Hitler’s Speeches

2,882 words

I read that Hitler delivered about 5,000 major speeches during his lifetime running to many thousands of pages. I am unaware whether a comprehensive listing of his speeches, or any reliable word count, exists. I suspect they do not.

Below I list some major published collections of Hitler’s speeches, both in English and German. Almost all consist of excerpts rather than complete speeches.

In compiling the list I was struck again by the paucity of trustworthy scholarship underlying the Himalaya of words academics, journalists, popular writers, filmmakers and broadcasters have heaped up about Hitler and the Third Reich.

Empirical and intellectual shoddiness and ignorance underpin the entire structure. Whether the subject is Hitler biographies, the Holocaust, Hitler’s speeches, or anything else, empiricism and objectivity are thin on the ground. Possibly the only major area where objectivity obtains to a substantial degree is in strictly battlefield and military accounts of the war.

As Detlef Mühlberger observed in his two-volume collection of excerpts (of all kinds, not just speeches) from the Völkischer Beobachter, the official Party newspaper mentioned below as a major source for Hitler’s published speeches (Hitler’s Voice: The Völkischer Beobachter, 1920–1933, 2004): “The relatively limited published material on the VB and the lack of a content analysis of the paper is astonishing given the undoubted importance of the VB, especially during the Nazi Party’s so-called ‘Period of Struggle’ (Kampfzeit), a term applied by the Nazis to the years 1919–1933.” (p. 18)

And so it goes in every area.

The endless allegations against Germany and the Germans, as well as the maniacal, pervasive rhetoric of hatred and demonization, add to the surreal atmosphere, and contrast sharply with the blasé treatment given to Communism and Communists.

The Nature of Oratory

Adolf Hitler was one of history’s great orators.

Oratory and public speaking are not the same. (See “On Oratory.”)

Public speaking is, and always has been, far more common than oratory. Today it is ubiquitous, while oratory is virtually nonexistent.

William Pierce was a public speaker—and an exceptionally good one. There is great power in (good) public speaking. I was going to link to a couple of his 45-minute speeches, but both have already been yanked from YouTube.[1]

Oratory is not some elaborate discourse treating of an “important” topic in a dignified, formal, or possibly grandiloquent manner reminiscent of stereotypical 19th-century 4th of July orations or contemporary Memorial Day speakers reciting Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

True oratory is the natural ability to speak with extraordinary eloquence and effectiveness to a crowd, regardless of size. In former times routinely, and occasionally still today, the words “eloquence” and “oratory” were synonymous, and used interchangeably.

Unlike William Pierce, both Adolf Hitler and Jonathan Bowden were orators.

Demosthenes, Cicero, Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay were also orators—not public speakers. This becomes glaringly evident when you pay close attention to the vivid language contemporaries used to describe such men and the mesmerizing effect they had on audiences.

For example, German-American US Senator Carl Schurz (R.-Mo.), who knew colleagues who had heard Henry Clay speak, described him as possessed of “the true oratorical temperament, that force of nervous exaltation that makes the orator feel himself, and appear to others, a superior being, and almost irresistibly transfuses his thoughts, his passions, and his will into the mind and heart of the listener.”

This vital capability of men long dead is obscured for us by our unfamiliarity with oratory, our inattention to detail, images formed in our minds from old paintings and engravings, and stereotypes of stiff 4th of July/Memorial Day speakers such as those mentioned previously. We are seriously misled about why such speakers were considered great.

Orators possess an extraordinary talent to move people, including intellectuals, emotionally, through the power of speech. They are unique and highly unusual human beings.

A psychic and emotional exchange, possibly a fusion, occurs between such speakers and their listeners, which is absent in public speaking. I am tempted to say that orators “channel” in some sense, although I do not want to invoke specific New Age practice or chicanery. As a consequence of all this, oratory is often viewed as a magic art, a black art.

Orator and audience partake in a joint ritual.

The orator, the occasion, the composition and mood of the audience, the subject matter, all contribute to a overall effect of the speech. The audience is transformed into Gustave Le Bon’s crowd by the orator’s stream of speech. It is this crowd that the orator psychically and emotionally interacts with, each feeding off the other.

Does Oratory Translate Well Into Print?

