77 years of the scariest speech by a government official in history

[Ringo Stalin]

In October 1943, at the initiative of the party office of Bormann, a meeting was held in Posen, which was attended by almost the entire top of the Third Reich. They discussed the current situation, the economy, the war, and, of course, the future prospects of the "thousand-year Reich" that was bursting at the seams.
And on October 6, 1943, at 17:00, Heinrich Himmler took the podium...

That evening, in the town hall of Posen (Polish poznań), the entire color of the Third Reich gathered: all the gauleiters and reichsleiters, Ministers like Speer, Saukel, Goebbels and other party bigwigs. And it is unlikely that any of them would have been surprised by the speech of the Reichsfuhrer of the SS, if not for the words and expressions that Himmler suddenly began to Express in public.
In fact, his entire speech, which has long been historic, was completed in an hour and a half. After a little discussion about the partisans, the subhuman Slavs, the "Russian pig"- general Vlasov, who allegedly became the favorite of many German officers who lost their vigilance and forgot that he was a Slav — the SS Reichsfuhrer smoothly moved on to the "Jewish question":

..The fact that there are no more Jews in your provinces obviously pleases you. The phrase "the Jews must be destroyed" consists of only a few words that are easy to pronounce, gentlemen, but it requires a great deal of effort from the person who implements it, and it is certainly the most difficult task in the world. I will ask you that what I am about to say in this circle should never be discussed publicly...
..We were faced with the question: what about women and children? - I have decided on a solution to this problem. I did not consider myself entitled to exterminate only men - in other words, to kill them or order them to be killed, allowing the Avengers in the form of their children to grow up among our sons and grandchildren.
I had to make a very difficult decision to make this people disappear from the face of the earth.
For the SS — this was the most difficult task ever assigned [...] Today I decided to openly and honestly tell you, as the highest dignitaries of the party, this political tool of the Fuhrer, about all the difficulties in solving this difficult issue.
By the end of the year, the Jewish issue will be resolved in all the countries that we occupy. There will only be a small handful of Jews who somehow managed to find shelter and hide...

Unexpectedly for everyone present there (not for everyone, but more on this later), Himmler began to openly talk about the murders of millions of women and children (and publicly used the phrase "kill", in German "umbringen").
There were very good reasons for this behavior of the Reichsfuhrer SS, but before we get to them, we need to mention one more meeting held just two days earlier — on October 4, 1943, all in the same Posen.

Two days before that....
The meeting held in Posen on October 4, 1943 was held in a narrower format — only the highest ranks of the SS were present — but it became much more significant for History.
After all, Himmler's speech on it, in addition to the text version (as, for example, the speech quoted above from October 6), has also been preserved on audio!

By the way, the audio recording is Himmler's personal know-how. It was he who ordered in 1942, in addition to mandatory shorthand, to write his performances on records. And although he is the last scoundrel, here it is worth praising him, because these records, like his work notebook, are absolutely priceless for history today.
In 1945, the Americans seized the archive of the "headquarters of the Reichsfuhrer SS", in the vaults of which they found about 50 plates with audio recordings of the Reichsfuhrer, as well as their reprinted versions, including drafts with handwritten edits by Himmler himself (photo of one of the handwritten pages of the draft speech of October 6 was above). Oh, he loved to reprint and edit his own speeches...

After the Nuremberg trials, Himmler's speeches of october 4 and 6, 1943, were called "poznań" by historians. Over time, it became clear that this is not only the banal speeches of some state official of Nazi Germany, but a whole milestone, a milestone in the history of the Third Reich itself.
Here is the most famous excerpt from the speech of October 4, which, I think, best of all historical books conveys the true essence of Nazism (under the text is the original audio recording of the same fragment):

 

[Ringo Stalin]

..There is only one principle, of course, that should exist for a member of the SS: we must be honest, decent, and loyal only to members of our own blood, and to no one else .
I am not in the least interested in the fate of the Czech or the Russian. From other Nations, we will take the blood of our type that they can offer us, if necessary, stealing their children and raising them in our midst. Whether other peoples live in contentment, or starve to death, interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture; otherwise I do not care.
If 10,000 Russian women fall from exhaustion while digging anti-tank ditches, it will only interest me to the extent that this anti-tank ditch is ready for Germany. It is clear that we will never be cruel and inhumane if it is not necessary: we Germans are the only people in the world who treat animals decently. Therefore, we will treat these people-animals decently, but we will commit a crime against our own blood if we take care of them and instill them with ideals so that it will be even more difficult for our sons and grandchildren to cope with them later...

