HITLER SPEECH AT MUNICH TRIAL 1924 EXCERPTS A PORTENT OF A LARGER AGENDA FOR GERMANY
NOTE: BRIEF STATEMENT OF PUBLICATIONS PRINCIPLES The World Future Fund serves as a source of documentary material, reading lists and internet links from different points of view that we believe have historical significance. The publication of this material is in no way whatsoever an endorsement of these viewpoints by the World Future Fund, unless explicitly stated by us. As our web site makes very clear, we are totally opposed to ideas such as racism, religious intolerance and communism. However, in order to combat such evils, it is necessary to understand them by means of the study of key documentary material. For a more detailed statement of our publications standards click here. From the very first I have aimed at something more than becoming a Minister. I have resolved to be the destroyer of Marxism. This I shall achieve and once I’ve achieved that, I should find the title of ‘Minister’ ridiculous. When I first stood in front of Wagner’s grave, my heart overflowed with pride that here lay a man who had forbidden any such inscription as ‘Here lies State Councilor, Musical Director, His Excellency Richard von Wagner’. I was proud that this man and so many others in German history have been content to leave their names to posterity and not their titles. It was not through modesty that I was willing to be a ‘drummer’ at that time for that is the highest task [das Höchste]: the rest is nothing. [ . . . ] What is the State? Today the State is an economic organization, an association of persons, formed, it would seem, for the sole purpose that all should co operate in securing each other's daily bread. THE STATE, HOWEVER, IS NOT AN ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION, IT IS A 'VOLKIC ORGANISM. The purpose, the aim of the State is to provide the people with its food-supply and with the position of power in the world which is its due. Germany occupies in Europe perhaps the most bitter situation of any people, Militarily, politically, and geographically it is surrounded by none but rivals.... IN PRAISE OF IMPERIAL GERMANY Democratic Minister of the Interior, stated that the old Prussia and the former Reich was unquestionably the best administered country in the whole world. No other state had such honest and principled civil servants as the former Germany, no other nation possessed an army in which the highest regard for personal honor had become a tradition. This applied both internally and externally. Twenty-six states tried to defeat this Reich but in a struggle which lasted for four years they failed, a proof of the power and strength of this Reich. There was no real need for a revolution.
FAILURE OF WEIMAR REPUBLIC MOTIVES FOR COUP I am no monarchist, but ultimately a Republican. Pöhner is a monarchist, Ludendorff is devoted to the House of Hohenzollern [Prussia-Germany]. Despite our different attitudes we all stood together. The fate of Germany does not lie in the choice between a Republic or a Monarchy, but in the content of the Republic and the Monarchy. What I am contending against is not the form of a state as such, but its ignominious content. We wanted to create in Germany the precondition which alone will make it possible for the iron grip of our enemies to be removed from us. We wanted to create order in the state, throw out the drones, take up the fight against international stock exchange slavery, against our whole economy being cornered by trusts, against the politicizing of the trade unions, and above all, for the highest honorable duty which we, as Germans, know should be once more introduced—the duty of bearing arms, military service. And now I ask you: Is what we wanted high treason? [ . . . ] KAHR AND ALLIES WERE ORIGINAL PLOTTERS OF COUP Now people say: But His Excellency von Kahr, von Lossow and von Seisser did not want the events of the evening of 8 November. The bill of indictment says that we pushed these gentlemen into an embarrassing situation. But it was through these gentlemen that we ourselves had got into an embarrassing situation; they had pushed us into it. Herr von Kahr should have said honorably: Herr Hitler, we understand something different by a coup d’état, we mean something different by a march on Berlin. He had a duty to say to us: In what we are doing here we mean something different from what you think. He did not say that, and the consequences should be borne solely by these three gentlemen. [ . . . ] CONCLUSION The army which we have formed grows from day to day; it grows more rapidly from hour to hour. Even now I have the proud hope that one day the hour will come when these untrained [wild] bands will grow to battalions, the battalions to regiments and the regiments to divisions, when the old cockade will be raised from the mire, when the old banners will once again wave before us: and the reconciliation will come in that eternal last Court of Judgment, the Court of God, before which we are ready to take our stand. Then from our bones, from our graves, will sound the voice of that tribunal which alone has the right to sit in judgment upon us. For, gentlemen, it is not you who pronounce judgment upon us, it is the external Court of History which will make its pronouncement upon the charge which is brought against us. The verdict that you will pass I know. But that Court will not ask of us, ‘Did you commit high treason or did you not?’ That Court will judge us as Germans who wanted the best for their people and their fatherland, who wished to fight and to die. You may pronounce us guilty a thousand times, but the Goddess who presides over the Eternal Court of History will with a smile tear in pieces the charge of the Public Prosecutor and the verdict of this court. For she acquits us.
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