Hermann Rauschning Hermann Rauschning ( 7 August 1887 – February 8 , 1982 ) was a German Conservative Revolutionary who briefly joined the Nazi s before breaking with them . In 1934 he renounced Nazi party membership and in 1936 emigrated from Germany ( eventually settling in United States ) and began openly denouncing Nazism . Rauschning is chiefly known for his book " Gespräche mit Hitler " ( Conversations with Hitler ) US title " Voice of Destruction " , UK title " Hitler Speaks " , in which he claimed to have many meetings and conversations with Hitler . Life and Works . Rauschning was born in Thorn ( Toruń ) , at the time part of the German Empire , to a Prussian officer in the province of West Prussia . He attended the Prussian Cadet Corps institute at Potsdam and in 1911 he obtained a Doctorate from Berlin University . He fought in World War I as an officer and was wounded . After the war , he settled in the area around Danzig ( now Gdańsk , Poland ) , where he owned land . He lived in Posen and was prominent in its Historical Society . In 1930 he published a work under the title " Die Entdeutschung Westpreußens und Posens " ( The de - Germanisation of West Prussia and Posen ) . According to Rauschning , Germans in these areas were constantly put under pressure to leave Poland . In 1932 he moved to a new estate in Warnow and became leader of the Danzig Land League . Previously affiliated with the German National People ' s Party , he then joined the Nazi Party believing that they offered the only way out of Germany ' s troubles , including the incorporation of Danzig into Germany . He became President of the Danzig Teachers ' Association in 1932 . After Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 , the Nazis in Danzig won control of the Free City ' s government , and Rauschning became the President of the Senate of Danzig on 20 June 1933 ; that is , head of state of the Free City government . He was an excellent public speaker . In foreign matters Rauschning did not conceal that his personal desire was to turn neighbouring Poland into a vassal of Nazi Germany . As a conservative nationalist Rauschning was not typical of Nazi members , and the Nazis ' violent anti - Semitism was alien to him . He was a bitter rival of Albert Forster , the future Gauleiter of Danzig . On 23 November 1934 , he resigned from the Senate and the Party . In the April 1935 Danzig elections , he supported " constitutionalist " candidates against the Nazis , and wrote articles supporting co - operation with the Poles , which angered the Nazis , and Rauschning found himself in personal danger . He sold his farming interests and fled to Poland in 1936 . He moved on to Switzerland in 1937 , to France in 1938 , and to the United Kingdom in 1939 . Rauschning joined German emigres but his right - wing beliefs did not endear him to left - wing Germans , nor the fact that while a member of the Nazi Party he had been instrumental in the take over of Danzig . Rauschning represented " one of the most conservative poles of the emigration " and enjoyed celebrity status through his lectures . He sought to play a leading role in the more conservative emigre ' German Freedom Party ' , run by Carl Spiecher ( later of the Centre Party ) , however he fell out with Spiecher who thought Rauschning was motivated by self - interest rather than the interest of the party . Between 1938 and 1942 , he wrote a number of works in German addressing the problem of the Nazis which were also published in a number of languages including English . His " Gespräche mit Hitler " ( Conversations with Hitler ) was a huge bestseller but its credibility would later be severely criticised , and it now has no standing as an accurate document on Hitler for historians . However , as anti - Nazi propaganda it was taken seriously by the Nazi regime . At the beginning of the war the French dropped leaflets on the Western Front containing excerpts from Rauschnings writings , but with little response . In 1941 Rauschning moved to the United States , becoming a US citizen in 1942 and purchasing a farm near Portland , Oregon where he died in 1982 . He remained politically active after the war and was opposed to the policies of Konrad Adenauer . Writings . Rauschning ' s writings that were translated into English deal with National Socialism and the Conservative Revolutionaries ' relation to it , and their role / responsibility for Hitler gaining power . By conservative revolution Rauschning meant “ the prewar monarchic - Christian revolt against modernity that made a devil ’ s pact with Hitler during the Weimar period ” . Rauschning came “ to the bitter conclusion that the Nazi regime represented anything other than the longed - for German revolution ” . In " Die Revolution des Nihilismus " ( The Revolution of Nihilism ) he wrote that " the National Socialism that came to power in 1933 was no longer a nationalist but a revolutionary movement " and , as the books title states , a nihilistic revolution , destroying all values and traditions . He believed that the only alternative to Nazism was the restoration of monarchy . His book went through seventeen printings in the United States . The book was directed at conservatives in Nazi Germany whom he hoped