Machtergreifung
Hitler broadcasts the new government's appeal to the German people
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗Two days into the job, Hitler went on the radio and asked Germans for four years — after which, he said, the electorate could judge the government's programme.
1 February 1933: a radio appeal from Berlin
On 1 February 1933, two days after becoming chancellor, Hitler delivered an appeal in the name of the new Reich government over the radio from Berlin. It was formally a government address rather than a party speech, though its accusations and themes were unmistakably Nazi.
This was a radio broadcast, not a speech to a mass rally.
Blame, then a bargain
The address blamed Germany's crisis on the post-1918 republic, on Marxism and on communism, and presented the new nationalist government as the agent of unity and recovery. Hitler invoked President Hindenburg's authority, describing the government as acting on his commission.
He promised two four-year programmes — rescuing agriculture and overcoming unemployment — alongside labour service, settlement policies and fiscal-administrative reorganisation, and asked for four years in which to carry them out.
Reprinted across Germany the next day
The claims should be read as propaganda rather than as description: unemployment stood at almost 35% when Hitler took office, and the speech promised to eliminate it within four years while declaring 'merciless war' on alleged political and cultural nihilism.
The proclamation was reprinted in newspapers across Germany the following day; the surviving original text cited by German History in Documents and Images appeared in the Nazi Party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter.
Sources
Researched 23 Aug 2026 2 sources 3 audit passes
How this was checked
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What the sources leave uncertain
- The date and Berlin location are directly supported by the German History in Documents and Images entry and its Bundesarchiv photograph metadata.
- English sources variously translate Aufruf as “Appeal,” “Proclamation,” or “Call.” “Appeal by the Reich Government to the German People” is the more literal event title used by GHDI.