Posen speeches
Himmler dispensed with the usual euphemisms[4] and spoke explicitly of the extermination of the Jews via mass murder, which he depicted as a historical mission of the Nazis.
US President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the prosecution of those mainly responsible for war and genocide on 12 February,[citation needed] which the US Congress agreed to on 18 March.
German dissidents planned Germany's reorganisation (the Kreisau Circle) and assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler (particularly the 20 July plot).
A scorched earth policy was brought in on 4 September for retreats on the Eastern Front, and martial law against those in the armed forces who refused to follow orders, initially introduced by the General Government on 2 October.
[7] In the spring of 1943, Sonderaktion 1005 was in full operation, the exhumation and incineration of those murdered by the Einsatzgruppen across the whole Eastern Front, whose death toll had so far reached 1.8 million Jews.
These recordings were then typed up by SS-Untersturmführer Werner Alfred Wenn, who corrected obvious grammatical errors and supplemented missing words.
[13] Large parts of the speech therefore concerned the increasingly precarious situation on the Eastern Front, while attempting to explain Soviet military successes as being due to a claimed combination of Communist ruthlessness and the weaknesses of Germany's allies.
Himmler assumes that his audience is experienced with mass shootings, ghetto liquidations and extermination camps, and accordingly, already possesses knowledge of them.
Himmler speculated over the Soviet army's potential, spoke disparagingly of the "Vlasov shivaree" (der Wlassow-Rummel), expatiated on the inferiority of the Slavic race, and included thoughts as to how a German minority can prevail over it.
Like in pre-war speeches, and in accordance with Hitler's remarks in Mein Kampf, he speaks of how the eradication of the Slavic Untermensch is a historical and natural necessity.
There is to be no place for sentiment:[14] One basic principle must be the absolute rule for the SS men: We must be honest, decent, loyal and comradely to members of our own blood and to nobody else.
To have endured this and at the same time to have remained a decent person — with exceptions due to human weaknesses — has made us tough, and is a glorious chapter that has not and will not be spoken of.
If the Jews were still part of the German nation, we would most likely arrive now at the state we were at in 1916 and 17 [...]Himmler then praises the mindset of the SS man, devoting approximately 30 of the 116 pages to their virtues as well as their duty of becoming Europe's ruling class in 20 to 30 years.
The speech in each of these stages resided in the files of the Personal Staff of the Reichsführer (Persönlichen Stabes Reichsführer-SS), which were seized in their entirety by U.S. authorities in 1945.
[17] At the end of September 1943, the party chancellery invited all Reichsleiters and Gauleiters, the head of the Hitler Youth Artur Axmann and Reich ministers Albert Speer and Alfred Rosenberg to a conference.
It is this portion of alleged armaments factories that Party Comrade Speer and I intend to clear out in the next few weeks.This last sentence seems to refer to the upcoming Operation Harvest Festival where the remaining Jewish forced laborers in the Lublin District of German-occupied Poland were liquidated.
A few death sentences imposed on the basis of making corrosive remarks are to serve as dissuasive warnings for thousands of others; party members must display exemplary behaviour.
Himmler closes by discussing how the German national boundary will be pushed 500 km eastwards, with 120 million people being relocated, and ends with the appeal:[22] When we see this then we will never lose our belief, never will we become disloyal, never will we be cowardly, never in bad spirits, but we will strive to be worthy to have lived under Adolf Hitler and been allowed to fight with him.Albert Speer, Reich minister for arms and munition since 1942, was, since 2 September 1943 as Reich minister for armament and wartime economy, responsible for all German armament production.
Not allowing avengers to rise against our children.On 5 May 1944 Himmler explained to Generals in Sonthofen that perseverance in the bombing war has only been possible because the Jews in Germany have been discarded.
[...] In my view, we as Germans, however deeply we may feel in our hearts, are not entitled to allow a generation of avengers filled with hatred to grow up with whom our children and grandchildren will have to deal because we, too weak and cowardly, left it to them.Applause can be heard on a recording of another speech given to Generals in Sonthofen on 24 May 1944, when Himmler says:[26] Another question which was decisive for the inner security of the Reich and Europe, was the Jewish question.
Saul Friedländer highlights Himmler's self-image as an unconditionally obedient executor of Hitler's plans for the Germanic "Lebensraum in the east".
The murderers were – with exceptions – spared from the traumatic experiences that survivors were left with.Hans Buchheim comments that the accused perpetrators very probably lacked a mens rea ("guilty mind").
Himmler's revaluation of soldierly virtues was not a total negation of moral norms, but a suspension of them for the exceptional situation of the extermination of the Jews, which had been passed off as a historical necessity.
[30] Historian Dieter Pohl states:[31] Traditional institutions of the Nazi state secretly began the search for a defence strategy for the post-war period in 1943: one had not been informed, and the SS was exclusively to blame.The unsparing portrayal of the genocide in Himmler's speech is thus interpreted as a means to formally render senior SS and Nazi functionaries as co-conspirators and accomplices in the perpetration of the Holocaust.
[32] Joseph Goebbels alludes to this view in his diary entry of 2 March 1943:[33] As always in the circles of the party, it is the duty of the Führer's closest friends to gather around him in such times of need [...] Above all with the Jewish question, we are so fixed on it that there is no longer any escape.
Subsequent generations will doubtlessly no longer dare address this problem with the courage and obsession as we are able to do today.Holocaust deniers have frequently attempted to negate Himmler's speeches as proof of the Holocaust.
[35] The reference to a bacillus in this statement is figurative, however, in line with Nazi rhetoric that encouraged dehumanizing concepts of Jews as a pathogen or malignant presence, rather than people.
[35] Because of this, critics explain that Holocaust deniers will arbitrarily select words from the dictionary that have nothing to do with the given context, such as cherry-picking the definition for Unkraut (weeds) and erroneously applying it to Volk (people).
Ich hielt mich nämlich nicht für berechtigt, die Männer auszurotten – sprich also, umzubringen oder umbringen zu lassen – und die Rächer in Gestalt der Kinder für unsere Söhne und Enkel groß werden zu lassen.
The difficult decision had to be taken to make this people disappear from the earth.Holocaust deniers will also offer erroneous translations of ausrotten by analysing the word's compounds, on the basis that "aus" and "rotten" are cognate with the English "out" and "root".
