Audio: Hitler and the Jews

Hitler's 'Final Solution' to the 'Jewish Question' was the elimination of the Jewish race from the European continent. During the Holocaust six million Jews were murdered.

Hitler once remarked 'If the Jews didn't exist, we would have to invent them'. This is one of his most revealing comments on Nazism. Nothing creates more unity than a common enemy. The hatred of the Jews was the backbone of Hitler's power.

A speech at the Siemens Dynamo Works in Berlin, 10 November 1933

	Hitler: 'The struggle between the people and the hatred amongst them is being nurtured by very specific interested parties ...' Play audio: modem Read transcript
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This was the first speech that Hitler broadcast live on all German radio stations, and took place only nine months after his take-over as Chancellor of the German Reich. It is a perfect illustration of the way he was able to create a sense of community between himself and his audience.

Hitler was aware that many in this working-class audience were likely to have left-wing sympathies, yet within a minute he had won them over with a reference to his wartime service as a corporal in the trenches.

The chief aim of the speech was to promote rearmament, without regard for international restrictions. Hitler wanted Germany to leave the League of Nations, which opposed rearmament; in November 1933 he organised a national plebiscite, in which Germans were intimidated into agreeing that they too wanted rearmament.

This was obviously going to damage Germany's international position, but Hitler made it clear whom he intended to blame. In the speech at the Siemens Dynamo Works, he never actually mentioned the Jews, but it was quite clear to whom he was referring. It hardly needed the man in the audience to shout it out.

Hitler's 'prophecy' speech to the Reichstag, 30 January 1939

	Hitler: 'In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet, and have usually been ridiculed for it ...' Play audio: modem Read transcript
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On the sixth anniversary of his rise to power, the Führer provided a horrifying resolution to the 'Jewish problem'. In this clip he made a prophecy that a world war would result in the annihilation of all European Jews.

The audio has been reproduced by courtesy of Stiftung Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv in Frankfurt, Germany.