Introduction by Field Marshal von Brauchitsch:
Offiziersanwarter!
It is a great joy for all of us, a profound happiness, to be able to greet among us on this day the Fuhrer and Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht. He is and shall remain for us at all time the first soldier; the man whose experiences as an infantryman led him onward to greatness in leadership; the soldier who restored to Germany the belief in itself and built up the Wehrmacht to the proud greatness of today.
The Fuhrer led our Volk to freedom, to strength, and to greatness; his words are listened to carefully not only in Germany, not only in Europe, but throughout the world. On your behalf, my Cadets, I greet our Fuhrer, the Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht. He will speak to you now. I know that your hearts will beat faster and that every one of his words will have a special meaning for you.
The Fuhrer speaks:
My Young Comrades!
Behind many of you already lie arduous battles. All will have to fight such battles in the future. Those of you who have already emerged from battle know well the strenuous psychological consequences of these hours. At such moments, all phrases, all theories, die. All that remains is the harsh realization: Defend yourself! Beat or be beaten! Kill or be killed! We can emerge victorious from this arduous battle, if only we realize its unchangeable, necessary, and inevitable nature. The individual cannot shrink from it, it is the fate of the entire Volk. Hence, at this hour, I would like to speak to you on the inevitability not only of this [battle], but of struggle as such: of the struggle which takes the life of the individual to give life to the community.
War and politics have always existed interdependently. I need only mention here two historic persons who were not only close to each other in age, but also in ideology. Clausewitz: "War is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse with the admixture of different means." Clemenceau: "For us, peace is the continuation of war." Beyond this, we can say that politics is history in the making, while history can grant us no more than a glimpse at the course of events in the struggle for life of a people. Now, the reason why this struggle of peoples with one another is necessary in the first place has two elements: Providence or nature has placed man on this earth. Man begins to multiply on this earth. This does not take place in a vacuum: his struggle begins as he encounters the other beings who populated this earth before him and who live there besides him. To the degree to which men now begin to associate with one another, to form families, and finally tribes, to this degree the struggle of men amongst themselves begins. For as they begin to occupy a part of this Lebensraum, the fact remains that while the Volk's numbers are variable, the Lebensraum to be occupied remains a given. It will remain the same unless man somehow succeeds in expanding it.
In other words: life naturally makes a Volk multiply, provided it is healthy, while it is not as natural that the necessary Lebensraum also will expand or be enlarged. Sooner or later, there will be a discrepancy between the increase in the Volk's numbers and the available Lebensraum. There are only two ways to overcome this discrepancy. Either the Volk's numbers are adjusted to the available Lebensraum-by repressing or reducing it somehow, depending on the circumstances-or the Lebensraum is adjusted to accommodate the increase in the Volk. This first path has been chosen in the past. Nature by itself advocates this path. Through hunger, it decimates a people whose Lebensraum no longer affords it the means necessary to its existence. At this point, man himself begins to undertake this decimation-i.e. by adjusting his numbers to the available area.
Either alone or in groups, he leaves it, insofar as it is possible for him to emigrate. The biological consequences are grave: this takes the most active elements away from a people. The alternative is man restricting his natural fertility-i.e. he adopts a two or one child system. Again, the biological consequences are grave: this undermines the process of natural selection, the breeding of the fittest.
Germany has already followed both paths; it has tried both alternatives.