Hitler's prophecy.
Hitler's prophecy was a statement first made by Adolf Hitler in a speech (pictured) at the Reichstag on 30 January 1939: "If international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will be not the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe". Hitler continued to invoke the prophecy throughout the war and referenced it in his last will and testament, such that the prophecy became a leitmotif of the Final Solution and is the best-known phrase from Hitler's speeches. The historical significance of the prophecy is debated: intentionalists view it as proof of Hitler's previously developed master plan to systematically murder the European Jews, while functionalists argue that "annihilation" was not meant or understood to mean mass murder, at least initially. It is also cited as evidence that Germans were aware that Jews were being exterminated.
