Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

138 DER FUEHRERthe propagandist cannot make people believe even the simplest truths,much less a tissue of contradictions and lies!A word must now be said concerning our source for these speeches.They are taken from the old issues of the Volkischer Beobachter, AdolfHitler's own newspaper, edited by Alfred Rosenberg and DietrichEckart. The texts were examined and approved by Hitler. In 1923,Rosenberg and Eckart decided to publish the speeches in book form andentrusted Adolf Viktor von Korber, a member of the newspaper's staff,with the editorial task. Hitler told Korber certain events from his life,and Korber wrote a little biography as an introduction. At the end of1923, he published a small volume of some one hundred and fifty pages,containing selected speeches, and entitled Adolf Hitler, sein Leben undseine Reden (Adolf Hitler, His Life and Speeches). Subsequentlyseveral new editions of the book appeared; and it is sometimes strangeto note how the speeches changed in the course of the years.In the Volkischer Beobachter text, these speeches stand before us inall their freshness, just as they were delivered. In these very words theyresounded from the platform; in these very words the VolkischerBeobachter s reporter took them down and brought them to the printshopthat very night, charged with all the power, the hatred, the selfreliance,the factual and grammatical mistakes of an agitated hour. Thisis what makes them such reliable testimony. Days or weeks later, thespeaker re-reads his own words; he is uncertain and suspicious, as oftenwhen relaxed. Could I have said that? Perhaps Rosenberg or Korber isalarmed: the old boy has blundered again. It can't stay like this. We'llhave to change it or throw it out.Hitler has uttered a hasty word about America. The paper carries itjust as it slipped out: '... Those phrases about reconciliation were a lie. IfWilson hadn't been a swindler, he would not have become President ofAmerica. In our country we had one of these aposdes of reconciliation,Herr Scheidemann' — first premier of the German Republic. 'Today wefeel the results of their pacifist activity only too clearly, though bothprophets have vanished from their posts. In accordance withparliamentary custom, the peoples have