Chancellor Adolf Hitler

Before two million workers on 1 May 1933 the "National Labour Day".

My comrades of the German people!

May is here. That is what the German song says. For many centuries the first day of May has been not only the symbol of the return of spring to the land, it has also been the day of joy, gaiety and festivity. Then there came a time which took over this day and turned it from a day of blossoming life and hopeful joy into a day of conflict and internal warfare. A doctrine which had seized upon our people attempted to make of this day of awakening nature, of the visible return of spring, a day of hatred, of civil war, of strife and sorrow. Decades have gone by and this day seemed evermore destined to constitute a record of the inward strife and the disunity of our nation. At length, however, came a time, when we returned to our senses after endless misery had taken hold of our nation, a time of introspection, when the German people found each other once more.

And to-day we can sing once more the old German folk-song: "May is here, our people have awakened once more." The symbol of class-warfare, of perpetual strife and contention has become once more the symbol of the great unification and rebirth of the nation. Therefore we have chosen this day of reawakening nature to be for all time the day for the restoration of our own internal force and strength and at the same time of that creative work which knows no narrow boundaries and which is not tied to the Trade Unions, to the factories and offices, a work which we wish to recognize and support everywhere where it is being done with the intention of furthering the life of our nation.

The German nation has a time of cruel need behind it. Nor is this to be ascribed in any way to a lack of industriousness. No! Millions of our people are as busy as formerly, millions of peasants stride, as formerly, behind the plough, millions of workers stand by their work tables and by their clanging anvils. Millions of our people are indeed busy, and millions of others, who wish to be busy, cannot he. Tens of thousands are voluntarily putting an ,end to their own lives which seem for them to hold nothing but trouble and misery. They are exchanging this life for the other side from which they hope for something more and better. Frightful misery and misfortune have come upon us and brought with them despondency, aye and despair. And we ask ourselves, why?

It is a political calamity. The German nation is at war within itself, its whole strength is being used up in internal strife. No longer are we relying on the strength of our own wills, no longer is the same force there. Millions are looking to the world outside and hoping to obtain from there happiness and salvation. The nation is crumbling to pieces, and in this process of collapse all power and all vital energy are disappearing. The results of class warfare are to be seen all around us and we wish to learn a lesson from them, for we have recognized one thing as necessary for the return to health of our nation:

The German people must learn to know each other again.

The millions who have been split up into professions and kept apart by artificial class distinctions, who, foolishly clinging to profession and status, cannot understand each other any longer, must find once more the way to each other. An enormous and stupendous task—we know it. After seventy years of the preaching of this madness as a political idea, after the destruction of community feeling has been held as a political duty for seventy years, it is, of course, difficult to alter the opinions of people at a blow. Nevertheless we must not give way to despondency and despair. What has been built up by the hands of man, can also be destroyed by the hands of man; what human madness once invented, can be overcome by human wisdom.

We know that this process of finding one another again and getting to know one another cannot be a question of weeks or months, and not even of a few years. We are, however, absolutely determined to fulfil this mighty task which has been laid upon us; we have made up our minds to lead the people of Germany to one another and, if necessary, to compel them.

That is the meaning of the first of May, which day, from now on, shall be celebrated in Germany throughout the centuries, in order that on it all those who are taking part in our creative national work may come together and, once in the year, may give each other their hands, fully recognizing that nothing can be achieved if all are not ready to do their part in the great work. Therefore we have chosen as the motto of this day the following sentence:

Honour work and respect the worker!

It is hard to-day for millions to find the way to each other again over all the hatred and misunderstandings which, in the past, have been artificially cultivated. The recognition of one fact should make the following of this way easier. Every man, wherever and whatever his work, must always remember that his fellow-citizen, who is doing his duty in just the same way as he himself, is indispensable, and that the nation is not maintained by the work of a government, by a certain class, or by its intellectuals, but by the common and harmonious work of all. The millions of people who believe that the kind of work which is done by the individual carries with it any especial distinction are making a great mistake. There are tens of thousands among us whose respect for the individual depends upon the kind of work which he does. No! Not what he does, but how he does it must be the deciding factor. The fact that millions among us are working hard year out and year in, without ever being able to hope to achieve riches or even to be able to lead a life free from care, should show us that it is to them especially that we owe respect, for it is their idealism and their devotion alone which make possible the existence and the life of the community. It would be a bad day for us if this idealism in our nation should disappear and if the worth of a man were only to be measured by the material goods which he possessed. Our nation would not then be worth much, nor would it survive very long.

