging army knew very well that for the Germans it was all coming to an end. So 2,000 Russians desert to them!

Or in anti-partisan warfare, that is, among the Russian-born units we had on our side, who fought for us as soldiers. Cases occurred in our own units of these Russian rifle squads, the same evening, right after defeating a huge enemy partisan group, they had a kind of victory celebration, and half the company deserted to the defeated enemy! Eight days later about half of them were back!

Well, I think we have to recognise that Slavic ethnicity runs the entire scale of feelings and characteristics, from the most sincere saintliness and good-heartedness, right down to cannibalism -- in one type of Slavs a bit more so, in other types less, among the more western types a bit more cultured, among the Eastern types a bit less cultured. Everything is there, and woe to him who ever forgets that. Woe to him! They'll destroy him.

How can one explain all this? It's explicable based on the racial composition of the Slavs. I'll sum it up very briefly. In former times, before the mass migrations, our Germanic tribes lived in these regions, right down to the Black Sea, and far into Russia. There was a sufficiently large Germanic population here. Through the historically, never entirely explicable process of Asiatic incursions – the incursion of the Huns under Attila at that time, when the [Germanic] peoples, tormented by misery, fell into serfdom to the Huns and became their vassals, and had to join their ranks or emigrate, insofar as they could.

Part of the Germanic population remained behind. Then there was an extremely thin upper crust [Oberschicht] of Germanic types, of Germanic blood, and a numerically huge inferior mass of Eastern peoples, and – particularly, after the incursion of the Huns and the migrations of the Mongolian peoples – of Mongolian character and Mongolian race. Then came a period in which very many German families, Germanic families, emigrated to Poland, forming the later stratum of Polish gentry, who were then invited into Russia by the Russians, with a justification which has always been a classic and which applies to all the Slavs since time immemorial: "Come into our land and govern us, since we can't govern ourselves". They also invited the Varangians and the Vikings. The result, in this early period, is a clear racial divide, with a Germanic ruling class [Oberschicht], which has nothing in common with the lower class [Unterschicht] ruled by it. Gradually, however, there now came – due to the laws of the land and through a failure to obey the laws of blood and race, through other things, for a start – a shortage of men and women caused by war among the ruling class, and a seeping downwards of Germanic blood into the lower class, as we find in the Baltic, to a great extent – from the German ruling class into the Latvians and Estonians, over seven centuries, or, as it came about precisely in Russia, in Poland – the intrusion of the lower class into the Germanic ruling class by marrying upwards.

In this way, the Germanic ruling class [Herrenschicht] became an upper class [Oberschicht], gradually forming a new nationality which, as a result, no longer felt German but Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Kashubian or otherwise reflecting an ethnicity [or tribe, Volkstamm], and thus arose a type of new nation, a new people, with all variations and mixtures, all the way from the residues of a still-existing purely Germanic blood, or all sorts of mixtures, in which the Germanic blood takes precedence, but where the Germanic blood is still present only in part, resulting, perhaps – such as we sometimes see today – in a pair of radiant blue eyes in an otherwise Mongoloid body, upon which there sits, perhaps, a completely Mongolian and Eastern [Ostisch] type of head, right down to the type which has maintained itself purely Mongolian, in remote areas, such as, for example, Lysa Gora in the Generalgouvernement. Here, too, in the Warthegau, you'll find villages where one might say: "These people are all pure Huns”. And that's what they are today.

When you know that, the evolutionary and racial development of the Slavic peoples, then you know that we have a task to do if we wish to purify these areas – and we must do that, if we want to live. The only task can be: clear domination, clear detachment, without unnecessary insults, because every once in a while, some individual factor – some part of our own blood, which is a proud blood – causes such a person to take offense, making us unnecessary enemies.

Constant watchfulness, never trusting, not even after you've known somebody for years. Always on your guard, like a lion tamer with his lion or leopard. This includes very small things. A handshake, the way we Germans customarily greet each other, must constitute a unique distinction for the little servant or farm worker, given here and there. But it must not be immediately refused again afterwards, either, the way we talk about it. We do a lot of things, but we don't talk about them. It would be best not to walk around your servants with a riding whip in your hand all the time, even if it is correct to reprimand him when he's quite impertinent.

