hitler's speech

75 Years Ago: Hitler’s Phony Plea for Peace

O n Oct. 6, 1939, Adolf Hitler returned from touring the trampled city of Warsaw to address the Reichstag. He was ready to do something surprising: ask the world for peace.

Except that his peace speech — delivered 75 years ago on Monday — was far from peaceful. As TIME noted in its coverage of the event, Hitler spent about 60 of the 80 minutes speaking about other things. And, when he finally moved on to the subject, the oratory was, unsurprisingly, full of untruths.

Here’s what TIME reported in the Oct. 16 issue:

The Polish victory came first on Speaker Hitler’s list, accompanied by three bare-faced lies. Lie No. 1: “A state of no less than 36,000,000 inhabitants took up arms against us. Their arms were far-reaching, and their confidence in their ability to crush Germany knew no bounds.” Lie No. 2: In spite of the “violations and insults which Germany and her armed forces had to put up with from these military dilettantes,” the First Soldier of the Reich claimed that he “endeavored to restrict aerial warfare to objectives of so-called military importance, or only to employ it to combat active resistance at a given point.” (For photographs and an accompanying eyewitness account of German restricted aerial warfare see p. 45.) Lie No. 3: All objective reports of the last days of besieged Warsaw agree that the Germans refused point-blank to allow the garrison to evacuate non-combatants from the city. Herr Hitler’s variorum: “Sheer sympathy for women and children caused me to make an offer to those in command of Warsaw at least to let civilian inhabitants leave the city. . . . The proud Polish commander of the city did not even condescend to reply.” The German victory, though it had to be won at times over odds of 6-to-1, was not only sweet but cheap in casualties, said the Führer (see p. 44). And now “German soldiers have once more firmly established the right to wear the laurel wreath of which they were meanly deprived in 1918.”

If TIME readers flipped to page 45, as suggested by the parenthetical about “restricted aerial warfare,” they would find a tale of the slaughter of Polish civilians.

The speech continued, this magazine reported, with a discussion of good relations with Britain and France, and Hitler’s hope that the nations of Europe could settle on a peace — but only a peace in which German demands would be met.

And, despite the ostensibly peaceful nature of the speech, Hitler couldn’t resist ending on an ultimatum: “If, however, the opinions of Messrs. Churchill and his followers should prevail,” TIME reported him saying, “this statement will have been my last.”

Read the full report on Hitler’s Oct. 6, 1939, speech here, in TIME ‘s archives: The Last Statement

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Write to Lily Rothman at [email protected]

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The exterminationist mindset: heinrich himmler’s october 1943 speeches.

In October 1943, SS leader Heinrich Himmler gave two speeches, showing the full depravity of the exterminationist mindset.

Top Photo: Heinrich Himmler lectures to a group of SS officers (the image is taken from an album of SS photographs). Date (sometime between 1936 and 1944) and location unknown. Credit: T he United States Holocaust Memorial Museum , Gift of Estelle Bechoefer.

Oratory and war have been inextricably linked at least since Pericles’s famed funeral oration. World War II was no exception to this tradition. In the United States and the United Kingdom, quotations from the speeches of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill continually reappear in the public spheres of the two countries and still inspire with their calls to defend democracy and freedom against fascism.

It is undeniable that there also existed powerful oratorical currents in the Axis states. Fascist movements often created massive spectacles to showcase the spoken word and to elevate their leaders to demigod status. Most notably, in Nazi Germany, the venomous speeches streaming from the mouths of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, with their ultranationalism, racism, and militarism, galvanized followers, imbued with what German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno later called “the authoritarian personality.”

Alongside these public incitements was a torrent of clandestine utterances. Some like Hitler’s speech to the Gauleiter (Nazi Party district leaders) in Berlin on December 12, 1941, after his declaration of war on the United States or his table conversations have become a key part of the historical record of the Third Reich. Reichsführer - SS Heinrich Himmler, typically not regarded as a charismatic speaker, delivered, nonetheless, one of the most significant speeches made in this vein by a Nazi during World War II. On October 4, 1943, Himmler addressed a gathering of SS-Gruppenführer , high-ranking officials of that elite National Socialist organization, at a hotel in the city of Posen (since 1945 Poznań, Poland). There he revealed and confirmed in some horrifying detail the genocide of European Jews .

The city of Posen had a long and fractious history having been one of the sites of contestation between Prussia and Poland before Prussia annexed it in 1793, following the second partition of Poland. Absorbed into the larger German Empire in 1871, it remained German until 1918, when it became part of the Second Polish Republic. Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 brought Posen back under German control—the city became the capital of a newly created administrative area called the Warthegau . Is it really surprising that Himmler chose Posen, long in a border region fought over for centuries and subject since 1939 to the brutal policies of Gauleiter Arthur Greiser, to communicate with his fanatically depraved cronies about the Nazi dictatorship’s secret and systematic extermination of an entire people?

Slavs and Racial Subjugation

Before dealing with the content of Himmler’s October 4 speech, it is important to flesh out some essential aspects of its context. An uprising had taken place in the Treblinka extermination camp on August 2, 1943, when some 60 to 100 Jews escaped that site of mass murder. A month before the speech, Himmler, recoiling from the retreat of German forces in Ukraine, ordered that the Red Army “must truly find a totally burned and destroyed landscape” as it moved to reclaim Ukrainian territory. [i] He and the Third Reich’s leadership sensed that the war had entered a new phase of waning German fortunes. Yet, as his comments to his beloved SS men indicate, Himmler evinced no sign of pulling back from the policies of mass subjugation and annihilation so tied already to his name.

According to Peter Longerich, Himmler spoke for several hours. [ii] The transcript of the speech, Steve Hochstadt claims, stretches to 116 pages in length. For my purposes here, the excerpts of the speech available in a volume of source materials on the Holocaust edited by Hochstadt will suffice. [iii]

Chilling in every sentence, Himmler’s October 1943 speech drags the reader into the rancid depths of the exterminationist mindset. His comments remind us that there was a core of the Nazi leadership who absorbed the murderous elements of Hitler’s antisemitism, transmitted them downward to eager disciples, and operationalized them, starting in 1941–42.

Reichsfuehrer -SS Heinrich Himmler poses outside among other SS officers. Photo: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum , courtesy of James Blevins  

“A basic rule for the SS man must hold absolutely: honest, decent, loyal, and comradely must we be to members of our own blood and to nobody else,” Himmler stressed. With an eye to the war against Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union, he rummaged through an array of coarse stereotypes about Russians. They might exhibit piety, were capable of hard work, and were proficient with technology. At the same time, Himmler proclaimed how endemic laziness, mendaciousness, and brutality were in Russia. He not only resorted to stereotypes—his speech also certified the validity of racial stereotyping as the basis of action for the SS.

Russians, Czechs, and other Slavs, Himmler resumed, possessed no inherent value as human beings. For the SS, these “human animals” were only valuable insofar as they labored under the lordship of the superior Aryan Germans: “If while building a tank ditch, 10,000 Russian women die from weakness or not, that interests me only insofar as the tank ditch is built for Germany.” He did not flinch from stating, “whatever good blood of our kind exists in these people, we should take by stealing the children, if necessary, and raising them ourselves.” Himmler’s personnel were engaged in heinous acts of stealing children in Poland in the hopes of salvaging the “good blood” for the Nazi racial community. The language of subhumanity wielded to depict Slavs here cannot be detached from the knowledge that millions had already perished in Eastern Europe prior to Himmler’s visit to Posen. And roughly 15 million Soviet citizens in total would die during the Second World War.

