by Carlos W. Porter
[Note: this translation attempts to retain the style and punctuation of the original, which is not correct in German: full space before colons and commas, no full space before following word. The document contains not one single sharp S (ß), a standard letter in the German alphabet.]
Obersalzberg ,22.8.39
Decision to attack Poland in the spring.Originally fear ,that due to political constellations I would have to act against England ,Russia ,France ,Poland , at the same time.Even this risk could have been tolerated.Goering has after all said ,that the Four Year Plan has failed and that we are finished ,if no victory in coming war. Since autumn of 1938 ,and since then ,I have recognized that Japan would not go with us unconditionally and Mussolini is threatened by the imbecile of a king and the traitorous rascals of crown princes ,decision ,to go with Stalin.Basically only three great statesmen in the world ,Stalin ,myself ,and Mussolini.Mussolini the weakest ,has been unable to break the power of either the crown ,or the church.Stalin and myself the only ones ,who can only see the future.Thus I will extend my hand to Stalin on the German-Russian border in a few weeks and undertake a redivision of the world with him. Our strength is our rapidity and our brutality.Ghengis Khan sent millions of women and children to their deaths ,consciously and with a joyous heart.History sees in him only the greatest founder of a state.What weak Western European civilization says about me ,is meaningless.I have given the order ,and I will have anyone shot who expresses even one word of criticism ,that the war aim lies not in the attainment of certain lines ,but in the physical destruction of the adversary.So I have ,first only in the East ,prepared my Death's Heads divisions with the order to send men ,women and children of Polish descent mercilessly and pitilessly to their deaths.Only thus will we win the living space that we need.Who still speaks today of the extermination of the Armenians? Coronel General von Brauchitsch has promised me ,to bring the war against Poland to a close in a few weeks.If he had told me ,I needed two years ,or only one year to do it ,I would not have given the order to march and temporarily allied myself [sentence runs off page]
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and temporarily allied myself with England instead of Russia.Since we cannot carry on a long war.At any rate ,a new situation is now created.The miserable worms Daladier and Chamberlain ,I experienced them at Munich.They will be too cowardly to attack.They will not go beyond a blockade.Against that ,we have our autarchy and the Russian raw materials.Poland will be emptied of its population and settled with Germans.My pact with Poland was only intended to gain time .And furthermore , gentlemen ,the only thing to do with Russia is the same thing ,that I have succeeded in doing with Poland.After Stalin's death ,he is a seriously ill man ,we will smash the Soviet Union.Then the German hegemony over the world will arise. The small states cannot scare me.After Kemal's death ,Turkey is being governed by cretins and half-idiots.Carol of Rumania is a complete slave of his sexual drives.The king of Belgium and the northern kings are weak jumping-jacks ,dependent upon the good digestion of their exploited and exhausted populations. We must accept the loss of Japan.I gave Japan a whole year's time.The Emperor is equivalent to the last Czar.Weak ,cowardly ,indecisive.May he fall victim to the revolution.My cooperation with Japan was never popular.We will furthermore tie up the unrest in the Far East and in Arabia.Let us think as masters and let us see in these people only painted half-apes at best ,who wish to feel the knout. The opportunity is favourable as never before.I have only one fear ,that Chamberlain or some other pig will come to me with peace proposals and capitulation at the last moment.He will fly down the stairs.Even if I have to kick him in the stomach before the eyes of the photographers. No ,it is too late for that.The attack and the destruction of Poland begins early Sunday.I will have a few companies in Polish uniforms attack in Upper Silesia or in the Protectorate.Whether the world believes me ,
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[FBI Laboratory stamp]
is indifferent .[scheissegal, spelled with double s instead of sharp S, roughly equivalent to "I don't give a schidt", in English.] The world only believes in success. For you ,gentlemen ,fame and honour are awaiting as they never have for centuries.Be hard ,be unsparing ,act more quickly and more brutally than the others.The citizens of Western Europe must tremble from fear.That is the most human manner of waging war.Since it deters them. The new waging of war corresponds to the border arrangement .A wall from Reval ,Lublin ,Kaschau ,to the mouth of the Danube .The Russians will get the rest.Ribbentrop has been instructed to make every offer and to accept every proposal.In the West I reserve the option of determining the best line strategically.Here ,we will have to work with protectorates ,perhaps Holland ,Belgium ,French-Lorraine. And now :go get the enemy! We will celebrate our next meeting in Warsaw!
