We do not wish to be mean. Many times there have been broken pledges in the past. But what happened in the years following 1918 was not one broken pledge; broken pledges were mass-produced. Not a single pledge has been fulfilled. Never before has a great nation been deceived as the German nation was then deceived. It had received so many assurances, this credulous nation had been promised so much, and what did they do to our nation? It was plundered, it was exploited. A foreign statesman, an American, was employed to make the German people even more credulous. Perhaps this was really the reason why the German people were duped by this manoeuvre. But in this respect, too, they are immune against any similar attempts. The German people had opportunities, year after year, to ponder the sincerity of democratic promises and assurances and the honesty of democratic statesmen, to make comparison and to test them against their own experiences. It was in this period that the National Socialist movement originated. If they now say: "But why did they pounce on a new ideology?" my answer is "Because the old one failed miserably." Not only in the interior-Heavens! democracy was a pitiful thing with us! When 40 or 50 odd parties compete with their gigantic philosophical interests, ranging from that of property down to the level of cyclists' clubs, estate owners and so on, that in itself is a very bad sight; but quite apart from that; if we only had been rewarded externally for this miserable internal democratic distortion of our lives, we could at least say: "Well that stuff has certainly failed at home, but at least you received decent treatment outside." At home the whole thing was, of course, nothing but a joke, but foreign countries took you seriously-or at least they pretended that they wanted to take you seriously. If they had kept some of their promises because you were willing to be good democrats on the pattern of others. Oh, if at least this had been the case! But who was it they blackmailed? Who was it they sweated? Was it the National Socialist State? It was the German democracy! When I came home in 1918 and lived through the winter of 1918 and 1919, I realized, like many other people, that we could not expect regeneration from the existing political world in Germany, and so I began to search-as did so many others-and this was how that conception originated which later conquered the German nation as National-Socialism. I started from the one insight: the German nation fell because it indulged in the luxury of spending its strength at home. This use of strength in the interior took away external strength according to an external law. The German nation had hoped to gain, in turn, the goodwill of others but it met only the naked egotism of the cruelest and meanest vested interests, which began to loot everything there was to loot. One should not have expected anything else. But now the die was cast. One thing seemed obvious to me: any rise could not originate from outside. First, the German nation had to learn to understand its own political struggle, which enabled it to rally Germany's entire strength above all its idealistic strength. And this idealistic strength was at the time only to be found in two camps; in the Socialist and in the Nationalist camps. But these were the camps between which there was the most mortal feud and strife. These two camps had to be fused into a new unit. Today, my countrymen, when millions and millions are marching under the symbol of this unity, this appears to be obvious. But in the years 1918 and 19l9, this seemed to be the product of a diseased imagination. At best, people pitied me. Perhaps, my countrymen, it was lucky that it was so. If people had taken me seriously at that time, they would probably have destroyed me, and the movement at that time was much too small to be able to survive such a destruction. But it was perhaps destiny willed by nature or by God, that they laughed at us, mocked us, and that a certain type of propaganda only ridiculed us and regarded us as a joke. Thus we succeeded, gradually, in forming the first germ, and the first nucleus of a new national community-an almost incredible historical phenomenon started by unknown people and willing followers among the masses of the people itself.