“A Very Difficult Topic”

In his remarks, Himmler transitioned to what he warned his audience was a “very difficult topic.” “Among ourselves,” he made clear, “it should be expressed once very candidly, even though we will never speak publicly about it.” The statements intimated that those in attendance were now privy to some candor they were not accustomed to usually.

What is astonishing here is how quickly Himmler moved in and out of official Nazi jargon to speak bluntly about genocide (a word, it should be remembered, that is not coined by Raphael Lemkin until the year after Himmler’s speeches). “I mean now the Jewish evacuation ( Evakuierung )”—the term “evacuation” had been openly utilized by the terror apparatus to refer, euphemistically, to the deportation of Jews to camps in Eastern Europe, supposedly to undertake labor for the Reich. But within an instant, Himmler, casting aside the approved language that he helped craft and approved, just said it: “the extermination ( Ausrottung ) of the Jewish people.” This had been an order, like the Night of the Long Knives of June 1934, which asked the utmost of the SS man’s sense of duty.

The line of perverse reasoning Himmler unfolded in this speech undercut any notion, though, that the “extermination of the Jewish people” was solely about duty and following difficult orders. Not sparing his listeners any gruesome details, Himmler dwelled on the mass murder of Jews conducted over the previous two years. Without showing a shred of sympathy for the murdered, he sympathized with the challenges the SS had faced carrying out this “very difficult” mission: “Most of you know what it means when 100 corpses lie together, when 500 lie there or when 1,000 lie there.” He accented the sacrifice and selflessness of those under his command (and complained bitterly about how everyday Germans would each identify a Jew who was not like other Jews). “This is a never written and never to be written page of glory in our history,” he maintained. The elite SS would never receive the credit from the German nation for executing this most onerous of tasks—physically eliminating all individuals of Jewish descent perceived as the Aryan race’s ultimate nemesis. They had implemented what they were told to do and “still remained decent, that has made us hard.” If Jews, whom he compared to germs, had been permitted to live, they would now act as partisans, sabotaging Germany’s war effort. As guardians of this new racist order, built on millions of corpses, Himmler before his men could laud the SS for having fulfilled “this hardest task out of love to our people.” The monstrosity, the obscenity, the insidiousness of these sentences, among the vilest ever uttered, test the limits of comprehensibility.

Concluding his speech with a slavish paean to Hitler, “who created the Germanic Reich and who will lead us into the Germanic future,” Himmler wrapped up the meeting. He was far from done, however, in highlighting and justifying the annihilation of Europe’s Jews.

Two days later, on October 6 at Posen City Hall, Himmler addressed an assemblage of Gauleiter . He seized the opportunity to revisit the subject of the mass murder of Jews. Trying to make the issue one of his own inner struggles, he asserted that “the Jewish question” had been “the most difficult question I’ve had to face in my life.” Demonstrating the same lack of restraint from October 4, he talked about—and defended—the slaughter of Jewish children and women. Mercy could not be granted.

“For I did not consider myself justified in exterminating the men—in other words, killing them or having them killed—and then allowing their children to grow up to wreak vengeance on our children and grandchildren. The difficult decision had to be taken to make these people disappear from the face of the earth. For the organization that had to carry out this duty it was the most difficult that we have ever had to undertake.” [iv]

Demands for understanding for what he and his men had gone through Himmler coupled with a logic of absolute exclusion and enmity for Jews. They had to all be wiped out without pity. These two speeches bespeak the full depravity of the Nazi exterminationist mindset. Roughly a week after them, an uprising by Jews incarcerated in the Sobibór death camp  liberated almost 60 people. Swiftly, Himmler responded with more barbarity. Tens of thousands of Jews in Poland were executed as part of Operation Harvest Festival and, to cover massive crimes against humanity already perpetrated, the Operation Reinhard camps  were dismantled.

Mass extermination did not remotely slow down as the war turned against Hitler and Himmler. In fact, just the opposite occurred. Himmler’s accounts of why this was necessary and moral in his demented ethical universe, exemplified in his October 1943 speeches in Posen, cannot be studied enough.

References:

[i] “Order by Himmler to Destroy Ukraine, 7 September 1943,” in Sources of the Holocaust , ed. Steve Hochstadt (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 161. 

[ii] Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler , trans. Jeremy Noakes and Lesley Sharpe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 689.

[iii] “Speech by Himmler to SS-Gruppenführer in Posen, 4 October 1943,” in Sources of the Holocaust , 163-165. All quotations, unless otherwise noted, are to these excerpts from Himmler’s October 4, 1943 speech.

[iv] Both quotations from Himmler’s October 6 speech are taken from Longerich, Heinrich Himmler , 690.

Jason Dawsey, PhD

Jason Dawsey, PhD, is a Research Historian at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy.

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Nazi supporters parade at a campaign rally in Waldenburg, Germany. In a speech, Hitler attacks the Weimar Republic and pledges to dissolve the parliamentary system soon after he gains power.

[Band music and cheering; singing of the Horst Wessel song] Adolf Hitler: For fourteen long years these parties have raped German freedom, beaten German men with clubs. Before two or three months pass this terror will be removed if you vote for National Socialists."

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Extract from the Speech by Adolf Hitler, January 30, 1939

...In connection with the Jewish question I have this to say: it is a shameful spectacle to see how the whole democratic world is oozing sympathy for the poor tormented Jewish people, but remains hard-hearted and obdurate when it comes to helping them which is surely, in view of its attitude, an obvious duty. The arguments that are brought up as an excuse for not helping them actually speak for us Germans and Italians.

For this is what they say:

1. "We," that is the democracies, "are not in a position to take in the Jews." Yet in these empires there are not 10 people to the square kilometer. While Germany, with her 135 inhabitants to the square kilometer, is supposed to have room for them!

2. They assure us: We cannot take them unless Germany is prepared to allow them a certain amount of capital to bring with them as immigrants.

For hundreds of years Germany was good enough to receive these elements, although they possessed nothing except infectious political and physical diseases. What they possess today, they have by a very large extent gained at the cost of the less astute German nation by the most reprehensible manipulations.

Today we are merely paying this people what it deserves. When the German nation was, thanks to the inflation instigated and carried through by Jews, deprived of the entire savings which it had accumulated in years of honest work, when the rest of the world took away the German nation's foreign investments, when we were divested of the whole of our colonial possessions, these philanthropic considerations evidently carried little noticeable weight with democratic statesmen.

