People of Nazi Germany

"My measures will not be crippled by any bureaucracy. Here I don't have to worry about Justice; my mission is only to destroy and to exterminate, nothing more."

"Shoot first and inquire afterwards, and if you make mistakes, I will protect you."

"Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat."

"The Jew must clearly understand one thing at once, he must get out!"

"Now you see. You are even turning the Fuehrer against me. Ah, the Jews, the Jews, they'll be the death of me yet!"

"Excellency, please sign. I hate to say it, but my job is not the easiest one. Prague, your capital–I should be terribly sorry if I were compelled to destroy this beautiful city. But I would have to do it, to make the English and French understand that my air force can do all it claims to do. Because they still don't want to believe this is so, and I should like an opportunity of giving them proof."

"Supplementing the task assigned to you by the decree of January 24, 1939, to solve the Jewish problem by means of emigration and evacuation in the best possible way according to present conditions, I hereby charge you to carry out preparations as regards organizational, financial, and material matters for a total solution (Gesamtlösung) of the Jewish question in all the territories of Europe under German occupation.Where the competency of other central organizations touches on this matter, these organizations are to collaborate.I charge you further to submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution (Endlösung) of the Jewish question."

"The only one who really knows about the Reichstag is I, because I set it on fire!"

"Why has this silly engine suddenly turned up, which is so idiotically welded together? They told me then, there would be two engines connected behind each other, and suddenly there appears this misbegotten monster of welded-together engines one cannot get at!"

"The people were merely to acknowledge the authority of the Führer, or, let us say, to declare themselves in agreement with the Führer. If they gave the Führer their confidence then it was their concern to exercise the other functions. Thus, not the individual persons were to be selected according to the will of the people, but solely the leadership itself."

"I especially denounce the terrible mass murders, which I cannot understand ... I never ordered any killing or tortures where I had the power to prevent such actions!"

"The German people trusted the Führer. Given his authoritarian direction of the state, they had no influence on events. Ignorant of the crimes of which we know today, the people have fought with loyalty, self-sacrifice, and courage, and they have suffered too in this life-and-death struggle into which they were arbitrarily thrust. The German people are free from blame."

"We are living through a National Socialist revolution. We emphasize the term “socialist” because many speak only of a “national” revolution. Dubious, but also wrong. It was not only nationalism that led to the breakthrough. We are proud that German socialism also triumphed. Unfortunately, there are still people among us today who emphasize the word “national” too strongly and who do not want to know anything about the second part of our worldview, which shows that they have also failed to understand the first part. Those who do not want to recognize a German socialism do not have the right to call themselves national."

"Just as nationalism protects a people from outside forces, so socialism serves a people's domestic needs. We want the people's strength to be released within the nation, forging the people once more into a strong block. The individual citizen must again have the sense that, even if he is finds himself in the simplest and lowest position, that his life and opportunities are assured."

"Marxist socialism was degraded to a concern only with pay or the stomach. The bourgeoisie degraded nationalism into barren hyper-patriotism. Both concepts, therefore, must be cleansed and shown to the people anew, in a crystal-clear form. The nationalism of our worldview arrived at the right moment. Our movement seized the concept of socialism from the cowardly Marxists, and tore the concept of nationalism from the cowardly bourgeois parties, throwing both into the melting pot of our worldview, and producing a clear synthesis: German national Socialism. That provided the foundation for the rebuilding of our people. Thus this revolution was National Socialist."

"Der Sieger wird immer der Richter und der Besiegte stets der Angeklagte sein."

"The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused."

"After the United States gobbled up California and half of Mexico, and we were stripped down to nothing, territorial expansion suddenly becomes a crime. It's been going on for centuries, and it will still go on."

"Do you think I give that much of a damn about my lousy life? — For myself, I don't give a damn if I get executed, or drown, or crash in a plane, or drink myself to death! — But there is still a matter of honor in this life! — Assassination attempt on Hitler! — Ugh! — Gott im Himmel!! I could have sunk through the floor! And do you think I would have handed Himmler over to the enemy, guilty as he was? Dammit, I would have liquidated the bastard myself!"

"Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

"What do I care about danger? I've sent soldiers and airmen to death against the enemy — why should I be afraid?"

"Hitler decided that. I thought it was stupid because I believed that first we had to defeat England. Also we had to take Gibraltar."

"No. It was the last hours and he (Hitler) was under pressure. If I could have seen him personally it would have been different."

"I know you want to study me psychologically. That's reasonable and I appreciate it. At least you don't lecture to me and pry into my affairs. You have a good technique as a psychiatrist. Let the other fellow talk and stick his neck into the noose. I don't mean that the way it sounds. But you hardly say anything. Someday I'm going to ask you questions."

"I have always been interested in family history. Chromosomes are funny things, aren't they? They may skip a generation and you can find children who resemble the grandfather, rather than either parent. Heredity is more important than environment. Blood will tell. For example, a man is either musical by heredity or he is not. You can't make a man musical by the environment. You can find a person who is very musically inclined and be puzzled because neither parents nor grandparents had any ear for music. But if you trace it back, you will find that the great-grandfather was a musician. But the environment plays a great part in the development of a man. It is significant whether a man is brought up in the city or in the country, near a lake or on the shores of the ocean."

"In Berlin Jews controlled almost one hundred percent of the theaters and cinemas before the rise to power."

"Hitler had the willpower of a demon and he needed it. If he didn't have such a strong willpower he couldn't have achieved anything. Don't forget, if Hitler had not lost the war, if he did not have to fight against the combination of big powers like England, America, and Russia — each one he could have conquered individually — these defendants and these generals would now be saying, 'Heil Hitler,' and would not be so damn critical."

"To me there are two Hitlers: one who existed until the end of the French war; the other begins with the Russian campaign. In the beginning he was genial and pleasant. He would have extraordinary willpower and unheard-of influence on people. The important thing to remember is that the first Hitler, the man who I knew until the end of the French war, had much charm and goodwill. He was always frank. The second Hitler, who existed from the beginning of the Russian campaign until his suicide, was always suspicious, easily upset, and tense. He was distrustful to an extreme degree."

"I am a man who is basically opposed to atrocities or ungentlemanly actions. In 1934, I promulgated a law against vivisection. You can see, therefore, that if I disapprove of the experimentation on animals, how could I possibly be in favor of torturing humans? The prosecution says that I had something to do with the freezing experiments which were performed in the concentration camps under the auspices of the air force. That is pure nonsense! I was much too busy to know about these medical experiments, and if anybody had asked me, I would have disapproved violently. It must have been Himmler who thought up these stupid experiments, although I think he shirked his responsibility by committing suicide. I am not too unhappy about it because I would not particularly enjoy sitting on the same bench with him. The same is true of that drunken Robert Ley, who did us a favor by hanging himself before the trial started. He was not going to be any advantage for us defendants when he took the stand."

"The atrocities are, for me, the most horrible part of the accusation in this trial. They thought that I took it lightly or laughed about it or some such nonsense, in court. That is definitely a mistake. I am the type of person who is naturally against such things and my own psychological reaction is to laugh or smile in the face of adversity. Perhaps that explains my attitude in court. Besides, I was not to blame for these horrors. It's not just that I am a hard man because of my long experience in the army and in politics. It's true that I saw plenty in the First World War and during the air raids and at the front in this war. But I was always a person who felt the suffering of others. To paint me as an unfeeling ogre who laughs in court at the atrocities is stupid."

"All nonsense. Nobody knows the real Göring. I am a man of many parts, but the autobiography, what does that tell you? Nothing. And those books put out by the party press, they are less than useless."

"I think that women are wonderful but I've never met one yet who didn't show more feeling than logic."

"If I didn't have a sense of humor, how could I stand this trial now?"