It is no use telling the labourer how valuable he is, nor proving to the peasant the necessity of his existence. It is no use going to the intellectual, to the brain worker, in order to tell him how important he is. What is necessary is to teach each class and profession the importance of the others. For this reason we wish to go to the cities and explain to them the nature and the necessity of the German peasantry, and to go into the country and to our intellectuals and tell them how important the German labourer is. We want to go to the labourer and to the peasant and teach them that without a German intellectual class there can be no German life, that they all form together one mighty body corporate: brain, spirit and fist; labourer, peasant and professional man.

This first of May is intended to bring to the realization of the German nation that diligence and labour alone do not create life, unless they are united to the strength and will of a people. Diligence and labour, strength and will, even if they work together, still need behind them the protection of the mighty fist of the nation, in order that real blessings may result.

And further, this day must bring a message to the nation: You are strong if you unite, if you tear from your hearts the spirit of class warfare and forget your quarrels. You have an enormous reserve of strength to put behind your work if you harness that work to the will to live of the entire nation.

We hope for a German national state which will be able to ensure once more to our people their daily bread, and we know that the united strength of the nation is necessary to achieve this. If Marxism scoffs that we shall never succeed, we shall give it the proof that we will succeed. My friends! Nothing in this world that is worth having is given gratis. Everything must be striven for; even the rebirth of a nation will not take place of its own accord; it too must be striven for from within. We must not complain; we know that we shall attain to this rebirth by our own exertions and that we shall win the freedom of our nation. Then it will be proved to how great an extent Marxism has been nothing but theory and, as such, attractive and seductive but unable, in reality, to bring happiness or prosperity to a nation.

This first of May must be the proof that we do not wish to destroy anything, but are concerned only with reconstruction. One cannot choose the loveliest spring day in the year as a symbol of strife, but only as one of constructive work. This day shall not stand for disintegration and collapse, but only for national unity and thus for rebirth. It is not chance that our opponents,, who have wished for the last seventy years to celebrate this day, and who have been in power in Germany for the last fourteen years, have nevertheless not succeeded in gripping the German nation on this day as we have done the very first time. The nation feels subconsciously that that Marxism celebration was contrary to the spirit of spring time. The people did not wish for hatred and strife; they wanted a new life. And to-day they feel that the first of May has been given once more its real inner meaning. That is the reason why millions in all Germany are joyfully flocking together to bear witness to their will to take part in this rebuilding of the nation. We who to-day -are celebrating this festival wish to hold before our eyes the aim which must be ours in the time which lies before us:

We will fight undeterred that the power, which the new idea, the new political faith in Germany, has attained for itself, shall never vanish but, on the contrary, shall become stronger and stronger.

We will fight to preserve the new idea victoriously in the whole of Germany and gradually to draw the entire German nation into the might of its ban. Bravely and with determination will we defend this flag of the resurgence of our nation against all who think that they can tear it down. We wish to reawake in our nation both self-consciousness and self-confidence, and to see to it that they increase from day to day. We know the time which lies behind us and the people who represented that time. They have intentionally inoculated our people with the idea that it was inferior throughout, incapable of great deeds and not worthy of the rights which belong to all others. Inferiority complexes were artificially cultivated, because they corresponded to the inferiority of those parties who led the nation astray during so many years. We want to free the nation from this ban, to fill them with the conviction:

Germans! You are not second-rate, even if the world wishes to have it so a thousand times. You are not second-class and inferior. Awake to a realization of your own importance. Remember your past and the achievements of your fathers, yes, and those of your own generation. Forget the fourteen years of decay, and think of the two thousand years of German history.

Fellow-citizens in all Germany! I have spoken thus from the very first day in order to arouse in you a feeling of inner unity and thus to give you this conviction:

Germans! You are a strong nation if you yourselves wish to be strong.

These millions who are demonstrating in Germany today will go home with the feeling of a newly won inner strength and unity. I know it, my comrades; your step will be firmer to-morrow than it was yesterday. For we all know that the nation can perhaps be violated and bound in chains, but never again can we be humiliated and made to bow our heads. We wish also, however, to strengthen today not only your trust in yourselves, but also your trust in your government, which feels itself bound up with you and is a piece of you, which belongs to you, which fights for your life, and which has no other aim than to make you free and happy once more.

And finally, this unity will be documented for the future to-day through an act. When we for the first time gave to the public

the idea of compulsory labour-service,

the representatives of the dying Marxian world raised a howl of protest and declared: "That is a new attack on the proletariat, an attack on labour, an attack on the life of the working man." Why did they do that? They knew quite well that it could never be an attack on labour and, above all, not an attack on the working man, but rather an attack on the loathsome prejudice that manual labour is something inferior. It is our intention to root out this prejudice as far as Germany is concerned. We wish, at a time when millions of us are living without understanding of the importance of manual labour, to teach the German nation once more, through the institution of labour service, that manual labour does not degrade or dishonour but rather does honour to everyone who performs it faithfully and conscientiously, as does any other work.