Today I can only assure these gentlemen that, thanks to the brutal education with which the democracies favored us for fifteen years, we are completely hardened to all attacks of sentiment. After more than eight hundred thousand children of the nation had died of hunger and undernourishment at the close of the War, we witnessed almost one million head of milking cows being driven away from us in accordance with the cruel paragraphs of a dictate which the humane democratic apostles of the world forced upon us as a peace treaty. We witnessed over one million German prisoners of war being retained in confinement for no reason at all for a whole year after the War was ended. We witnessed over one and a half million Germans being torn away from all that they possessed in the territories lying on our frontiers, and being whipped out with practically only what they wore on their backs. We had to endure having millions of our fellow countrymen torn from us without their consent, and without their being afforded the slightest possibility of existence. I could supplement these examples with dozens of the most cruel kind. For this reason we ask to be spared all sentimental talk. The German nation does not wish its interests to be determined and controlled by any foreign nation. France to the French, England to the English, America to the Americans, and Germany to the Germans. We are resolved to prevent the settlement in our country of a strange people which was capable of snatching for itself all the leading positions in the land, and to oust it. For it is our will to educate our own nation for these leading positions. We have hundreds of thousands of very intelligent children of peasants and of the working classes. We shall have them educated -  in fact we have already begun and we wish that one day they, and not the representatives of an alien race, may hold the leading positions in the State together with our educated classes. Above all, German culture, as its name alone shows, is German and not Jewish, and therefore its management and care will be entrusted to members of our own nation. If the rest of the world cries out with a hypocritical mien against this barbaric expulsion from Germany of such an irreplaceable and culturally eminently valuable element, we can only be astonished at the conclusions they draw from this situation. For how thankful they must be that we are releasing these precious apostles of culture, and placing them at the disposal of the rest of the world. In accordance with their own declarations they cannot find a single reason to excuse themselves for refusing to receive this most valuable race in their own countries. Nor can I see a reason why the members of this race should be imposed upon the German nation, while in the States, which are so enthusiastic about these "splendid people," their settlement should suddenly be refused with every imaginable excuse. I think that the sooner this problem is solved the better; for Europe cannot settle down until the Jewish question is cleared up. It may very well be possible that sooner or later an agreement on this problem may be reached in Europe, even between those nations which otherwise do not so easily come together.

The world has sufficient space for settlements, but we must once and for all get rid of the opinion that the Jewish race was only created by God for the purpose of being in a certain percentage a parasite living on the body and the productive work of other nations. The Jewish race will have to adapt itself to sound constructive activity as other nations do, or sooner or later it will succumb to a crisis of an inconceivable magnitude.

One thing I should like to say on this day which may be memorable for others as well as for us Germans: In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet, and have usually been ridiculed for it. During the time of my struggle for power it was in the first instance the Jewish race which only received my prophecies with laughter when I said that I would one day take over the leadership of the State, and with it that of the whole nation, and that I would then among many other things settle the Jewish problem. Their laughter was uproarious, but I think that for some time now they have been laughing on the other side of their face. Today I will once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!

...The nations are no longer willing to die on the battlefield so that this unstable international race may profiteer from a war or satisfy its Old Testament vengeance. The Jewish watchword "Workers of the world unite" will be conquered by a higher realization, namely "Workers of all classes and of all nations, recognize your common enemy!"

N.H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler , I, London, 1942, pp. 737-741.

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The ‘perfect storm’ turning teenagers into terrorists

As figures reveal 2023 set a new record for under-18s being arrested for terror offences, we explore the factors behind this worrying trend

Joe Metcalfe was 15 when he resolved to launch a terror attack in the UK. Shut in his bedroom in his family home, drinking vodka and smoking cannabis, he had become embroiled in the online world of neo-Nazis working to trigger an international race war.

The acne-afflicted teenager was referred to the Prevent counter-terrorism programme by his school in 2021 after teachers became concerned about his extreme views and behaviour. But instead of moving away from violence, he tried to manipulate an ideological mentor into believing he was changing his views while secretly plotting a horrific attack .

He is part of a growing phenomenon of teenage terror offenders in Britain, with 2023 seeing a new record of 42 under-18s arrested for crimes including sharing terrorist propaganda and encouraging attacks.

In the most recent case, a 16-year-old from Cowes on the Isle of Wight was jailed for seven years this week. Like Metcalfe, that teenager – who cannot be named for legal reasons – was 15 at the time of the offences and had been radicalised online, but he became obsessed with jihadists instead of neo-Nazis.

The boy, from a secular white British family, converted to Islam in late 2021 was described by a judge as an “isolated and troubled young man who looked for the fellowship and comfort of a religious faith”. Instead, he ended up following a “warped and corrupted form” of Islam after inept searches for information on social media led him to extremist groups. One of his tutors noticed a photograph of Osama bin Laden was the background picture on his phone.

The teenager initially researched the Isle of Wight music festival as a potential target, before planning to murder people he believed had insulted his new religion, while spreading graphic Isis propaganda celebrating beheadings and international terror attacks.

“Even if I do get caught, I’m 15 – they will just tell me off and put me on some prevention course, trust me,” he bragged online after an Instagram user warned against sharing the gory videos.

Kingston Crown Court heard that the boy had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder when he was five, and later had his childhood “shattered” by the death of his father. He told a psychiatrist, who assessed that he had impaired social skills and difficulty expressing himself, that he had no friends and had a “bad time at school”.

The number of teenage terror offenders has jumped by a third year-on-year, and means that one in five terror suspects arrested in the UK is now legally considered a child – a figure counter-terror police have called “truly shocking”.

While a child has not yet successfully launched a terror attack in the UK, fears about the real-world threat they could pose were realised in Australia on Monday.

A teenage boy is accused of stabbing a bishop and a priest during an alleged terror attack at a Sydney church, with police saying his comments suggested a religious motive. A third of the children convicted of terror offences in Britain since 2016 were “preparing acts of terrorism”, either by attempting to join Isis abroad or planning attacks on home soil. 

Dr Gina Vale, a University of Southampton criminologist who co-authored a report on Britain’s teenage terrorists in November, says the startling combination of social isolation, neurodivergence and “adverse childhood experiences” are not an exception but the rule among under-18s found guilty of terror offences.

“Teenagers are forming their identity, and uncertainty about belonging and disillusionment is common,” she says.

“When they are gaining access to extremist materials that are far too easy to access online, grievances and frustrations can then develop into ideological causes, which is the problem.”

Another common factor among teenage terror offenders is gender – of the more than 40 under-18s convicted of terror offences since 2016, only one was a girl.

Safaa Boular, then 17, planned a UK terror attack in 2017 alongside her sister and mother, in Britain’s first all-female terror cell. She had been romanced by a male Isis fighter, who was directing her actions online before he was killed in a US drone strike.

Several male offenders have been misogynists obsessed with sexual violence, and some young neo-Nazi terrorists have also been prosecuted for child sex offences. 

Metcalfe’s targets were two mosques in Keighley, near Bradford, where he planned to massacre worshipping Muslims while disguised as a police officer – with the plan only stopped after he crashed a stolen car during a reconnaissance mission.

But, while being prosecuted for his terror plot, he was also convicted of raping and abusing his 15-year-old girlfriend. He enjoyed “manipulating her into saying and communicating racist things and making Nazi salutes”, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb told his sentencing hearing.

Metcalfe’s parents were in an abusive relationship and his mother moved out during the period he was committing the terror offences. The judge said his father “will provide little effective guidance at the moment”. 

Vale and her colleagues are charting all child terror prosecutions in Britain through the Child Innocence Project, with the startling data showing distinct waves of activity.

Between 2016 and 2018, all convicted terror offenders under the age of 18 were inspired by Isis or al-Qaeda, but they were then overtaken by a wave of neo-Nazis inspired by National Action, a far-Right group now proscribed as a terror body, and its spin-off organisations.

Children driven by extreme Right-wing ideologies formed the majority of cases until 2022, when young jihadists inspired by Isis started to make a regular reappearance in the courts.

“We’re now seeing a more sustained terrorist or extremist activism from under-18s from across the ideological spectrum,” Vale says. “We have a new generation that is engaging with extremism in a new phase.”

The dangers facing children were exacerbated during the Covid pandemic, when counter-terror police quickly warned of a “perfect storm” of people spending “more time isolated and online, and with fewer of the protective factors that schooling, friends and family can provide”, while extremist groups of all kinds were using the pandemic to further hateful narratives.

