Hitler's prophecy


During a speech at the Reichstag on 30 January 1939, Adolf Hitler predicted "the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe" in the event of another world war. These words, which were similar to comments that Hitler had previously made to foreign politicians in private meetings, came towards the end of a long speech that dealt with several topics. They were made in the context of Nazi attempts to increase Jewish emigration from Nazi Germany, before the outbreak of World War II.
Allusions to Hitler's prophecy by Nazi leaders and in Nazi propaganda were common from 30 January 1941, when Hitler mentioned it again in a speech. The prophecy took on new meaning with the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and the German declaration of war against the United States that December, leading to the systematic mass murder of Jews and the globalization of World War II. In late 1941, Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels stated that the prophecy was being fulfilled while justifying the mass deportation of Jews from Germany. On 30 September 1942, Hitler referenced the prophecy in another speech, which was adapted into a November issue of Parole der Woche titled "They Will Stop Laughing!!!" Hitler continued to invoke the prophecy as the war went against Germany, even alluding to it in his last will and testament. The prophecy became a leitmotif of the Final Solution as it was frequently used by Nazi leaders when alluding to their systematic murder of Jews, and is the best-known phrase from Hitler's speeches.
The interpretation of the prophecy is debated between the schools of functionalism and intentionalism: intentionalists view it as proof of Hitler's previously developed master plan to systematically murder the European Jews, while functionalists argue that "annihilation" was not meant or understood to mean mass murder, at least initially. The prophecy is cited by historians as an example of Nazi belief in an international Jewish conspiracy and Jewish responsibility for World War II. Despite its vagueness—the prophecy does not explain how the "annihilation" will come about—it is also cited as evidence that Germans were aware that Jews were being exterminated. The prophecy has been compared to other instances of incitement to genocide.

Background

leader Adolf Hitler had associated the Jews and war in multiple speeches before 1939. In 1931, Hitler said in the event of war, the Jews would be "crushed by the wheels of history"; he also characterized the 1933 anti-Nazi boycott as a Jewish declaration of war against Germany. According to historian Claudia Koonz, between taking power in 1933 and his prophecy speech in January 1939, Hitler only "directly vent his phobic racial hatred" on two occasions: in a 1935 speech announcing the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws, and at the Nuremberg Rally in September 1937. Given that Hitler regularly gave two- and three-hour speeches, "racial policy hardly figured in his pronouncements" overall, according to Koonz. Hitler found subtle ways to signal antisemitism to his core followers while maintaining a moderate public image. In discussions of the proper solution to the Jewish Question in the 1930s, extermination was often discussed as an option by SS officials, although it was usually discarded.

Kristallnacht

In November 1938, the Nazi leadership organized and incited the Kristallnacht pogrom against Jews, in part to bleed off excess antisemitic sentiment from party activists that had been suppressed for diplomatic reasons during the Munich crisis. The pogrom involved unprecedented public violence against German Jews, including the burning of synagogues, looting of Jewish-owned stores and residences, and assaults on Jews which caused 91 deaths. Hitler personally approved the arrest of 30,000 Jews and their incarceration in concentration camps. Kristallnacht evoked disgust among many Germans, although few engaged in overt opposition to the regime's actions. It also aroused considerable international criticism and endangered the German government's efforts to organize and facilitate the emigration of German Jews.
Kristallnacht radicalized the anti-Jewish discourse in German society. A propaganda campaign conducted from November 1938 to January 1939 aimed at justifying the pogrom to the German people and blaming it on the Jews. The idea of exterminating Jews became more common. On 12 November, Hermann Göring convened a meeting of Nazi leaders in Hitler's name. Göring stated that "it goes without question that we in Germany also will in the first place think of carrying out a great reckoning with the Jews" if Germany went to war. Historian Yehuda Bauer writes that this statement is "very similar to that quoted from Hitler's speech" given on 30 January 1939. On 24 November, the SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps, reflecting on the meeting of 12 November, printed the following statement: "This stage of development will impose on us the vital necessity to exterminate the Jewish subhumanity as we exterminate all criminals in our law-abiding state: with fire and sword! The outcome will be the actual and final end to Jewry in Germany, its total annihilation." This language reflected the radicalization in party circles, and, according to Bauer, "was written with at least the knowledge that it fitted in with Hitler's views".

Statements to diplomats

On 21 November 1938, Hitler met with the South African defense minister Oswald Pirow and told him that the Jews would be killed if war broke out. The same month, an official of Hitler's chancellery told a British diplomat "that Germany intended to get rid of her Jews, either by emigration or if necessary by starving or killing them, since she would not risk having such a hostile minority in the country in the event of war" and also that Germany "intended to expel or kill off the Jews in Poland, Hungary and the Ukraine" after invading those countries. On 16 January 1939, Hitler met with István Csáky, foreign minister of Hungary. Csáky recalled that "he was sure of only one thing, the Jews would have to disappear from Germany to the last man".
On 21 January, Hitler told František Chvalkovský, foreign minister of Czechoslovakia: "Our Jews will be annihilated. The Jews did not perpetrate 9 November 1918 for nothing; this day will be avenged." Hitler added that the Jews were also poisoning Czechoslovakia, prompting an antisemitic diatribe from Chvalkovský. In the same meeting, Hitler threatened the "annihilation" of Czechoslovakia if it did not conform to German demands. According to German historian Hans Mommsen, Hitler was referring to destroying the influence of the Jews rather than calling for their physical destruction. German historian Peter Longerich interprets "annihilation" to refer to emigration or expulsion: Hitler "evidently did not mean the physical destruction of the Jews", but only "the end of their collective existence in Germany". British historian Ian Kershaw argues that, while Hitler was not announcing his intentions to Chvalkovský, "the sentiments were not merely rhetoric or propaganda".

Speech of 30 January 1939

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels helped write the speech, which was delivered in the Reichstag on 30 January 1939, the sixth anniversary of Hitler's seizure of power in 1933. The speech lasted two or two-and-a-half hours. It dealt with both the foreign and domestic policies of the Nazi government.

