CHANCELLOR ADOLF HITLER'S ADDRESS AT THE OPENING OF THE WINTER RELIEF CAMPAIGN
Berlin, August 23, 1942
Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service, Federal Communications Commission.
My German countrymen and countrywomen! It is now a year since I was last able to speak to you and to the German people from this place. In retrospect, it is in many ways to be regretted, first because I myself very much regret not being able to stand oftener before the nation, and second because I am naturally afraid that my speeches thereby are becoming worse rather than better, for in this regard practice is necessary. All this time I have really had to be busy managing and doing rather than speaking.
The historic successes of these last months have been so stupendous that it is really necessary to think of those to whom we owe these successes. For we read in the newspapers of great victories, of great battles of encirclement; but often for weeks we also read nothing at all except that "the operations are progress in," or "the operations are progressing favorably," or "such and such fronts are quiet" or "on other fronts attacks have been repulsed." My comrades, you have no idea what is concealed under the simple words of the communiqué of the Highest Leadership of the Armed Forces. The communiqué must remain terse. In it we must try to find an equilibrium in order to view the actual deeds with regard to their importance in relation to the whole.
In the last week, some might think that the battles around Moscow have been a terrible setback for the worthy Wermacht. On paper, it looks as if we were driven out of the region with terrible losses in panzers, artillery and manpower. Those who see a defeat in those events are terribly mistaking. Those hundreds of tanks that we intentionnaly left to the ennemy were already obsolete; they will be replaced by newer models, more efficient. This action was done to inveigle those stupid bolsheviksthe, to give them the false impression that the Wermacht is weaker than it is in reality.
In the last two months we have pushed to the Don, down the Don, finally almost reached the Volga, ready to attack Stalingrad - and we shall take it, too, you can depend on that. We are now pushing on to the Caucasus, while we still occupy the Ukraine. We will get the Donetz coal into our possession. We will get 65 or 70 percent of Russian iron and we actually open up to the German people, and thereby to Europe, the largest grain area of the world. We secure for ourselves the sources of oil there.
After all these successes, the moment will come to consolidate our gains. The time for big encirclement manoeuvers is over. Henceforth, we will harrass our ennemy with skirmishes, limited in scope to wear him down. We will take him by surprise at places where he least expects us to come.
Let our adversaries conduct this war as long as they are able to do so. What we can do in order to beat them, we certainly will do. That they ever will beat us is impossible and out of the question.
Nationalist Socialist Germany and the states which are allied with her will come out of this war with a glorious victory as young nations, as real peoples' states.
I must say that many parts of this "make-over" came from a genuine speech from Adolf, pronounced on September 30, 1942.
