Introduction by a soldier: I open the rally of the NSDAP at the Sportpalast in Berlin to celebrate the seizure of power by the Führer, tenth year to the day.

Gauleiter (District leader Dr. Goebbels) speaks to us.

(Shouts: Sieg Heil!)

Dr. Joseph Goebbels: My German compatriots, Party comrades,

Since the seizure of power on 30 January, 1933 every year the Führer personally has spoken mainly from the Sportpalast to the German people and has given to them the slogan for the next year of struggle.

The Führer has instructed me to inform you that it was his very warm desire to talk today to the German nation.

He is as deeply sorry as us to have to break the deeply felt tradition of the celebration of this commemoration day this year desire but the hard necessities of the war leadership does not permit him presently to abandon his headquarters from where he leads the big defence battles in the East. He thus addresses the German people in a proclamation instead of a speech. I will be reading out this proclamation on behalf of the Führer in the course of my speech.

Allow me to give an introduction with some explanations about the present situation.

It is not the first time that I take the floor at this place before the German people in a difficult moment of our national life. In the Sportpalast in Berlin we lived in the last 15 years all the ups and downs of the German political and in war of the military progress. The dangers that have threatened our nation in these eventful one and a half decades were explained from this place before the German people and the decisive decisions to its rectification were also proclaimed. This room never saw a following that were discouraged or with no hope. We have received many strikes in these 15 years from our enemies but we have always responded to every strike with a counterstrike.

Who does not remember the numerous occasions the Party or the National-Socialist state got involved in a more or less important crisis, our enemies thinking that they were now able to definitively triumph over us!

They have always triumphed too early!

Enemy men and forces that even today had completely faded from our memory whose names and descriptions can barely be remembered have opposed us in these 15 years. The time went by for them. Yet we have stayed.

We have coped with all kind of dangers and crises. And just as it was in the past, so it will be in the present and in the future. We National-Socialists have never allowed ourselves to play down or deny arising problems to the people. On the contrary, it was always a sign of our unbroken sense of power to explain every danger to our following and to the whole German people so that our Party and our People can prepare and get ready for it.

It is always a question of self-assurance and of fierce determination whether one movement or one people cope with difficulties appearing sometimes overwhelming. If these are ready and willing to use its whole internal and external force against it, then they will always triumph.

Only if they capitulate to the dangers, they perish. For us it is always been a sure and irrevocable principle that the word capitulation does not exist in our vocabulary.

We are and will be always sticking to it!

Just as it was yesterday it is today.

The times have changed but we National-Socialists have stayed the same.

When I speak to you in this moving moment on the 10th anniversary of the takeover of power by the Führer from the tribune of the Sportpalast in Berlin and to the whole German people through the radio waves that fills me with deep emotion. I stand again on this podium where history was made on. As we entered this wide spacious hall for the first time, a fighting arena was opened where in the following time the deciding clashes over the power in Germany were decided.

I don’t know how many hundreds of times the Führer and we, his near helpers, have from this place spoken to you, to the National-Socialist Movement in Berlin, in good and bad moments, and with a deep action further into the nation to the whole German people. Here the struggle for the power in the nation’s capital saw its more striking expression.

Here we lived the fantastic moments of the National-Socialist enthusiasm for the struggle, though also of a fierce resolution when dangers and difficulties piled up a mile high before our eyes. Here we gathered in moments of very high pressure and very strong willpower where we had to affirm ourselves against our enemies when they gave us hard knocks or inflicted a severe defeat on us.

Just as it was yesterday it is today. From this podium the arousing political slogans that merged and merge the Nation into a fanatical will to struggle went and go into the people. The German people find itself again in the middle of a hard struggle for his destiny. Its traditional enemies, against whom we had so often to clash until 1933, at times under hopeless circumstances although we eventually were victorious, have congregated again against us. The old enemy coalition well known to us has risen anew but this gigantic struggle for our life has now taken the form of an extra-continental one.

