The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

Himmler's October 4, 1943 Posen Speech
"Ditches"
IMT Translation, in English


For more information, see the Himmler's October 4th, 1943 Posen Speech Index.

From Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Vol. IV, 1946, p. 559. (The first paragraph below is also quoted in Vol. II; that entire volume is available online.)

One sentence in Nizkor's recording precedes the IMT's quotation.

One basic principal must be the absolute rule for the SS man: we must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and to nobody else. What happens to a Russian, to a Czech, does not interest me in the slightest. What the nations can offer in good blood of our type, we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture; otherwise, it is of no interest to me. Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interest me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished.

We shall never be rough and heartless when it is not necessary, that is clear. We Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these human animals.

But it is a crime against our own blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult time with them. When someone comes to me and says, "I cannot dig the anti-tank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it will kill them", then I would have to say, "you are a murderer of your own blood because if the anti-tank ditch is not dug, German soldiers will die, and they are the sons of German mothers. They are our own blood".

Several sentences in Nizkor's recording follow the IMT's quotation.


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