Hitler's prophecy
During a speech at the Reichstag on 30 January 1939, Adolf Hitler, dictator of Nazi Germany, threatened "the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe" in the event of another world war:
These words were similar to comments that Hitler had previously made to foreign politicians in private meetings after the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938. The speech was made in the context of Nazi attempts to increase Jewish emigration from Germany, before the outbreak of World War II in September 1939.
Allusions to "Hitler's prophecy" by Nazi leaders and in Nazi propaganda were common after 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, both of which facilitated an acceleration of the systematic mass murder of Jews. In late 1941, Nazi propaganda chief 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 and referenced it in his last will and testament. Frequently used by Nazi leaders when alluding to their systematic murder of Jews, the prophecy became a leitmotif of the Final Solution and it is perhaps the best-known phrase from Hitler's speeches.
The historical significance 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 the Nazis' belief in an international Jewish conspiracy that supposedly started the war. Additionally, despite its vagueness—not explaining how the annihilation would come about—the prophecy is cited as evidence that Germans were aware that Jews were being exterminated.
Background
According to historian Ian Kershaw, upon Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler's seizure of power on 30 January 1933, the Nazi mass movement was already "proto-genocidal" and "held together by the utopian vision of national salvation, to be achieved through racial cleansing at the core of which was the 'removal' of the Jews". In April 1933, the one-day Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses was announced and the SA was posted around Jewish businesses to enforce the boycott. Between 1933 and 1939, more than 400 anti-Jewish laws and decrees were enacted. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws defined Jews by their ancestry rather than religion, formalized their exclusion from society, and outlawed marriages and sexual relationships between Jews and "German-blooded" people. Other laws banned Jews from owning property or earning a living.Hitler had associated the Jews and war in several 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 overtly voiced his hatred of Jews on two occasions: in a 1935 speech announcing the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws, and at the Nuremberg Rally in September 1937. Although race was not prominent in his discourse in the 1930s, 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.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. Many Germans were disgusted by the violence, although few overtly opposed the government. Kristallnacht was also denounced abroad, endangering the German government's efforts to organize and facilitate the emigration of German Jews.
Kristallnacht radicalized the anti-Jewish discourse in German society. The Nazi Party conducted a propaganda campaign from November 1938 to January 1939 to justify the pogrom to the German people. 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 Germany would consider "carrying out a great reckoning with the Jews" in the event of war. Historian Yehuda Bauer writes that this statement is "very similar" to what Hitler said 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 the writers were aware that it aligned with Hitler's view.
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 of German plans "to get rid of Jews, either by emigration or if necessary by starving or killing them" to avoid "having such a hostile minority in the country in the event of war". He also said 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, the 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, the 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 historian Hans Mommsen, Hitler was referring to destroying the influence of the Jews rather than calling for their physical destruction. Historian Peter Longerich interprets "annihilation" to refer to emigration or expulsion of Jews leading to "the end of their collective existence in Germany". 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
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. At the time of the speech, discussions were ongoing between Göring and George Rublee, director of the Intergovernmental Committee for Refugees. 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 and dealt with both the foreign and domestic policies of the Nazi government. Hitler expressed his desire for additional "living space" and discussed the Munich crisis, admitting that he had planned a military invasion in the event that Czechoslovakia did not capitulate to his demand to surrender the Sudetenland. He maintained that the Sudetenland had been secured by German willingness to resort to war, rather than by diplomacy.In the part of the speech dealing with the Jewish question, Hitler complained that there was enough space 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, then 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". He asserted that Jews would have to stop "liv off the body and productive work of other nations", or else they would "succumb to a crisis of unimaginable severity". He 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". Hitler then arrived at his main point:
Hitler's assertion did not necessarily imply physical annihilation. Later in the speech he said:
Dissemination and reactions
The speech was broadcast live on radio and Hitler's prediction about the Jews was reprinted in the party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter and in a dedicated pamphlet. According to Goebbels' explicit instructions to Fritz Hippler, 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 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. Outside Germany, coverage of the speech focused on the geopolitical implications of Hitler's discussion of foreign policy, while the threat to Jews went unremarked. 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, columnist Moshe Yustman discussed appeasement and other foreign policy issues.