Officers are concerned about the rising number of children in their caseload, and are calling for parents and guardians to “pay close attention” to what they are viewing and sharing online.

Richard Smith, the acting senior national coordinator for UK Counter Terrorism Policing, says: “Whilst our role is to stop anyone – no matter their age – committing terrorism offences or planning to cause harm to the public, it is truly shocking that almost one in every five of our arrests involves a young person.”

Jonathan Hall KC, the UK’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, says that tech giants do not have the resources in place to properly moderate billions of posts and messages, and that parents should take more of a role in policing their children’s online activities. 

“There’s going to be no perfect legal or technical solution to this, so it’s got to be a social solution about limiting children’s ability to have access to whatever they want,” Hall says.

“The expectation of what we allow our children to access has to change. We wouldn’t allow a stranger into a child’s bedroom, but we allow a phone in their bedroom that allows them to connect to the worst sort of strangers.”

Such is the demand on security services that Hall has called for the Government to create alternatives to conventional criminal prosecution for low-risk children who have committed offences by looking at or sharing material online. 

New court-imposed injunctions would see teenagers arrested and jailed if they broke strict conditions, including mandatory ideological mentoring, and how they browse, communicate and interact with other people online.

Hall warns that currently there is “almost no long-term effect” of prosecuting children for lower-level terror offences that do not garner significant jail sentences. He says authorities are finding it particularly difficult to judge the risk that young terror offenders may pose, and that recent cases showed that even where a teenager may not be planning violence themselves, they are capable of inspiring it abroad.

In 2021, the UK’s youngest known terror offender was spared jail after recruiting for a neo-Nazi group at the age of just 13, and disseminating manuals on making explosives, guns and weapons. He had been charged with founding and overseeing a British cell of neo-Nazi terrorist group Feuerkrieg Division, which was led at the time by an Estonian boy who was just 13 himself.

Some children have been consuming vast amounts of terrorist material, using peer-to-peer sharing to access banned Isis videos and manuals, as well as far Right manifestos and neo-Nazi books, videos and propaganda. Vale says the process often starts when initially harmless research on current events leads young people down online “rabbit holes”.

“Once you start looking for certain content, for example the Ukraine war or the Mediterranean refugee crisis, it’s very easy to start getting on to platforms that are espousing a very different narrative and leading into more and more extreme ideas,” she adds.

“There is a lot of extremist propaganda that’s focused on a teenage audience, particularly among the extreme Right-wing.”

The disturbing trend is not expected to subside in the near future, with today’s digitally native children expected to continue out-manoeuvring authorities’ attempts at limiting access to online material.

Hall expects more “isolated and unhappy teenagers” to be seen in Britain’s courts, warning that while many have been driven to the internet as a “source of comfort … it’s also the source of terrorist information and inspiration.”

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Quote of Maine Republican lawmaker's Nazi comments is missing context | Fact check

The claim: Post implies Maine state representative questioned the legality of Nazi Germany's actions

An April 4 Facebook post ( direct link , archive link ) from the liberal group Occupy Democrats includes a picture of Maine state Rep. Laurel Libby .

"Breaking: In an unhinged rant, Maine Republican lawmaker Laurel Libby just asked, 'What did the Nazis do that was illegal?'" reads text in the image. "This is what we're up against, folks!"

Some social media users took the post to mean Libby was referring to Nazi Germany's actions in the 1930s and '40s.

"It's called the Holocaust. Google is free," one user wrote.

"So. Rounding up undesirables and shoving them into ovens isn't illegal to her," wrote another.

The post was shared more than 4,000 times in six days. A similar post on Instagram was liked more than 6,000 times.

More from the Fact-Check Team: How we pick and research claims | Email newsletter | Facebook page

Our rating: Missing context

The implied claim here is wrong. Libby, a Republican, wasn't referring to Nazi Germany in her comment. She was referencing neo-Nazi activity in the state while making a point about freedom of expression during a debate.

Post omits context of Maine lawmaker's Nazi remarks

On April 3, the Maine House of Representatives narrowly approved a bill that would restrict unauthorized paramilitary training in the state. Democratic state Rep. Laurie Osher sponsored the bill in response to efforts by a prominent neo-Nazi to set up a paramilitary training center in the state in 2023, the Portland Press Herald reported . The bill would ban paramilitary activity intended to create public disturbances or violence, the article said.

The bill, Legislative Document 2130 , passed by a 72 to 71 vote and was largely buoyed by Democratic support. It next heads to the state Senate. Opponents, including Libby, have called the bill unconstitutional, saying it infringes on constitutionally protected expression.

It was in this context that Libby spoke about Nazi activity in Maine. During debate on the bill on April 3, she referenced neo-Nazi activity in the state in 2023 that was covered by the media, including reports on a rise in white supremacist and other extremist groups in the state and a demonstration of neo-Nazis at the state Capitol.

"So let’s talk about the Nazis," Libby said on the House floor, according to video of the legislative session archived by the Maine Legislature . "I would like to know – although I’m not posing a question through the chair – I would like to know what they did that was illegal. I would like to know what they did – in detail if folks would like to share – that was wrong; that infringed on another person’s right. Holding a rally – and even holding a rally with guns – is not illegal. That is within our rights, madam speaker."

She continued, "Now we don’t have to like what said Nazis did. We don’t have to like what they stand for. We don’t have to agree with their positions. We don’t have to think well of them. But you know what we do have to do? We have to protect their First Amendment right to free speech and association."

The video of Libby's remarks makes clear she was not referring to the actions of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, as the image in the Facebook post implies. She was making a point about constitutionally protected speech.

Fact check : Donald Trump, Bernie Madoff bond comparison is missing context

In a phone interview with USA TODAY, Libby said posts on social media have taken her comments out of context, calling them manipulative and deceitful. She added that her job is to protect the rights of the people of Maine – including their right to freedom of speech and freedom of association – provided they are not infringing on another person's rights. It is not her job, she said, to "like" how people exercise their rights.

Grant Stern , executive editor of Occupy Democrats, acknowledged Libby wasn't talking about Nazi Germany as some took the post to mean, but he defended the point made in the post.

"While Libby wasn’t specifically referencing German Nazis in her comments, rather the American Nazis making a paramilitary camp in her state, it is a distinction of ideology without difference," Stern said in an email.

Stern noted that the Occupy Democrats image was inspired by a viral clip shared on X, formerly Twitter, by the Maine House Democratic Campaign Committee . The 41-second clip shows a portion of Libby's remarks on the state's House floor but excludes her reference to the 2023 media coverage about neo-Nazi activity in the state. It was viewed more than 290,000 times.

Following the circulation of the committee's clip, news organizations such as USA TODAY , The Boston Globe and The Associated Press reported on Libby's contention that her remarks had been misrepresented.

"Everyone who’s watching that clip thinks I’m a 1930s and '40s Nazi sympathizer," Libby told The Associated Press.

The Maine House Democratic Campaign Committee also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Our fact-check sources:

• Laurel Libby , April 8, Phone interview with USA TODAY
• Grant Stern , April 5, Email exchange with USA TODAY
• Maine Legislature, April 3, House Chamber Recorded April 3, 2024 at 10:00 AM
• Portland Press Herald, April 3, Ban on paramilitary activity passes by 1 vote in Maine House
• Portland Press Herald, July 23, 2023, Hate groups are on the march in Maine
• Portland Press Herald, Aug. 12, 2023, Small group of neo-Nazis demonstrates in Augusta
• USA TODAY, April 8, 'Let's talk about the Nazis': Maine lawmaker stands by comments that sparked swift backlash
• Boston Globe, April 6, Maine lawmaker defends comments on Nazis that drew online criticism
• The Associated Press, April 7, GOP lawmaker says neo-Nazi comments taken out of context in debate over paramilitary training

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or e-newspaper here .

