Adolf Hitler's public appearances were all carefully choreographed. The Nazi regime was one of the first in the world to make full use of the power of audiovisual mass media. Hitler's speaking voice and normal conversational style were never recorded except this time. The following is of a secret recording of Hitler's dinner table conversation made when he was visiting Marshal Mannerheim, the supreme commander of the Finnish armed forces, on his 75th birthday. The dinner was had on Mannerheim's special railway car. The secret microphones had been installed by Thor Damen, a sound engineer at YLE, the Finnish Broadcasting Company. He was supposed to record the official speeches and Mannerheim's responses but he continued to record the entire meeting including informal dinner table talk. He only got 11 minutes of that before Hitler's guards noticed what he was doing and he was told to stop recording.
Hitler seems to do most of the talking here. He spends a lot of time discussing the circumstances prior to Operation Barbarossa and the difficulties the German leadership faced regarding the Soviet Union during the Battle of Britain. Hitler also covers the initial phase of the war on Soviet Union.
The images in the video are taken by official Finnish army photographers.
The government and the president of Finland were also present but no negotiations were on the table. This was a social call the unofficial purpose of which was probably to strengthen the relationship as co-belligerents (against the Soviet Union) between Finland and Germany at the time.
The video has English subtitles.