Bill Moyers' hard-hitting Hitler Interview

This is the full transcript of Moyers' Q&A with the Reichsführer. If I'm not mistaken, Moyers earned a Pulitzer in the 40's for this interview.

BILL MOYERS: In 1933, Adolph Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany with only 44% of the vote. He inherited a struggling country with high inflation and staggering unemployment. How did you unite the country behind you?

ADOLF HITLER: Through the pursuit of peace. Europe will not have peace until the Jewish question has been disposed of.

MOYERS: But by the 1940s, you'd repaired the German economy and unemployment was nearly eradicated.

HITLER: The world has sufficient capacity for settlement, but we must finally break away from the notion that a certain percentage of the Jewish people are intended, by our dear God, to be the parasitic beneficiary of the body, and of the productive work, of other peoples.

MOYERS: Let's start with first things. When did you hear the call to leadership? How did it come?

HITLER: From millions of men . . . one man must step forward who with apodictic force will form granite principles from the wavering idea-world of the broad masses and take up the struggle for their sole correctness, until from the shifting waves of a fre thought-world there will arise a brazen cliff of solid unity in faith and will.

MOYERS: Contrary to some of the rumors that have been circulated about Germany, what are the realities of your Jewish community?

HITLER: Jewry must adapt itself to respectable constructive work, as other peoples do, or it will sooner or later succumb to a crisis of unimaginable proportions.

MOYERS: Are you saying that for the citizens of Germany leave the world of unemployment, leave the world of discrimination, leave the world of that daily struggle and come to...

HITLER: If the international finance -- Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations into a world war yet again, then the outcome will not be the victory of Jewry, but rather the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!

MOYERS: Lots of controversy about "Nazism". As I understand it, Nazism attempts to achieve a peaceful world through the establishment of a people's state.

HITLER: A folkish state must therefore begin by raising marriage from the level of a continuous defilement of the race, and give it the consecration of an institution which is called upon to produce images of the Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape.

MOYERS: Adolf Hitler, thank you very much for this opportunity.

HITLER: Well, thank you for having me Bill. Thank you sir.

MOYERS: That's it for the JOURNAL. We'll see you next week and on line.

I'm Bill Moyers.
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