USA TODAY is a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network, which requires a demonstrated commitment to nonpartisanship, fairness and transparency. Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Meta .

Background: The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union came as a surprise to nearly everyone, though it should not have, given the long Nazi antipathy toward Marxism. This statement, released on the morning of the invasion, provided Hitler’s justification for the attack. As usual, he presents himself as someone who did everything in his power to preserve peace, resorting to arms only at the last possible moment.

The source: “ Der Führer an das deutsche Volk 22. Juni 1941,” in Philipp Bouhler (ed.), Der großdeutsche Freiheitskampf. Reden Adolf Hitlers, vol. 3 (Munich: Franz Eher, 1942), pp. 51-61.

The Führer to the German People: 22 June 1941

German people!

National Socialists!

After long months when I was forced to keep silent, despite heavy concerns, the time has come when I can finally speak openly.

When the German Reich received England’s declaration of war on 3 September 1939, the British attempted once again to frustrate any attempt to begin a consolidation, and thus a strengthening, of Europe by fighting the then strongest power on the Continent.

England formerly destroyed Spain through many wars.

For the same reason it waged its wars against Holland.

With the help of all of Europe it later fought France.

And around the turn of the century, it began to encircle the German Reich and it began the World War in 1914.

Germany was defeated in 1918 only because of its inner disunity. The results were terrible. After first hypocritically declaring to be fighting only against the Kaiser and his regime, they began the systematic destruction of the German Reich after the German army had laid down its arms. As the prophecy of a French statesman, who had said that there were twenty million Germans too many, began to be fulfilled through starvation, disease, or emigration, the National Socialist movement began building the unity of the German people, thereby preparing the rebirth of the Reich.

This new revival of our people from poverty, misery, and shameful contempt was a sign of a pure internal rebirth. England was not affected, much less threatened, by this. Nonetheless, it immediately renewed its hateful policy of encirclement against Germany. Both at home and abroad, we faced the plot we all know about between Jews and democrats, Bolshevists and reactionaries, all with the same goal: to prevent the establishment of a new people’s state, to plunge the Reich again into impotence and misery.

The hatred of this international world conspiracy was directed not only against us, but also against those peoples who also had been neglected by Fortune, who could earn their daily bread only through the hardest struggle. Italy and Japan above all, alongside Germany, were almost forbidden to enjoy their share of the wealth of the world. The alliance between these nations was, therefore, only an act of self-defense against a threatening, egotistical world coalition of wealth and power.

As early as 1936, according to the testimony of the American General Wood to a committee of the American House of Representatives, Churchill had said that Germany was becoming too strong again, and that it therefore had to be destroyed.

In summer 1939, England thought that the time had come to renew its attempts to destroy Germany by a policy of encirclement. Their method was to begin a campaign of lies. They declared that Germany threatened other peoples. They then provided an English guarantee of support and assistance, next, as in the World War, let them march against Germany.

Thus between May and August 1939, England succeeded in spreading the claim throughout the world that Germany directly threatened Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Bessarabia, and even the Ukraine. Some of these nations allowed themselves to be misled, accepting the promises of support that were offered, and thereby joined the new attempt to encircle Germany.

Under these circumstances, I believed that I was called by my conscience, and by the history of the German people, to assure not only these nations and their governments that these British accusations were untrue, but also to reassure the strongest power in the East through formal declarations that our interests did not conflict.

You probably all felt that this was a bitter and difficult step for me. The German people have never had hostile feelings toward the peoples of Russia. During the last two decades, however, the Jewish-Bolshevist rulers in Moscow have attempted to set not only Germany, but all of Europe, aflame. Germany has never attempted to spread its National Socialist worldview to Russia. Rather, the Jewish-Bolshevist rulers in Moscow have constantly attempted to subject us and the other European peoples to their rule. They have attempted this not only intellectually, but above all through military means.

The results of their efforts, in every nation, were only chaos, misery, and starvation.

I, on the other hand, have tried for two decades to build a new socialist order in Germany, with a minimum of interference and without harming our productive capacity. This has not only eliminated unemployment, but also the profits of labor have flowed increasingly to working people.

The results of our policies are unique in all the world. Our economic and social reorganization has led to the systematic elimination of social and class barriers, with the goal of a true people’s community.

It was, therefore, difficult for me in August 1939 to send my minister to Moscow to attempt to work against Britain’s plans to encircle Germany. I did it only because of my sense of responsibility to the German people, above all in the hope of reaching a lasting understanding and perhaps avoiding the sacrifice that would otherwise be demanded of us.

With the exception of Lithuania, Germany declared that those areas and nations were outside Germany’s political interests. There was a special provision in the case that England succeeded in inciting Poland into war against Germany. But here, too, German claims were moderate, and in no relation to the accomplishments of German arms.

The results of the treaty, which I sought in the interests of the German people, were particularly severe for Germans living in the affected nations.

Over half a million German people’s comrades — all of them small farmers, craftsmen, and workers — were forced, almost overnight, to leave their former homes to escape a new government that threatened them with vast misery, and sooner or later, with complete extermination ( Ausrottung ).

Even so, thousands of Germans disappeared! It was impossible to learn what had happened to them, or even where they were. More than 160 of them were men holding German citizenship.

I kept silent about all this, because I had to keep silent! My wish was for final agreement with this state, and if possible a lasting settlement.

But even during our march into Poland, in violation of the treaty, the Soviet rulers suddenly claimed Lithuania.

The German Reich never intended to occupy Lithuania, and never made any such demand on Lithuania. To the contrary, it turned down the request by the Lithuanian government to send German troops there, since that did not correspond to the goals of German policy.

Nonetheless, I accepted this new Russian demand. But that was only the beginning of ever new demands.

The victory on Poland, gained exclusively by German troops, gave me the occasion to extend a new offer of peace to the Western powers. It was rejected by the international and Jewish warmongers.

The reason was that England still hoped to mobilize a European coalition against Germany that would include the Balkans and Soviet Russia.

Those in London decided to send Ambassador Cripps to Moscow. He has clear orders to improve relations between England and Soviet Russia, and to develop them along lines England wanted. The English press reported on the progress of his mission, as long as they were not silent for tactical reasons.

The first results were evident in fall 1939 and spring 1940. Russia justified its attempts to subject not only Finland, but also the Baltic states, by the sudden false and absurd claim that it was protecting them from a foreign threat, or that it was acting to prevent that threat. Only Germany could have been meant. No other power could enter the Baltic Sea, or wage war there. I still had to remain silent. The rulers of the Kremlin continued.

Consistent with the so-called friendship treaty, Germany removed its troops far from its eastern border in spring 1940. Russian forces were already moving in, and in numbers that could only be seen as a clear threat to Germany.

According to a statement by Molotov, there were already 22 Russian divisions in the Baltic states in spring 1940.

Although the Russian government always claimed that the troops were there at the request of the people who lived there, their purpose could only be seen as a demonstration aimed at Germany.

As our soldiers attacked French-British forces in the west, the extent of the Russian advance on our eastern front grew ever more threatening.

In August 1940, I concluded that, given the increasing number of powerful Bolshevist divisions, it was no longer in the interests of the Reich to leave the eastern provinces, so often devastated by war, unprotected.

