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I was right, Hitler's quote about the Armenian genocide wasn't an urban legend.
And I was lucky -- it turns out I've resurrected The Mother Of All Controversies.
But anyway my original citation was Lloyd Dobyns, who ran an entire half-hour segment about the Armenian genocide on "NBC News Overnight," television news for vampires co-hosted by Linda Ellerbee, after reporting a tiny story about the assassination of a Turkish diplomat in Paris.
Dobyns and Ellerbee were American commercial television's finest moment in news broadcasting. While their shows lasted -- they also did "NBC Weekend" -- you could watch television news and think you were seeing something as thoughtful, intelligent and serious as reading an excellent national newspaper. Well, you were.
(Vleeptron will shortly have a bit to say about CNN / Cable News Network, the degenerate xxxxroach cartoon descendent of commercial television something. I don't know what the something is, I only know it's not news. But check out the Tekno Beat that pumps up every story!!! TV News you can DANCE to!!! And those hot babe announcers and the way they smile at me!!! And those gorgeous hunk lox announcers!!! Hubba-hubba!!!)
(On a "Murphy Brown" episode, Ellerbee confessed that she stole the tagline "And so it goes." from Dobyns.)
Anyway, here are two quotes. The second one, hosed from Wikipedia, contains its own questions about authenticity.
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"We must already be thinking of resettlement of millions of men from Germany and Europe. Migrations of people have always taken place. Are we really going to remain a nation of have-nots forever? We have the capacity to rouse and lead the masses against this situation. We intend to introduce a great resettlement policy; In 1923 little Greece could resettle a million men. Think of the biblical deportations and the massacres of the Middle Ages and remember the extermination of the Armenians [erinnern Sie sich doch an die Ausrottung Armeniens]."
-- Adolph Hitler, interview with Richard Breiting that apeared in the German daily newspaper Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, 4 May 1931.
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from Wikidedia:
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The Armenian quote is a paragraph allegedly included in a speech by Adolf Hitler to Wehrmacht commanders at his Obersalzberg home on 22 August 1939, a week before the German invasion of Poland. The authenticity of the quote has been disputed. The key area of contention regarding the "Armenian quote" is its last sentence, which contains a reference to the Armenian genocide, an episode during World War I in the Ottoman Empire, during which, according to many estimates, approximately 1,500,000 ethnic Armenians were killed. The authenticity of the quote has become hotly contested between Turkish and Armenian political activists. Since the quote is now inscribed on one of the walls of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., its authenticity has become an issue in debate over the politics of Holocaust commemoration.
Third paragraph of Hitler's speech:
"Unsere Stärke ist unsere Schnelligkeit und unsere Brutalität. Dschingis Chan hat Millionen Frauen und Kinder in den Tod gejagt, bewußt und fröhlichen Herzens. Die Geschichte sieht in ihm nur den großen Staatengründer. Was die schwache westeuropäische Zivilisation über mich behauptet, ist gleichgültig. Ich habe den Befehl gegeben -- und ich lasse jeden füsilieren, der auch nur ein Wort der Kritik äußert -- daß das Kriegsziel nicht im Erreichen von bestimmten Linien, sondern in der physischen Vernichtung des Gegners besteht. So habe ich, einstweilen nur im Osten, meine Totenkopfverbände bereitgestellt mit dem Befehl, unbarmherzig und mitleidslos Mann, Weib und Kind polnischer Abstammung und Sprache in den Tod zu schicken. Nur so gewinnen wir den Lebensraum, den wir brauchen. Wer redet heute noch von der Vernichtung der Armenier?"
The above is verbatim according to a takedown in writing to be found in the German Foreign Office's archive. English translation below; as with any translation, due to lexical, grammatical and semantical redundancies in both languages, a variety of different wordings have been published since World War II, mostly retaining linguistic accuracy nevertheless:
"Our strength is our quickness and our brutality. Genghis Khan had millions of women and children hunted down and killed, deliberately and with a gay heart. History sees in him only the great founder of States. What the weak Western European civilization alleges about me, does not matter. I have given the order - and will have everyone shot who utters but one word of criticism - that the aim of {translator: this} war does not consist in reaching certain {translator: geographical} lines, but in the enemies' physical elimination. Thus, for the time being only in the east, I put ready my Death's Head units, with the order to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of the Polish race or language. Only thus will we gain the living space that we need. Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?"
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