We have a lot to learn here, and gentlemen, there are no regulations governing the treatment of Slavic peoples. We must learn what to do and what not to do. As riders, you already know how to handle a horse, and what not to do with him. If you do something wrong, you get thrown off. And if you do something wrong with a foreign ethnic group, when you're only a thin ruling class, then the subject people [das Untere Volk] will murder you one day. It's a shame, but in many cases, it's deserved.

If we rule this Slavic people correctly, we can derive endless values out of this mass man, and endless strength for Germany. I am also of the opinion that it is better for a Russian or a Pole to die in this world struggle, if I can save a German, German blood, for the same struggle. But I must never imagine here that I can win the war with Russians alone, or with Poles alone, as a liberation army or volunteers. We've got to win this war ourselves, with our hearts, our own blood. But where we can have a servant die with us, then let's let him die with us. If I can sacrifice a foreigner instead of a German, I'll sacrifice him. But let nobody forget that these people can only be of use to us as auxiliaries, and can never win the struggle itself. The real struggle must be won by ourselves. The Reich which must be created will belong to us, and if it can't be won by our own efforts, with our own blood, then we won't have deserved to have it, and won't be able to keep it. You can only keep what you've won by fighting for it yourself.

When I speak of Slavs as a whole, then I'd like to note one thing: ruling the Slavs is, of course, best learnt by studying the cases where this rule has succeeded. I'm speaking now of the Russian land mass. Of course, they're Slavs too, after all, but they're the Great Mother of all Slavs. There may be enmities between them, conflicts – the Poles are afraid of being gobbled up by the Russians, the Russians don't like the Poles. That's all true. But just the same, in their Pan-Slavism, in their commonality, they hang together again. In all cases in which these races have been ruled successfully, the ruling classes – the Golden Horde, from Genghis Khan to Stalin – have always been of the same type. They knew their Slavs. They knew one thing very exactly: they all have one thing in common. In general, with the exception of a few persons, like Lenin, Stalin, a couple of Czars, like Genghis Khan, like Tamerlane, like Attila, they are quite incapable of building a Reich, they are incapable of governing themselves. They are, however, always capable – we've seen this in the Polish State for seven hundred years – of opposing an existing order, no matter how lenient it may be – of conniving, committing sabotage and conspiring. They can do that first-class.

As a result of their knowledge of their own Slavic subjects, the Russians, or the Slavs including the Poles, as we can well see, had – as long as they could do so – their own method of ruling their subjects. Under Stalin, it's the same thing: he has his widespread NKVD and GPU. Whenever five or six Russians are together, then nobody – not even when it's a family with father, mother and children – knows with certainty which one of these six persons is betraying the others to the GPU.

So the possibility of conspiring and whispering behind your back, talking – they'll talk you to death – which is so typical of the Slavs, philosophising late into the night – philosophising which never produces anything practical – all this is prevented by this system.

We can learn something for our practical conditions here and a few other places, too, something that repeatedly permeates into the organisation and features of our enemy – since in most cases, he will be our enemy – and gives him the feeling that he is never alone, but rather that we know everything. Then he'll be loyal and reliable. Otherwise, not.

When we say that is an atrocious way of governing people, then I would like to say something. It would be atrocious for us Germans. It would be unworthy of our people, and I can say this openly before this group here, to start with, in these ten years I and my late friend Heydrich – have always opposed this system with the full force of our personality, and have never permitted it – the idea of imposing a system of agents, of informers, or a kind of NKVD or something like that for the German people. I have no agents. For me, making use of the security forces is precisely -- we have educated our security forces with this point of view in mind -- an affair of honour for every honourable German, just as it is a matter of honour for an Englishman to belong to the Secret Service. It is not a question of agents and their dirty tricks, but rather of soldiers, a military matter, a soldierly duty and a soldierly attitude.

There must be such things. You've seen that – let's take a striking example – the liberation of the Duce. The liberation of the Duce succeeded only because Skorzeny was brave and decent. That was the key point. The liberation was possible as the final act of gigantically long preparation work, and it worked only because of the Sicherheitsdienst [Security Service], as we called it, just like the English, with their Secret Service.

Now I'll come back to something: this system of informants – which we have avoided among us Germans and which we will never have – is quite necessary for the Slavs. But let us always and above all else avoid attributing to foreign peoples, spiritually, German values of mind, German standards and German reservations which we have always correctly had to maintain, and which we have maintained among ourselves and will always maintain, as if this foreign people would conduct itself the way we do. Even when it hurts him, so that we say, out of false pity: no, we can't do that to him. Maybe we will do something to him. We're doing ourselves and our children a favour, and that's why it's done. And we must never forget that.