How well does such speech translate to print?

It appears that much must inevitably be lost in the process.

To use an analogy, the relationship of the printed speech to the original declamation is something like the relationship of a printed play to its performance on stage, a printed screenplay to the actual movie, or a television script to the TV telecast.

Novels are written to be read, whereas few people actually read plays, motion picture screenplays, or television scripts. In the same way, few people actually read speeches.

I own a book called A Treasury of the World’s Great Speeches which, interestingly, is made up primarily of excerpts rather than complete speeches. The compiler states that his ideal “is to include selections that read as well as they probably sounded. Even when the speaker lived long before our time, we can recapture him and his moment in history, and share some of the emotions of his original hearers.” (Emphases added.)

Do speeches translate to print better than plays, screenplays, or television scripts?

A lot depends upon the speaker and the speech.

The author of the Treasury calls Edmund Burke’s 1775 speech to the House of Commons on conciliation with the American colonies “the most readable of all speeches” (emphasis added), while noting that “in the whole history of eloquence Burke probably had the finest mind and, on most occasions, the worst delivery.”

Similarly, his introduction to Unitarian clergyman and abolitionist Theodore Parker’s speech indicates that Parker possessed “none of the graces of the orator, nothing to bind his audience to him but an immense sincerity, a transparent courage, and a terrifying arsenal of knowledge.”

Many famous speakers wrote their speeches out in advance. Adolf Hitler did this (I mean he wrote his speeches himself, without relying upon speechwriters), though he was quite capable of speaking extemporaneously with great force, and frequently did.

I have read that Demosthenes was reluctant to speak extemporaneously, declined to comment on subjects he had not previously studied, and elaborately prepared all of his speeches in advance. As a consequence, his orations became the object of careful study by others.

According to the Treasury, “In the classic Greco-Roman centuries distinguished orators wrote out their speeches, memorized them, delivered them with great éclat—and revised them for posterity.”

While such a method appears to bridge the gap between the spoken performance and publication as well as can possibly be done, the downside is that the finished product is not a genuine transcript or record of the address actually delivered.

It is possible that run-of-the-mill speeches transfer to the printed page better than truly outstanding orations, since the latter possess a gravitational force extending well beyond the ideas expressed or the specific words used to articulate them. Such speeches are, in a sense, a form of magical art.

Today when we read a speech by Jonathan Bowden, his voice still rings in our ears, whether or not we have heard the particular speech in question. We intimately associate the printed language with our vivid image of the man speaking—the familiar sound of his voice, his intonations, elocution, verbal pacing, body movements, beliefs, and so forth. The relevant sociocultural context also retains its immediacy.

But this kind of familiarity and intimacy does not exist for readers who have never heard Bowden speak, just as it no longer exists for us when we read great speeches by Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, or, possibly, Adolf Hitler.

An arresting observation by one person who read translations of portions of Hitler’s speeches was that it was “like reading lyrics from songs without the music.”

Hitler’s Speeches

For a complex variety of reasons, Hitler’s oratorical mastery is unapparent to most people.

Putting aside the absurd but widespread diabolization and ridicule of Hitler and his oratorical style, it appears that an insurmountable language barrier and radically altered social circumstances make it impossible to objectively comprehend, even when viewing live documentary footage, the profoundly hypnotic, convincing dynamic that suffused his speeches and sp deeply inspired the German people.

As the Chaplin clip vividly demonstrates, manipulative propaganda easily concealed the essence of Hitler’s oratorical power from white non-Germans even at the time.

The necessity of translating from the German, whether published speeches or subtitles on film, interposes a great obstacle.

Translation raises intriguing problems especially pertinent to white people worldwide, who suffer from severe language, and hence psychological and cultural, balkanization. Language barriers among whites have greatly facilitated the cosmopolitan promotion of genocide.

Translations can be good or bad, accurate or inaccurate. Even a non-misleading translation, poorly done, can appear dead on the page, nothing like the original. Some classic books have suffered such a fate.

Following are some of the major published sources for extracts (mostly) from Hitler’s speeches. Again, few complete speeches are available in published form.

