Rare audio recordings offer a different perspective on some of the most notorious figures of Nazi Germany. Instead of the shouted rhetoric of mass rallies, these clips capture Adolf Hitler and members of his inner circle speaking in calm, ordinary, even conversational voices.
The recordings follow a method used in an earlier project devoted to Hitler's everyday voice. That work gathered examples of Hitler speaking in a normal tone, in direct contrast to how he is usually presented. The same approach is now applied to other leading Nazis.
One clip captures a relaxed, chatty Hitler addressing the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, apparently in 1938. The setting is informal rather than ceremonial, and his delivery is far removed from his public speeches.
The sequence then turns to Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda and public enlightenment, described as the mouthpiece of National Socialism. After Hitler's death, Goebbels served as Reich chancellor of Germany for a single day, until his suicide on May 1, 1945.
In the audio, Goebbels is heard taking a question about how the new Germany views economic developments in the United States. A translation follows his remarks. He says that people in Germany are keenly interested in and follow very closely the economic development of the United States.
Goebbels adds that Germans believe President Roosevelt and his advisors are on the right path. He frames the matter as the greatest economic and social problem the world has ever had to solve: reinstating millions of people who lost their jobs in factories, shops, and offices back into the process of production.
To solve such a problem, Goebbels argues, it is not enough to leave matters to private initiative. The government, he says, must take the lead.
The next figure is Hermann Göring, described as probably the most flamboyant member of Hitler's inner circle. He was head of the Luftwaffe, prime minister of Prussia, and Hitler's number two after 1941.
Göring was apprehended by the Americans at the end of the war and tried at Nuremberg. The recording presents excerpts from his defense in 1946. He committed suicide in his cell the day before he was due to be hanged.
In the excerpt, Göring is questioned about taking people into what is called protective custody. He confirms that this is correct.
The recordings then move to Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and the Gestapo and one of the most powerful and feared men in Nazi Germany. He was apprehended by the British in May 1945 and died in custody shortly afterwards.
In the audio, Himmler is heard privately discussing the Jews before a meeting of SS leaders in Poland in October 1943.
Rudolf Hess was deputy führer until 1941, when he flew to Scotland in an attempt to broker a peace deal between Germany and Britain. Sentenced to life imprisonment at Nuremberg, he died in Spandau prison in Berlin in 1987 at the age of 93.
Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and minister of armaments, constructed grandiose Nazi buildings and used slave labor to keep Germany's wartime economy going. He was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment at the Nuremberg trials and died in London in 1981. The short clip associated with him in the sequence is not subtitled.
Hitler's foreign minister was captured by the British at the end of the war after some months in hiding in Hamburg. Tried at Nuremberg and hanged in 1946, he was fluent in English and had served as German ambassador to Great Britain during the 1930s.
The Hitler Youth leader was half American and a descendant of two signers of the Declaration of Independence. From 1940 to 1945 he was Gauleiter of Vienna. Sentenced to 20 years at Nuremberg, he died in 1974.
The sequence also includes a clip of Hitler's wartime ally speaking English in the early 1930s. In it, he expresses friendly feelings toward the American nation and describes the friendship with which Italy looks upon the millions of citizens living in the United States.
He says this feeling is deeply rooted in Italian hearts and speaks of the energy of the American people. He salutes what he calls the great American peace and addresses Italians in America who, he says, unite in a single love for their nation.
Taken together, the recordings preserve historical fragments in which these figures sound strikingly ordinary. The contrast between their calm private or conversational voices and the crimes they directed remains the central fact of the material.