When one has this attitude, and this knowledge of the history of the Slavs and their way of thinking, then it will only be a matter of education that the Slavs, in a Gau like this one in the broad expanse of the East, must be ruled without unnecessary severity, but never with completely inappropriate softness. Brutal, where necessary, clear in one's own attitude, and never let oneself go. It's bad when a servant sees that his master is drunk. That doesn't strengthen one's authority [Herrentum] at all.

It is extremely harmful when the Untermensch [meaning underman, a term invented by the American Lothrop Stoddard] sees that there's a dispute in the ruling class – whether in the family, on the farm or estate, or in an organisation, agencies, authorities, armed forces, Party, State. That is extremely harmful. When we have disagreements among us Germans, we can say anything in a decent way. I very much believe we should say things, not write letters, rather sit down decently together and discuss things. That saves a great many officials and paper pushers on both sides, many staff members, and it is clear and decent, and we gain trust in each other and we cooperate.

But it is extremely damaging when some one of us has a dispute in front of a Pole, or when a German superior corrects a German subordinate in front of a Pole.

Our actions and proceedings must always be dictated by the notion of protecting German power and sovereignty, saving German blood, not just not neglecting its multiplication and its promotion, but rather supporting it by all means. We must be attentive to this law of the racial struggle [Rasssentumskampf] and ethnic group struggle [Volkstumskampf] in every action, even the smallest.

I said before that there are no regulations for the handling of these people, and there are no regulations covering all individual matters. While I obstruct anything harmful to the mother and child, any abortion, for Germans – at the same time my point of view where Slavs are concerned is: I am not the protector of Slavs. Let them do what they want. Here my legality goes no further. Legally, as a German, I favour my own people. What other peoples do, they can do by themselves. They only interest me insofar as I need them for Germany. Otherwise they do not interest me at all. And this standpoint, this mental attitude, must we all, as old National Socialists, out of a recognition of the laws of the blood, the evolution of the race, the peoples, the conditions, the power relationships in the East – we must learn our attitudes, educate each other, based on this recognition; and I am convinced that the youth who are growing up here now will learn many things which we found hard to digest, and will avoid many errors which we committed at first, in order to learn not to commit them anymore; they'll learn these things by themselves. I am convinced that we will be able to master the problem of ruling hundreds of millions of foreign peoples at least as well as the English can do it today. The English, and we should never forget this either, are just a tiny off-splintering of Germanic blood from our continent.

The war is difficult today. We know that. I would not like to speak too much about the war, however, and I think that it is a matter of course – I consider it a matter of course for everyone to do everything, even the very smallest things, to win the war; that every one of us would send to the front every man who can be spared in his office; that every one of us will quietly and calmly correct any deficiency which he sees anywhere, and not keep silent about anything; that he should object to them in a good-natured way and convince others, but when good-nature doesn't work, that he should report things. We must choke off any defeatism which we may and will encounter here and there; we must correct anyone who becomes down-hearted because Fate has struck him a hard blow, because he's lost his son; we must grab him by the sword knot, and speak to him as a German, we must seize him by his loyalty to the Führer, by his obedience, by his gratitude which he owes to the Reich and the people.

These are all things which are so obvious, that we will never become faint-hearted. That a war with millions of Russians, this brutally led mass from the East, involves the greatest difficulties was clear from the outset. We can confidently predict that more difficulties are on their way. We are going to go through many tight spots and bear many burdens. The Russian will, this winter, this fall, he's already beginning to do it, he will return this winter with a desperate army of certainly far more than one hundred divisions. And we'll have to defeat them, smash them, and slaughter them [abschlacten]. When a people like the Russians already have their whole army full of everything from 16 year-olds to 50 or 55 year-olds, then reason tells us that this whole mass of people is coming to an end, like everything on this earth.

