# Adolf Hitler's Proclamation on the 23rd Anniversary of the National Socialist Party (24 February 1943)

Fuhrer Headquarters, February 24, 1943, read by Hermann Esser
Party Comrades!
Party comrade Adolf Wagner, who conveyed my greetings to you in the past year, has been seriously ill for many months and is unable to attend the present rally. I have therefore asked party comrade Esser, who as one of my first comrades in arms attended the foundation assembly of the movement, to tell you in my name what I, because of the circumstances, am unable to tell you for the second time now.
The German Wehrmacht, which fought excellently this winter, as it has done since the beginning of this war, is involved in a bitter struggle against the danger to the world instigated by the banking houses of New York and London together with the Bolshevik Jews in Moscow.
I myself am in the east and therefore unable to join you on this day.
Nevertheless, my thoughts are with you, more so this year than ever before.
After all, what fate would have awaited our Volk and all of Europe, had not those theories of the National Socialist revolution been proclaimed in this hall on February 24, 1920, theories which took hold of the German Volk and gave it the necessary force not only to restrain the Jewish danger to the world today, but also to crush it in the end! The Sturmlied of our unforgettable, dear old Dietrich Eckart is again proving to be a trumpet-call in these months. It can wake up people, open their eyes to the fate that would await all of us in the present and our children in the future-and beyond this, all European people-if we do not succeed in bringing about the failure of the devilish plan of the Jewish international criminals.
You are all aware of the circumstances, which allowed the enemy in the east, similar to the forces of nature last winter, to reverse in the course of this winter a part of those successes secured by the heroism of our soldiers in the summer. However, you also know that the path along which our party has traveled has likewise not been a secure or comfortable way to success. Instead, we suffered countless difficulties and setbacks, which the same enemies dealt to us and against whom we must fight today-against the whole world.
As I proclaimed the party program in this hall in the year 1920 and my resolution to destroy with zealousness the enemies of our Volk, I was a lonely and unknown man. Germany had suffered its most profound humiliation. The number of those who believed in its restoration was negligible, and there were even fewer who still hoped for this to happen in our generation.
The few followers who joined me at the time were opposed by the almost crushing superiority of the enemy. For every hundred National Socialists, there were millions of opponents, partly blinded, partly seething with hatred. And that is not to count those men of little faith who always wait first for the success in order to march then on the victorious side with a brave heart.
What a difference compared with the struggle of today! No matter how great the coalition of our enemies is, as a power it is less than the strength of the alliance of those people who oppose the Bolshevik-plutocratic destruction.
The struggle of the National Socialist movement was often in a position in which only the most fanatical of its faithful could still believe in a victory, while its otherwise shrewd opponents were already firmly convinced that they had killed the idea and the party. Nevertheless, our movement was born again each time; it overcame every setback and emerged stronger than before from every crisis. The party was always upheld by the unbending decision not to capitulate under any circumstances and not to give up the fight in any case, until the conspiracy of our enemies at home was crushed and eliminated.
My party comrades! I taught you this fanaticism. Please rest assured that I am today inspired by the same fanaticism, which will never leave me as long as I live. You also received this faith from me, and rest assured that this faith is stronger in me today than ever before. We will break and crush the power of the Jewish international coalition. Mankind in its struggle for its freedom, life, and daily bread, will gain the final victory in this struggle.
Just as in the time of our struggle for power, every attack by our enemies and every one of their apparent successes made me more dogged in my determination not to stray from the path that sooner or later had to lead to the victory, so too I am today suffused by the same will to persevere to the bitter end in the task which destiny has given me.
I have a right to believe that Providence has chosen me to fulfill this task.
For without its blessings, I, as an unknown man, would never have been able to set out on the path leading from this hall across so many hurdles and through so many attacks to the takeover of power and, finally, to this struggle which has been crowned by victories the like of which have never been seen in world history, but who has also been weighed down by many worries which would have broken many weaker characters.
However, I was blessed by Providence in having a sworn community around me in such hours, a community which in devoted faithfulness always regarded the common fate as its own and which always stood loyally by me, as its Fuhrer in this struggle, and will always stand by me.
As I address this message to you, I do so out of the same profound gratitude as in the past year. In you, my dear party comrades, I have found not only the first representatives of the National Socialist ideology but also of the National Socialist attitude, an attitude which has proved its worth in such an unheard-of manner in particular in times of great trial. The bourgeois opportunists failed to understand this as did the masses of our old parties, indoctrinated by Jewry.
