Historians have long seen Adolf Hitler’s speeches as a central source on National Socialism and its exercise of power in need of further research and reliable documentation. Until now, researchers have regularly used the overview put together by Max Domarus in the 1960s, which is incomplete and contains numerous errors. Besides, only a few selected speeches have been edited for publication to date, while some volumes of Hitler’s  proclamations can be found from before 1945. A complete overview of Hitler’s speeches, however, has yet to be gathered, compiled and analyzed in full.

It is uncontroversial that Hitler’s political rise was driven by his public speaking and rhetoric in particular. His addresses did much more to motivate and steer the Nazi movement than his assertions in Mein Kampf ever did. After 1933, Hitler continued to use speeches as a concentrated means to achieve an impact both politically and ideologically and to keep charging the public with his ideological visions.

This project centers on the working hypothesis and research interest of how much Hitler’s speeches reflected and indeed embodied the links between political ideology, rhetorical communication, and social mobilization as fundamental elements to Nazi rule. The systematic overview and availability of these sources thus provides a key contribution to all basic research on National Socialism and its historical impact.

The goal of the collection is to present, for the first time and, whenever possible, in their entirety all known speeches after January 30, 1933, complete with annotations. To date, over 100 contemporary and post-war publications have been evaluated in addition to archival records and several collections of speeches put together by different Nazi agencies. As of now, there are records of 766 of Hitler’s speeches, of which around four fifths are from the pre-war period.