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Just as in the speech of October 6, in the speech of October 4, Himmler raised the "Jewish question" — and again he did not hesitate to Express himself, and knowing that there is an audio recording:

..I want to discuss with you with the utmost frankness a difficult question . This time we will talk to each other openly, but we will never admit it publicly...
I mean the "expulsion of the Jews", the extermination of the Jewish people. Easy to say: "The Jewish people will be destroyed," every member of the party says, " it is clearly written in our theory: the elimination of the Jews, the destruction of them — ha, a trifle... But suddenly they all come, 80 million good Germans, and everyone has their own decent Jew. Of course, all the other pigs, but his Jew is excellent (on the audio recording at this point, you can clearly hear a chuckle in the audience).
Of all those who say this, not one of them has seen with his own eyes or experienced, unlike most of you, what 100 corpses lying next to each other, or 500, or 1000. To stand it and, with the exception of certain cases of human weakness, to remain decent — that's what hardened us. This is a glorious page in our history that has never been and will never be written...
We Have a moral right and duty to our people to destroy this people who wanted to destroy us... we destroy the bacilli, and we do not want to get infected and die from them.

 

[Tim the plumber]

Nope when Mao started the cultural revolution that was much worse.

https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/117145.pdf?v=831a370b4d4f8f1c2b8576d24e56d4eb

 

[Ringo Stalin]

What is all this?
Anyone who has read up to this point has the right to ask: why all this? What's the catch? What is so strange or surprising about it?
I'll explain.

Before these speeches in Poznan, none of the Third Reich's bonzes had ever spoken so directly about the "Jewish question". And after. Even Himmler himself made sure that documents were written only in euphemisms, such as "relocation to the East" or "evacuation to the East" or "removal to the East" or "special treatment". At the beginning of 1943, the Reichsfuhrer returned to an SS official a statistical report on the "solution of the Jewish question" in Europe, which briefly mentioned that in the camps of the General government (meaning the extermination camps of Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor) at the moment "1.3 million of the Jews were processed." Himmler demanded that the report be redone and that the expression "processed in the camps" be replaced with "transported through the camps".

And here, just six months later, he spits on all the conspiracy and bluntly declares: I want to talk to you about the "expulsion of the Jews", and obsessively adds — the destruction of the Jewish people. That is, deliberately, on a dictaphone, gives out what is hidden behind the "expulsion". Two days later, he even talks about the destruction of women and children in front of the entire party (!) top, but then noticeably tightens his speech, and gives out: "I did not consider myself entitled to kill, or order to kill only men, leaving women and children."

For many who are superficially familiar with the history of Nazism, it will probably be news that the subtleties of the "solution of the Jewish question" before 1943 were devoted only to the truly "chosen". And executors.

Yes, after the attack on the USSR, when the Einsatzgruppen began to work, many of the Wehrmacht saw and even sometimes participated in the executions themselves, but it all looked like some haphazard, sporadic atrocity.

And some head of the Hitler youth or the Labor front, or a Gauleiter of some German Gau, did not even know this. He saw that Jews were being collected and taken away on trains somewhere in the direction of Poland and Russia. And when he himself participated in this, he saw that the documents referred to "relocation" to the East. Sometimes some vague rumors reached him, but all this was so far away and uninteresting, and life was so full and beautiful that he did not want to bother with it at all.

 

[Ringo Stalin]

But in 1943, the Third Reich cracked...

In early 1943, the allies agreed that from that moment on, war with Germany would only be waged until its unconditional surrender. That same winter, the USSR, Britain, and the United States adopted a joint Declaration on the punishment of German criminals after the war. The defeat at Stalingrad, Kursk, and Africa, the allied landings in Italy, and the bombing of German cities. Finally, the collapse and arrest of Mussolini, who was betrayed and deposed by his own associates — all this greatly frightened Hitler.
And the Fuhrer thought hard...

It's time to play it safe and remind your subordinates what moral line they have already crossed. Every single one of them, even those who really didn't know all the details. To understand that the bridges are burned and no one has good exits. In other words, smear them in blood. Not for nothing were these speeches delivered just two months after Mussolini's arrest in Italy. Of course, there is no direct evidence for this, but indirect ones convince many serious historians of this. Judge for yourself...

