MASTER OF THE GAME-CHANGING SPEECH

A single well-crafted, courageous and straight-talking speech can really make a big positive difference in this world.

As a professional speaker who helps people craft and deliver speeches, and who makes a few myself, I suppose I would say this.

But the world has just been reminded of the power of a great speech with the death of one of my heroes, the former German President, Richard von Weizsacker.

Weisacker was the president of the reunified Germany for the three years I lived in Berlin as a foreign correspondent after the fall of The Wall in 1989.

Having died at the age of 94, he had a long and colourful life and is being remembered for many things.

Foremost among them was the speech he made as President of West Germany on 8 May, 1985 to mark the fortieth anniversary of Nazi Germany’s capitulation at the end of World War II.

The speech was a game-changer.

It was a speech which looked unflinchingly at Germany’s Nazi past, and altered West Germany’s and the world’s perceptions of the country for the better in a stroke because of it’s searing honesty.

Richard von Weizsacker delivering his speech in the West German Parliament.

Weizacker took the opportunity to argue that Germans had to face up to their responsibility for their own misery in the aftermath of the war – and he linked this directly to Adolf Hitler’s rise as Chancellor in 1933.

Adolf Hitler as German Chancellor

Weisacker in World War II

So he had the kind of personal baggage which would have prevented a lesser man from making the speech.

But it also gave him the historical perspective and emotional connections to speak about the war with total credibility and feeling – and enabled him take a piercingly honest look at the devastation and genocide inflicted by the Nazis and to tell it like it was.

GUARDIAN GERMANY’S MORAL CONSCIENCE

Speaking as the guardian of his country’s moral conscience, Weizsacker, told his fellow Germans: “All of us, whether guilty or not, whether young or old, must accept the past.”

“We are all affected by the consequences and liable for it.

“The young and old generations must and can help each other to understand why it is vital to keep alive the memories.”

Weizsacker, who became the first West German President to visit Israel, accepted that the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis was a crime on a scale like no other.

“We Germans must look truth straight in the eye,” he declared, “without embellishment and without distortion.”

Weizsacker went on to say that anyone who closes his eyes to the past is blind to the present.

“Whoever refuses to remember the inhumanity is prone to new risks of infection.

“The Jewish nation remembers and will always remember.

“We seek reconciliation.

“Precisely for this reason we must understand that there can be no reconciliation without remembrance.”

Weizsacker’s speech had a cathartic effect.

His office was inundated with approving letters and telegrams.

The Israeli Ambassador to Bonn declared the speech to represent ”a moment of glory” in West German-Israeli ties and paved the way for Weizsacker’s subsequent historic visit to Israel.

Weizsacker at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem

Hundreds of thousands of copies of the speech distributed.

I was given one by the West German Embassy in Canberra before I left Australia on a flight to Frankfurt.
By addressing the Nazi crimes more directly than his political predecessors, Weizsacker unburdened the nation and took a huge step in allowing it to rehabilitate itself in the eyes of the world.

You can read the speech in full here:
http://deferred-live.net/muse/ariUploads/pdfs/speechRichardvonWeizsacker.pdf

GETTING YOUR SPEECHES RIGHT

So you may not get the opportunity deliver a speech at a key moment on behalf of your country.

But we have been reminded that words have power, and when deployed and delivered in the appropriate way they can have an extraordinary positive effect.

Click the video below for details of my conference keynote speeches on Becoming Inspirational Communicators:

www.michaeldoddcommunications.com/speaking-at-your-event

Information about Presenting with Confidence, Impact and Pizzazz is at:

http://www.michaeldoddcommunications.com/presenting-with-confidence-impact-and-pizzazz/

In my master classes on public speaking we work on the content of what you say, the way you structure it and the way you look, sound and feel when delivering your presentation.

When you get these right, it’s amazing what results you can have.

Keep smiling,

Michael