Despite everything, we will still have to overcome many trials in the other theatres of war. Despite everything, I would like to say I know that one day the war will be over, after the bitterest and hardest months of the hardest and most difficult testing. When our enemy has given up, then the others will give up, too, and then this or that person will say, "See, I always said, the war with England will end in a tie". Very sly, a real clever guy. After all, we never wanted to conquer England. You can read absolutely all the remarks, speeches, newspaper articles since the year 1929, or since 1934. The only demand we ever made of England was the return of our colonies. We never wanted Ireland, we never wanted a piece of England, we never wanted to destroy the British Empire in any way. After all, in the end, it is an empire of white men. We never wanted it. England just wanted to interfere in Europe. And then, when you see the fact that Germany governs Europe, that the way to the East lies open, that we've expanded our fields and farms [Äcker, agricultural properties] here in the Warthegau, in the Generalgouvernement and further East in Russia, that it has multiplied its farms, if you consider that a tie, gentlemen, then we are agreed.

And at the close of this war stand the following facts:

1) Recognition of all the trials which Germany has undergone until the year 1939 after the Polish war;

2) Recognition before the world that Germany is no longer a European power, but rather, as was confirmed for Old Fritz [Fredrich the Great] after seven years of the bitterest war, that Germany is a world power;

3) The introduction and continuation of the process that the Great German Reich is becoming the Germanic and Great Germanic Reich; that the unification of the Teutons – despite all difficulties which we are experiencing with the population in the Netherlands today and in Norway here and there, on the battlefields – has already begun, and has, of course, substantially begun in the Germanic divisions "Viking" and "Nordland”, in the Germanic 3d Tank Corps, that this unification has been carried much further forward.

Complete Germanisation [Deutschewerden – becoming German*} of the new German provinces of Upper Silesia, the Wartheland, West Prussia, South-East Prussia, Bialystok means the clear and unambiguous expansion, further and further outwards, of an unambiguous German racial border; that is, an area in which there will be no one but Germans and Teutons, approximately 1,000 kilometres from the old German Reich border. [*Deutschewerden does not imply force, but cannot be said to be always fully voluntary either. Eindeutschung – making German – is what is usually translated as Germanisation.]

That means, economically, and, in terms of power, the occupation and linking up of as much additional room as possible, the settlement of so-called German "jewels of settlement" in the German style with German garrisons, German storage facilities, store rooms, repair shops for automobiles and trains – small towns and garrisons, as I said, of approximately 20,000 inhabitants, thus, every hundred kilometre settlement with an average radius of 5 kilometres around, with German villages and German farmers around this town, so that every town has its farmers, and the farmers have a city centre; this means the creation of a nursery for German blood, so that we can become a people with numerous children again at last.

That is not just a question of any outlook or opinion, but rather, it is the question of the life of our people. It is already depressing when you know that a Russian military generation consists of two and a half to three times as many men as a German military generation. We would spare ourselves a good many worries today if people's attitudes, or our own 18, 19, 20 years ago, had been different with regards to the continuation of the blood line of our family, with regards to that which we owe our ancestors, different from what it was 20 years ago in the democratic-liberalistic but also deeply poverty-stricken period of inflation and unemployment.

This East must and will be the nursery, as I already said, of the richest Germanic blood. It will be the melting pot of all German and Germanic tribes; this aim should provide us with the necessary numbers, in addition to, and based on, quality, the unique and decisive racial value of the people who settle here.

This East will therefore be the precondition which will enable the Germanic Reich in the world, in the coming centuries, of checking and driving back the next incursions which will come from Inner Asia sooner or later, over and over again, in an historical rhythm, shifting the ethnic border further outwards over the coming generations and, in the end, merely taking back that which our Germanic forefathers once possessed as their Reich and their land.

We, however, who must live in this time, wish to prove ourselves worthy, every day and every hour, of the gifts which Fate has given us, through the fact that it sent us the Führer, to start with, and after two thousand years, who was, we might say, sent by God. As German men and German women, we wish to be thankful that we were born in precisely this age, that we are able to live in this age.

We want everyone to do his duty at his post, to help lighten the tasks of the Führer and his assistants, wherever we can, and we wish never to give in, when daily life or when the enemy in the war is putting pressure on us at some position, when Fate is repeatedly weighing and testing us on its scales, month after month. One day, these months will be over and done with long ago, and then only one thing will be important: the goal, that I already showed you verbally, of the Germanic Reich created by the Führer Adolf Hitler, the settlement here in the East, and our faith here – since we are sitting here in the East, conquering the land in the old-fashioned German way, building farms, protecting them with our swords, in order to win new ground, over and over again, time after time, in eternal growth for eternal youth, and for the future of the German, Germanic Reich.