The Great War: Evaluating the Treaty of Versailles — http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=424
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Hitler’s Speech
Speech on the Treaty of Versailles (April 17, 1923)
Adolf Hitler
With the armistice begins the humiliation of Germany. If the Republic on the day of its
foundation had appealed to the country: Germans, stand together! Up and resist the foe! The
Fatherland, the Republic expects of you that you fight to your last breath, then millions who are now
enemies of the Republic would be fanatical Republicans. Today they are the foes of the Republic not
because it is a Republic but because this Republic was founded at the moment when Germany was
humiliated, because it so discredited the new flag that men's eyes must turn regretfully toward the old
flag.
So long as this Treaty stands there can be no resurrection of the German people; no social reform
of any kind is possible! The Treaty was made in order to bring 20 million Germans to their deaths and
to ruin the German nation. But those who made the Treaty cannot set it aside. As its foundation our
Movement formulated three demands:
1. Setting aside of the Peace Treaty.
2. Unification of all Germans.
3. Land and soil [Grund und Boden] to feed our nation.
Our movement could formulate these demands, since it was not our Movement which caused the War, it
has not made the Republic, it did not sign the Peace Treaty.
There is thus one thing which is the first task of this Movement: it desires to make the German
once more National, that his Fatherland shall stand for him above everything else. It desires to teach our
people to understand afresh the truth of the old saying: He who will not be a hammer must be an anvil.
An anvil we are today, and that anvil will be beaten until out of the anvil we fashion once more a
hammer, a German sword!
Note: Text of speech from Aspects of Western Civilization, Volume II, Perry Rogers, ed.; Prentice Hall
(2000)
