One (very) rare piece of history
The only extant recording of Hitler's normal voice
Adolf Hitler was a maniacal mesmerizing public speaker. The innumerable surviving propaganda clips and longer documentaries deliver a Hitler rousing the masses with carefully rehearsed theatrical booming speeches.
But, strangely, there is no known audio footage of his normal conversational voice--with the exception of one tape, recorded in secret by a Finnish sound engineer during Hitler’s visit to Finland to wish the Marshal of Finland Baron C. G. E. Mannerheim a happy 75th birthday on 4 June 1942.
Hitler and his delegation met with the Finns in Mannerheim’s special saloon coach, in which Finnish intelligence had installed a listening device to capture their Marshal’s conversation with the German dictator. The recording somehow survived the war and surfaced in pretty good shape.
The innumerable references to Hitler the conversationalist, by people who had regular contact with him, underline that the dictator, who would deliver long rumbling lectures to his captive private audiences, had an attractive, almost “schoolteacher’s,” voice, a fact that appears true and correct once you hear this recording.