Fight was the then slogan of the National-Socialist movement from the beginning, and fight is still today our slogan. Just as we got nothing for free, so today we get today nothing for free. We have to conquer and work for ourselves. In this moment of present hard fights in the East the enemy thinks again to be able to triumph over us.

The English and American newspapers nature a complacent certainty as if Plutocracy and Bolshevism stood right before the achievement of their goal. International Jewry is gloating as it has so often been doing. The enemy newspapers lie through their teeth, it is stated that in Germany the state of emergency has been proclaimed, the nation is falling through, etc… I can lay out well-established facts against it: In Germany only prevails the state of a total willingness of our people to the concentration of its forces… willingness and a determination for war and for victory. The whole German people are united in this fierce and fanatic determination. Up and down our nation the shout for the most total war effort in the broadest sense of the word penetrates our ears.

Just as before the 30th January 1933 we dedicated all forces to the takeover of power and thus we came to power, so it is today our firm intention to dedicate all forces of the nation to achieve the victory.

And we are firmly convinced that we will also achieve it quicker as some may think.

As far as the fight against the bolshevism goes, we have fought against this Jewish terrorist idea of world conquest inside our nation for 14years under the most unfavourable circumstances. In these 14 years the fight also always raged up and down, and sometimes we thought it impossible to continue, but victory came at the end.

Today it is the same in our fight against soviet bolshevism on the military field. No one thinks about minimizing the difficulties of this international struggle. It is extremely hard and places superhuman demands on our troops and their leadership. Yet as back then we also know today what the deal is. We fought in the East not only against a way of thinking but also against the most violent threat to our national and individual life. When our enemy refers to military victories in this winter, we can only answer that as a result of it we were shaken up out of our contentment and comfort. Now the German people take up their position. From this moment on they only want to fight and work for the victory.

We learned from London that we have no more available reserves. They will get to know these reserves before they think and wish. In the last year our enemies have also put their hopes on a military defeat of the Axis powers. On this respect we have suffered defeats of a serious kind; but hardly came the spring and approached the summer that the German army has again compensated for our losses and driven the enemy again further into the East. Just as in Poland the whole German nation is resolved to quickly overcome all the difficulties that this winter brings with it.

From now on we want to do everything and anything imaginable to accelerate the victory. It does completely not matter to us if our enemies don’t take us seriously in our determination. It is a good help in war to be underestimated by the enemy. One will get to know about the consequences of our fanatic work on the enemy later on in this war before one thinks.

Just as in the struggle for the domestic power the Jewry attacks us from two sides in this gigantic struggle.

Bolshevism sends its mass army ahead, while the plutocracy sends a heavy barrage of lies and slanderous propaganda to be rained upon us. The struggle for our life nears its dramatic high point. It is not only a struggle for the freedom and security of the German nation but a gigantic clash on the future destiny of Europe, definitely of the civilized Western world.

Against this backdrop takes place the 30 January, 1943, the tenth anniversary of the National-Socialist takeover of power.

20 years ago, on 9 November, 1923 the Party suffered its most terrible disaster. Who talks still today about its consequences? It has again recovered from it through the most marvellous victory of our national history. Today we are in the battlefields in a fight for our people’s destiny. It is of really symbolic importance that the young National-Socialist state at its 10th anniversary be subject to this present hard burden.

It is obvious why our enemies fight against the new Nation from all sides as if despairingly. They don’t want to tolerate any people’s state in Germany. That’s the only reason why plutocracy and bolshevism have forced this war on us. The democratic Republic that arose from the Peace Treaty of Versailles was not attacked by the eternal enemies of the Nation because it was run by their lackeys. She was weak and dishonourable.

We became a people of Helots with no will to resist, defenceless at the mercy of the plundering attempts by our enemies. The National-Socialism has succeeded in bringing a change. It has to defend militarily in the international arena the things that it created domestically. In this struggle for the existence or inexistence it is not about a type of state but on our national life.

We still have the election between being slaves and the existence of a free people in a socialist community of a state. This war puts us before the historic mission of confirming on foreign affairs and militarily what we have domestically secured ten years ago.

