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Audio Excerpts from the speech given by Heinrich Himmler
to SS Group Leaders in Posen, occupied Poland
October 4, 1943

"It is absolutely wrong to project our own harmless soul with its deep feelings, our kindheartedness, our idealism, upon alien peoples. This is true, beginning with Herder, who must have been drunk when he wrote the Voices Of The Peoples, thereby bringing such immeasurable suffering and misery upon us who came after him. This is true, beginning with the Czechs and Slovenes, to whom we brought their sense of nationhood. They themselves were incapable of it, but we invented it for them.

One principle must be absolute for the SS man: we must be honest, decent, loyal and friendly to members of our blood and to no one else. What happens to the Russians, what happens to the Czechs, is a matter of utter indifference to me. Such good blood of our own kind as there may be among the nations we shall acquire for ourselves, if necessary by taking away the children and bringing them up among us.

Above paragraph spoken by Himmler in German
Portrait of SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler from 1942.
Original transcript in German.
Himmler's handwritten speech notes showing the term "Judenevakuierung" meaning evacuation of the Jews.

Whether the other races live in comfort or perish of hunger interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture; apart from that it does not interest me. Whether or not 10,000 Russian women collapse from exhaustion while digging a tank ditch interests me only in so far as the tank ditch is completed for Germany.

Above paragraph spoken by Himmler in German

We shall never be rough or heartless where it is not necessary; that is clear. We Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude to animals, will also adopt a decent attitude to these human animals,

Above paragraph spoken by Himmler in German

(he continued) but it is a crime against our own blood to worry about them and to bring them ideals.

I shall speak to you here with all frankness of a very serious subject. We shall now discuss it absolutely openly among ourselves, nevertheless we shall never speak of it in public. I mean the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race.

Above paragraph spoken by Himmler in German

It is one of those things which is easy to say. 'The Jewish race is to be exterminated,' says every Party member. 'That's clear, it's part of our program, elimination of the Jews, extermination, right, we'll do it.'

Above paragraph spoken by Himmler in German

And then they all come along, the eighty million good Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. Of course the others are swine, but this one is a first-class Jew. (some laughter) Of all those who talk like this, not one has watched, not one has stood up to it. Most of you know what it means to see a hundred corpses lying together, five hundred, or a thousand. To have gone through this and yet – apart from a few exceptions, examples of human weakness – to have remained decent fellows, this is what has made us hard. This is a glorious page in our history that has never been written and shall never be written.

Above paragraph spoken by Himmler in German

For we know how difficult we should have made it for ourselves, if – with the bombing raids, the burdens and the depravations of war – we still had Jews today in every town as secret saboteurs, agitators and trouble-mongers. We would now probably have reached the 1916-17 stage when Jews were still in the national body.

Above paragraph spoken by Himmler in German

We have taken from them what wealth they had. I have issued a strict order, which SS-Obergruppenführer Pohl has carried out, that this wealth should, as a matter of course, be handed over to the Reich without reserve.

Above paragraph spoken by Himmler in German

Some SS men have disobeyed this order. There are not very many – and they will be dead men – without mercy!!! (Himmler shouts) We have the moral right, we had the duty to our people to do it – to kill this people who wanted to kill us. But we do not have the right to enrich ourselves with even one fur, with one Mark, with one cigarette, with one watch, with anything. That we do not have. Because at the end of this, we don't want – because we exterminated the bacillus – to become sick and die from the same bacillus.

Above paragraph spoken by Himmler in German

I won't watch it happen – that even one bit of putrefaction comes in contact with us, or takes root in us. On the contrary, where it might try to take root, we will burn it out together. Altogether, however, we can say, that we have fulfilled this most difficult duty for the love of our people. And our spirit, our soul, our character has not suffered injury from it."


Above paragraph spoken by Himmler in German
 
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