Foreign policy

Hitler discussed the Munich crisis and admitted that he had planned a military invasion after the May Crisis in the event that Czechoslovakia did not capitulate to his demand to surrender the Sudetenland by 2 October 1938. Referencing "a serious blow to the prestige of the Reich" and an "intolerable provocation", Hitler claimed that the Sudetenland had been secured by German determination and willingness to resort to war, rather than by diplomacy. For the first time since Munich, Hitler hinted at further expansion, stating "how important the expansion of our people’s living space was in order permanently to secure their food supplies", as Germany currently had "to export in order to buy food". He complained that Germany was prevented from expanding by "the continuing blindness of the former victor powers". Longerich writes that demanding "living space, while simultaneously stressing Germany’s commitment to peace, soon became part of the standard repertoire of German propaganda".

Jews

Although the Évian Conference in July 1938 had failed to open other countries to Jewish emigrants, the Nazis still attempted to hasten the emigration of Jews from Germany. Discussions continued between Göring and George Rublee, director of the Intergovernmental Committee for Refugees. Hitler ridiculed "German businessmen devoid of any conscience" who felt sympathy for Jews. He complained that there was "enough space for settlement" in the world for German Jews to go, and contended that Europe could "not become pacified before the Jewish question has been settled". In a long rant against Jews, Hitler first mocked them, remarking at "how the whole democratic world oozing with sympathy for the poor tormented Jewish People remains hard-hearted when it comes to helping these supposedly most valuable members of the human race". He said that it was time to "wrestle the Jewish world enemy to the ground", and that the German government was completely determined "to get rid of these people".
Hitler accused Jews of having "nothing of their own, except for political and sanitary diseases" and being parasites on the German nation, turning Germans into "beggars in their own country". He asserted there had to be an end to the misconception that "the good Lord had meant the Jewish nation to live off the body and productive work of other nations", or else the Jews would "succumb to a crisis of unimaginable severity". At this point Hitler got to what Longerich describes as "the core of what he had to say":
Hitler claimed that the Jews were trying to incite "millions among the masses of people into a conflict that is utterly senseless for them and serves only Jewish interests".

Dissemination and reactions

Hitler's prediction about the Jews was reprinted in the party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter and in a dedicated pamphlet. The speech was broadcast live on radio. According to Goebbels' explicit instructions to Fritz Hippier, the part of the speech that included Hitler's threat against the Jews was recorded simultaneously in audio and video and included in the weekly UFA Wochenschau newsreel after Hitler personally approved it. Newsreels typically played down the exclusionary aspect of the people's community; January 1939 was the first time that Nazi policies towards the Jews were directly connected to the party leader on newsreels. Historian Richard J. Evans writes that the threat "could not have been more public".
At the time of the speech, Jews and non-Jews inside and outside of Germany were paying close attention to Hitler's statements because of Kristallnacht and the possibility of war. In the following days, the speech attracted significant commentary in Germany. The German-Jewish diarists Luise Solmitz and Victor Klemperer mentioned the speech in their diaries but paid little attention to Hitler's threat. A member of Sopade, a German resistance organization, responded to the speech and argued that "the Jews in Germany are lost unless they can emigrate". In February, another German wrote of "the inexorable extermination ... What happened to the Armenians in Turkey... is, more slowly and efficiently being done to the Jews".
The speech also attracted attention outside of Germany, but coverage focused on the geopolitical implications, while the threat "was barely noticed at the time", according to Koonz. Some foreign commentators interpreted the speech as "the expression of will for peace, if only justified German demands" were satisfied, according to historian Norman Domeier. The New York Yiddish newspaper Forverts printed a headline referencing Hitler's threat against the Jews, but the article below it only discussed the threat of war and Hitler's alliances with Italy and Japan. The Warsaw Yiddish newspaper Haynt discussed the speech in several issues beginning on 31 January, but did not emphasize the prophecy. On 31 January, it printed the main points of the speech without mentioning the prophecy; in an analysis of the speech published the next day, Moshe Yustman discussed appeasement and other foreign policy issues.

Allusions

Although Hitler rarely repeated himself, he made over a dozen references to his threat both publicly and privately. At the height of the Holocaust in 1942, Hitler publicly referenced his prophecy on at least four occasions. Believed to be intentional, he consistently misdated the prophecy to 1 September 1939, when the German invasion of Poland began: by emphasizing the link between the war and the persecution of the Jews, the persecution could be construed as a justified response to an attack on Germany. Hitler always referenced the prophecy when discussing the extermination of the Jews.
Besides Nazi leaders, army propaganda and ordinary soldiers also referred to the prophecy. Low-ranking Holocaust perpetrator Walter Mattner wrote a letter to his wife justifying the murder of Jewish children and referencing Hitler's prophecy. Jews were also aware of the prophecy, Warsaw Ghetto diarist Chaim Kaplan writing on 1 September 1939 that, since war would break out, Polish Jews might face the fate the Hitler had foretold. On 2 February 1942, Kaplan wrote that Hitler "boasted that his prophecy is beginning to come true: had he not said that if a war would break out in Europe the Jewish people would be annihilated? This process has already begun and will continue until the end is reached." "Hitler's oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe" was referenced in the Joint Declaration by Members of the United Nations on 17 December 1942.

Timing of the war

In February 1939, Himmler advanced the timing for the upcoming world war and believed that it would occur soon rather than in the next decade because of the backlash to Kristallnacht. In notes for a speech, he wrote, "Radical solution of the Jewish problem is prompting Jewry to fight us, if necessary by unleashing a world war." Longerich sees a clear link to Hitler's speech.

''The Eternal Jew''

Footage of Hitler making the threat was included in the 1940 film The Eternal Jew. According to historian Bill Niven, the film makes the case to Germans "that the war was a racial one, a life-or-death struggle against Jews. It makes of Hitler's words of 30 January 1939 a statement of intent and call to arms" juxtaposed with "supposed images of Jewish savagery". The film was a flop and a month after its release was only being shown in one cinema in Berlin. Historian Alon Confino writes that Germans rejected the film because its scenes, shot in German-occupied Poland, were too explicit in showing what "annihilation" might actually entail.