I don’t need to waste any word on our fanatic determination to employ and exhaust from now on all energy of the German people in this fight of extermination against bolshevism. The second gigantic winter battle in the East is for the German nation the signal to total war. The Soviet Union has been arming for twenty-five years to militarily prepare for this war. Bolshevism made war robots out of people. In 1936 we pronounced the slogan: „First cannons, then butter“, on the other hand Bolshevism has taken it to another level for twenty-five years using the slogan: „Socialist misery, hunger and mass distress but on top of weapons, cannons and armament. Against this abnormal military threat we have to defend ourselves with all our national energy if we don’t want to lose our freedom and our national life.

In the middle of the gigantic deployment of Stalin the German sword went in. Today our troops fight deep into enemy’s territory. A whole continent stands menacingly before us. We have taken control of an important part of it in the triumphant victories of two summers. Like in the past winter of war in the East, now we have to defend the conquered territory in this second winter of war in the East in a supple way and under superhuman tests. I don’t need to express that, the German people already knows it.

So a second time German soldiery finds itself as to its power of resistance and its heroism on the balance of the goddess of destiny. Our confidence in our Führer cannot ever be outdone at all.

Our confidence in our soldiers knows no limits.

Our troops were and are, I have to assure you, superior to the Bolshevik enemy.

In numerous letters from all classes of our people the cry for the most total war effort penetrates the ears of our leadership.

People won’t talk in Germany anymore about the past comforts that were, at least in a couple of things, a burden to peace.

Our people sacrifice itself with joy to transform the already mentioned force into tanks, weapons, munitions and national resistance.

We are more than a so far working and fighting community lending its support to the war and its requirements with fanatic determination, and which longs for the hour where the Führer with our new weapons can give the order of attack to his troops.

Many have so far only talked about people’s war, now we will wage it as a nation. The total war effort demands giving up all comfortable bourgeois habits. A complete readiness for action fills our whole people.

They champion the better cause with the deeper faith. They have already proved their superiority in the most convincing way in the last winter.

In this winter they are engaged in a new defensive action of unimaginable violence. The superhuman burdens and dangers they are exposed to have ripened the motherland for last decisions. There is no one at home who would not be imbued of this fanatical will to be worthy of the heroic fighting front through their work and through their faith in the victory.

The German leadership has quite openly presented the harshness and gravity of this fight to the people and to the world. We have nothing to hide. The motherland answers with the firm will to commit herself strongly. Everyone at home only asks themselves what they can do to help our soldiers, to protect the nation and to secure victory.

Heaps of still unexhausted or not completely exhausted energies are ready to feed into the gigantic war procedure of our civil life. What is called for now is mobilize them. If the enemy thought they would be able to discourage us with a couple of strikes, they were very wrong. These strikes were and are an alarm signal to total war for us, to which we are now determined.

Party and state will exemplarily lead the way in preparation for total war. There have been measures taken and will be still taken in the next days that should organize and in practice carry out the total deployment for total war. The situation demands that we act quickly and ruthlessly.

Our Party’s National-Socialist history is a unique proof that we National-Socialists can do that and always, if need be, gather the energy necessary. The Party will be as always in important national crucial moments the engine of this magnificent change in the life and work in our motherland. Its revolutionary vigour will determine the pace of this revolutionizing process. The leadership expects from the whole people not only that orders and laws be respected.

Furthermore, everyone puts themselves to the disposal of any work necessary for the war knowing that he was asked by the Führer to do it.

The war laws are naturally binding for everyone. No exceptions can be made. Whether high-class or low-class, poor or rich in the life struggle of the German people no one is too good to put their whole energy and everything that he possesses at the disposal of the fatherland.

Against saboteurs of our leadership in the war, we have so far taken hard actions and will also do that in the future. However, they hardly deserve a public denunciation being in very small numbers. We only need to appeal to the fanaticism and the respectability of the German people, and we have a following that includes the whole nation.

On 30th January when we step before the world on the 10th anniversary of our revolution to express our determination to continue this fight with all necessary means until victory, the world should know that behind our words are our actions.

We find ourselves in the middle of this dramatic decision in the historic clash of the 20th century.

