In the speech quoted below, Hitler mocked at his opponents “military idiots” as he called them, on a note he was never to reach again, little more than a month later the Allies landed in North Africa, in under two months the Russians began their offensive at Stalingrad.
The appeal made by Mr Churchill and President Roosevelt to the Italian people bore fruit shortly in Italy’s defection from the Axis.
Document CCLXXI consists of extracts from an important speech made by Field Marshal Smuts.
Speech made by Hitler to the Nazi Party Audience at the Sportspalast in Berlin on September 30th 1942
When Mr Eden or some other nincompoop declares that they have a belief we cannot talk with them, as their idea of belief seems to be different from ours.
We believe we have to beat our enemies until final victory is won.
They believe that Dunkirk was one of the greatest victories in the world’s history.
They believe that an expedition lasting nine hours is an encouraging symptom for a victorious nation.
If they believe this, of course we can hardly compare our modest victories with theirs.
What have we to offer?
If we advance 1,000 kilometres it is nothing. It is a veritable failure…
If we could cross the Don, thrust to the Volga, attack of Stalingrad and it will be taken, you may be sure of that, then it is nothing.
It is nothing if we advance to the Caucasus, occupy the Ukraine and the DonetzBasin….
They say the second front will come….
Had it before me a serious opponent I could figure out where the second front will come.
But with these military idiots one never knows where they will attack.
The maddest enterprise may be launched and this is the only disagreeable thing one never knows what next when faced with such lunatics and drunkards.
Of course we must prepare everywhere.
Let me assure Mr Churchill that wherever he may choose for his next attack he may consider himself lucky if he remains on land for nine hours……
Our programme for this years was as follows.
1.In all circumstances to hold what it was necessary to hold….
2.We were determined to attack wherever attack was necessary…
We had three objectives
To take away the last Russian wheat territory.
To take away the last district of coking coal.
To approach the oil district, paralyseit, and at least cut it off.
Our offensive then went onto the enemy’s great transport artery, the Volga and Stalingrad.
You must rest assured that once there no one will get us out of this position….
The German Reich will never capitulate... let our enemies wage the war as long as they please.
National Socialist Germany will come out of this war with glory and victory.
Message to the Italian People from Mr Roosevelt and Mr Winston Churchill, Broadcast on July 16th 1943.
At this moment the combined armed forces of the United States, Great Britain and Canada, are carrying the war deep into the territory of your country.
This is the direct consequence of the shameful leadership to which you have been subjected by Mussolini and his Fascist regime…
In spite of Italy’s great vulnerability to attack by air and sea, your Fascist leaders sent your sons, your ships, your air forces to distant battlefields to aid Germany in her attempt to conquer England, Russia, and the world.
Your soldiers have fought not in the interests of Italy, but for Nazi Germany.
They have fought courageously, but they have been abandoned by the Germans on the Russian front and on every battlefield in Africa…..
The sole hope for Italy’s survival lies in honourable capitulation to the overwhelming power of the military forces of the United Nations.
If you continue to tolerate the Fascist regime which serves the evil power of the Nazis, you must suffer the consequences of your own choice.
We take no satisfaction in invading Italian soil and bringing the tragic devastation of war home to the Italian people.
But we are determined to destroy the false leaders and their doctrines which have brought Italy to her present position…
The time has now come for you, the Italian people, to decide whether Italians shall die for Mussolini and Hitler or live for Italy and for civilization.
“Thoughts of the New World” by Field Marshall Smuts, to a meeting of the U.K. Branch of the Empire Parliamentary Association on November 25th 1943.
There are two dangers that face us….
One is the danger of over simplification; the other danger is what I may call the danger of following slogans or catchwords and so missing the real inwardness of the problems before us.
When I look at the sort of problems that we shall have to deal with at the end of this war, I doubt whether, we shall ever come to a peace conference at all at the end of this war.
We may be faced with questions so vast, so complicated, so difficult and intractable. That we shall have to be satisfied with making a pretty comprehensive Armistice dealing with the general military question of ending the war, and leave the rest of the problems to a long series of conferences, a long process of working out solutions…
Take the danger of following slogans and catchwords.
Today we hear a great deal of democracy, we are fighting for freedom.
Our opponents have another set of formulas, they fight for the leadership principle, and I would say that in arranging for a new world organization for security.
We shall have to provide not only for freedom and democracy, which are essential but we shall also have to provide for leadership and power…
To my mind that can be done much more effectively than in the Covenant of the League of Nations by giving a proper place to the three great Powers that are now at the head of our United Nations….
I think it was largely because in the League of Nations we constituted after the last war we did not recognize the importance of leadership and power that everything went wrong in the end.
What was everybody’s business proved to be nobody’s business...
I now come to much more explosive things, for which I hope you will not hold responsible hereafter,
Europe is completely changing, at the end of this war three of the great Powers in Europe, will have disappeared.
France has gone, ad if ever she returns it will be a hard and long upward pull for her to emerge again.
We may talk about her as a Great Power , but talking will not help her much,France has gone and will be gone in our day and perhaps for many a day.
Italy has completely disappeared and may never be a Great Power again. Germany many will disappear…
We are therefore left with Great Britain and with Russia….
Russia is the new Colossus on the European continent.
What the after effects of will be nobody can say.
Then outside Europe you have the United States.
Many people look to union or closer union between the U.S.A. and Great Britain, with her Commonwealth and Empire, as the new path to be followed in the future.
I myself am doubtful about that, if you were to pit the British Commonwealth plus the United States against the rest of the world, it would be a very lopsided world.
So we come back to where we started, namely the trinity, but in that trinity you will have two partners of immense power and resources, Russian and America.
And you will have this island, the heart of the Empire and of the Commonwealth, weak in her European resources in comparison with the vast resources of the other two….
The idea has repeatedly floated before my mind, whether Great Britain should not strengthen her European position, by working closely together with those smaller democracies in Western Europe which are of our way of thinking…
Neutrality is obsolete, is dead.
They have learned the lesson that, standing by themselves on the Continent, they are lost.
Surely they must feel that their place is with this member of the trinity….
We have evolved a system in the Commonwealth which opens the door for developments of this kind……
