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The Voice of Destruction: Conversations With Hitler 1940
Publié en 1939 comme un avertissement et un cri d'alarme, ce livre est un document d'histoire d'un intérêt capital, bien plus important pour la compréhension du nazisme que le très officiel Mein Kampf. C'est un Hitler en liberté qui se livre ici : à la fois politicien retors et visionnaire titubant, messianique et sentimental, fasciné par l'abîme qui le délivrera de son fardeau d'anxiété. Membre du parti nazi de 1926 à 1934, Hermann Rauschning a su comprendre, avec la prescience d'un compagnon de route désabusé, ce que tant de contemporains se sont obstinés à ignorer : la dynamique de l'une des pulsions révolutionnaires les plus puissantes et les plus destructrices de notre siècle.
302 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1939
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182 people want to read
About the author
Hermann Rauschning
30 books10 followersGerman Conservative Revolutionary who briefly joined the Nazis before he broke with them in 1934.
Rauschning joined the Nazi Party in 1932 and became the head of the parlement of Danzig in 1933.
In 1934 he left the Nazi party membership and defected to the United
States where he denounced Nazism.
Rauschning is chiefly known for his book Conversations with Hitler in which he claimed to have many meetings and conversations with Hitler. His book is considered to be a fraud by historians.
After the war he became a staunch critic of the president of the federal republic of Germany Konrad Adenauer
Rauschning joined the Nazi Party in 1932 and became the head of the parlement of Danzig in 1933.
In 1934 he left the Nazi party membership and defected to the United
States where he denounced Nazism.
Rauschning is chiefly known for his book Conversations with Hitler in which he claimed to have many meetings and conversations with Hitler. His book is considered to be a fraud by historians.
After the war he became a staunch critic of the president of the federal republic of Germany Konrad Adenauer
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 31, 2015
Published in 1940, this purports to be Rauschning's near-contemporaneous record of numerous conversations with Hitler. Several historians (Ian Kershaw) think it's a fraud, and that such conversations never took place.
I don't really care if the conversations are authentic. They do reflect Rauschning's views on Hitler, some of which are quite thoughtful and reflect possibilities I have not read in other authors. In particular, since Rauchning was the Nazi Gauleiter (party leader) of Danzig, he makes some observations about the interactions between Hitler and Polish leader Pilsudski that ring quite true to me ...
*** Hitler wanted intelligence regarding Poland (Pilsudski) … what will Poland do if I force through the Austrian Anschluss?
*** Hitler: I should prefer an eastern policy of agreement with Poland rather than one directed against her … I shall give the Poles a chance … they have men who seem to be realists (Pilsudski, Beck) … they have as little use for democracy as we have … but of course they will have to be generous in their views ... then I shall be so as well
*** Hitler wondered if Poland would be prepared to yield certain districts to Germany in return for certain others ... he was also considering the possibility of attacking Russia with the assistance of Poland ... he recognized that Poland would want an outlet to the Black Sea, but said they would have to give up any pretensions to Ukrainian territory
*** Rauschning thought Pilsudski had designs on the Ukraine, Lithuania and Latvis … dreams of a Greater Polish Empire reaching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, from Riga to Kiev
These and other observations not only describe a significant chess game between Germany and Poland, at a time when Poland was the stronger and Pilsudski was considering whether he should attack, they also suggest to me several possible opportunities to involve my characters in these 1932-34 events.
I don't really care if the conversations are authentic. They do reflect Rauschning's views on Hitler, some of which are quite thoughtful and reflect possibilities I have not read in other authors. In particular, since Rauchning was the Nazi Gauleiter (party leader) of Danzig, he makes some observations about the interactions between Hitler and Polish leader Pilsudski that ring quite true to me ...
*** Hitler wanted intelligence regarding Poland (Pilsudski) … what will Poland do if I force through the Austrian Anschluss?
*** Hitler: I should prefer an eastern policy of agreement with Poland rather than one directed against her … I shall give the Poles a chance … they have men who seem to be realists (Pilsudski, Beck) … they have as little use for democracy as we have … but of course they will have to be generous in their views ... then I shall be so as well
*** Hitler wondered if Poland would be prepared to yield certain districts to Germany in return for certain others ... he was also considering the possibility of attacking Russia with the assistance of Poland ... he recognized that Poland would want an outlet to the Black Sea, but said they would have to give up any pretensions to Ukrainian territory
*** Rauschning thought Pilsudski had designs on the Ukraine, Lithuania and Latvis … dreams of a Greater Polish Empire reaching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, from Riga to Kiev
These and other observations not only describe a significant chess game between Germany and Poland, at a time when Poland was the stronger and Pilsudski was considering whether he should attack, they also suggest to me several possible opportunities to involve my characters in these 1932-34 events.