This, however, is exactly what the British and Soviets had hoped. The fact that so much of the German forces, in particular the air force, was tied down in the east made it impossible for the German leadership to bring a radical end to the war in the West.

This was the goal of both British and Soviet Russian policy. Both England and Soviet Russia wanted to prolong this war as long as possible in order to weaken all of Europe and plunge it into ever greater impotence.

Russia’s threatened attack on Rumania was intended not only to take over an important element in the economic life not only of Germany, but of Europe as whole, or at least to destroy it.

With boundless patience, the German Reich attempted after 1933 to win over the southeastern European states as trading partners. We, therefore, had the greatest possible interest in their domestic stability and order. Russia’s entrance into Rumania and Greece’s ties to England threatened to rapidly transform this area into a general battleground.

Despite our principles and customs, and despite the fact that the Rumanian government had brought on these troubles itself, I urgently advised them, for the sake of peace, to bow to Soviet extortion and cede Bessarabia.

The Rumanian government, however, believed that it could justify this step to its own people only if Germany and Italy in return guaranteed the security of its remaining territory. I did this with a heavy heart. When the German government gives a guarantee, it will stand by it. We are neither English nor Jewish.

I thus believed that I had saved peace at the last moment, even if at the cost of a heavy obligation. To reach a final resolution of these problems and to clarify Russian intentions toward the Reich, as well as under the pressure of steadily increasing mobilization along our eastern border, I invited Mr. Molotov to come to Berlin.

The Soviet foreign minister demanded further clarification from Germany on the following four questions:

Molotov’s first question:

Does Germany’s guarantee for Rumania in the event of an attack mean war with Russia in the event of an attack Soviet Russia?

The German guarantee is broad and obligates us absolutely. Russia has never told us that it has any interest in Rumania outside Bessarabia. The occupation of northern Bukowina was already a violation of this assurance. I therefore do not believe that Russia could have any further claims on Rumania.

Molotov’s second question:

Russia feels itself threatened by Finland again. Russia is unwilling to tolerate this. Is Germany ready to provide no support for Finland, and above all to withdraw the German troops in Kirkenes?

As in the past, Germany has no political interests in Finland. However, the German government cannot accept a new Russian war against the tiny Finnish people, particularly since we could never believe that Finland threatens Russia. However, we do not want war in the Baltic Sea.

Molotov’s third question:

Is Germany willing for Soviet Russia to provide a guarantee to Bulgaria, and to send Soviet-Russian troops to Bulgaria for this purpose — although he (Molotov) wished to say that they did not have the intention of removing the king.

Bulgaria is a sovereign state, and I did not know that, just as Rumania had asked for a German guarantee, Bulgaria has asked for one from Soviet Russia. I would also have to discuss the matter with my allies.

Molotov’s fourth question:

Soviet Russia absolutely requires free passage through the Dardanelle, and also demands, for its protection, several important positions on the Dardanelle or along the Bosporus. Is Germany willing to agree to this or not?

Germany is ready at any time to agree to changes in the Statute of Montreux that benefit the Black Sea states. Germany is not willing to approve Russian bases on the straights.

I behaved as the responsible leader of the German Reich, but also as a responsible representative of European culture and civilization.

The result was an increase in Soviet Russian activity against the Reich, above all the immediate beginning of efforts to subvert the new Rumanian state and an attempt to use propaganda to eliminate the Bulgarian government.

With the help of confused and immature people, the Rumanian Legion succeeded in organizing a coup that removed General Antonescu and plunged the nation into chaos. By removing legal authority, they also removed the grounds for Germany to act on its guarantee.

Still, I believed it best to remain silent.

Immediately after this enterprise collapsed, there was a new increase in Russian troops along the German eastern border. Increasing numbers of tank and parachute divisions threatened the German border. The German army, and the German homeland, know that until a few weeks ago, there was not a single German tank or motorized division on our eastern border.

If anyone needed final proof of the carefully hidden coalition between England and Soviet Russia, the conflict in Yugoslavia provided it. While I was making a last attempt to keep peace in the Balkans, and in agreement with the Duce invited Yugoslavia to join the Three Power Pact, England and Soviet Russia organized a coup that toppled the government that was ready for such an agreement.

The German people can now be told that the Serbian coup against Germany was under both the English and Soviet Russian flags. Since we were silent, the Soviet Russian government went a step further. Not only did they organize a Putsch, but signed a treaty of friendship with their new lackeys a few days later that was intended to strengthen Serbia’s resistance to peace in the Balkans, and turn it against Germany. It was no platonic effort, either.

Moscow demanded that the Serbian army mobilize.

Since I still believed that it was better not to speak, the rulers of the Kremlin took a further step.

The German government now possesses documents that prove that, to bring Serbia into the battle, Russia promised to provide it with weapons, airplanes, ammunition, and other war material through Salonika.

That happened at almost the same moment that I was giving the Japanese Foreign Minister Dr. Matsuoka the advice to maintain good relations with Russia, in the hope of maintaining peace.

Only the rapid breakthrough of our incomparable divisions into Skopje and the capture of Salonika prevented the realization of this Soviet Russian-Anglo-Saxon plot. Serbian air force officers, however, fled to Russia and were immediately welcomed as allies.

Only the victory of the Axis powers in the Balkans frustrated the plan of involving Germany in battle in the southeast for months, allowing the Soviet Russian armies to complete their march and increase their readiness for action. Together with England, and with the hoped for American supplies, they would have been ready to strangle and defeat the German Reich and Italy.

Thus Moscow not only broke our treaty of friendship, but betrayed it!

They did all this while the powers in the Kremlin, to the very last minute, hypocritically attempted to favor peace and friendship, just as they had with Finland or Rumania.

I was forced by circumstances to keep silent in the past. Now the moment has come when further silence would be not only a sin, but a crime against the German people, against all Europe.

Today, about 160 Russian divisions stand at our border. There have been steady border violations for weeks, and not only on our border, but in the far north, and also in Rumania. Russian pilots make a habit of ignoring the border, perhaps to show us that they already feel as if they are in control.

During the night of 17-18 June, Russian patrols again crossed the German border and could only be repelled after a long battle.

Now the hour has come when it is necessary to respond to his plot by Jewish-Anglo-Saxon warmongers and the Jewish rulers of Moscow’s Bolshevist headquarters.

At this moment, an attack unprecedented in the history of the world in its extent and size has begun. With Finnish comrades, the victors of Narvik stand by the Arctic Sea. German divisions, under the command of the conqueror of Norway, together with the heroes of Finland’s freedom and their marshal, defend Finnish soil. On the Eastern Front, German formations extend from East Prussia to the Carpathians. From the banks of the Pruth River, from the lower Danube to the Black Sea, German and Romanian soldiers are united under state leader Antonescu.

The purpose of this front is no longer the protection of the individual nations, but rather the safety of Europe, and therefore the salvation of everyone.

I have therefore decided today once again to put the fate of Germany and the future of the German Reich and our people in the hands of our soldiers.

May God help us in this battle

[Page copyright © 2005 by Randall Bytwerk. No unauthorized reproduction. My e-mail address is available on the FAQ page .]

Go to the German Propaganda Archive Home Page.

A blog of the U.S. National Archives

Pieces of History

Hitler’s Final Words

This post comes from Greg Bradsher’s latest article “Hitler’s Final Words”  in Prologue magazine. Bradsher is a senior archivist at the National Archives and a frequent contributor to Prologue .

A little after 11 p.m., Gertrude Junge, the 25-year-old secretary to Adolf Hitler, woke from a one-hour nap, and, thinking it was time for the nightly tea with her boss, headed for his study.