In English

Adequate English translations of Hitler’s speeches are extremely hard to come by.  Presently, virtually all translations are confined to collections of excerpts rather than complete speeches.  The quality of the translations is often very poor.

Following are some of the collections I am aware of.

Norman H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922–August 1939: An English Translation of Representative Passages, 2 volumes, Royal Institute of International Affairs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942).

This 1,980-page work is a collection of representative passages arranged by subject matter. The excerpts are neither complete, self-contained, nor in chronological order (except for the passages in volume 2 on foreign policy, which are in chronological order). Interviews with journalists are also included.

Baynes translated from the German with some difficulty due to what he called a “diffuseness” in National Socialist terminology. Where authorized English translations of excerpts or interviews existed, Baynes relied upon those instead.

A 220-page abridgement is Norman H. Baynes, ed., Speeches of Adolf Hitler: Early Speeches, 1922–1924, and Other Selected Passages (N.Y.: Howard Fertig, 2006).

Raoul de Roussy de Sales, ed. Hitler: My New Order (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941), covers the early years through 1941. Excerpts from newspapers of the era commenting on some of the speeches, as well as introductory background material on each speech, are included.

A somewhat obscure volume is Gordon W. Prange’s Hitler’s Words: Two Decades of National Socialism, 1923–1943 (Washington, DC: American Council on Public Affairs, 1944), a collection of excerpts arranged under twenty topical headings.

A little-known, but ostensibly more definitive collection, at least insofar as the years in power are concerned, is Max Domarus, ed. Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations 1932–1945: The Chronicle of a Dictatorship, trans. Mary Fran Gilbert and Chris Wilcox (Wauconda, Ill.: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1990–2004),  a 3,330-page, 4-volume set. The collection omits speeches prior to 1931.

Issued originally as a 2-volume German edition in 1962–63, the constituent English volumes are:

• Vol. 1: 1932–1934 (1990)
• Vol. 2: 1935–1938 (1992)
• Vol. 3: 1939–1940 (1996)
• Vol. 4: 1941–1945 (2004)

Notorious German fraudster Konrad Kujau used the German-language edition of this work to plagiarize his colossal forgery, The Hitler Diaries, which was sold to the German magazine Stern for 9.3 million DM in the early 1980s. The fraud caused an international sensation.

It has been asserted that Domarus’s collection is considered the most essential and reliable resource for Hitler’s speeches. In fact, the German and English language versions of the work are both highly flawed.

The English translation has been characterized as being of very low quality. Neither version contains a complete collection of complete speeches.  Some are mere excerpts, while others are missing altogether.  It is often difficult to tell where speeches begin and end, and Domarus insisted upon inserting his own opinions into the middle of speeches.

An 800-page selection of quotes from this set was published as Max Domarus, The Essential Hitler: Speeches and Commentary, ed. Patrick Romane (Wauconda, Ill.: Bolchazy-Carducci, 2007). An Amazon.com reviewer noted of this volume that half the book consisted of “hectoring, unilluminating, hate-engorged commentary” by Domarus.

The New Germany Desires Work and Peace: Speeches by Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler The Leader of The New Germany. With An Introduction by Dr. Joseph Goebbels (Berlin: Liebheit & Thieson, 1933), an authorized English collection of Hitler’s early 1933 speeches.

Liberty, Art, Nationhood (Berlin: M. Muller & Sohn, 1935), 79 pp. Authorized English translation of three addresses delivered at the Seventh National Socialist Congress, Nuremberg, 1935.

Hitler Speeches Online (Published Texts)

Scattered websites have published purported copies of Hitler’s speeches.  One key problem is that many of the “speeches” are not complete texts, but excerpts, a fact that is frequently not explained. The original German text is usually not provided for comparative purposes.

For the complete online text of a handful of key Hitler speeches, in both the original German and English translation, see here. The categories included are:

• Speeches on the Anniversary of Coming to Power
• Speeches on Art
• Declarations of War Against the Soviet Union (June 22, 1941) and the United States (December 11, 1941)

 In German

The following two works are collections of Hitler’s writings and speeches in the years before he was appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933.

Eberhard Jäckel and Axel Kuhn, eds. Hitler: Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen: 1905–1924 [Hitler: Complete Records: 1905–1924] (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980), 1,312 pages.