Why should this be different today? There is only one difference: today, the gigantic throng of the German Volk stands behind the new Reich. The Volk is unconditionally determined to accept the new Reich idea, which is inspired by the National Socialist world of thought. The party has become the unshakable incarnation of this power.
Today it is the internal guarantor not only of victory, but also of the preservation of our Volk in the future. It must fulfill its second great historic task-especially during these months and perhaps in the coming years, too- which is to shake up the German nation constantly, make it aware of the magnitude of the danger, reinforce the sacred faith that will overcome, give strength to weaklings and mercilessly destroy saboteurs. It will work to enlighten in those cases where enlightenment is desired, break terror with tentimes- greater terror, exterminate traitors no matter who they might be and what disguise they are using to realize their intentions against the people (volksfeindliche Absichten).
Even if the elite of the National Socialist movement’s men confronts the enemy today and fulfills its duty as soldiers in an exemplary fashion, the old fighters remain the strongest zealots in the assertion of the German will to life.
Year after year, they are joined by a new age group from Germany’s youth, totally educated in accordance with National Socialist principles, forged together by the ideas of our Volksgemeinschaft, and willing to move against anyone who should dare to sin against our fight for freedom. And just as in the time of the party’s struggle for power, our female party comrades, our German women and girls, were the most reliable supports of the movement, so now again the multitude of our women and girls form the strongest element in the struggle for the preservation of our Volk.
After all, thank God, not only the Jews in London and New York but also those in Moscow made clear what fate might be in store for the German Volk.
We are determined to be no less clear in our answer. This fight will not end with the planned annihilation of the Aryan but with the extermination of the Jew in Europe. Beyond this, thanks to this fight, our movement’s world of thought will become the common heritage of all people, even of our enemies.
State after state will be forced, in the course of its fight against us, to apply National Socialist theories in waging this war that was provoked by them. And in so doing, it will become aware of the curse that the criminal work of Jewry has laid over all people, especially through this war.
As our enemies thought in 1923 that the National Socialist Party was defeated for good and that I was finished with in the eyes of the German Volk because of my trial, so they actually helped National Socialist ideology to spread like wildfire through the entire German Volk and convey the essence of Jewry to so many million men, as we ourselves would never have been able to do under normal circumstances. In the same manner international Jewry, which instigated this new war, will find out that nation after nation engrosses itself more and more in this question to become finally aware of the great danger presented by this international problem.
Above all, this war proves the irrefutable identity of plutocracy and Bolshevism, and the common ambition of all Jews to exploit nations and make them the slaves of their international guild of criminals.
The same alliance we once faced as our common enemies in Germany, an alliance between the stock exchange in Frankfurt and the “Red Flag” in Berlin, now again exists between the Jewish banking houses in New York, the Jewishplutocratic class of leaders in London, and the Jews in the Kremlin in Moscow.
Just as the German Volk successfully fought the Jewish enemy at home as a consequence of this realization and is now about to finish it off for good, the other nations will increasingly find themselves again in the course of this war.
Together, they will make a stand against that race that is seeking to destroy all of them.
Just as the Jews rejoiced about each supposed setback that we suffered during our struggle within the Reich, and just as they confused their feverish hopes with the hard facts, so they believe today, just as they did last winter, that they will shortly reach their thousand-year-old goal. However, just as they did last year, they will also suffer a terrible disappointment this time. On the contrary, the German Volk will now all the more summon and deploy its forces to a degree never before seen for a war in the history of mankind.
We will not hesitate one second to ask for contributions in this fateful struggle from those countries responsible for the outbreak of this war. We regard it as a matter of course that foreign lives cannot be spared at a time that demands so many difficult sacrifices of our own lives. In indissoluble, loyal association with our allies, we will carry out a mobilization of the spiritual and material values of Europe, the like of which our continent has never seen before in its millennia-old history. This is necessary in order to secure an independent ethnic life for all of Europe, a life which has been the basis not only for our great shared culture but also for the material existence of this continent.
My old party comrades, I greet you as always with an overflowing heart. I thank you for having made it possible for me at the time to start out successfully on the path that was a prerequisite for the salvation of the German Reich and for all of Europe. My thoughts are with you at this hour, just as they always are. During these months, weeks, and days, my duty forces me constantly to think and work, and prepare the coming turn of events for those who as the fighters of our Volk, together with our allies, are fashioning the fate of the world: our brothers and comrades, the German soldiers especially at the front in the east, where the future of Germany and Europe will be decided. The outcome must and will be our victory!
Adolf Hitler