“Have you had a nice little rest, child,” her boss asked her as he shook her hand. “Yes, I have slept a little,” she replied.

Getting any sleep in Hitler’s bunker, deep underground in Berlin, might have been difficult that night in April 1945.

Russian troops were only about 1,000 yards away, and the war was all but lost by then. The head of Hitler’s dreaded SS, Heinrich Himmler, was already negotiating with the Western Allies. The Third Reich was almost over.

But the dictator had something else on his mind at tea time.

“Come along,” he said to Junge, “I want to dictate something.”

They went into the conference room next to Hitler’s quarters, and Junge began to uncover the typewriter she usually used to take down his dictation.

Not this time, however, as Greg Bradsher recounts in “Hitler’s Final Words” in the Spring 2015 issue of Prologue magazine, the National Archives’ flagship publication.

“Take it down on the shorthand pad,” Hitler said. So she sat down and waited for him to begin.

“My political testament,” he said.

Then came words that millions had heard before, she later recalled, “the explanations, accusations and demands that I, the German people and the whole world would know already.”

After finishing his “political testament,” he dictated his personal will, then told Junge to type the documents out in triplicate and bring them to him.

The dictator then headed to another room in the bunker to marry Eva Braun and wait for Junge to finish her typing assignment. Hitler wanted copies of this testament and will to go to three different locations and wanted to see the couriers on their way before moving to the next item on his plan.

The couriers left. Finally, at 3:30 p.m. on April 30, 1945—the war in Europe just eight days from an Allied victory—Hitler and his new bride committed suicide.

Today, one set of the documents is in the holdings of the National Archives, where it first went on display in April 1946. Greg Bradsher’s article also tells the story of the documents’ journey to the National Archives.

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3 thoughts on “ hitler’s final words ”.

There are so many different versions of events that it’s almost impossible to know what to believe, other than the basics.

In one film from 1972 he called Eva Braun a ‘stupid bitch’ then she took the cyanide capsule whilst he was looking away and continuing his harangue. Suddenly he turned towards her and upon seeing her slumped over and already dead exclaimed, “You have betrayed me!”

Although only a film, the statement in the opening credits claims that the film was based upon extensive documents and eye witness testimonies.

Other people claim that the bodies weren’t burnt or that he had escaped to South America and so on. Although I don’t believe that, so many accounts are pieces of disinformation, fabricated by the Soviet government under Stalin, so who’s to say that this isn’t another one? The author of this book is said to have spent ten years in prison and had been tortured so it could be that this book was written as a part of some bargain for his freedom, or even his life.

No one witnessed the suicide of Hitler and Braun, so there is no basis for any version of what went on in the last minute. The witnesses entered after the suicide and described what they saw. They also knew beforehand that the moment of suicide had arrived as Hitler made it clear. The little people who took care of Hitler probably provided reliable narratives (once they were free from the Soviets).

Hi guys I also agree with David although it is quite like Hitler to call someone a swearword

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Dance Gavin Dance Parts Ways With Lead Singer Tilian Pearson Again

By Lexi Carson

Lexi Carson

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The post-hardcore band Dance Gavin Dance announced on Monday it has parted ways once again with lead singer Tilian Pearson after his 12-year run in the band, and the group will move forward without him.

Pearson has been the clean vocalist for the band since 2012, following Jonny Craig’s second departure from the group. Together, Pearson and Dance Gavin Dance have released six albums: “Acceptance Speech,” “Instant Gratification,” “Mothership,” “Artificial Selection,” “Afterburner” and “Jackpot Juicer.”

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View this post on Instagram A post shared by Dance Gavin Dance (@dancegavindance)

Pearson also released a statement on Instagram stating how even though his time in the band is over, he will continue to release music and is working on his solo project, “Tilian.” His last solo album was “Factory Reset” in 2021.

“Now It’s time for a new chapter. I will be focusing on making new music on a different canvas. I’m currently in the studio perfecting a new Tilian album and will be playing live shows to support it later this year.”

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Tilian (@tilianpearson)

Pearson previously stepped away from Dance Gavin Dance due to sexual misconduct allegations and substance abuse problems in June 2022. After receiving treatment, he was welcomed back in November 2022.

Dance Gavin Dance most recently finished touring the “Jackpot Juicer” album in November 2023. Their last single with Pearson was “War Machine” was released in October 2023.

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Verified pro-Nazi X accounts flourish under Elon Musk

E lon Musk’s X is a thriving hub for Nazi support and propaganda, with paid subscribers sharing speeches by Adolf Hitler or content praising his genocidal regime. 

NBC News found that at least 150 paid “Premium” subscriber X accounts and thousands of unpaid accounts have posted or amplified pro-Nazi content on X in recent months, often in apparent violation of X’s rules. The paid accounts posting the content all consistently posted antisemitic or pro-Nazi material. Examples included praise of Nazi soldiers, sharing of Nazi symbols and denials of the Holocaust. 

The pro-Nazi content is not confined to the fringes of the platform. During one seven-day period in March, seven of the most widely shared pro-Nazi posts on X accrued 4.5 million views in total. One post with 1.9 million views promoted a false and long-debunked conspiracy theory that 6 million Jews did not die in the Holocaust. More than 5,300 verified and unverified accounts reshared that post, and other popular posts were reshared hundreds of times apiece. 

X’s policies ban glorifying violence — a broad prohibition that X has sometimes used to take down pro-Nazi content and accounts. The rules also ban “praising violent entities” and say the platform will apply labels to hate imagery like swastikas. But NBC News found that X does not appear to be enforcing those policies consistently. 

The findings are the latest evidence of a flourishing Nazi network on X under Musk’s ownership. Previous investigations by news organizations and anti-hate watchdogs have documented many examples of antisemitism, white supremacy and support for Nazism on X. 

NBC News found the Nazi propaganda posts by browsing the platform: scrolling through replies, clicking on user profiles and looking through the engagements on viral posts. NBC News conducted its review during one week in late March. The number of verified subscribers posting pro-Nazi material may be significantly more than 150. When NBC News conducted its review, Premium subscribers had the option to hide their verification check marks from the public.

The verified users sharing the pro-Nazi content have entered into a mutually beneficial relationship with Musk’s X, paying $8 a month or more for premium services that are available to all premium subscribers. In exchange, they get “ prioritization ” when they reply to posts and the opportunity to monetize their content through ads, according to the subscription terms. 

The result is that X is bringing Nazi sympathizers in from the dark corners of the internet to a massive platform where they can pay to amplify their content. X had 174 million daily active users worldwide on its mobile app in February, according to the research firm Sensor Tower. X claims to have many more than that. 

NBC News conducted its research in March, before X implemented a change to provide free premium subscriptions to accounts with more than 2,500 verified followers. That move has made it more difficult to determine who is a paid subscriber. 

A welcoming social media environment can make Nazi sympathizers feel validated in their views and recruit others to their cause, said Patrick Riccards, executive director of Life After Hate , a Milwaukee-based organization that helps people disengage from violent extremist groups. 

“For those who are already driven by hate, it is a big warm hug,” he said. 

Online hatred can also contribute to violence offline, he said, citing the racist massacre at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, where 10 Black people died in 2022. The gunman wrote in a document that he supported neo-Nazism . He later said in court that he “believed what I read online and acted out the hate.” 

“They’re wanting to find individuals to take physical action when the time comes,” Riccards said. 