"In the first place I'm sure Hitler did not write that damned testament himself. Probably some swine like Bormann wrote it for him. But I don't see what is so terrible in the testament when you examine it, anyway. There was Berlin, bombed every minute. The noise of artillery from the lousy Russians, the American and British bombers overhead. Maybe Hitler was a trifle unbalanced by all that. If he wrote the testament at such a time, it was hysteria. But essentially, what difference does it make?"

"I have to laugh when the English claim they are such a wonderful nation. Everyone knows that Englishmen are really Germans, that the English kings were German, and that in Russia the emperors were either of German origin or received their education in Germany."

"The Russians are primitive folk. Besides, Bolshevism is something that stifles individualism and which is against my inner nature. Bolshevism is worse than National Socialism — in fact, it can't be compared to it. Bolshevism is against private property, and I am all in favor of private property. Bolshevism is barbaric and crude, and I am fully convinced that that atrocities committed by the Nazis, which incidentally I knew nothing about, were not nearly as great or as cruel as those committed by the Communists. I hate the Communists bitterly because I hate the system. The delusion that all men are equal is ridiculous. I feel that I am superior to most Russians, not only because I am a German but because my cultural and family background are superior. How ironic it is that crude Russian peasants who wear the uniforms of generals now sit in judgment on me. No matter how educated a Russian might be, he is still a barbaric Asiatic. Secondly, the Russian generals and the Russian government planned a war against Germany because we represented a threat to them ideologically. In the German state, I was the chief opponent of Communism. I admit freely and proudly that it was I who created the first concentration camps in order to put Communists in them. Did I ever tell you that funny story about how I sent to Spain a ship containing mainly bricks and stones, under which I put a single layer of ammunition which had been ordered by the Red government in Spain? The purpose of that ship was to supply the waning Red government with munitions. That was a good practical joke and I am proud of it because I wanted with all my heart to see Russian Communism in Spain defeated finally."

"No enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr. If one reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Göring. You may call me Meyer."

"In 1940 I could at least fly as far as Glasgow in most of my aircraft, but not now! It makes me furious when I see the Mosquito. I turn green and yellow with envy. The British, who can afford aluminium better than we can, knock together a beautiful wooden aircraft that every piano factory over there is building, and they give it a speed which they have now increased yet again. What do you make of that? There is nothing the British do not have. They have the geniuses and we have the nincompoops. After the war is over I'm going to buy a British radio set – then at least I'll own something that has always worked."

"When I hear the word culture, I reach for my Browning!"

"I will decide who is a Jew!"

"Hitler neither developed his ideas in a vacuum nor rose to power alone. A rather motley crew of people formed his inner circle. Its membership changed many times, as people fell in and out of favor. Three individuals who stuck with Hitler throughout his political career and gained international profiles were Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels, and Heinrich Himmler. All of them would play key roles in the Nazi regime, each amassing enormous power even as they fought among themselves for Hitler's favor."

"Hermann Göring (1893-1946) was a hero of World War I who rose through the air force to become commander of the famous Richtofen Squadron. Somewhat at a loss after the war ended with Germany's defeat and massive demilitarization, he joined the Nazi Party in 1922. One of Hitler's oldest associates, Göring had the distinction of having been wounded at the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Nazi lingo reserved the label "old fighters" for those of the faithful who had been members before the failed Putsch. Hitler often presented Göring as one of Nazism's more respectable figures. Göring's father had been a judge and consular official, and he had ties with conservative and nationalist circles. Göring senior had even served as resident minister plenipotentiary in German Southwest Africa, site of the German genocide of the Herero and Nama people in 1907. In fact there was a major street named after him in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia (now Daniel Munamava Street)."

"Throughout the 1930s Hitler showered appointments on Hermann Göring. When the Nazi Party became the largest party in the German parliament, Göring became president of the Reichstag (as the German parliament was called). Göring established the Gestapo, a political police force, and was named commander in chief of the Luftwaffe (air force). In 1936 Hitler chose Göring to head the Four-Year Plan to prepare Germany for war. A swaggering, flamboyant individual who relished luxury and excess, Göring was also an ambitious schemer and vicious infighter."