The speech was received with enthusiasm.Goering climbed upon on the table. Bloodthirsty thanks and bloodthirsty promises.He danced around like a wild man.The few (!) doubters kept silent.
[Part of "speech" crudely cut out with pair of scissors, probably to conceal something handwritten on the reverse side of the page.]
While eating ,Hitler also said that he must act this year ,since he would not live very much longer.His successor however could do no more ,and furthermore ,the situation would be desperate in two years at most.
COMMENTS BY OTHER AUTHORS ON DOCUMENT L-3:
DAVID IRVING, NUREMBERG: THE LAST BATTLE: p. 100: …”[the letter] ‘L’ signified a document from London, like the now-famous forgery 003-L, the report on Hitler’s speech to his generals on August 22, 1939, which the anti-Nazi opposition had fed to Associated Press journalist Louis Lochner in Berlin.”
DAVID L. HOGGAN: THE FORCED WAR, p. 472: “One version of these conferences [August 22, 1939] was presented by Louis P. Lochner of the American Associated Press to British diplomats at Berlin as a valid record of the conferences, and it consciously or unconsciously influenced the thinking of British diplomats at the time. Otherwise, it would have been dismissed as too ridiculous to receive serious consideration. The crass propaganda in the material would have been immediately discarded had people been permitted to think normally about important issues. Unfortunately, a furious and uninterrupted war propaganda campaign had been carried on in the West for more than five months, and nearly everyone, regardless of his mental calibre, had been seriously affected.
“Why would anyone believe that Marshal Goering danced on the table and shrieked like a savage before a group of austere German generals? Why would Hitler blandly announce to his Generals that ‘Goering had demonstrated to us that his Four-Year Plan is a failure and that we are at the end of our strength, if we do not achieve victory in a coming war?’ This sounded more like a leaf from the book of President Roosevelt, who, unlike Hitler, was still facing a catastrophic depression. The statement would be sheer nonsense when applied to war with poverty-stricken Poland. Every informed person, including Lord Halifax, knew that Goering was the last person in Germany who would deliver arguments in favour of a general war at this time [footnote 50: J.W. Wheeler-Burnett, Nemesis of Power, New York, 1954, pp. 446-449, W.L. Langer and S.E. Gleason, The Challenge to Isolation, 1937-1940, New York, 1952, pp. 181-182].
“The memorandum stated that Hitler told his Generals he planned to kill the Polish women and children. This would have been proper material for an American ‘comic book’, and also for Hitler, if his purpose had been to goad his Generals into an immediate revolt against the German regime. The memorandum claimed that Germany could not hold out in a long war, but added in the same paragraph that ‘Poland will be depopulated and settled with Germans’. The memorandum also claimed that Stalin was very sick, and that Germany would dismember Russia after his death.
“Succinct and reliable references to the meeting of August 22, 1939 are available from the actual participants. The traditions of popular journalism cannot excuse people, from any country, who seek to precipitate war by spreading lies when feeling is running high [Footnote 51: British Foreign Policy, III, vol. 7, no. 314; for reliable records, see especially Raeder Diaries, Washington D.C., and the account by Admiral Boehm, Washington D.C.]
[In the German-language version of Hoggans’ work, DER ERZWUNGENE KRIEG, see p. 624.]
Final note by C. Porter: one of the many absurdities contained in this document is the claim that Ghenghis Khan founded a great state. Everybody knows this is not true. It occurs to me that the myth of the attack on the Gleiwitz radio station was, in fact, an attempt to shore up the credibility of this document (or perhaps the other way around). Hitler never made any authentic reference to the Gleiwitz incident as a cause of the war.
See also:
http://www.tetedeturc.com/Armenien/Phrase-de-Hitler_Etude-de-Lowry.htm
http://www.ataa.org/ataa/ref/arm_uscongress/arm_uscongress.html
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