September 13, 2015
I have frequently called historians to task for reliance on this book as a source, although in fact I hadn’t read it until now. Having read it, it is hard to believe that anyone who had studied Hitler ever took it seriously. There are a few sections which sound enough like him, but huge portions of it seem to have been either fantasy or distortion. The book today is particularly popular among those who wish to impose a spiritual or “occult” explanation to the Third Reich, which is warning enough for impartial historians.
Hermann Rauschning was an anti-democratic conservative who was in the Nazi Party from 1932 to 1934. He was active in the “free city” of Danzig, which was not a part of Germany, but its local Nazi party had won elections and thus controlled the local government through this period. Meanwhile, in Germany, Hitler’s party moved from opposition to governmental power when he was made Chancellor in January, 1933, and the period of Rauschning’s membership includes the increasing power of the party after the Reichstag Fire, the Röhm purge, and Hitler’s accession to the Presidency after the death of Paul von Hindenburg. These were critical times in Nazi history, and Rauschning could have offered useful insights into the Polish policies of the party – Danzig was a focal point of Hitler’s territorial claims in the country that ultimately triggered the Second World War.
Unfortunately, Rauschning was not satisfied with such important-but-ultimately-minor documentation. Instead, he inflated his role and claimed to be able to tell the English-speaking world what was really on the mind of the Führer. He transcribes dozens of intimate conversations and policy meeting that probably never took place. Some historians have questioned whether Rauschning ever met Hitler at all. I wouldn’t go that far, but it is highly unlikely that he met with him enough to produce an entire book (let alone two, including The Revolution of Nihilism: Warning to the West) from the conversations. Moreover, he wrote the book more than five years after any supposed last meeting took place, without notes or other recorded documentation, filling in gaps with his own biases, imagination, and (most likely) stories he had heard from colleagues and fellow critics of Hitler. Rauschning undermines his own case at the end of the book by indulging in deliberate fiction, and it’s difficult to tell where the putative truth ends and the intentional fiction begins.
So, even though I’m willing to concede that Rauschning probably did meet with Hitler, and talk politics with him, I wouldn’t state that any single quote in this book is reliable. Where it may be of use, at least to lay readers, is as a kind of departure from Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944, in which Hitler’s private speech was written down by stenographers, and edited for posterity by Martin Bormann. Bormann is doing what he can to make the private Hitler look good. Bormann’s Hitler is erudite, witty, charming, and reasonable, and there is enough documentation to suggest that this picture is incomplete at best. Rauschning’s Hitler, by contrast, is petty, nervous, aggressive, and domineering. He frequently shouts, especially if someone disagrees with him, and he acts from profound insecurity. By putting these two pictures together, not privileging the words but merely combining the personalities, one may actually get a better sense of the complexity of Adolf Hitler.
Hermann Rauschning was an anti-democratic conservative who was in the Nazi Party from 1932 to 1934. He was active in the “free city” of Danzig, which was not a part of Germany, but its local Nazi party had won elections and thus controlled the local government through this period. Meanwhile, in Germany, Hitler’s party moved from opposition to governmental power when he was made Chancellor in January, 1933, and the period of Rauschning’s membership includes the increasing power of the party after the Reichstag Fire, the Röhm purge, and Hitler’s accession to the Presidency after the death of Paul von Hindenburg. These were critical times in Nazi history, and Rauschning could have offered useful insights into the Polish policies of the party – Danzig was a focal point of Hitler’s territorial claims in the country that ultimately triggered the Second World War.
Unfortunately, Rauschning was not satisfied with such important-but-ultimately-minor documentation. Instead, he inflated his role and claimed to be able to tell the English-speaking world what was really on the mind of the Führer. He transcribes dozens of intimate conversations and policy meeting that probably never took place. Some historians have questioned whether Rauschning ever met Hitler at all. I wouldn’t go that far, but it is highly unlikely that he met with him enough to produce an entire book (let alone two, including The Revolution of Nihilism: Warning to the West) from the conversations. Moreover, he wrote the book more than five years after any supposed last meeting took place, without notes or other recorded documentation, filling in gaps with his own biases, imagination, and (most likely) stories he had heard from colleagues and fellow critics of Hitler. Rauschning undermines his own case at the end of the book by indulging in deliberate fiction, and it’s difficult to tell where the putative truth ends and the intentional fiction begins.
