Posen speeches
On October 6, 1943, Heinrich Himmler, leader of the Schutzstaffel (SS), gave a three-hour speech at occupied Poznań where the Reichsführer-SS spoke to the assembled SS-Gruppenführer. The speech, titled Rede zu den SS Führern ("Speech to SS Officers") lays out Himmler's views about the extermination of Jews and others (such as Slavs) deemed to be enemies of the German Reich.
Statements
Regarding the Jews, Himmler stated:
- I also want to refer here very frankly to a very difficult matter. We can now very openly talk about this among ourselves, and yet we will never discuss this publicly. Just as we did not hesitate on June 30, 1934, to perform our duty as ordered and put comrades who had failed up against the wall and execute them, we also never spoke about it, nor will we ever speak about it. (reference to the Night of the Long Knives) Let us thank God that we had within us enough self-evident fortitude never to discuss it among us, and we never talked about it. Every one of us was horrified, and yet every one clearly understood that we would do it next time, when the order is given and when it becomes necessary.
- I am now referring to the evacuation of the Jews, to the extermination of the Jewish people. This is something that is easily said: "The Jewish people will be exterminated", says every Party member, "this is very obvious, it is in our program — elimination of the Jews, extermination, a small matter." And then they turn up, the upstanding 80 million Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. They say the others are all pigs, but this particular one is a splendid Jew. (compare with Rosenstrasse protest) But none has observed it, endured it. Most of you here know what it means when 100 corpses lie next to each other, when there are 500 or when there are 1,000. 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. Because we know how difficult it would be for us if we will had Jews as secret saboteurs, agitators and rabble rousers in every city, what with the bombings, with the burden and with the hardships of the war. If the Jews were still part of the German nation, we would most likely arrive now at the state we were at in 1916/17. (as in the Dolchstosslegende)
Himmler also expressed his views of the Slavs subjugated by German armed forces in Eastern Europe:
- One basic principle must be the absolute rule for the SS man: we must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and to nobody else. What happens to a Russian, to a Czech does not interest me in the slightest. What the nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type, we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our Kultur; otherwise, it is of no interest to me. Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished. We shall never be rough and heartless when it is not necessary, that is clear. We Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these human animals. But it is a crime against our own blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult time with them. When somebody comes to me and says, "I cannot dig the anti-tank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it would kill them", then I have to say, "You are a murderer of your own blood because if the anti-tank ditch is not dug, German soldiers will die, and they are sons of German mothers. They are our own blood." That is what I want to instill into the SS and what I believe I have instilled into them as one of the most sacred laws of the future. Our concern, our duty is our people and our blood. It is for them that we must provide and plan, work and fight, nothing else. We can be indifferent to everything else. I wish the SS to adopt this attitude to the problem of all foreign, non-Germanic peoples, especially Russians. All else is vain, fraud against our own nation and an obstacle to the early winning of the war.
Controversies
Arthur R. Butz, in his book "The Hoax of the Twentieth Century" (see http://vho.org/GB/Books/thottc/10.html) cites the documents (NMT, vol. 13, 457-487) to indicate that the International Military Tribunal at Nüremberg accepted the speech prima facie, which means “at first sight; accepted as so until proved otherwise”:
“Judge Powers, Presiding: Well, I think that there is enough evidence here, prima facie, that the voice is the voice of Himmler to justify receiving the document in evidence. There is no evidence, however, that it was delivered at Poznan or any other particular place. The discs will be received in evidence as an indication of Himmler’s general attitude.”
Also, according Arthur R. Butz and his above-cited book (pages 237-241), the recording was put into evidence during the testimony of defendant Gottlob Berger, SS General, at the IMT, but Berger denied that the speech was accurate, because he recalled that part of the speech had dealt with certain Belgian and Dutch SS leaders who were present at the meeting, and
"[...] that is not contained in the transcript. I can say with certainty that he did not speak about the Ausrottung of the Jews, because the reason for this meeting was to equalize and adjust these tremendous tensions between the Waffen SS and the Police."
Literature
Historian Daniel Goldhagen quoted a sentence relating to Albert Speer, but later withdrew it as a paraphrase. (Sereny p.393)
References
- Internationaler Militärgerichtshof Nürnberg (IMT): Der Nürnberger Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher. Delphin Verlag, Nachdruck München 1989, ISBN 3-7735-2523-0, Band 29: Urkunden und anderes Beweismaterial (in German, Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Volume 29: Documents and other Evidence)
- Bradley F. Smith, Agnes F. Petersen (Editors): Heinrich Himmler. Geheimreden 1933 – 1945, Propyläen Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin/Wien 1974, ISBN 3-549-07305-4 (in German, literally "Secret Speeches")
- Sereny, Gitta (1995). Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth. Knopf. ISBN 0-394-52915-4.
- ^ Himmler's reference is to the Night of the Long Knives, the purge wherein the SS and other elements loyal to Hitler purged potential political rivals in the storm troopers (SA).