Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Every few years, I teach my students Hitler's notorious Reichstag speech, delivered on 30 January 1939, to mark the sixth anniversary of the Nazi Party's seizure of power.In this lengthy address (over two hours long), Hitler reviews with great satisfaction the achievements of the Nazi revolution.The speech touches on many subjects, primarily in the realm of foreign policy, and much of it is laden with fiercely antisemitic rhetoric.1 Toward the end of the speech, Hitler declares: Today I will once more be a prophet.If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe! 2In archival footage of this part of the speech, the Reichstag delegates, all men, many in uniform, can be seen rising to their feet and cheering Hitler's "prophecy" with great enthusiasm.3 The importance of this speech lies in the fact that it was the first time that Hitler spoke publicly and explicitly of the possibility of the annihilation of the Jews.But what does the declaration itself signify, and what did Hitler mean by it?In the past, historians such as Eberhard Jäckel believed that this speech revealed Hitler's plans to annihilate the Jews, which took shape in his mind as early as the 1920s.4 At the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, the speech is given considerable space in the passage from the exhibit on Germany in the 1930s to the exhibit on the invasion of Poland and the establishment of ghettos, following the outbreak of the war.The speech is shown prominently on a screen, subtitles in English and Hebrew.The
Source: Journal of Genocide Research
Author: Amos Goldberg
Institution: Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4403406912