30 January 1941 speech

On 30 January 1941, in a speech at the Sportpalast, Hitler mentioned the prophecy. Kershaw suggests that although Hitler may have had his threat in mind during the intervening years or was reminded of it by a subordinate, it was most likely the clip from The Eternal Jew that reminded him. Hitler stated:
In the speech, Hitler implied that his previous threats against German Jews had caused the international Jewish community to influence Western powers into appeasement of Germany, and renewed threats would induce the Jews to convince the British government to make peace. Under the headline "The Jew will be exterminated", the speech was published in German and translated for international media companies. The editors of The New York Times wrote that Hitler did not have a record of following through with promises or threats.
At the time of the January 1941 speech, the Nazi leadership was already planning the invasion of the Soviet Union and considering deporting Jews to the conquered territories after a victory. Therefore, Kershaw argues, Hitler's "war against the 'Jewish-Bolshevik' archenemy was taking concrete shape in his mind" and referencing the prophecy was a covert allusion that "the showdown with the Jews was approaching". He also wrote that the reference was a "veiled hint" at something like the Madagascar Plan and "a repeat of the blackmail ploy that he held the Jews in his power as hostages". Although Hitler was "uncertain precisely how the war would bring about the destruction of European Jewry, he was sure that this would be the outcome".

Invasion of the Soviet Union

On 22 June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Goebbels published the essay "Mimicry" in Das Reich on 20 July 1941. It was one of his most influential extended attacks on the Jews, in which he elaborated on Hitler's prophecy. Goebbels argued that the Jews practiced "mimicry" by infiltrating nations and secretly controlling the Allied governments; they were using their power to prolong the war so that Europe would bleed out and be too weak to resist the "Bolshevization" that Jews intended to inflict upon it. He claimed that the Nazis were able to "unmask" them by ignoring historical contingency and threatened a terrible punishment for their alleged guilt.
In mid-August 1941, Goebbels received a report of a mass shooting of Jews in the Baltics and connected the killing to Hitler's prophecy. According to Goebbels' diary entry on 19 August, Hitler mentioned the prophecy when granting Goebbels' request to force Jews in Germany to wear yellow stars after the invasion of the Soviet Union was not as easy as expected. Hitler said that his prophecy was coming true: "the Jews in the East must pay the bill ; in Germany they have already paid part of it and in the future they will have to pay more... the Jews will not have much cause to laugh in future". According to Longerich, Hitler was willing to authorize harsher measures against Jews in Germany because he knew of the mass shootings of Jews in the occupied Soviet Union. The diary entry indicates that both Hitler and Goebbels drew a causal connection between the war and the extermination of the Jews.
In September, when Hitler made the decision to deport German Jews into the occupied Soviet Union, the Nazi Party printed the prophecy on one of its weekly quotation posters : "Should the international Jewish financiers succeed once again in plunging the nations into a world war, the result will not be the victory of the Jews but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe." These posters were sent to all of the Nazi Party's local branches and displayed promiently in Berlin and "in every town and village". Koonz writes that Hitler was "investing political capital in the war against the Jews". According to German historian, the true meaning may not have been obvious.
In the lead article on 15 October from the periodical Die Judenfrage in Politik, Recht, Kultur und Wirtschaft titled "The War Guilt of the Jews", a series of quotes from various Jews is joined together in an effort to prove that the Jews declared war against Germany; the prophecy is mentioned at the end of the article.
On 25 October, referring to attempts to drown Jewish women in the Pripet marshes, Hitler mentioned his prophecy that asserted the "criminal race" would be destroyed. Jersak writes that this "supplied the correct logic for the perpetrators against the background of defeat in the First World War". On 8 November 1941, Hitler referred to the prophecy in his annual speech at the Löwenbräukeller in Munich to the Nazi old guard to commemorate the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler said that all measures would be taken so that "November 1918 will never happen again". The speech was reported on in the Nazi media, with Völkischer Beobachter running the story under the headline "The Jewish Enemy" and concluding with the statement that "the war against the Jewish international is a life and death struggle that must be ruthlessly fought to the end".

"The Jews are Guilty"

On 16 November 1941, Goebbels wrote an article titled "The Jews are Guilty" in Das Reich, aiming to justify the ongoing deportation of the Jews. Communications theorist Randall Bytwerk described it "one of most vehement anti-Semitic articles".
The article referred explicitly to Hitler's approval for the annihilation and listed actions that Germans should take against Jews and anyone who associated with them, who was to be "regarded and treated as a Jew". German historian Heinrich August Winkler argues that it was "first and foremost, a warning to the apparently many Germans who sympathized with the Jews", and perhaps "a kind of final warning to the American Jews". The article was the first time a Nazi leader had announced that the annihilation of European Jews had gone from threat to reality. According to American historian Jeffrey Herf, Goebbels presented the international Jewish conspiracy "on the offensive against an innocent, victimized German object".
Goebbels had recycled the article title from a 1932 article he wrote for Der Angriff. Winkler writes that in both cases the Jews were blamed for the failure of the Nazis to achieve their goals, which led to an increase in anti-Jewish aggression. Kershaw suggests that Goebbels probably discussed the article with Hitler before publication. At the time, Das Reich had a circulation above one million, and the article was broadcast on German Home Service. Goebbels specifically ordered the article to be distributed to soldiers on the Eastern Front. According to the Security Service, the article "found a strong echo" among Germans, although some churchgoers were critical of it.
Historian Norman Dormeier wrote that the article "made public and legitimized that the Nazi regime was in the process of murdering the Jews of Europe". Many contemporaries dismissed it as another Nazi propaganda lie unrelated to the regime's actual actions towards the Jews. Herf argues that the reference to "extermination" was unambiguous because the German language has words for "impoverishment, discrimination, deportation, and illness". Winkler writes that "hoever read or heard about the 16 November article learned that masses of Jews were being killed in the east", and that the meaning "was impossible to misunderstand or ignore". According to Longerich, the article was a "sufficiently clear answer to the question of what was happening to the Jews who were being deported from Germany".

Friedrich-Wilhelm University speech

Goebbels, who had a doctorate from the University of Heidelberg, presented the narrative to German elites in a speech at Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Berlin on 1 December. "We are now experiencing the implementation of this prophecy.... is now suffering a gradual process of extermination". The Reich Press Office ordered newspapers to report on this speech as a front-page story, and it was widely broadcast on the radio.
Goebbels justified the violence against the Jews as a preemptive strike against the extreme violence that they supposedly planned to unleash upon Germany, and argued that the anti-Jewish violence was a normal part of war. According to Herf, this "demonstrated that denial of the dimensions of the Holocaust was an essential component of the act itself". Herf writes that the "balance of justification for mass murder and silence about the details was characteristic of Nazi propaganda throughout the Holocaust".
Goebbels used the word extermination to refer to what the Soviet Union intended to do if it won the war, referring to the murder of the German intelligentsia. A few minutes later, he used the same word to refer to what the Germans were doing to the Jews. Herf suggests that "some in his audience thought the addition of the adjective 'gradual' before 'process of extermination' may have meant slow starvation or death by exposure", rather than immediate murder by shooting or in death camps. Herf argues that the violent language in his speech points to the most direct interpretation.

