Hitler's Obersalzberg Speech

[3][2] Canadian historian Michael Marrus wrote that Lochner almost certainly obtained the text from Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the Abwehr (German intelligence), who was present at the Obersalzberg Conference.

The speech is also found in a footnote to notes about a speech that Hitler held in Obersalzberg on 22 August 1939 and was published in the German foreign policy documents[7][12] When later asked at Nuremberg who his source was, Lochner said it was a German named "Herr Maasz" but gave vague information about him.

[13] The Times quoted from Lochner's version in an unattributed article titled "The War Route of the Nazi Germany" on 24 November 1945.

[14] In Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (colloquially known as "the Red Set"), a collection of documents related to the Nuremberg trials which was compiled by the prosecutorial team, the editors describe the relationship between the relevant documents as follows:[15] Just one week prior to the launching of the attack on Poland, Hitler made an address to his chief military commanders, at Obersalzberg, on 22 August 1939.

]In his book What about Germany?, Lochner offered the following English translation of the third paragraph of the document L-3: Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality.

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.