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892012518HEROS ago

Today we see in the enemy press events mentioned in a few vague lines that in normal times would plunge peoples and continents into the deepest distress. Several USA terror bombers were recently shot down during a bombing attack on a famed center of German culture. They landed with their parachutes. One was a drunken Negro who had just left a building in soot and ashes that belonged to the treasures of the civilized world. The prisoner did not even know which German city he had dropped his bombs and incendiaries on, much less what irreplaceable cultural monuments had fallen victim to his barbarism. 1944 is characterized most clearly by this event.

What does he know about the multitude of suffering that has fallen upon the earth, not least on the German people. If there is anything that can give us faith and firm confidence in this whirlwind of powerful events that takes the world’s breath away from week to week and month to month, it is this: the German people has demonstrated its mission and its historic task, and continues to demonstrate it at the end of this year. It has matured, enabled us to grow, in ways that as we reflect greatly astonish even us. The German people was the only steady factor in this terrible year. If we had not given meaning and form to the war through our steadfastness and unshakable determination for our sworn ideals, the war would long have become meaningless and humanity sooner or later would have sunk into the darkest barbarism and the most stupid primitiveness of prehistoric times.

This conviction gives us the strength to continue to resist and to overcome difficulties in our way to victory that often seem insurmountable, and will continue to arise until we have victory securely and firmly in our grasp. We are fulfilling our German German mission in this war, through which we will rise or fall.

We are at the end of an old age and the threshold of a new one. The contours of this new age are already visible to those with deep insight, but they must await new facts and events to reach fruition.

As a result, we can today only attempt to view the war from a broader view, to examine it in historic perspective, even though we are forming it and suffering through it. It has its historic meaning, like any historic event of this size and reach. We simply cannot understand the meaning our enemies give to it. We see in them only the proponents and defenders of an evil world philosophy that we must resist, and with all the strength we have if we do not want to lose our lives and, therefore, extinguish the light of humanity.

If the past year could not shake us, what is there that could possibly could! We still have the months of July, August, September, and October in sorrowful memory: the start of the enemy invasion in the West, major offensives and breakthroughs by the Soviets on the central front, a ceaseless hail of bombs by the enemy air forces, a contemptible attack on the Führer during the most critical period of the war, the Anglo-American breakthrough near Avrances, the collapse of Romania, Bulgaria, and Finland, the loss of the occupied Western territories, and the Soviet attack that brought them to the borders of East Prussia.

Our people stood fast during these wild storms like a rock in the ocean. Its enemies thought the road to Berlin was clear. In London and Washington, the odds were 10:1 that the war in Europe would be over by October. The USA economy was changing over to peace-time production and a Christmas armistice was to be celebrated with fireworks in London. In this tornado of misfortune that fell upon us, the German mythos rose miraculously.

What seemed incomprehensible to the enemy occurred: the German people and its leadership thought not of capitulation, but of the opposite. In a unique effort they again found firm footing. The idea triumphed over raw power. The light of the world flickered, but it did not go out. No crisis was strong enough to strike our life nerve. If ever the Reich proved in a critical hour that it is eternal and imperishable, not a dream or fantasy, but rather a hard and unchangeable fact, this was that hour.

The hardest months of the war have cost us some drops of sweat and blood, but they will doubtless go down in history as the most heroic accomplishment of the German people in this great battle of nations. It displayed what our enemies call the German miracle. We proved ourselves stronger than they, and even many of us, thought possible, so strong that our heroic people deserted by nearly all of its allies, alone and dependent only on itself, resisting a world of enemies. In a few weeks it not only stabilized its defensive fronts, but also began a strong offensive blow in the center of the flank of its Western enemy, which they had thought invulnerable. Our enemies were completely astonished. They cannot understand it. We, however, do understand it. It is no miracle, but rather the result of our faith, our fighting, and our labor.

Fate has given us nothing; to the contrary, it has made success as difficult as possible. We have scorned its obstinacy. In the truest sense of the word we have dug into our home earth with our fingernails, which is why it remains and will remain ours. We have not folded our hands in our laps and waited for a miracle, but rather we have made the German miracle a reality through our labor and through our bravery. That is the real great achievement of this war.

Throughout history military conflicts of such revolutionary character as to change the face of humanity, even to transform it, have been led by great men who direct their courses and their short and long term effects. They lead their peoples to previously unknown heroism and the greatest loyalty to themselves and their historic laws, driving them in the most critical hours to ever new heights. Each is a secular genius who is far ahead of his time, who in the loneliness of his calling acts according to the tasks Providence has given him. To see and understand the effects he has that transforms the world and humanity itself requires special grace.

One may look across the field of enemy politicians and generals in this battle of peoples that far exceeds anything we have known before without discovering a personality who can in any way be compared to the Führer. They are only manifestations of parliamentarian vote counters and gamesters or the most bloody back stabbers.

He, however, is the symbol and embodiment of his age. If Europe saves its life, it will only be through him.