The January 30th 1939 Reichstag Speech is nothing special insofar as it pertains to evidence of the mythical Holocaust. As you will find out by reading through other posts on this matter, the speech was made years before the conventional narrative claims there was an extermination policy aimed at the Jews.
The importance of this speech isn't so much derived from its historical value, but from its ability to act as propaganda for the Holocaust Hucksters themselves to influence the public in movies, documentaries, and books. They might not cite it as evidence for anything, but they certainly use it to push the ignorant observer in the direction they want them to go. To evaluate all evidence from the pre-determined Holocaust perspective.
Ian Kershaw has a successful strategy for this that he's called "working towards the Führer". Because Hitler cannot be linked to anything regarding the Holocaust whatsoever, it is speeches like this that give Hitler's followers the
idea that he wanted them to murder all the Jews because it was their interpretation of his will. Hence why you see highlighted in debate references to the Goebbels diary where Goebbels himself references Hitler's "prophecy".
To Kershaw, and now the wider academic establishment, Hitler's followers were supposed to perceive Hitler's wishes without any direct orders. The Holocaust establishment have thus invented a way to manufacture
intent and then to weaponize it for their propaganda campaign against National Socialism:
In his speech to the Reichstag on 30 January 1939, the sixth anniversary of his takeover of power, Hitler revealed publicly his implicitly genocidal association of the destruction of the Jews with the advent of another war. The ‘hostage’ notion was probably built into his comments. And, as always, he obviously had an eye on the propaganda impact. But his words were more than propaganda.132 They gave an insight into the pathology of his mind, into the genocidal intent that was beginning to take hold. He had no idea how the war would bring about the destruction of the Jews. But, somehow, he was certain that this would indeed be the outcome of a new conflagration. ‘I have very often in my lifetime been a prophet,’ he declared, ‘and was mostly derided. In the time of my struggle for power it was in the first instance the Jewish people who received only with laughter my prophecies that I would some time take over the leadership of the state and of the entire people in Germany and then, among other things, also bring the Jewish problem to its solution. I believe that this once hollow laughter of Jewry in Germany has meanwhile already stuck in the throat. I want today to be a prophet again: if international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will be not the bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation (Vernichtung) of the Jewish race in Europe!’133 It was a ‘prophecy’ that Hitler would return to on numerous occasions on several occasions in the years 1941 and 1942, when the annihilation of the Jews was no longer terrible rhetoric, but terrible reality.
Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936-1945 Nemesis (London: Allen Lane, 2000), pp. 152-153
Here Kershaw displays exactly what I'm talking about. He doesn't use the speech as evidence for anything, he just uses it to push for the pre-determined historical narrative he is planning to depict in his book. He uses these sly words to make it all stick, and at first glance is successful, but not to anyone that knows more details than he provides here. Saying "genocidal intent", "pathology of his mind" etc. Kershaw for a single moment allows himself to be taken in by Hitler as a prophet, and portray him as such. You will notice that he quite readily admits that
"He had no idea how the war would bring about the destruction of the Jews.", thereby making sure the reader knows that at this time Hitler or anyone else, had no
real plans to murder Jews, but makes sure that he can frame the wording of the speech to support the Holocaust narrative later on by saying
"he was certain that this would indeed be the outcome of a new conflagration" and to support this assertion goes on to quote Hitler calling himself a prophet. Kershaw doesn't question this when he would otherwise chastise Hitler and those who followed him for even considering that such a "wicked" man could ever be a prophet, he would claim that Hitler had a "messianic complex". Only now, when it suits him, would Kershaw avoid such terminology in order to surreptitiously places Hitler at the helm of the Holocaust.
Because Kershaw knows full well that the Holocaust lie is pre-determined, when he uses the word
Vernichtung it has the genocidal inflection Kershaw wanted it to have, because of his own manipulation of words, not Hitler's.
If Kershaw wasn't a hypocrite who allowed himself to convey to the reader that Hitler
really was a prophet when it suits him, for events that he himself admitted Hitler had no idea about (this means Hitler was prophesising without a plan as a
genuine prophet would). If Kershaw had not done this, Hitler would just be making a speech and using
Vernichtung as an overly dramatic metaphor for the deportation of the Jews outside of Europe with no particular meaning one way or the other.
Remember, all books on Hitler start with the Holocaust. They never end with it, and it's never researched as if it were any other historical subject worthy of evaluation, let alone re-evaluation.
Many of these orthodox historians themselves actually explicitly deny that the speech indicated any plans for the Holocaust directly, because they know full well that it's untenable.
Here are some quotes from these Establishment Historians regarding the speech:
Nazi antisemitism certainly took a new turn in 1938, but it would be difficult to argue that by then plans had been drawn up to murder the Jews in specially created camps in east-central Europe. Some would say that Hitler had already made up his mind by January 30, 1939, when he delivered a notorious speech to celebrate the sixth anniversary of the Nazi takeover. Nevertheless, he had to find a means of putting his thoughts into action, and even then, German leaders were remarkably sensitive to foreign opinion. It is more likely that the speech, with its prophecies of Jewish suffering, was a warning to the United States that there would be trouble for the Jews if they continued to stifle German trade and rob the country of the foreign currency it so desperately needed to survive.