In most cases, Nazi material on X is about spreading hate, said Megan Squire, deputy director for data analytics at the Southern Poverty Law Center, an anti-hate group founded in 1971.

“It’s not like historians are on there talking about Hitler’s speeches,” she said. 

Squire said that in her research she has found that accounts posting Nazi material are run by “known white supremacist groups that are attempting to normalize their ideas, gain followers and shuffle those followers into platforms” elsewhere online where their organizing work continues. 

By failing to act against many pro-Nazi accounts, X continues to earn income from their activity in at least two ways: by collecting monthly subscription fees from those posting pro-Nazi content and by running advertisements on those accounts or adjacent to the pro-Nazi content.

NBC News found ads running on 74 of the 150 premium accounts, either on their profile pages or in the replies below their posts. The advertisers included SiriusXM, The Hollywood Reporter and Cisco subsidiary Splunk. SiriusXM declined to comment. Penske Media, the owner of The Hollywood Reporter, declined to comment. Splunk did not respond to requests for comment sent by email. 

Ads from other companies appeared among the search results for a Holocaust-denial hashtag. 

NBC News does not have a comprehensive list of advertisers that use X. Each account on social media sees different ads at different times, so it is unknown how many advertisers’ ads have run next to pro-Nazi content. 

Advertisers online generally have limited control over where their ads appear. X says on a website for advertisers that it gives them the ability to target certain demographics, accounts, keywords, phrases, interests, events and locations. Advertisers can also use “negative” targeting, asking X’s ads system not to place ads near certain keywords. The system, however, does not guarantee placement next to or away from any specific post. Other platforms, such as Instagram, have targeting systems of their own. 

On a second website for advertisers , X says its rules are meant to ensure brand safety. It says that the rules “are enforced for all people who use X” and that they “set the standard for content and behavior not permitted on the platform.” X specifically notes on the page that its policies include rules that address “violence,” “terrorism/violent extremism” and “hateful conduct.” 

X does not disclose publicly which accounts share in ad revenue, and NBC News could not determine how many of the 150 premium subscribers do so. 

Monetizing Nazi content contradicts one of Musk’s early pledges after he bought the app, then known as Twitter, in October 2022 .

“Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter,” he wrote in a post in November 2022. 

Musk also said then that no one has a right to amplification online. 

“New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach,” he wrote. 

NBC News sought comment on its findings from X. A representative for X asked for examples, and NBC News provided 13 examples of accounts posting pro-Nazi content. Hours later, X had put labels on some of the examples, all of which remained online. Representatives for X did not answer written questions or agree to an interview, but they sent a link to a blog post from September that says X has a “zero tolerance approach” to violent speech. 

Many of the 150 premium accounts have put links on their X profiles directing people to their websites, books and other media, where they sometimes push Nazi sympathy and antisemitism. One such account, using the name The Impartial Truth, posts recycled and remixed Nazi propaganda content, and its X profile links out to a donation site. The account did not respond to an emailed request for comment. 

One of the premium accounts belongs to Stew Peters, a Florida-based host of an internet talk show who has praised Nazi book-burning in 1930s Germany. Last month, a post of his denying the Holocaust went viral on X with 1.9 million views. Peters has more than 574,000 followers on X, where his posts often include antisemitism, and his account links to his website charging $10 a month for videos. In response to a request for comment, Peters said NBC News was using “ad hominem arguments to create narratives out of whole cloth.” 

Some of the accounts posting Nazi propaganda are unabashed in their praise of the Nazis. At least two verified X subscribers recently praised Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister. One said it used artificial intelligence to generate fake audio of Goebbels reading his writing aloud, bringing in more than 23,000 views. 

X’s policies require a “sensitive media” label for “hateful imagery,” which includes “symbols historically associated with hate groups, e.g., the Nazi swastika.” Musk cited a related “incitement to violence” policy when he suspended the rapper Ye, formerly Kanye West, after Ye praised Hitler in an interview and posted an image resembling a swastika. 

Some viral Nazi content stops short of praise and instead drives engagement to accounts with no clear ideology. Two examples came in March from the account @dom_lucre, a conspiracy theorist . It posted two Hitler speeches that together received more than 15 million views. The speeches were translated with artificial intelligence, Lucre said. He, unlike others, included a warning that the speech was graphic and antisemitic, though he did not express disapproval. 

“I am simply sharing what is news as I always do,” he wrote in a post. Lucre, who also goes by Dominick McGee, according to his Facebook page, did not respond to an emailed request for comment. 

Lucre and other similar posters who stopped short of praising Nazis were not included in the NBC News count of the 150 premium subscribers posting pro-Nazi content. Those 150 accounts were more explicit in their pro-Nazi ideologies. 

Squire, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the proliferation of pro-Nazi content is the result of multiple decisions by Musk since he bought the platform: cutting content moderators, changing the rules about who got verification, reinstating banned accounts and restricting the data stream that outside watchdogs used to research Twitter. 

Many researchers have complained that it is now difficult or impossible to measure the reach of extremism on X because of the new restrictions Musk has imposed. 

“It’s safety through obscurity: Make it really hard for people to see the problem, and then you can pretend it doesn’t exist,” Squire said. 

Before Musk bought Twitter, it had been working for about five years to crack down on the presence of Nazis. In 2017, after years of complaints by users and advertisers, Twitter said it was banning Nazi swastikas and other hateful imagery from profile photos and that it would kick off users who associate with violent organizations. Opponents of Nazis celebrated the moves as long overdue. 

Some prominent X users are unhappy with what they have seen. Christopher Rufo, an activist and senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, wrote last month that he had seen a rise in “Kanye-style antisemitism.” A representative for Rufo said he was not available for an interview. 

Some Nazi supporters have also said they have noticed a rise in sympathetic posts. One account, referring to Hitler as “the Boss,” wrote recently: “I’m seeing the Boss’ speeches and quotes more and more on social media, from people youd never expect.” 

Rather than crack down on antisemitic posts, Musk has used his massive platform to promote antisemitic conspiracy theories. Last year, he embraced the concept of the “great replacement,” which says there is a top-down plot to replace the white population with nonwhite people. His posts on the subject drew condemnation from the White House and led to an exodus of advertisers. Following the backlash over his statements, Musk visited Israel and traveled to the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro.

Musk also reinstated the accounts of prominent neo-Nazis Andrew Anglin and Nick Fuentes. Both are now suspended, although videos in which Fuentes questions the Holocaust still spread widely on X. 

Last year, the progressive watchdog Media Matters published a report saying Nazi content was running on X alongside advertisements from major corporations. X sued Media Matters , saying its research was flawed because it used an account that, according to the company, was primed to see Nazi material based on the accounts it followed. It also said Media Matters received flawed results because the activity of its researchers was atypical, for example by refreshing a page many times to see which ads appeared. X’s suit is ongoing. In a statement to NBC News at the time, Media Matters President Angelo Carusone called the lawsuit "frivolous" and said the organization "stands behind its reporting and looks forward to winning in court.”

Among the ads running near pro-Nazi content seen by NBC News was one from the FBI seeking tips about hate crimes. The FBI ad appeared among the replies to a post from @AshaLogos, a verified account with more than 54,000 followers that frequently posts antisemitism, including a recent accusation that Jews have a “monopoly” on media.

The FBI did not respond to requests for comment on the ad or its placement or about NBC News’ findings about pro-Nazi propaganda on X. 

Hate crime in the U.S. has been surging, with reports jumping 12% in 2021 and 7% in 2022 , according to law enforcement reports to the FBI. 

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com