"Fate has allotted those in power today more than thirteen years to be tested and proven. In the November days of ‘18 (1918), they solemnly pledged to lead our Volk and in particular the German worker into a better economic future. Today, after they have had nearly fourteen years to keep their promise, they cannot cite a single German professional group as witness for the quality of their actions.
The German peasant has become impoverished; the mittelstand is ruined; the social hopes of many millions of people are destroyed; one third of all German men and women of working age is unemployed and thus without income; the Reich, the communities, and the Länder are over indebted; finances are in a muddle across the board; and all the coffers are empty!
What more could they possibly have destroyed? The worst thing, though, is the destruction of the faith in our Volk, the elimination of all hopes and all confidence. In thirteen years they have not succeeded in mobilizing in any way the powers slumbering in our Volk; on the contrary!
Out of their fear of the awakening of the nation, they have played people off against one another: the city against the country, the salaried workers against the civil servants, those who work with their hands against those who work with their brains, the Bavarians against the Prussians, the Catholics against the Protestants, and so forth, and vice versa.
Now, after thirteen years, after they have destroyed everything in Germany, the time has finally arrived for their own elimination. Therefore it is a duty to vanquish these parties, for in order to secure their own existence.
Thirteen million people of all professions and ranks—thirteen million workers, peasants, and intellectuals; thirteen million Catholics and Protestants; members of all German Länder and tribes—have formed an inseparable alliance. And thirteen million have recognized that the future of all lies only in the joint struggle and the joint successes of all.
Thirteen years ago we National Socialists were mocked and derided—today our opponents’ laughter has turned to tears! A faithful community of people has arisen which will gradually overcome the prejudices of class madness and the arrogance of rank. A faithful community of people which is resolved to take up the fight for the preservation of our race, not because it is made up of Bavarians or Prussians or men from Württemberg or Saxony; not because they are Catholics or Protestants, workers or civil servants, bourgeois or salaried workers, etc., but because all of them are Germans. If the nation does its duty, then the day will come which restores to us: one Reich in honor and freedom—work and bread!"
- Adolf Hitler, July 15, 1932.
