History of Sorts

On 12 December 1941, five days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, Adolf Hitler made a revealing speech in Berlin to Nazi leaders.

“Bezüglich der Judenfrage ist der Führer entschlossen, reinen Tisch zu machen. Er hat den Juden prophezeit, daß, wenn sie noch einmal einen Weltkrieg herbeiführen würden, sie dabei ihre Vernichtung erleben würden. Das ist keine Phrase gewesen. Der Weltkrieg ist da, die Vernichtung des Judentums muß die notwendige Folge sein.”

“With regard to the Jewish question, the Führer is determined to clear the air. He prophesied to the Jews that if they were to bring about another world war, they would experience their annihilation. That was not just a phrase. The world war is here—Destruction of Judaism must be the necessary consequence.”

This was a private meeting, of course, but there were many occasions where Hitler publicly laid out his plans for the Jews, going back as far as the 1920s.

Hitler’s Conversation with author Josef Hell, 1922
When Hell asked Hitler what he intended to do if he ever had full freedom of action against the Jews, his response was:
“If I am ever really in power, the destruction of the Jews will be my first and most important job. As soon as I have power, I shall have gallows after gallows erected, for example, in Munich on the Marienplatz many of them as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged one after another, and they will stay hanging until they stink. They will stay hanging as long as hygienically possible. As soon as they are untied, then the next group will follow and that will continue until the last Jew in Munich is exterminated. Exactly the same procedure will be followed in other cities until Germany is cleansed of the last Jew.”

Hitler Interview in the New York Staatszeitung, 1933.
“Why does the world shed crocodile tears over the richly merited fate of a small Jewish minority? … I ask Roosevelt, I ask the American people: Are you prepared to receive in your midst these well-poisoners of the German people and the universal spirit of Christianity? We would willingly give every one of them a free steamer ticket and a thousand-mark note for travelling expenses if we could get rid of them.”

Hitler’s Closing speech at the Nuremberg Party Conference, 1938
(12 September 1938)
“When the question is still put to us why National Socialism fights with such fanaticism against the Jewish element in Germany, why it pressed and still presses for its removal then the answer can only be: Because National Socialism desires to establish a true community of the people…. Because we are National Socialists we can never suffer an alien race which has nothing to do with us to claim the leadership of our working people.”

These words were all said long before the war started.

Sources

https://phdn.org/archives/www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/statements.htm