The Obersalzberg Speech

The Obersalzberg Speech is a speech given by Adolf Hitler to Wehrmacht commanders at his Obersalzberg home on 22 August 1939, a week before the German invasion of Poland. The speech details, in particular, the pending German invasion of Poland and a planned extermination of Poles. It shows Hitler's knowledge of the extermination and his intention to carry out the said genocide in a planned manner.

Three documents were grouped together during Nuremberg Trials which contained Hitler's speech on 22 August 1939 (1014-PS, 798-PS, and L-3,) and only the document L-3 contained the Armenian quote. Documents 1014-PS and 798-PS were captured by the United States forces inside the OKW headquarters but these documents did not contain the Armenian quote. On May 16, 1946, during the Nuremberg War Tribunals, a counsel for one of the defendants, Dr. Walter Siemers requested from the president of the trial to strike out the document 1014-PS, but his request was rejected by the president. Document L-3 was brought to the court by an American journalist, Louis P. Lochner.

According to Louis P. Lochner, while stationed in Berlin he received a copy of a speech by Hitler from his "informant", which he published (in English translation) in his book What About Germany? (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1942) as being indicative of Hitler's desire to conquer the world. In 1945, Lochner handed over a transcript of the German document he had received to the prosecution at the Nuremberg trials, where it was labeled L-3. Hence it is known as the L-3 document. The speech is also found in a footnote to notes about a speech Hitler held in Obersalzberg on 22 August 1939 that were published in the German Foreign Policy documents When asked in the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal who his source was, Lochner said this was a German called "Herr Maasz" but gave vague information about him.

The Times of London quoted from Lochner's version in an unsigned article titled The War Route of the Nazi Germany on 24 November 1945. The article stated that it had been brought forward by the prosecutor on 23 November 1945, as evidence. However, according to the Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik (ser. D, vol. 7, 1961), the document was not introduced as evidence before the International Military Tribunal for undisclosed reasons and is not included in the official publication of the documents in evidence. Two other documents containing minutes of Hitler's Obersalzberg speech(es) had been found among the seized German documents and were introduced as evidence, both omitting the Armenian quote.

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