"Goering, wreathed in smiles and orders and decorations received us gaily, his wife at his side. There is something un-Christian about Goering, a strong pagan streak, a touch of the arena, though perhaps, like many who are libidinous-minded like myself, he actually does very little. People say that he can be very hard and ruthless, as are all Nazis when occasion demands, but outwardly he seems all vanity and childish love of display."

"In Goering's tones there is just such a shadow. He is a complex villain if ever there was one. He also kept his bravery to the end and made a showing at Nuremberg which shamed his colleagues. He also kept his stubborn cunning, defeating the hangman."

"I can't see a thing wrong with Göring's behavior as far as this trial is concerned. They have proven none of the charges. I have mentioned to Göring that the trouble with National Socialism is that it is a house divided, that we Germans tried to live in a community without considering our neighbors, and Göring agreed with me. So even Göring isn't as bad a fellow as the prosecution would have the world believe."

"The statesmen of the 1930s were not blind to the danger posed by a Germany dominant on the continent. On the contrary, it became conventional wisdom that the nation's capital would be flattened within twenty-four hours of the outbreak of war by the might of Hermann Gôring's Luftwaffe. In 1934 the Royal Air Force estimated that the Germans could drop up to 150 tons a day on England in the event of a war in which they occupied the Low Countries. By 1936 that figure had been raised to 600 tons and by 1939 to 700 tons - with a possible deluge of 3,500 tons on the first day of war. In July 1934 Baldwin declared, 'When you think of the defence of England you no longer think of the chalk cliffs of Dover; you think of the Rhine. That is where our frontier lies.' Yet he and his successor Neville Chamberlain failed altogether to devise a rational response to the German threat. It was one thing to let the Japanese have Manchuria; it meant nothing to British security. The same was true of letting the Italians have parts of Abyssinia; even Albania could be theirs at no cost to Britain. The internal affairs of Spain, too, were frankly irrelevant to the British national interest. But the rise of a Greater Germany was a different matter."

"And another question was unfortunately not asked of Göring: 'The German people put faith in you even if they doubted Hitler because you were gentlemanly and more likable. What did you, Göring, do to justify this confidence? You have led a luxurious life and collected stolen art.'"

"Göring wanted to know if we had ever thought about this. "Jawohl, Herr Reichsmarschall!" He looked me straight in the eyes and said, "What would you think of an order to shoot down pilots who were bailing out? "I should regard it as murder, Herr Reichsmarschall", I told him, "I should do everything in my power to disobey such an order". "That is just the reply I had expected from you, Galland"."

"The blame for the faulty use of the Air Force must be apportioned equally to Hitler and to Goering. Neither the bravery nor the military and technical ability of the Luftwaffe sufficed to compensate for the vanity of its Commander-in-Chief and for the indulgence that Hitler showed towards the ambitions of his principle disciple. Only much later did Hitler form a true picture of Goering's worth- or rather worthlessness- but it is significant that on 'grounds of policy' he always refused to replace him in an appointment that was, for better or for worse, decisive to the outcome of the war. It has often been maintained that Hitler showed unshakable loyalty to his 'old comrades'. So far as Goering is concerned this was unfortunately true. It is also true that he frequently complained about him, but he never drew the correct conclusions from his own observations."

"The two incidents which contributed most deeply to the motivation of his life came about in 1918, just after the Armistice. First, Goering refused to demobilize and surrender his planes. He was ordered to do so by the German General Staff, but he refused to obey, until he was finally brought to ground near Darmstadt. He said farewell to his fellow officers, toasting the day when Germany would be supreme in the air. His planes were then destroyed. He never got over this. The destruction of his precious aircraft, by men whom he considered his infinite inferiors, was a psychic shock from which he did not recover; his present passionate energy to build a new German air fleet is compensation. Second, after he had returned to Berlin, a socialist mob saw him in uniform and forcibly tore his officer's insignia from his coat lapels. Foaming with rage, he swore vengeance. His hatred of socialists, which is psychopathic in intensity, dates from that day. This incident is important to Nazi history. It is not entirely fanciful to assume that much of the Brown Terror was motivated by this incident."