The conference in Posen on October 6 was organized by Bormann's party office, and such a large number of Third Reich officials had not been assembled in a very long time. In Himmler's work notebook, the names of all those present and absent were ticked off — for some reason the SS leader was very interested in this (and it was there that he first publicly said: "we are KILLING, AND WOMEN AND CHILDREN").

Moreover, on the following day, all gauleiters and reichsleiters who were present in the Poznan hall on October 6 were ordered to report to Hitler's headquarters "Wolf's den". This was unusual. Never before had all the gauleiters been invited to the Fuhrer's military residence at once. There, without explaining anything, he gave a long speech to the guests, in which he directly said that the battle is for survival, all bridges are burned, and it remains only to go forward resolutely, either to win or to die.

In General, summing up all the indirect facts, we can confidently say that the "Poznan speeches" of the Reichsfuhrer SS were a well-thought-out performance, which was played out as if by notes by Hitler, Bormann, Himmler and Goebbels. The main ones of the "initiates". By the way, in March 1943, Goebbels wrote in his diary that, they say, we are already so deeply mired in the "Jewish question" that all the bridges are burned and there is no way back for us.

And it is not for nothing that albert Speer, after serving 20 years in prison, will assure everyone for the rest of his life that he left that day before Himmler's speech. After his death in 1982, historians will find evidence in his personal archive that he lied.

And the former head of the Hitler youth, Baldur Schirach, told the Nuremberg trials that after this speech, most of the Nazi officials present went down to the buffet, got drunk, and sat for a long time in sad silence, realizing what they had heard.

 

[Ringo Stalin]

This theory is also indirectly confirmed by Himmler's subsequent behavior. After two "poznań speeches", he broke loose. During 1943-44, he made several more direct statements in his speeches that he personally ordered the killing of women and children.

Thus, in a speech on December 16, 1943, to officers of the Kriegsmarine (Navy), Himmler spoke not only about the extermination of Jewish children:

"..so I actually gave the order to kill the wives and children of these partisans and Commissars. If, in this struggle of humanity against subhumanity, I had allowed the children of the untermensch to grow up, filled with hatred for us, I would have become a weakling and a criminal for our descendants..."

On may 5, 1944, speaking to Wehrmacht generals in Sonnenhof, he again spoke about it:

"The "Jewish question" is completely resolved both in Germany itself and in the countries occupied by Germany. You understand how difficult it was to carry out this military order placed on my shoulders... If you say: "We can understand about men, but not children," then I must remind you of what I said at the beginning. I believe that we Germans, however deeply we may feel for them, have no right to allow a generation of Avengers to grow up, filled with hatred for us, and that our children and grandchildren will have to deal with them, and that we will shift this problem to their shoulders because of our weakness and cowardice..."

below is an audio of Himmler's speech, where he says the text above (and how unusual it is to hear the word "kinder" in this context")

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On may 24, 1944, in the same Sonnenhof, he started talking about it again:

"...Another issue of crucial importance for the internal security of Europe and the Reich was the 'Jewish question'. I think, gentlemen, that you know me well enough to understand that I am not a bloodthirsty man. I'm not one of those people who feels pleasure or joy when you need to do something rude. However, on the other hand, I have very good nerves and a developed sense of duty — I can say to myself that if I recognize an issue as important to me, I solve it uncompromisingly. I didn't think I had the right — especially for Jewish women and children — to let these children grow up to be Avengers who would then kill our children and our grandchildren. That would be cowardly. Therefore, this issue was resolved by me uncompromisingly."

 

[Ringo Stalin]

He ended one of his speeches to Wehrmacht officers with these significant words: "Now you know everything, and I Hope that you will take this knowledge with you to the grave."
Himmler continued to actively "smear" them all with blood. Party members, members of the Wehrmacht and the Kriegsmarine....

Who else is there left?
Now they couldn't say, "We had nothing to do with it, we didn't know anything!" However, the cunning Himmler did not forget to carefully emphasize each time that this was not his personal initiative, but "a heavy military order placed on the shoulders of the SS." The Fuhrer, of course. Himmler himself was only an honest, uncompromising and "not bloodthirsty" man. It makes my eyes water, it's like a darling, not a guy...