War against the United States

On 11 December 1941, Germany declared war on the United States in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack. The next day, Hitler gave a speech in the Reich Chancellery to Nazi Party leaders. According to Kershaw, Hitler discussed "the consequences of Pearl Harbor, the war in the east, and the glorious future awaiting Germany after final victory", and then referenced his prophecy:
Kershaw writes that Hitler's tone was "more menacing and vengeful than ever". The prophecy was initially meant as a warning, but since the Jews had started a world war, they would experience the consequences of the war. Herf notes that the speech further emphasized the causal connection between the war and the Holocaust. According to Longerich, Hitler intended to indicate that the systematic murder of Jews that was already underway in the Soviet Union, Poland, and Serbia, should be continued and extended. Historian Christian Gerlach writes that Hitler "never before as clearly, as unambiguously, or in such a matter-of-fact way as recorded here by Goebbels. What Hitler said was not intended metaphorically or as propaganda". Gerlach argues that this meeting was Hitler's announcement of his decision to murder all of the Jews in Europe, while Goldhagen interprets it to mean that "Hitler had taken the decision" and could now taunt his victims. According to Evans, the theory that Hitler gave the order at this point has been rejected in favor of the theory that Nazi decision-making evolved gradually over time, and Gerlach subsequently distanced himself from the claim. Browning writes that "Hitler gave no explicit order but made unmistakably clear that his prophecy... had to be taken utterly literally".
Kershaw writes that Hitler "still had his 'prophecy' in mind" on 14 December, when he spoke to Alfred Rosenberg about a speech that the latter was preparing. According to Rosenberg, Hitler "said had burdened with the war and brought about the destruction so it was no wonder if they would be the first to feel the consequences". On 16 December, Nazi official Hans Frank repeated the prophecy in similar words as Hitler had used five days earlier, adding: "What is to happen to the Jews? Do you believe they’ll be accommodated in village settlements in the Ostland? They said to us in Berlin: why are you giving us all this trouble?... Liquidate them yourselves!... We must destroy the Jews wherever we find them." According to Frank, the war could not be considered a complete success unless the Jews were exterminated. Without receiving a written order from Hitler, he understood that the Jews were to be exterminated, although the details had not been worked out at that time.

30 January 1942 speech

Ten days after the Wannsee Conference at which the Final Solution was discussed, Hitler spoke at the Sportpalast for the ninth anniversary of the Nazi seizure of power. He insulted Winston Churchill and emphasized the difficulty of the ongoing winter fighting on the Eastern Front. He characterized the war as a "fight for the whole of Europe and, thereby, for the whole of civilized humanity" and a race war between Jews and Aryans before referencing the prophecy:
The speech was widely covered in the press and, according to Security Service reports, was understood to mean that "the Führer’s fight against the Jews is being fought mercilessly to the end, and that soon the last Jews will have been driven from European soil". However, the reports also indicate that Germans had a stronger reaction to other issues raised in the speech than the prophecy. Winkler writes that the speech is a paraphrase of Revelation 20 "to convince the Germans of the greatness of their mission in history" in saving Europe from the Jews. According to Longerich, Hitler intended to emphasize that "the further course of the war was inextricably bound up with the fate of the Jews under his regime".

24 February 1942 speech

On 24 February, the anniversary of the founding of the Nazi Party, Hitler was absent but instructed Gauleiter Adolf Wagner to read a statement. Hitler implied that even if the war was lost, his prophecy would be fulfilled. A paragraph was quoted in the next day, under the heading "The Jew is being exterminated". The speech was quoted in a Der Stürmer article of 19 March 1942 titled "The Coming End — the Führer's Prophecy", which explained that Hitler's speech made it clear "ow this solution will come about". The article coincided with the third and fourth waves of deportations of Jews from Germany, which occurred very publicly from March to June 1942 and effectively eliminated the Jewish presence in Germany.

Goebbels diary entry

In March 1942, Goebbels wrote in his diary about the gassing of Jews in the Lublin District of occupied Poland. It was the most detail that he ever devoted to the murder of Jews. Goebbels wrote that Jews under German rule were paying for the war effort of the Allied powers:
Jersak observes Goebbels' horror at how the German persecution of Jews "was dispelled by the normative logic of the system": the admission that the treatment was "barbaric" is justified by referring to the prophecy and the Jewish conspiracy, while the sentimentality is dispelled by dehumanizing Jews by describing them as a "bacillus".
On 23 May, Hitler presented what Kershaw describes as "a more forthright version of his 'prophecy'" in a closed-door meeting with party leaders in the Reich Chancellery, saying "that the Jews are determined under all circumstances to bring this war to victory for them, since they know that defeat also means for them personal liquidation". Kershaw writes that Hitler was "unmistakably and explicitly linking , in Goebbels’s understanding of what was intended, with the physical liquidation of the Jews".

"They Will Stop Laughing!!!"

On 30 September, Hitler delivered another speech at the Sportpalast. He reassured his audience that the worst of the war was over. Speaking of the need to retaliate for Allied bombing, he invoked the prophecy "as if the extermination of the Jews were an act of retaliation for the Allied bombing campaign".

Kershaw describes this as "the most menacing phrases he had so far used" when referring to the prophecy. The audience responded with enthusiasm; Herf contends "that the Nazi faithful understood that Hitler was telling them in language by then familiar that the Nazi regime was at that moment murdering the Jews". As for Hitler's reference to the Jews not laughing anymore, Herf argues that "ny benign interpretation... strains credulity". Herf stated that the audience may have understood Hitler's addition of "everywhere" to his promise to end Jewish laughter to mean the globalization of the Final Solution. Herf concludes that "all indicated that he had ordered and was then implementing the destruction of the Jews".
The speech was broadcast on the radio, reported to the army, and featured prominently in the press. Six weeks later, quotes from the speech were reproduced in an article titled "They Will Stop Laughing!!!" in '', a wall newspaper which frequently printed antisemitic content. The newspaper emphasized a laughing Franklin Roosevelt and his supposed Jewish advisers; "They will stop laughing everywhere!!" was reproduced in large type at the bottom of the page. About 125,000 copies of the newspaper were printed and posted in public places to be viewed by millions of people. Herf acknowledges that there is no reliable evidence as to "how many people had the intellectual curiosity, political acumen, and moral courage to conclude that this wall newspaper was an announcement of mass murder".

