National Socialist Germany

Right at the beginning of Hitler’s final speech of the movie, he makes clear what are and were from the earliest beginning of the party the basic aims of the Nationalist Socialists: for one thing that they wanted to be a party with a true ideology and for another thing that they wanted to be the one and only power in Germany. To achieve these aims Hitler says that on the one hand struggle is essential, but on the other hand also sacrifices. In his opinion all upright Germans have to be Nationalist Socialists and therewith already implies that all people who oppose the Nationalist Socialist party are no real Germans. Talking about sacrifices in that context already gives the idea that he is willing to do everything to clean the German people of all “Anti” -Germans.

His speech also contains a lot of military elements. He starts his speech with saying that this is also a meeting of the old comrades, probably referring to some military leaders from the First World War that were present. In the German original he even uses two words for describing comrades, first Streiter, which basically means something like fighter and Kampfgenosse, which means comrades in battle. By using two words that basically mean the same thing he emphasizes the military background of the meeting. Later he even speaks of educating the people by two institutions: first of all by the party leaders and their traditions, which often had a military background and secondly by the army. Thus it is obvious that he wants to build an army, though he officially was not allowed to do so. Later he even refers to an army word-for-word talking about the SA, naming them our wonderful & glorious army and carriers of arms. Thus he speaks not of a army of workers but of a real military army, which obviously is needed to go war.

He wants every active fighter to swear: “I will fight”, and expects from the rest of the population to believe in the ideas of Nationalist Socialist Party. He even uses a biblical allegory by comparing the party to a holy order. The Party is in a way a kind of religion everyone has to attend to and Hitler identifies this “religion” with Germany. By saying “Long lives the National Socialist movement! Long live Germany!” his goal of building up a purely National Socialist state becomes clear again.