"My meek Heinrich" — as Hitler called him...
Soon enough," meek Heinrich " will be running around Northern Germany like a rat until he is actually swatted. But even here he can get out of it and get away from responsibility. Using a cyanide capsule. The same poison that he had been developing on the orders of the adored Hitler since 1943, and which he had ordered to be tested on dozens of concentration camp prisoners.

Now he was sprawled on the spattered dirt floor. Small, puny, pathetic. The most monstrous and large-scale killer-practitioner in the history of mankind.



Although for the notes and audio of his speeches saved by him, the "non-bloodthirsty" anti-man should be praised. Thanks to them, all evil spirits ( Holocaust deniers, neo-Nazis) are defeated even before they open their stinking mouths. By the way, Hitler should not have written his boring "Mein Kampf" — these speeches are the best description of the deep essence of Nazism. Unclouded Nazism, concentrated one.

And I can't believe that Germany was so schizophrenic recently...

 

[Tim the plumber]

Stalin was much worse than Hitler.

 

[Robertinfremont]

While reading Nazi history informs a forum, we also need points to be explain be made clearly.

It is common knowledge the Nazis were exterminating the Jews.

 

[Helix]

**** all nazis. this used to be the default mode.

 

[Rogue Valley]

**** all nazis. this used to be the default mode.

**** all Stalinists also.

 

[Ringo Stalin]

Stalin was much worse than Hitler.

Why don't you openly state your political views (in the manner of Himmler in the article) and write openly in the "Political leaning" column: neo-nazi?

 

[Ringo Stalin]

While reading Nazi history informs a forum, we also need points to be explain be made clearly.

The Point was expressed openly: When the Nazis felt the end approaching, they tried to smear all the Germans in their blood to prolong their engagement.
Another way for them was to drive a wedge between the allies. Therefore, at about the same time, Goebbels' Ministry of propaganda announced the murder of polish officers by the soviets in Katyn, which was committed by the nazis themselves.
P.S. Himmler spoke not only of the murder of jews but also of slavs. And they were killed significantly more than jews, by the way.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Stalin was much worse than Hitler.

Second time you have mounted your desperate lead pipe apologetics, as if to try to normalize Hitler.
WTF is wrong with you anyway?

 

[Tim the plumber]

Why don't you openly state your political views (in the manner of Himmler in the article) and write openly in the "Political leaning" column: neo-nazi?

I have no real idea what you are saying other than throwing in an insult for no good reason.

Nazism is evil.

Communism is worse.

Today we divert 40% of US+EU arable production into biofuel which causes the price of food to be twice what it would be if it stopped. This is killing about 20 million people per year. We have been doing it for 20+ years. That is a far higher death toll than all of the killings of Nazism, communism and the Mongol invaisions.

 

[Tim the plumber]

Second time you have mounted your desperate lead pipe apologetics, as if to try to normalize Hitler.
WTF is wrong with you anyway?

The thing "wrong" with me is that I have a knowledge of history and don't want the present evils to be ignored in favor of stupidity.

 

[Ringo Stalin]

I have no real idea what you are saying other than throwing in an insult for no good reason.
Nazism is evil.
Communism is worse.

Oswald Mosley would have liked that.

 

[Ringo Stalin]

If the capitalist does not commit hostile acts against the people, he may well live and work successfully under the Soviet regime. There are many examples of this - even some Ministers of the bourgeois Provisional government, which was overthrown by the Bolsheviks in October 1917, subsequently held various responsible positions in the Soviet apparatus.
The same applies to tsarist officers and even officers who participated on the side of the Whites against the Reds in the civil war, those who honestly served the people, reached high positions.
On the other hand, no matter how much you try to show your loyalty to the Nazis and no matter how useful you are as a specialist, if you are a jew or even a slav, then your fate is tragic. This is only a small part of the proof that in "Stalin is worse than Hitler" nonsense, only idiots can believe.