Hitler: Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen is a collection of primary documents that professedly includes all of Hitler’s speeches and writings from 1905 to 1924: every surviving letter, postcard, note and poem written by Hitler.

Co-editor Jäckel is a Left-wing, anti-Hitler Social Democrat. Since the 1960s he has claimed that Hitler intended to exterminate the Jews from 1924 on. A major theme of Jäckel’s writing has been what he sees as the uniqueness and singularity of the Holocaust, which he contends is like no other genocide.

In the late 1970s Jäckel wrote a series of newspaper articles attacking historian David Irving and his magnum opus Hitler’s War. These articles were later turned into a book, David Irving’s Hitler (Port Angeles, Wash. and Brentwood Bay, B.C.: Ben-Simon Publications, 1993).

In the Historikerstreit (Historians’ Dispute) of the late 1980s, Jäckel joined other Left-wing academics and journalists in attacking conservative German historians such as Ernst Nolte, Joachim Fest, and Klaus Hildebrand. Among his polemics was an essay entitled “The Impoverished Practice of Insinuation: The Singular Aspect of National Socialist Crimes Cannot Be Denied,” published in the newspaper Die Zeit.

In April 1981 it was revealed that 76 of the six hundred documents contained in Jäckel’s and Kuhn’s work were forgeries.

Institut für Zeitgeschichte [Institute of Contemporary History], ed. Hitler: Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen, Februar 1925 bis Januar 1933 [Hitler: Speeches, Writings, Orders, February 1925 to January 1933] (Munich: K.G. Saur, 1992), consisting of six volumes and three supplementary volumes.

The NSDAP published Hitler’s complete speeches in German in the official Party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter. The VB is available on microfilm, but printed in Fraktur, a difficult German typeface to read.

The VB was a major source used by Norman Baynes and Gordon Prange for their wartime collections of extracts from Hitler’s speeches in English, as well as by Eberhard Jäckel and Axel Kuhn for their major work. (On all of which see above.)

The Party’s central publishing house issued miscellaneous collections of Hitler’s speeches—the accredited “author” for each volume of which is “Zentralverlag der NSDAP, ed.” Examples include:

• Reden des Führers, 1933–1936 (1936).
• Der Parteitag der Freiheit vom 10–16. September 1935: Offizieller Bericht über den Verlauf des Reichsparteitages mit sämtlichen Kongressreden (Munich: F. Eher, 1935).
• Parteitag der Freiheit: Reden des Führers und Ausgewählte Kongressreden am Reichsparteitag der NSDAP, 1935 Wehrmachts-Ausgabe (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1935).
• Reden des Führers am Parteitag der Freiheit 1935. Sonderausgabe der Luftwaffe (Munich: F. Eher, 1935).
• Reden des Führers am Parteitag der Ehre 1936 (Munich: F. Eher, 1936).
• Reden des Führers am Parteitag der Arbeit 1937 (Munich: F. Eher, 1937).
• Reden des Führers am Parteitag Grossdeutschland 1938 (Munich: F. Eher, 1939).
• Der Grossdeutsche Freiheitskampf: Reden Adolf Hitler vom 1. September 1939–15. März 1942, 2 Bd. (Munich: F. Eher, 1941–43).

 Note

[1] A 1998 Pierce speech I listened to just a few months ago, here, was removed because YouTube terminated the poster’s account. Although the reason for termination is not stated, YouTube is a subsidiary of Internet media giant Google, a multibillion dollar Jewish corporation. Google and other massive Internet firms interface closely with the ADL, a powerful Jewish censorship/hate group, to determine what content, opinions, and facts the global Internet audience is allowed to post, see, and hear, and what Americans and others worldwide will be forbidden from posting, seeing, and hearing. Later this year Stanford University is hosting a meeting of the “private” ADL, Google, Facebook (a Jewish company possessing enormous amounts of data on private individuals and organizations), and other elite individuals and groups to further extend Web censorship. Though such activities occur entirely in the dark, it is impossible to overstate their social impact. They create an artificial intellectual, cultural, and political environment in which anti-white racism, genocide, totalitarianism, anti-Christian bigotry, and many other evils cannot be opposed or countered, even verbally.