Hitler's Reichstag Speech of 30 January 1939

Abstract

The most widely known quotation from Hider's public orations is taken from his speech in the German Reichstag on 30 January 1939. Referring to the Jewish question, it contains the macabre prophecy: Today I will be once more a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!1 This statement has been taken as evidence that in early 1939 Hider already intended to exploit the conditions of a future war to annihilate the Jews, at least those under German rule. This interpretation seems further reinforced by the fact that Hider subsequendy made several references to this statement, erroneously dating it September 1939.2 It has also been argued on the basis of this speech that the German public, or at least those who were politically aware, should have concluded from it that the ultimate fate of the Jews under German domination would be their physical annihilation. However, it seems to me that in order to analyze this statement ?which was unprecedented in its harshness?it should be read widiin the immediate political context and the particular conditions that prevailed at that time.3 First of all, Hider's threat did not occupy a prominent place in his rather lengthy speech, which celebrated his seizure of power and was largely devoted to the party saga (PaneierzAhlung), a subject that usually comprised considerable parts of Hider's speeches and did not vary in content. It was only in the last part of the speech,