US Ambassador to the USSR in 1937-39 Joseph Davis on communism and Nazism and their fundamental difference
"(July 7, 1941)
My friend Lindbergh surprised me by saying that he preferred nazism to communism. In general, making such a choice is a desperate matter, but the difference between these two subjects is too great. Both Germany and Russia are totalitarian states. Both are realistic. Both of them use strict and ruthless methods. However, there is one significant difference that can be shown as follows. If Marx, Lenin, or Stalin had been christian believers, and if one tried to place the Communist experiment performed in Russia within the framework of the dogmas of the Catholic or Protestant church, the result would have been declared the greatest achievement of Christianity in the entire history of mankind in its pursuit of humanity and the implementation of Christian commandments in society.
The fact is that the christian religion can be combined with communist principles without committing much violence to its economic and political goals, the main one of which is the "brotherhood of all people". If we conduct a similar test with regard to nazism, we will find that it is impossible to combine the two ideologies. The principle of Christian ideology cannot be imposed on the Nazi philosophy without destroying the political basis of the state. Fascist philosophy creates a state that is actually based on the denial of the altruistic principles of Christianity. For the Nazis, love, charity, justice, and christian values are only manifestations of weakness and decline if they contradict the needs of the state.
This is the whole difference - the communist Soviet state can act with christianity as the basis for achieving the ultimate goal - the universal brotherhood of people. The communists allow the state to die out as a person improves, while the nazi ideal is the opposite - the state is above all."

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

The thing "wrong" with me is that I have a knowledge of history and don't want the present evils to be ignored in favor of stupidity.

The thing wrong with you is you never met a fascist you didn't like.
Measuring the body count and excusing the one with the lower score is apologetics, but instead of acknowledging that all of them are monsters, you appear to be defending one by pretending the other two were worse which, apparently in your mind, makes the other one "better".
F**** that noise because the only difference is, Germany didn't have 1.5 billion souls.

 

[Tim the plumber]

The thing wrong with you is you never met a fascist you didn't like.

Not sure I've ever met an actual Fascist.

I do consider that ideology evil.

It is utterly vile and always reduces that quality of life as compared to the vastly better free societies where we have democracy, flawed as it is.

Just because I see communism as worse (and close to the same thinking) does not mean I like or am a Fascist. You are being very foolish there.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Not sure I've ever met an actual Fascist.

I do consider that ideology evil.

It is utterly vile and always reduces that quality of life as compared to the vastly better free societies where we have democracy, flawed as it is.

Just because I see communism as worse (and close to the same thinking) does not mean I like or am a Fascist. You are being very foolish there.

I am not the one desperately playing whataboutisms or bothsiderisms.

 

[Tim the plumber]

I am not the one desperately playing whataboutisms or bothsiderisms.

77 years of the scariest speech by a government official in history

Obviously that is not true.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

77 years of the scariest speech by a government official in history

Obviously that is not true.

Yeah it is.
Person A is describing a monstrous human being, and you reduce it to a comparison between cars, or beer, saying "this beer has more alcohol" or "this car was much worse", as if to say the other beer isn't so bad, or the other car isn't so dangerous, because the two cars you mentioned are more dangerous.

You have company, you know that, you have the kind of company that will cheerfully accept an extreme as a bulwark against another extreme. I'm sure you and @Rostocker would find each other's arguments compatible.

 

[Tim the plumber]

Yeah it is.
Person A is describing a monstrous human being, and you reduce it to a comparison between cars, or beer, saying "this beer has more alcohol" or "this car was much worse", as if to say the other beer isn't so bad, or the other car isn't so dangerous, because the two cars you mentioned are more dangerous.

You have company, you know that, you have the kind of company that will cheerfully accept an extreme as a bulwark against another extreme. I'm sure you and @Rostocker would find each other's arguments compatible.

No.

I am somebody who is truth focused.

So the wrong statement that the meeting where the SS forced the civilian authorities of Germany to be imculcated into the already in motion final solution, the extermination of the Jews where they could catch them, is not the worst moment in human history. It is very very bad. There have been far worse.

That you don't like the facts that your prefered communists are far worse than Hitler is not my problem.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

No.

I am somebody who is truth focused.

So the wrong statement that the meeting where the SS forced the civilian authorities of Germany to be imculcated into the already in motion final solution, the extermination of the Jews where they could catch them, is not the worst moment in human history. It is very very bad. There have been far worse.

That you don't like the facts that your prefered communists are far worse than Hitler is not my problem.

See, I knew we'd arrive here sooner or later!
You think I prefer communism, ergo I must be a communist.
And that's all you have, like every other red-baiting troll chef on the planet.