"His ambition as well as his vanity is enormous. On March 6, 1933, exactly one day after the elections which confirmed Hitler's accession to office, he ordered his portrait painted- with a book in his lap conspicuously titled Life of Napoleon. His pets are lion cubs. All of them, male or female, are named Caesar. He is as carnivorous as Hitler is frugal- brusque, impulsive, brutal. Testimony after the Munich Putsch of 1923 recorded his orders to "beat in the skulls" of his opponents "with rifle butts". His famous order to the police in February, 1933, to shoot "enemies" without question, really signalled the beginning of the Nazi terror. His ruthlessness is unthinking, spasmodic, hot-blooded. He is not a plotter like Goebbels. He has great executive ability, and this serves to make him doubly dangerous."

"The jokes about Goering are, of course, legion. Most of them, are predicated either on the resplendency of his uniforms or his abnormal size. He is not merely fat: he is fat atop an immensity of muscle. He moves with the vigor of a man a hundred pounds lighter: there is nothing torpid about him; his energy is terrific. But the story goes that he is so obese that he "sits down on his own stomach"; he and Emmy have to sleep in a tent: and he wears "corsets on his thighs." One story is that he dons an admiral's uniform whenever he takes a bath, with rubber duplicates to all his medals. A new unit of weight has been established in Germany- a "goering"- to signify the aggregate displacement of his decorations. Once he visited a steel factory and his companions were horrified to see him suddenly leave the floor and dart perpendicularly upward to the ceiling. Reason: an electro-magnet above had caught his medals. Another little story has him arriving late at a luncheon in Berlin, where he is to meet an eminent (and doubtless mythical) visiting Englishman. Goering apologizes for his tardiness, and says he has been out shooting. The Englishman turns to him with the lofty words, "Animals, I presume?" Goering, incidentally, is said to be fond himself of all the stories about him. Once, the legend has it, Hitler fell into a doze during a performance of Lohengrin. The Führer was too tired to keep fully awake. His eyes opened suddenly as the figure of the shining knight in armor took the stage. Hitler thought it was Goering. "Hermann," he shouted, "you are going too far." Goering's basic importance, if the present set-up lasts, is not his blood lust, not his position in Prussia, not his command of the Prussian police. What matters is his association with aviation. The next war will be fought in the air, and it is an ill-omen that a man like Goering, with his immense drive and ruthlessness, should be supremely responsible for the developments of the German air army."

"I was immensely entertained at meeting the man. One remembered all the time that he had been concerned with the "clean-up" in Berlin on June 30th 1934, and I wondered how many people he had been responsible for getting killed. Like a great schoolboy, full of life and pride in all he was doing, showing it all off, and talking high politics out of the setting of green jerkin and red dagger. A modern Robin Hood: producing on me a composite impression of film-star, gangster, great landowner interested in his property, Prime Minister, party manager, head-gamekeeper at Chatsworth."

"Had Hitler died in middle of the 1930's, Nazism would probably have shown, under the leadership of a Goering, a fundamental change in its course, and the Second World War might have been averted. Yet the sepulcher of Hitler, the founder of a Nazi religion, might perhaps have been a greater evil than all the atrocities, bloodshed and destruction of Hitler's war."

":Strasser: Are your people ready at the hotel?"

"The large and varied role of Göring was half militarist and half gangster. He stuck his pudgy finger in every pie. He used his SA musclemen to help bring the gang into power. In order to entrench that power, he contrived to have the Reichstag burned, established the Gestapo, and created the concentration camps. He was equally adept at massacring opponents and at framing scandals to get rid of stubborn generals. He built up the Luftwaffe [air force] and hurled it at his defenseless neighbors. He was among the foremost in harrying Jews out of the land. By mobilizing the total economic resources of Germany, he made possible the waging of the war which he had taken a large part in planning. He was, next to Hitler, the man who tied the activities of all the defendants together in a common effort."