Our soldiers have performed incredible feats. They still have to do incredible feats. Under the unimaginable burden of a second winter in war in the East our heroic troops fight courageously, tenaciously and doggedly through all dangers and superhuman difficulties. The Soviet Union throws at them masses of people and materials that seem inexhaustible. We have to assert ourselves in this fight if the German people are not to lose its life.

On the other hand, this gigantic struggle is exposed to many weaknesses and chance happenings. We know that since we frequently went through it during the time before the seizure of power, although in a smaller scale.

We certainly know that if a people of fight-ready men and women are prepared at whatever cost to stand up and fight for their great goal, they will achieve it at the end.

Crises and fluctuations come and go but a nation remains if it fights its way up courageously, bravely and undeterred. Today we are facing again the same enemies as before. They use the same methods to outwit and fight us down. The same crises and fears that then overwhelmed us.

Though at the end one day the same victory as then will triumph.

This war in a national resistance war. It has been imposed to us by our enemies. They want to defeat us to lower us to the level of a slave people. There is only one means against it: not softness but iron spirit of resistance. The struggle has to and will be overcome.

At the end, we steadfast believe it, victory will smile on us. This winter will finish too. The Führer leads the gigantic defensive battle in the East. Although it runs under extremely difficult circumstances, we put our firm and trusting confidence in his leadership and in the historically proved bravery of our soldiers.

Just as we frequently succeeded in overcoming the hardest burdens, so we will also succeed this time, and again the word of the philosopher will prove well-founded in ourselves: „That, which does not kill us, will make us stronger. „Now the Führer addresses at this historic commemoration a proclamation to the German people. From his headquarters he addresses his appeal to the nation. It is a proud honour for me in this memorable moment to be able to read out the Führer’s proclamation in front of the whole German people.

It contains everything that we have to know in this moment, and the orders that the German people has been impatiently waiting for. Here are the slogans of the struggle and of a fierce resolution that warms our hearts, and strengthen and puts new heart into us.

It reads as follows: „From the big North to the African desert, from the Atlantic Ocean to the expanses in the East, from the Aegean to Stalingrad, an epic song sounds that will last thousands of years.

That the homeland remains equal to these unique and, especially this year, difficult feats are a dictate of its honour.

Although it so far makes its huge contribution to the carrying through of this fight in the cities and the countryside, the whole work of the nation has to be increased.

The epic struggle of our soldiers on the Volga should be a reminder for everyone to do their best for the struggle on the freedom of Germany and on the future of our people, and at the same time in the broader sense for the preservation of our whole continent.

The National-Socialist party has the obligation as well as its members in all arms of service in our army to compete with each other in exemplary bravery, even to be. It was the intention of our enemies to threaten our peaceful cities and villages by way of terrible destruction. However, it has been proven that they only destroyed houses and annihilated people, but were not capable of breaking the spirit but only to boost it.

At the beginning of the war what many German men and women were unaware of, has now become clearer to them.

The fight that the enemies have forced on us like in 1914 decides on the existence or the annihilation of our people. The Almighty will be the just judge. However, our mission is to fulfil our obligation so that we are able to continue to live according to the survival law given by Him as the creator of all the worlds, so that, without ever becoming disheartened, we spare no life and shirk no work in order to keep a future life for our people.

In this fight one day the crucial hour will strike where our people will be liberated from foreign enemies, from the sacrifice of the dead and the ruins of our cities and villages will blossom a new life to continue to shape the state, we believe in and we fight and work for.

To the German state of the German nation as the eternal and same homeland of all men and women of our people. The National-Socialist Greater German Nation, in it, however, will at all times be present that energy that is necessary to protect the future of the European family of peoples against the dangers of the East. The Greater German Nation and its allied nations together will also have to secure those spheres of influence that are essential for the keeping of their material existence.

Headquarters, January 30th, 1943, signed Adolf Hitler.

The German people know what to do.

A belligerent and ready-to-fight people come back again to the place of their fight and work.