It is our firm determination that every German, be he who he may, rich or poor, son of a professional man or of a factory worker, shall once in his life be a manual labourer, in order that he may learn what manual labour is and that he may be able more easily to command because he himself has learned to obey. We are not going to be contented with doing away with Marxism superficially; we are determined to remove the conditions necessary for its existence. We want to spare the generations that come after us this intellectual chaos.

Brain worker and labourer must never again stand in opposition to one another. That is the reason why we are rooting out that silly pride which so easily takes possession of the individual and makes him look down upon his comrades who "only" stand at the carpenter's bench or by the machine or walk behind the plough. But not only must every German become acquainted with this kind of work, the labourer must also realize that brain-work is necessary too. He also must learn that no one has the right to look down on others and to think himself better, but that everybody must be ready to form part of the great community.

This year we shall, for the first time, put into practice this great ethical idea which is bound up with labour service, and we know that after forty years the words "manual labour" will have undergone the same change of meaning as did once the expression "landsknecht" in the place of which the name "German soldier" came into use.

Another great task which must be accomplished this year is the freeing of creative initiative from the disastrous influence of majority rule, not only in the parliament but also in our economic life. We know that our economic life cannot experience a revival unless a synthesis can be found between the freedom of the creative genius and his obligation towards the community. It will therefore also be our task to give to contracts the meaning which they ought to have. Man does not live for contracts, but the contracts are there to make possible the life of man. And finally, we shall endeavour to take this year the first step on the way to an

organic economic development,

working on the fundamental principle that there can be no recovery which does not begin at the root of national and economic life, the peasant. From him the way leads to the labourer and then to the intellectual.

We shall therefore begin with the farmer and put him first of all on a sound basis. We are convinced that this is the first step necessary for the restoration of our entire economic life. For the last fourteen years the opposite method has been taken. We have seen the results. Neither the city dweller nor the labourer nor the middle-classes were helped—they were all brought to the brink of destruction.

Our next task is the removal of unemployment, the providing of work. This providing of work is divided into two main groups. First the private providing of work. Under this heading we are going to undertake a great work this year, a work which will bring the buildings and houses in Germany in order and thus give employment to hundreds of thousands. We wish to make at this moment and in this place our first appeal to the entire German nation. Do not think that the problem of providing work will solve itself. You must help to solve it. You must wisely and trustfully do everything you can to provide work. Everyone has the duty not to hesitate to buy what he needs and not to wait to have done for himself what eventually must be done. Every contractor, every houseowner, every business-man and every private individual must think of the German worker. If the world is spreading untrue stories about us, if German work is being cried down, then it is up to the German to look after himself in this respect. This is an appeal which, directed to millions of individuals, is most likely to give work to millions. Further, it is our intention to start in a large way the public providing of work this year. We have made a programme which we do not wish to leave to our successors, the programme of road-building, a gigantic task, which will demand millions. We will put aside all opposition and set about our task on a large scale. With this we shall begin a series of public works which will help to lower the number of unemployed more and more.

We wish to work and we shall work. But it must not be forgotten that everything depends in the end on the German people themselves. It depends on you, on the trust which you put in us, on the strength with which you support the national state. Only when you all become one in the determination to save Germany can the individual in Germany be saved.

We know that we still have tremendous difficulties to overcome. We know too that all human work must in the end be in vain if it does not have the blessing of Providence. But we are not of those who leave everything to Providence. Nothing will be given to us for nothing. Just as the road which we have trod in the last fourteen years up to the present day was a road of eternal strife, a road which often led us to the point of despair, so will the road to a better future also be a hard one. The world is persecuting us, it is turning against us, it will not recognise our right to live, nor our right to protect our homeland.

My German comrades! If the world is so against us we must all the more unite ourselves together, we must all the more firmly proclaim: "You can do what you like but you will never make us bow our heads, you will never compel us to recognise a yoke. You will never compel our nation to give up its claim to equal rights." The German people have come to themselves. They will not endure people among them any more who are not for Germany. We are determined honourably to earn a recovery for our nation by our industriousness, our perseverance and our unshakeable determination. We do not pray to God: "Lord, make us free." We shall work, behave as brothers one to another and strive together until the day comes when we can stand before the Lord and say that we have become different, that the German nation is no more a nation without honour, a nation covered with shame, a nation at war within itself, a nation of little faith. That the German nation is strong again in its own will, strong in perseverance and strong to make every sacrifice. We will not let Him go until He bless our fight for our freedom and bless our German people and fatherland.