Germans, fellow nationals, my German workers, when I speak to you today and thereby to millions of other German workers, I have more right to do so than any other. I have grown out of you, once stood among you myself, spent four and a half years of war here in your midst, and then worked my way up slowly through diligence, through learning—and I can say—through hunger. In my innermost being I have always remained what I was before. However, I never counted myself among those who at that time turned against the interests of their own nation. I was convinced that the fate of the nation must be represented, for otherwise the entire people would sooner or later suffer terrible harm. That is what separated me from the others who, in that critical time, ultimately turned against Germany.

Not only the German people, but other nations as well, are witnesses to the effects of this treaty. The theory that the defeated must remain forever in their legal status leads to a new hatred in the world, to eternal unrest, to insecurity and mistrust on one side and bitterness on the other. The world was not satisfied, as was declared at the time, but on the contrary, it was plunged into ever new conflicts and ever new disputes. And just as irrational was the second thesis: that one must also destroy the defeated economically so that the victor may fare better economically. An irrational thesis that runs through the entire Treaty of Versailles like a red thread and ultimately leads to the attempt, over the course of ten years, to burden the economy of a great people on the one hand with unbearable loads and on the other hand to destroy it as much as possible, cutting off all opportunities.

We then experienced the consequences of this, how Germany was finally forced, in order to meet its economic obligations, to throw more and more of its products onto the export market under all conditions, and how international competition began, how political guilt was gradually transformed into economic debt. And it is natural that many interested parties would turn against this. It is understandable that the organizations which formed the two classes want to live, that organizations must perish when their basic idea is shaken; it is understandable that they resist the one who shakes it, but in the end it must be eliminated. One cannot allow a people to perish because certain organizations want to exist. In the end, a people does not live for theories, not for programs and not for organizations, but all of that must serve the life of a people.

And today we are experiencing the same thing again on a much larger scale. The conflict among nations and the hatred between them are cultivated by very specific interested parties. It is a small rootless international clique that incites nations against one another, that does not want them to come to rest. These are people who are everywhere and nowhere at home, who have no soil on which they have grown, but who live today in Berlin, tomorrow just as easily in Brussels, the day after tomorrow in Paris, then again in Prague or Vienna or London, and who feel at home everywhere. (Interjection: “Jews”) They are the only ones who can be described as international elements, because they can conduct their business everywhere, but the people cannot follow them.

The people are bound to their soil, bound to their homeland, bound to the living conditions of their state, of the nation. The people cannot follow them. The farmer is fixed to his land. The worker is bound to his workplace; when it collapses, where is he helped. What does international solidarity mean today. All theory in a time in which need cries out everywhere and peoples must struggle hard for their existence. It was not the intellectual classes that gave me the courage to begin this gigantic work. Rather, I can say this: I only gained the courage because I knew two strata, the farmer and the German worker; I knew them.

When a man earns a name through his own strength, a name known by every child in the nation, then he needs no titles; he requires none of that. I came and took this position with only one single thought: now to realize what I had preached for years. For I can never become more than I am. But I would like the future to one day confirm to me that I honestly and decently tried to realize my program. The present can offer me nothing. I think only of the future. And I wanted to work, and we have worked, and in these nine months we have achieved something enormous.