Words like vernichten (exterminate) and ausrotten (wipe out) came easily to Hitler’s lips. As a frontline soldier in the Great War, he had personally experienced the effects of poison gas, but even by the end of 1938 it was unlikely that he had considered using it on his racial enemies. Wartime conditions vastly accelerated the Nazis’ as yet unformulated projects, and only when the smoke was thick enough to obscure the activities of the zealots in the extermination camps did massive troop deployment, inadequate communications, inurement to violence and death, together with casualties on an unprecedented scale, all help remove the last moral barriers to genocide.
Giles Macdonough, 1938: Hitler's Gabmle (Basic Books, 2009), pp. x-xi
Peter Longerich in his 2019 Hitler biography also denies that this speech was intended to precipitate the Holocaust:
Was Hitler announcing publicly and to the whole world his intention to murder the Jews in a coming war? At this juncture, the word ‘annihilate’ cannot be unequivocally interpreted in this sense. A few days earlier, Hitler had also spoken to the Czech foreign minister about ‘annihilating’ the Jews, but had meant their expulsion, quite apart from the fact that he had also warned Chvalkovský of the ‘annihilation’ of Czechoslovakia. When interpreting this passage, as with many other Hitler statements, one should be aware that Hitler was not simply announcing a decision taken in isolation, but rather that his ‘prophecy’ had several potential layers of meaning. Above all, in the first place, one must take into account the tactical motive of his speech, which should be seen in the context of the international negotiations concerning Jewish emigration.
His annihilation threat was intended, first of all, to increase the pressure on German Jews to emigrate and on foreign countries to receive them. [...] the main target audience of his prophecy was the United States.
Peter Longerich, Hitler: A Life (Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 604-605
And Wilhelm Stäglich, a German Judge, points out that Hitler, in the same speech actually clarified what he meant, something these "historians" never quote because it gets in the way of their own sophistry:
This is how he continued his speech:
For the non-Jewish peoples are no longer without the weapon of propaganda. Both National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy have the equipment necessary to enlighten the world about the nature of a problem that many nations instinctively recognize, though they may lack a scientific view of it. For the time being, the Jews may carry on their agitations in certain states under the cover of the press, cinema, radio, theater, literature, etc., which are in their hands. But if the Jewish nation should once again succeed in goading millions of people from other nations into a totally senseless war, to serve only Jewish interests, the efficacy of the kind of enlightenment that within just a few years utterly defeated the Jews in Germany will become manifest.
Thus Hitler’s threat was that, if another world war broke out, Zionism would be politically eliminated – by disclosing to the peoples of the world its role in that catastrophe. He started from the premise – and we may leave aside the question whether rightly or wrongly – that the preservation of world peace depended largely on the stance of international Jewry, which did indeed have an extraordinarily strong influence on nearly all governments.
Wilhelm Stäglich, Auschwitz: A Judge Looks at the Evidence (Castle Hill Publishers, February 2015), p. 105
Hitler as we can see, in the
same speech of January 30th 1939, reiterates his "prophecy" using the same wording (
"But if the Jewish nation should once again succeed in goading millions of people from other nations into a totally senseless war") but this time employing the recent historical example of Germany, which up until that point had "annihilated" (
Vernichtung) the
influence of Jews in Germany by a number of means, but never violent. Jews left the country entirely on their own volition, or were otherwise helped to leave via the incentives provided by the Haavara Agreement - prior to this they were simply denied access to certain Jobs or to study certain professions which in itself helped Jews leave Germany.
With this context it is impossible to suggest (as Kershaw does) any "genocidal intent" or "pathology of his mind" potentially influencing Hitler in any way.
David Irving does a good job mangling the propaganda behind such alleged references to the Holocaust laced in Hitler's speeches:
So far the conformist historians [...] [suggest] the project was so secret that only oral orders were issued. Why however should Hitler have become so squeamish in this instance, while he had shown no compunction about signing a blanket order for the liquidation of tens of thousands of fellow Germans (Philipp Bouhler’s T-4 euthanasia programme); his insistence on the execution of hostages on a one hundred to one basis, his orders for the liquidation of enemy prisoners (the Commando Order), of Allied airmen (the Lynch Order), and Russian functionaries (the Commissar Order) are documented all the way from the Führer’s headquarters right down the line to the executioners.
Most of my critics relied on weak and unprofessional evidence. For example, they offered alternative and often specious translations of words in Hitler’s speeches (apparently the Final Solution was too secret for him to sign an order, but simultaneously not so secret that he could not brag about it in public speeches); and quotations from isolated documents that have however long been discarded by serious historians as worthless or fakes, like the Gerstein Report† or the ‘Bunker conversations’ mentioned earlier
David Irving, Hitler's War and the War Path (Millennium Edition, Focal Point Publications, 2002), p. xxviii
He makes a good point. If Hitler were so confident that he was going to win the war, as some Believers have stupidly stated (as you should know TruthSeeker) then why would Hitler not have signed an order? If he were so unconcerned about the remnants of the Holocaust on the battlefield at Babi Yar for example, where German soldiers were apparently allowed to take photographs (
) then why would he not sign an order for the killings? And why has nobody ever claimed to have
seen this order? The only references to "Führer" orders have been from those like Eichmann or Gerstein, but never did they claim to see this order on paper. It has only ever been speculation based on 2nd or 3rd hand accounts.
None of this makes sense if you want to believe the Holocaust narrative is true.
