Secret Meeting of 20 February 1933

The Secret Meeting of 20 February 1933 (German: Geheimtreffen vom 20. Februar 1933) was a secret meeting held by Adolf Hitler and 20 to 25 industrialists at the official residence of the President of the Reichstag Hermann Göring in Berlin. Its purpose was to raise funds for the election campaign of the Nazi Party.

The German elections were to be held on 5 March 1933. The Nazi Party wanted to achieve two-thirds majority to pass the Enabling Act and desired to raise three million Reichsmark to fund the campaign. According to records, two million Reichsmarks were contributed at the meeting.

The meeting was attended by the following business representatives:

According to historian Gerald Feldmann also present were:

Georg von Schnitlzler said in his 10 November 1945 statement before the Office of US Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality that Dr. Stein, chairman of Gewerkschaft Auguste Victoria, a mine owned by IG Farben, and member of the German People's Party was also present at the reunion.

First Hermann Göring gave a short speech in which he emphasized the importance of the current election campaign. Then Hitler appeared and gave a ninety-minute speech. He praised the concept of private property and argued that the Nazi Party would be the nation's only salvation against the communist threat. The basis of the Nazi Party is the national idea and the concern over the nation's defense capabilities. Life is a continuous struggle and only the fittest could survive. Concurrently, only a militarily fit nation could thrive economically.

In his speech, Hitler declared democracy culpable for the rise of communism. The following is a translated excerpt of what remains of his speech:

We are today facing the following situation. The Weimar Government imposed upon us a certain constitutional order by which they put us on a democratic basis. By that we were, however, not provided with an able governmental authority. On the contrary, for the same reasons for which I criticized democracy before, it was inevitable that communism, in ever greater measure, penetrated the minds of the German people.

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