to warn of the alleged anti - Christian nature of the Nazi revolution . He would reiterate the anti - Christian nature of Nazism in " Gespräche mit Hitler " . Rauschning ' s ideas of conservative Christian resistance to Hitler met with increasing scepticism , and were of no interest to Winston Churchill and his doctrine of uncompromising total war . He fared little better in the US where " extremists , like Henry Morgenthau argued for the radical dismemberment of the entire German nation " . At the Nuremberg Trials the Soviet Union presented as evidence ( USSR - 378 ) two extracts from " The Voice of Destruction " . Dr Pelckmann , for the defence , asked for Rauschning to be called as a witness on the matter of the party program relating to the solution of the Jewish question and Hitler ' s " principle to deceive the Germans about his true intentions " so that the prosecution would have to prove that the SS " knew what Hitler actually wanted " but Rauschning was not called . Authenticity of " Hitler Speaks " . The authenticity of the discussions Rauschning claims to have had with Hitler between 1932 and 1934 , which form the basis of his book " Hitler Speaks " , was challenged shortly after Rauschning ' s death by Swiss researcher Wolfgang Hänel . Hänel investigated the memoir and announced his findings at a conference of the revisionist association " Zeitgeschichtliche Forschungsstelle Ingolstadt " in 1983 . Hänel declared that " Gespräche mit Hitler " ( the German title of " Hitler Speaks " ) was a fraud and that the book has no value " except as a document of Allied war propaganda " and concluded that : Hänel based his book upon a tape - recorded interview that he had led in 1981 with Emery Reves , Jewish publisher of the original French edition of " Hitler speaks " ( which had been entitled " Hitler m ' a dit " ) who had commissioned the book from Rauschning in 1939 . In this interview , Reves contended that penniless Rauschning ' s main reason for agreeing to write " Hitler speaks " was the 125 , 000 francs advance , and , referring to preliminary talks with Rauschning in 1939 where he had agreed with the author on what themes and personality traits to apply to Hitler , considered it as largely fabrication . " The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich " also considers that " The research of the Swiss educator Wolfgang Hänel has made it clear that the ' conversations ' were mostly free inventions . " The non - revisionist historian Hugh Trevor - Roper ' s initial view that the conversations recorded in " Hitler Speaks " were authentic also wavered as a result of the Hänel research . For example , in the introductory essay he wrote for Hitler ' s Table Talk in 1953 he had said : " Hitler ' s own table talk in the crucial years of the Machtergreifung ( 1932 – 34 ) , as briefly recorded by Hermann Rauschning , so startled the world ( which could not even in 1939 credit him with either such ruthlessness or such ambitions ) that it was for long regarded as spurious . It is now , I think , accepted . If any still doubt its genuineness , they will hardly do so after reading the volume now published . For here is the official , authentic record of Hitler ' s Table - Talk almost exactly ten years after the conversations recorded by Rauschning " . in the third edition , published in 2000 , he wrote a new preface in which he did revise , though not reverse , his opinion of the authenticity of " Hitler Speaks " : " I would not now endorse so cheerfully the authority of Hermann Rauschning which has been dented by Wolfgang Hanel , but I would not reject it altogether . Rauschning may have yielded at times to journalistic temptations , but he had opportunities to record Hitler ' s conversations and the general tenor of his record too exactly foretells Hitler ' s later utterances to be dismissed as fabrication . " In writing his biography of Hitler , Ian Kershaw has written " I have on no single occasion cited Hermann Rauschning ' s " Hitler Speaks " , a work now regarded to have so little authenticity that it is best to disregard it altogether . " Richard Steigmann - Gall , in " The Holy Reich : Nazi Conceptions of Christianity " , is another historian contending " Hitler speaks " an overall fake . The Hänel research was reviewed in the West German newspapers " Der Spiegel " and " Die Zeit " in 1985 . Other historians have not been convinced by Hänel ′ s research . David Redles attacked Hänel ′ s method which consisted of : ' pointing out similarities in phrasing of quotations from other individuals in Rauschning ' s other books . . . and those attributed to Hitler in " Voice of Destruction " [ i . e . " Hitler Speaks " ] . If the two are even remotely similar Hänel concludes that the latter must be concoctions . However the similarities , which are mostly slight , could be for a number of reasons . . . [ they ] need not stem from forgery ' . Eberhard Jaeckel also concluded that , whilst the work cannot be regarded as a verbatim account , it is a good guide to Hitler ' s world view from someone who conversed with him . Works by Hermann Rauschning in English . also Works by Hermann Rauschning in German . " Gespräche mit Hitler " was also translated into French ( " Hitler m ′ a dit " ) .