So, even though I’m willing to concede that Rauschning probably did meet with Hitler, and talk politics with him, I wouldn’t state that any single quote in this book is reliable. Where it may be of use, at least to lay readers, is as a kind of departure from Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944, in which Hitler’s private speech was written down by stenographers, and edited for posterity by Martin Bormann. Bormann is doing what he can to make the private Hitler look good. Bormann’s Hitler is erudite, witty, charming, and reasonable, and there is enough documentation to suggest that this picture is incomplete at best. Rauschning’s Hitler, by contrast, is petty, nervous, aggressive, and domineering. He frequently shouts, especially if someone disagrees with him, and he acts from profound insecurity. By putting these two pictures together, not privileging the words but merely combining the personalities, one may actually get a better sense of the complexity of Adolf Hitler.
November 6, 2010
Also known as "Hitler Speaks". This is an incredible book to read. Hermann Rauschning was President of the Danzig Senate and had actually met Hitler a few times which have been historically proven and noted in his other book "The Revolution of Nihilism" which he says he had met with him 3 or 4 times. This book on the other hand makes it appear that he had many more meetings with Hitler than he previously stated. It has been shown by historians that much of what is stated in this book has been taken from many sources, speeches ect., and were not taken from personal conversations with Hitler. In fact he in all his meetings (3 or 4) he was never even alone with him. Bluntly put this book is basically Allied propaganda although damn interesting propaganda. I honestly believe many of the stories of Hitlers psychosis and involvement with magic may have actually had their start from the last chapters of the book. Read with a grain of salt, heck with the whole salt shaker, but read it nonetheless.
March 22, 2023
A very interesting read. Aleister Crowley recommends it in a letter in Magick Without Tears and it is interesting to read this in that light. As far as a historical document goes it is interesting as a curiosity - but the speeches are compiled from the memory of an alleged witness who was at these speeches. There may be some accuracy in conveying Hitler’s thinking, but it is impossible to verify what is presented in this document. Still, quite interesting.
February 8, 2019
Frightening. Don't believe the revisionists.
June 21, 2023
In 1978, the respected American historian Prof. Henry A. Turner, Yale University/USA, published Otto Wagener's notes for the first time in the Ullstein-Verlag. At that time, contemporary history research believed that Hermann Rauschning's "Conversations with Hitler" provided sufficient material on the early history of National Socialism and Hitler's way of thinking. In his introduction, Turner was almost a little embarrassed to extol the virtues of his new source: Wagener was possibly a more competent witness than Rauschning. The suspicion was vision. Ten years later, we know that Hermann Rauschning - a Nazi party member and president of the Gdansk Senate in 1933/34 - fooled historians and the public. He made up his alleged minutes of the talks. The "Zeit" wrote about this affair on 19 July 1985:[2] "His false Hitler quotations are still in school textbooks today, adorn festive speeches and editorials ... In Joachim Fest's biography of Hitler alone, Rauschning's invented conversations and sayings are quoted more than fifty times." Rauschning had been forced to resign as Senate President in 1934 and even expelled from the Nazi party. After his emigration, he was encouraged in Paris by the newspaper publisher Emery Reves, alias Imre Révész, to fabricate his alleged memories for propaganda purposes against Germany. With the collaboration of the journalist Paul Ravoux, the "Conversations with Hitler" were written. Rauschning received 125,000 francs for it, more than any author in France had ever received for a book. The beautifully gruesome alleged Hitler quotations that have been teaching unsuspecting pupils to cringe in class for four decades ("We must be cruel.... We must regain the good conscience for cruelty. Only in this way can we drive softness out of our people.... softness." - "Do I want to eliminate whole tribes of people? Yes, something like that, that's what it will come to." - "I want war."), would probably have done their duty for a few decades longer, had they not been brought down by the persistence of the Swiss teacher Wolfgang Hänel.~ The "Zeit" writes about this in its article: "Rauschning claims that he spoke with Hitler more than a hundred times. A fat lie, says debunker Hänel, and he can prove it. Professor Schieder had, according to a generous count, only thirteen meetings between 1932 and 1934, but could only find a note for two of them (and even then the guest from Danzig never spoke privately with Hitler!).
After the war, the Soviet prosecutors in the Nuremberg war crimes trial elevated Rauschning's "conversations" to evidence document "USSR-378" - which prompted the main defendant, Hermann Göring, to raise the obvious objection: "Do we believe that the Führer would have revealed his most secret views to any provincial politician?
After the war, the Soviet prosecutors in the Nuremberg war crimes trial elevated Rauschning's "conversations" to evidence document "USSR-378" - which prompted the main defendant, Hermann Göring, to raise the obvious objection: "Do we believe that the Führer would have revealed his most secret views to any provincial politician?
March 22, 2023
Denna bok är naturligtvis inte bokstavlig på det sätt författaren ger sken av men ger en insikt i en diktators tankevärld. Parallellerna till Kreml idag är kusliga. Väl värd att läsa därför.
August 11, 2018
Es ist ja leider nicht klar, ob und inwiefern das authentisch ist, aber beeindruckend fand ich das allemal.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews