Adolf Hitler: The Obersalzberg Speech

Modern History Sourcebook: 

Adolf Hitler: The Obersalzberg Speech | August 22, 1939

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Adolf Hitler: The Obersalzberg Speech

Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter – with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It’s a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me. I have issued the command – and I’ll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad – that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness – for the present only in the East – with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?

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Source:

From Documents on British Foreign Policy. 1919-1939. eds. E. L. Woodward and Rohan Riftlep; 3rd series (London: HMSO, 1954), 7:258-260.

Associated Press bureau chief in Berlin, Louis Lochner.

Inscription | The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.

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The third paragraph of the L-3 document:

ORIGINAL : "Wer redet heute noch von der Vernichtung der Armenier?"

"Vernichtung" - destruction | extermination | annihilation

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HayForum.Blog | ARMENIAN GENOCIDE | 1915