8 November 1942 speech

On 8 November, during Hitler's annual speech for the Nazi party old guard to commemorate the Beer Hall Putsch, he discussed the war in which Germany had recently suffered reversals, and stated that there would be no negotiated peace. He referenced his prophecy and said that the result of the war would be "the extermination of Jewry in Europe":
Hitler said that the enemy was the same one that Nazis had faced under the Weimar Republic. He argued that Germany lost World War I because it did not understand the great danger posed by internal enemies and the Jews; Nazi Germany would win its war against the "half-Jew Roosevelt" because it had been enlightened. Kershaw writes that "he speech was not one of Hitler’s best" because his rhetoric was too out of touch with reality, and had only a superficial effect on listeners according to Security Service reports. Herf argues that "the meaning of Hitler’s words was clear. The Jews had intended to 'exterminate'—that is, to kill—the Europeans" and in return the "Nazi regime was in the process of exterminating—that is, killing—the Jews". In Herf's opinion, the most believable interpretation of the Jews no longer laughing was that "something of a catastrophic nature was being done to them". The applause indicated that the audience approved of Hitler's "justified retaliation against Germany’s greatest enemy".

1943

On 18 February 1943, Goebbels delivered the total war speech at the Sportpalast. According to Herf, the enthusiastic audience reception to Goebbels' calls for total war against the Jewish–Bolshevik enemy indicated that "Hitler’s prophecy was still popular with the Nazi faithful".
On 8 May 1943, Goebbels wrote an article titled "The War and the Jews": "None of the Führer’s prophetic words has come so inevitably true as his prediction that if Jewry succeeded in provoking a second world war, the result would be not the destruction of the Aryan race, rather the wiping out of the Jewish race. This process is of vast importance, and will have unforeseeable consequences that will take time. But it cannot be halted." The article reached thousands of readers and millions of radio listeners. According to Herf, the piece "repeated and elaborated on the essential projection mechanism of Nazi propaganda"—that Jews were plotting the extermination of Germans.
Goebbels wrote that he was satisfied with the reception of the article and planned to increase the use of antisemitism as a propaganda tactic, as he found it second only to Bolshevism in effectiveness. On 18 May, the propaganda ministry delivered copies of "Twilight for the Jews All over the World!" to Nazi officials. The article cited Goebbels' repetition of Hitler's prophecy, adding that antisemitism was rising throughout the world because people had begun to understand that "all the suffering, privations, and deprivation of this war are exclusively due to the Jews, that the war itself is the work of Juda."

1944–45

Hitler continued to refer to his prophecy as the war went against Germany and used it to justify the conflict and its catastrophic consequences. Hitler's comments on the Final Solution also became more explicit; on 3 January 1944, he said that the outcome of the war was unresolved but the end of Jewish life in Europe was "beyond any doubt". On 26 May 1944, after the German invasion of Hungary, he addressed high-ranking army officers at the Berghof and said that if the opponents of Nazism prevailed, "Bolshevism would slaughter millions and millions and millions of our intellectuals. Anyone not dying through a shot in the neck would be deported. The children of the upper classes would be taken away and eliminated. This entire bestiality has been organized by the Jews." He described the bombing of Hamburg and dubbed the Hungarian Jewish community as "a seamless web of agents and spies" that undermined its country. Hitler declared that the Jews would be destroyed, just as he had predicted, and this was received well by the audience.
Hitler mentioned his prophecy in his New Year's speech on 1 January 1945. On 13 February, he reportedly said "I have fought openly against the Jews. I gave them a last warning at the outbreak of war. I never left them in uncertainty that if they were to plunge the world into war again they would this time not be spared—that the vermin in Europe would be finally eradicated." In his last will and testament, signed shortly before his suicide, Hitler wrote that the true meaning of his prophecy of 1939 was "to exterminate the vermin throughout Europe".

Analysis

Reception by Germans

The threat to annihilate the Jews is the best-known phrase from Hitler's speeches. Kershaw writes that while the Holocaust continued, "o Nazi leader was left unaware... of the 'prophecy' the Führer had made about the Jews". Kershaw also notes that the prophecy was a "key metaphor for the 'Final Solution'", and "a regular weapon in rhetorical armoury". Confino writes that "There was only one prophecy in wartime German society, and it meant one thing: Hitler’s promise to annihilate the Jews." The prophecy emerged as "a common, shared, universal idiom among Germans and Jews" for the ongoing genocide.
Confino argues that the prophecy reflected the antisemitism already prevalent in German society. He describes the speech as Hitler's interpretation of the "post-Kristallnacht relations of Germans and Judaism", and the first time since 1933 that Hitler openly threatened the Jews. Confino adds that by invoking the prophecy to discuss new developments in the Holocaust, Hitler reframed the Holocaust in terms of Kristallnacht, "placing within a shared, familiar narrative". According to Confino, "Nazis and other Germans could connect emotionally to the mockery, resentment, and violence expressed in Hitler’s speech because they communicated these emotions themselves in anti-Jewish actions." Koonz writes that "Hitler's decision in January 1939 to speak openly of Jews and even to predict their extermination in the event of war suggested that he believed public opinion had been sufficiently prepared to accept a harsh solution to the Jewish question." She argues that his assessment was correct.

"Annihilation"

The interpretation of the prophecy is debated between the schools of functionalism and intentionalism, which differ in the degree to which they hold that the Holocaust was planned in advance by Hitler versus emerging from the Nazi bureaucracy. Early historians of Nazi Germany, such as Helmut Krausnick and Gerald Reitlinger, were convinced that Hitler had already plotted the genocide since the 1920s, and it was therefore unnecessary to prove a direct connection between the speech and the killings. In the 1960s, the school of functionalism emerged, which characterized Hitler as a weak dictator and argued that anti-Jewish policy emerged from Nazi functionaries as the war continued. In the 1990s, attention shifted back to Hitler's role, but this time arguing that he made the decision in 1941.
A key issue is what was meant, or understood, by "annihilation" in 1939. Historian Sarah Gordon suggests that Hitler chose the word for its vagueness, as he wanted to frighten the Jews into emigrating without explicitly calling for murder, which the reaction to Kristallnacht indicated that the German public opposed. Confino writes that "no one in Germany knew exactly what the word meant or how this metaphor of 'annihilation' would come to pass". He suggests that it evoked Kristallnacht and its burning synagogues, not the gas chambers of Auschwitz or the mass graves at Babi Yar. Confino contends that although not even Hitler knew what he meant by "annihilation", the speech demonstrated that Hitler and his listeners already "imagine a world in which extreme violence was applied to get rid of Jews and eliminate Judaism".

Genocide

Intentionalists emphasize the importance of the speech and cite it as proof that the genocide had been planned before the war and did not gradually emerge. Lucy Dawidowicz highlighted the speech as "the decision to proceed with irreversible mission", and argued that the German people should have understood it as a prior announcement of the Final Solution. German historian Stefan Kley notes that "f Hitler had actually expressed a firm intention to commit genocide at the beginning of 1939, this would not only be a strong indication of his decisive role, but also a refutation" of functionalist arguments.
Herf believes that the prophecy was Hitler's "first unequivocal public threat to exterminate —not merely to remove, deport, or defeat"— Europe's Jews". Historian Shlomo Aronson described the statement as "an open threat to kill the Jews" and "an open declaration of Hitler’s basic intention to eliminate the Jews", because he was already planning the war. American historian Gerhard Weinberg argues that "the murder of Jews would be an integral part of the war on which had already decided". Historian Robert Wistrich argues that "Hitler's prophecies invariably referred to the murder of Jews": "This was an extraordinary outburst from the leader of a great power and can hardly be reduced to a mere 'metaphor' or a piece of Utopian rhetoric... The vehemence with which Hitler delivered this particular section of his speech, and the frenzied applause of the Reichstag delegates, makes it plain that it was a deadly serious threat."
Historian Daniel Goldhagen views the speech as "a clear declaration of Hitler’s ideal and, given the opportunity, his intent" but not a defined program that would immediately be operational. He adds that "Hitler and other Nazis were at the very least bandying about the idea of a genocidal 'final solution'". He finds it "almost inexplicable that interpreters today could construe Hitler’s prophecy, his oft-stated intention to destroy the Jews, to have been meant but metaphorically or to have been but meaningless verbiage", noting that Hitler referred to his previous statement as having literal meaning.

Emigration or expulsion

Functionalist scholars tend to emphasize the tactical implications of the speech in holding the Jews in Germany hostage against the behavior of the United States during the coming war, although they acknowledge that the speech establishes a "mental connection between annihilation and war". One indication against this interpretation is that Hitler referred to "European Jews" rather than "German Jews".
Historian Christopher Browning said in an interview that during the 1939 speech, Hitler intended to tell his followers that in the event of war, the Jews would be expelled from Europe. His reference to "the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe means that there will be no more Jews there". Browning said that the speech has to be considered in light of the anti-Jewish policies of the next two years, rather than with the retrospective knowledge of Auschwitz. Browning also wrote that the anti-Jewish policies pursued by the Nazis from 1939 to early 1941, would have resulted in a great reduction in the Jewish population and argues that this would have been viewed as fulfilling the prophecy.
Historian Mark Roseman contends that "there is no evidence that mass extermination was being planned in 1939" and points out that Hitler did not emphasize his prophecy in 1940. He asserts that it is impossible to know "whether statements demonstrate clear intent or even to ascertain precisely what that intent might have been". He also argues that it is unclear whether "annihilation" referred to expulsion or mass murder and points out that Hitler repeatedly spoke of the forcible banishment of the Jews from Germany.
Koonz writes that Germans at the time "might have understood vernichten to be merely metaphorical—as in to 'smash' or 'wipe out' a rival". Bytwerk argues that "ithin the context of the speech, it is not necessary to conclude that Hitler is speaking of the physical destruction of Jews." Mommsen describes the prophecy as no more than "a rhetorical gesture designed to put pressure on the international community" to allow the immigration of German Jews: He states: "At that time it was highly unlikely that either the German or the international public could have interpreted his statement as an ill-concealed declaration of a serious intention to liquidate the Jews under German rule in the event of war."

Multiple meanings

Bauer interprets the prophecy as expressing Hitler's determination to get rid of the German Jews. His first choice to resolve the situation was by international agreement that would lead to emigration, then a forcible, violent expulsion. A war, which the Nazi leadership was planning at the time, was another way that Jews might be eliminated. Bauer concludes that "while the Nazi aim was fixed—no Jews in the expanding Reich—the means could be varied as occasion demanded... The threats of annihilation may have been meant seriously by Hitler, Goering, and Himmler-Heydrich, but they were not translated into any operative plan in 1939."
Jersak argues that "Hitler planned to expel the Jews from Germany before he planned to conquer Lebensraum." As evidence, he cites "Hitler's repeated orders between 1937 and 1939 to accelerate Jewish emigration". Jersak argues that if Germany became involved in a world war, Hitler recognized that the Axis would not emerge victorious. Therefore, he considered the systematic killing of Jews a "radical alternative" in case he did not get his way in the war. In this situation, "war would serve as a cover for extermination and the fighting would conceal the real war aim"—the murder of the Jews. Jersak cites Hitler's 1939 statement "Who remembers the extermination of the Armenians?" as evidence that Hitler believed that crimes committed during wartime would be overlooked. Longerich writes that Hitler's prophecy "had several potential layers of meaning", of which the first is Hitler's tactical desire to frighten Jews into emigration.

War

Jewish conspiracy

Longerich views the 1939 speech as part of a "long-term strategy for assigning blame for the outbreak of an impending war" to the Jews. Gerlach wrote that the prophecy was self-fulfilling because in Hitler's nationalistic minset, any opposition to Nazism was viewed as the work of an international Jewish conspiracy. Hitler and Nazi leaders believed that the Jewish conspiracy was real. The prophecy was also believed literally by many Germans; Victor Klemperer was confronted by Germans who told him that Jews had started the war and deserved their fate. Klemperer found that even non-Nazi Germans believed this propaganda.
Herf notes that as Hitler plotted war in 1939, "he ordered his propagandists to assert that exactly the opposite was taking place". Herf writes, "Invisible to those lacking the insight provided by Nazi ideology, this conspiracy was perceived by Hitler and his henchmen as the driving force of modern history... When the major powers opposed Nazi Germany, they were doing so as Judenknechte, or servants of the Jews." This conspiracy theory violates chronology and causality and makes contradictory claims of a master race dominating the world versus the Germans as innocent victims attacked by a powerful Jewish conspiracy. Historian Antony Beevor writes that the prophecy's "breathtaking confusion of cause and effect lay at the heart of Hitler's network of lies and self-deception".

Strategic considerations

Historian David Reynolds argues that "mong Hitler’s many reasons for the speech may well have been Franklin Roosevelt", who was simultaneously trying to persuade Americans to abandon isolationism. Roosevelt also worked to promote the emigration of Jews from Europe. Weinberg contends that, at the time of the prophecy speech, Hitler regretted allowing Neville Chamberlain to avert war in 1938, and was determined to go to war before 1940. According to Weinberg, Hitler already planned to use the war "to effect a demographic revolution on the globe, a revolution in which the systematic killing of all Jews was a central part".
Herf argues that in his speeches referencing the prophecy, Hitler made it clear that he saw a "causal and inherent, not a contingent or accidental, connection with his intent to exterminate the Jews". Kershaw writes that the speech was mostly "a defiant tirade against what he portrayed as Jewish-inspired western war-mongerers" and "the 'prophecy' denoted the indelible link in mind between war and revenge against the Jews". Confino argues that "The prophecy created a direct link between the war and the mass murder of the Jews." Koonz writes that in his 1939 speech, "Hitler posed as the sole moral arbiter of his Volk at war on two fronts: racial and geopolitical".

Hostages

According to Longerich, Hitler's reference to "international Jewish financiers" envisioned a scenario in which the United States and other western powers intervened to prevent German expansionism in Europe, to which Hitler was already committed: if it came to pass, the "international Jewish financiers" would be blamed for the resulting war, and Jews remaining in Germany would be held as hostages threatened with annihilation. If emigration failed and Western powers intervened in the war, Hitler was "keeping all options open for further radicalizing his Jewish policy". Evans cites the Nazi belief in an international Jewish conspiracy to argue that Hitler's aim was to hold the Jews hostage to prevent American entry into the war. If America did so, the Jews throughout Europe would be murdered: "Nazi terrorism had now acquired an additional dimension: the practice, on the largest possible scale, of hostage-taking". According to Mommsen, because Nazis believed in an international Jewish conspiracy that supposedly controlled the world's governments, it made sense to threaten the Jews in Germany to obtain the compliance of other countries. Aronson also views the threat as "aimed at the West", where the Jews were held hostage to ensure that Hitler could deal with each of the countries separately. Roseman writes that "Hitler's threats were in part a kind of blackmail"; Hitler hoped that by holding German Jews hostage, their brethren in other countries could be controlled. Kershaw states that the prophecy was in part aimed at "deterring the USA from entering the war through the threat of what would then happen to the Jews of Europe". Jersak argues that the speech served as an "early warning to the US not to interfere in Europe. The idea that American Jews in Germany could serve as hostages against another US participation in a possible European war was probably also born at this time."

"World war"

Bauer writes that "the war that Hitler wanted", which was to ally with Poland in an invasion of the Soviet Union, "was not the one he got in September 1939". Even after concluding the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, he attempted to avoid a two-front war by keeping the United Kingdom, United States, and possibly France out of the war. Kley argues that at the time, "world war" meant any major conflict between the European powers, a definition in use by German writers since the Napoleonic Wars. German writers called World War I a "world war" by 1915. Roseman writes that it is not clear when the "world war" began: when Hitler declared war against the British Commonwealth or when he invaded the Soviet Union. Roseman argues that his return to the prophecy in 1941 may have been a reaction to other events rather that "evidence of consistent understanding of what 'world war' meant".

Soviet Union

Golhagen writes that the invasion of the Soviet Union was an opportunity for Hitler "to make good on his promise that a war would result in the annihilation of the Jews of Europe". Bytwerk writes that in wartime "the word 'destruction' takes on a physical connotation missing in peace, and Hitler wanted to make it clear that he was absolutely serious about his threat to destroy the Jews". Jersak argues that "the campaign against the Soviet Union turned into a war against the Jews—culminating in the Holocaust—at that point in time when the that Hitler himself had set for realizing his prophecy could no longer be achieved and his power appeared to be under threat." From September 1941, he contends, anti-Jewish actions were not just justified but also motivated by fear of the Jewish conspiracy. Kershaw writes that the war and Hitler's mission to get rid of Jews "reached its fateful point of convergence in the conception of the 'war of annihilation' against the Soviet Union". According to Longerich, when Hitler referenced his prophecy in November 1941, he intended to cement his leadership role: "All bridges had been burnt and the 'people' had no alternative but to entrust themselves to Hitler’s purportedly superhuman leadership qualities and support his conduct of the war until victory had been achieved."

United States

When the United States entered the war, the Jews lost their value as hostages and could be killed with impunity. From the Nazi perspective, the first part of the prophecy was fulfilled when the European war became a world war. Kershaw writes that the prophecy "was evidently never far from mind in these weeks as the winter crisis was unfolding in the east" and was "at the forefront of his thoughts in the wake of Pearl Harbor". According to Jersak, around the same time the Nazis determined on the "murder of the last Jew on European soil", which Nazis believed "would break the 'subversive power' of 'International Jewry'". Browning argues against this explanation, noting that the systematic murder of Jews was already taking place in the Soviet Union and Hitler's prophecy was not "tied to a 'world war' defined by American involvement". Longerich writes that Hitler's speech of 12 December 1941 at first "appears to contain nothing really new" but, as Germany was now engaged in a world war, "Hitler’s 'prophecy' inevitably came closer to its realization".

