Adolf Hitler - appeal to the Political Leaders of Germany

 

 

September 11, 1936

 

The time of internal tensions has now been overcome, just as has the time of the external threat! Just as we are joined together here, so has the German Volk been joined together today. Just as you, my banner bearers, have marched here in columns, so stands the German Volk arrayed in columns under your banners and behind your banners!

 

How could we help but feel once more in this hour the miracle that brought us together! Once you heard the voice of a man, and that voice knocked at your hearts, it wakened you, and you followed that voice. For years you pursued it, without ever having even seen the owner of that voice; you simply heard a voice and followed it.

 

When we meet here today, we are all of us filled with the miraculousness of this gathering. Not every one of you can see me, and I cannot see every one of you. Yet I feel you, and you feel me! It is the faith in our Volk that has made us small people great, that has made us poor people rich, that has made us wavering, discouraged, fearful people brave and courageous; that has made us, the wayward, see, and has joined us together! Thus you come from your little villages, from your small market towns, from your cities, from the mines and the factories, leaving the plow; one day you come into this city. You come from the limited environment of your daily life struggle and of your struggle for Germany and our Volk, to have for once the feeling: now we are together, we are with him, and he is with us, and we are now Germany!

 

This Reich has only seen but the first few days of its youth. It will continue to grow for more than centuries to come; it will become strong and mighty! These banners shall be borne through ages of ever-new generations of our Volk.

 

Germany has come into its own! Our Volk has been reborn! Hence I greet you, my old comrades in arms, my leaders, my banner bearers, as the standard bearers of a new history, and hence I greet you here and thank you for all the loyalty and all the faith you have shown me all these long years.

 

Hence I greet you as the hope of the present and the guarantors of our future. And hence I greet particularly the youth assembled here. Become men like those who stand before you! Fight as they have fought! Be upstanding and determined, fear no man, and in other respects do what is right and your duty! And then the Lord God will never abandon our Volk.

 

Heil Deutschland!