Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter—with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It is a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me.

I have issued the command—and I will have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad—that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness—for the present only in the East—with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus will we gain the living space [Lebensraum] which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?

‘The solution of the Jewish question’ by the Germans—I must state this with a full sense of responsibility for what I am saying—is a serious and quite dangerous tool in the hands of the Germans, which is facilitating the ‘moral pacification’ of broad sections of Polish society … Although the nation loathes them mortally, this question is creating something of a narrow bridge upon which the Germans and a large portion of Polish society are finding agreement.