Blame for war destruction

By the winter of 1941–1942, Allied military action, especially strategic bombing, was killing an increasing number of German soldiers and civilians. The Jews were held responsible for each death and would be made to pay in kind. Herf argues that "for millions of Germans, the abstract slogan 'The Jews are guilty' assumed direct emotional significance". According to Kershaw, Hitler viewed the genocide of Jews as "natural revenge for the destruction caused by the Jews – above all in the war which he saw as their work". When the Allies became aware of the systematic murder of Jews and denounced it, Hitler and other Nazi propagandists did not deny the reports. Instead, states Herf, they preferred to "present the Nazi attack on the Jews as a justified act of self-defense, retaliation, and revenge in response to the misfortunes the Jews had inflicted and were at that moment inflicting on Germany".

Communication

Hitler's role in the Holocaust

Kershaw contends that both intentionalist and functionalist interpretations are wrong. Although the Nazi extermination of the Jewish people was not fully realized until years later, he argues that the 1939 speech "can nevertheless be seen to hold a key to Hitler’s role in the 'Final Solution'" and is "a key both to Hitler’s mentality, and to the ways he provided 'directions for action'". He argues that Hitler's actions were mostly confined to the realm of propaganda, especially the prophecy, as it was "neither his style, nor his inclination" to involve himself with day-to-day details. The prophecy obviated the need for a Hitler order explicitly authorizing the Holocaust, because the prophecy served as "the transmission belt between Hitler’s own inner conviction that the war would bring about the final destruction of European Jewry and the actions of his underlings" in murdering Jews. Party insiders understood the invocation of the prophecy as a call to radical action against the Jews without explicit instructions. Kershaw argues that the repetition of the prophecy in mass media helped to "condition the general population against humanitarian sympathy for the Jews" and signaled the intensification of the mass murder.
Jersak argues that "the hypothesis of an order for the murder of the European Jews unrelated to that prophecy assumes... that Hitler, who repeatedly referred to his prophecy, did not mean what he said". Jersak contends that the order "must therefore be seen as expressing the realization of his prior resolve", which he stated on 30 January 1939. He interprets the passage in Goebbels' diaries in August 1941, in which Hitler indicates that he believes "with almost uncanny certainty" that his prophecy would come true "in the coming weeks or months", as evidence that the order for the Final Solution had been issued. Historian Eberhard Jäckel writes that the repetition of the prophecy is "truly astounding and its motivation is not readily apparent". Jäckel speculates that Hitler's motivation may have been to indicate his approval of the mass murder or to "have the final solution put on the record". Goldhagen lists the prophecy as one of the "four causally interrelated aspects of Hitler's, and therefore of Germany's, anti-Jewish policy", which show that he planned the genocide in advance. According to Roseman, Hitler's rhetoric, including the frequently repeated prophecy, "provided the justification for others' actions, assuring the perpetrators that murder was appropriate".

Vagueness

Israeli historian David Bankier notes that the prophecy "lacked a space or time frame and gave no details on how the Final Solution would be implemented. In his 'prophecy' the Jews would disappear without an agent"; if Hitler had said that he was going to exterminate the Jews, that would be a policy statement, not a prophecy. Beevor writes that "espite his apocalyptic diatribes against the Jews", Hitler was "remarkably reluctant to hear details of mass killings". Similarly, he tried to keep other types of violence abstract despite having "done more than almost anyone else in history to promote it". Herf describes Goebbels' article "The Jews are Guilty" as "a paradigm of Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda" because it was "blunt and noneuphemistic", but "the extremist language went along with a total absence of revealing details about where, when, and how this mass murder was taking place". In other words, it "left enough ambiguity and absence of detail to promote plausible deniability".
Kershaw writes that despite the "dark hints that his 'prophecy' was being fulfilled", Hitler was:
Kershaw adds that Hitler wanted to "lay claim to his place in 'the glorious secret of our history' while still detaching himself from the sordid and horrific realities of mass killing". Therefore, he never made any statement like Himmler's Posen speeches, even in private with other Nazi leaders. Hitler also wanted to avoid opposition from the bureaucracy or the judicial system, after he signed an order for the euthanasia program. Himmler used the same strategy of vagueness when communicating about the fate of the Jews.

Knowledge of the Holocaust

After the war, Germans claimed ignorance of the Nazi regime's crimes and argued that references to the "annihilation" of Jews had not been understood literally. Historians have disputed these claims. Koonz writes that the prophecy was one reason why "no bystander could deny the intention of the Nazi leadership to eradicate Jews, one way or another". Herf writes that when Hitler's prophecy was referenced in German mass media during the war, readers understood that the Jews had been declared "guilty" for the war and that the Nazi regime was carrying out its previously announced threat to exterminate them. References to the prophecy in mass media spread "an awareness, while avoiding detailed or explicit information, that the destruction of the Jews was inexorably taking place", according to Kershaw.
Bankier writes that the prophecy "left no possible doubts that, in one way or another, the fate of the Jews would be physical obliteration". He adds that in openly declaring their aims, the Nazi leadership aimed to test the loyalty of ordinary Germans to the regime. Confino argues that Germans knew in general terms about the extermination of Europe's Jews, even if they did not know the details: "By understanding the meaning of the prophecy, Germans became complicit, whatever they knew about Auschwitz and whatever they thought about the extermination." Herf writes that in contrast to his pre-1939 statements, Hitler spoke with "unprecedented clarity, bluntness, and frequency about acting on his threats to exterminate the Jews of Europe". Browning finds it ironic that Nazism's two most prominent spokesmen "could not resist the urge to speak about the mass murder", especially in terms of the prophecy.

Comparisons

At the International Military Tribunal, Der Stürmer publisher Julius Streicher was convicted of crimes against humanity based on his "incitement to murder and extermination" of Jews. The judgement against him cited a January 1943 article he wrote praising Hitler for fulfilling his prophecy to extirpate the Jews. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has ruled that predicting genocide can, under certain circumstances, be considered incitement to genocide. Historian Paul R. Bartrop compared Hitler's prophecy to the predictions by convicted génocidaire Théoneste Bagosora before the Rwandan genocide that if the Rwandan Patriotic Front continued its war or if the Arusha Accords were enforced, it would lead to the extermination of all Tutsis. Wistrich argued that Hitler's prophecy is comparable to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statement that Israel "must be wiped off the map"; in his opinion, "the same genocidal intent is plainly there".

Citations

Books

Journal articles