More trusting as ever we want to feel committed to the Führer especially in these fateful moments. A short time ago an English journalist asked where we National-Socialists take again and again the energy from to believe in the certainty of victory in such a strong and unshakable way during all the war fluctuations. I will give the interviewer our National-Socialist answer: We National-Socialists believe in the victory because we know our people which we come from. We believe in the victory because we are convinced that this people will be able to surmount any danger and any burden with the right political leadership. We believe in the victory because we know the inexhaustible material and emotional aid and reserves of this people that we ourselves have awaken, built up and organized. We believe in the victory because our enemies are not unknown to us, because we know for certain as to their threats and boasts what is pretence and what is reality. We believe in the victory because we have already clashed with these enemies. At that time we had the impression sometimes that our cause was a lost one, living to see at the end that we were stronger than they were when we only used our energy and had trusting and loyal confidence in the Führer.

We especially believe in the victory because the German nation knows this time what it is about. She hardens herself in these hard tests of her political and military character against all enemy insinuations and temptations. They don’t reach up to their iron heart. We are determined to remain hard and to work and fight with determination until the victory lies in our hands.

Is it still necessary among Germans and especially among National-Socialists to give the last and most convincing reason for our unshakeable faith in the victory? We believe in the victory because we have the Führer. He hassled us National-Socialists from 1919 to this moment. What dangers have we not gone through and still we were always victorious at the end? How many strikes have we received in the struggle for a new Germany but how many blows have we given back! The proud chain of our historic successes from 1919 to this moment is a single convincing piece of evidence for the deep legitimacy of our unshakeable faith in the final victory of the German people and their Allies over the tyranny of the international plutocracy and the bare-faced threats by the Jewish bolshevism? When we look at the Führer, we see in him the sure guarantee of the future final victory. What importance it has to his historic phenomenon the political adventurers of the like of Churchill or Roosevelt or Stalin? We know for certain that the world-deciding clash of this war will take place between our National-Socialist nation and the bolshevist Soviet Union. It was also like that in the struggle for the power.

We have had to fight with the communism until the day of the seizure of power, yes, a long time ago. Things were always touch-and-go but then came the ardently-awaited, blissful hour where the Goddess of History handed us the laurels of victory for all our efforts and troubles, for all the valour and all the overcome dangers.

Who knows when and where we are called to the last decision in this war! The more we believe in its victorious outcome, and the more fanatic we fight and work, the more certain will it be ours.

National-Socialists! On this day we rally around our Führer with trusting confidence.

Above all his old fighting guard presents him today with moved heart the most profound feelings of their admiration, their blind confidence and also their enormous, indelible gratitude. He has got us through the perils of this stormy and eventful time. He has elevated the Nation from nothing to a great power again.

It would lie crushed on the ground if he had not come to bring us to our senses. With him striding in front of us today, we clearly see the way to the victory. So we want to ask the Almighty a single favour on the tenth anniversary of our revolution in this dramatic hour of our gigantic fight against our old enemies, in memory of our national uprising, to keep the Führer healthy and full of energy and decisiveness.

We know that in the past we overcame all dangers, and victory and peace were finally achieved.

Faith moves mountains. This mountain-moving faith has to fill us all up.

It drives us to work and to fight for our people and nation.

On the place I am standing now and I speak to the German people from, it was held for the first time in front of our old guard in difficult and critical moments the speech that has faithfully accompanied us all the following years until this hour. Today it is still valid as exhortation and demand on us and our followers. Again it has come a time of burden and of utmost commitment for the nation.

More than ever it is necessary to direct the look of the nation to the man who is for us the personification of our fanatic determination, our unbroken fighting will and our ready trust.

So I shout to the Führer, in the name of the whole German people on the tenth anniversary of the national uprising through our revolution for the most difficult fight for our international freedom, our old slogan as confirmation of our determined preparedness for all: Führer order, we follow! We stand up from our seats. With us the whole German people in deep respect to their heroes, and it greets the Führer in this moment of fanatic fighting will with our old salute:

Adolf Hitler – Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!

Audio version of this speech with English subtitles at the following videos: