What did Adolf Hitler say on the one time that he was interviewed one on one?


 Hitler was never ‘interviewed’, per se, but instead secretly recorded as he spoke to the Commander-in-Chief of Finland’s Defense Forces, Marshal Mannerheim. Creatively referred to as the “Hitler and Mannerheim recording”, it is the only known recording of Hitler’s unofficial speaking voice.

But do we still have it? Out of pure luck, yes. Okay, but can we even understand what Hitler is saying in it? Yes, the audio quality is great. Needless to say this recording is almost too good to be true for us history lovers.

The ol’ Fuhrer never liked to be recorded off-guard, though, not much less than anybody does, I reckon. So who had the balls to do it? Well, here’s the story in short

So Hitler and Mannerheim met secretly to celebrate Mannerheim’s birthday up in Finland on June 4th, 1942. I say ‘secretly’ because this really was intended to be a private affair; as far as the ‘public sphere’ was concerned, Hitler was there to have his official greetings and birthday wishes recorded, nothing more.

But Thor Damen, one of the Finnish sound engineers present, decided that he would record just a little more than Hitler and Mannerheim exchanging pleasantries. And so Thor set up his microphone in the birthday boy’s personal train, where Mannerheim, Hitler, and other officials met for cigars, drinks, and lunch.

What he got was 11-minutes of pure, unadulterated Hitler; no flaming rhetoric, no screaming: just plain conversation.

In the recording, Hitler talks about various war-related developments, like his failed invasion of the Soviet Union*. Most amusingly to me, however, is how awe-struck he sounds when talking about the Red Army’s ability to make vast amounts of armaments

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