"These men saw no evil, spoke none, and none was uttered in their presence. This claim might sound very plausible if made by one defendant. But when we put all their stories together, the impression which emerges of the Third Reich, which was to last a thousand years, is ludicrous. If we combine only the stories of the front bench, this is the ridiculous composite picture of Hitler's Government that emerges. It was composed of: A No. 2 man who knew nothing of the excesses of the Gestapo which he created, and never suspected the Jewish extermination programme although he was the signer of over a score of decrees which instituted the persecution of that race; A No. 3 man who was merely an innocent middleman transmitting Hitler's orders without even reading them, like a postman or delivery boy; A Foreign Minister who knew little of foreign affairs and nothing of foreign policy; A Field-Marshal who issued orders to the armed forces but had no idea of the results they would have in practice ... ... This may seem like a fantastic exaggeration, but this is what you would actually be obliged to conclude if you were to acquit these defendants. They do protest too much. They deny knowing what was common knowledge. They deny knowing plans and programmes that were as public as Mein Kampf and the Party programme. They deny even knowing the contents of documents which they received and acted upon. ... The defendants have been unanimous, when pressed, in shifting the blame on other men, sometimes on one and sometimes on another. But the names they have repeatedly picked are Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, Goebbels, and Bormann. All of these are dead or missing. No matter how hard we have pressed the defendants on the stand, they have never pointed the finger at a living man as guilty. It is a temptation to ponder the wondrous workings of a fate which has left only the guilty dead and only the innocent alive. It is almost too remarkable. The chief villain on whom blame is placed — some of the defendants vie with each other in producing appropriate epithets — is Hitler. He is the man at whom nearly every defendant has pointed an accusing finger. I shall not dissent from this consensus, nor do I deny that all these dead and missing men shared the guilt. In crimes so reprehensible that degrees of guilt have lost their significance they may have played the most evil parts. But their guilt cannot exculpate the defendants. Hitler did not carry all responsibility to the grave with him. All the guilt is not wrapped in Himmler's shroud. It was these dead men whom these living chose to be their partners in this great conspiratorial brotherhood, and the crimes that they did together they must pay for one by one."

"Air tactics, after all, merely interested Goering because he believed they could be solved at once by quick, unconsidered solutions."

"The stage was thus set for the entrance of Hermann Goering and his once powerful Luftwaffe. On 24th November the Reichsmarschall was present at a situation conference at Hitler's headquarters when Zeitzler stated that the Sixth Army had requested a minimum of 750 tons of supplies a day flown into the Stalingrad ring. It was realized that such a figure was beyond the capacity of the Luftwaffe or any other air force, and the General Staff had decided on a minimum of 300 tons a day. Zeitzler doubted if the Luftwaffe could raise sufficient transport aircraft to undertake the job; what had Goering to say about it? "Well?" demanded Hitler, looking directly at Goering. It is doubtful if Goering knew anything about the state of the Luftwaffe in Russia. For over a year, he had drifted lazily between Berlin and Rome; occasionally amusing himself in Vienna, always seeking refuge from the grim reality of a world at war. His star had waned in the Nazi hierarchy; he no longer had any friends, only associates who treated him with contempt or openly ignored him. He was a worried, lonely and dispirited man, hiding behind the inevitable mask of joviality and wanting desperately to be left alone with his jewels and art treasures. But the shackles of responsibility still weighed heavily upon him. He was Hermann Goering, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe. "The task is a difficult one," said Goering. "Nevertheless, you will carry it out." Hitler turned to his Chief of Staff. "You see, Zeitzler? It can be done." Zeitzler shook his head. "It would need at least 200 planes a day," he commented. "The Luftwaffe can do it!" insisted Goering, turning crimson with anger. He had spoken with scarcely a moment for thought, and, as always, had immediately convinced himself that he was right. In retrospect, one can only feel surprise that Hitler, after so many disappointments, was still willing to believe him."

"Hands clasped behind his back, Hermann Goering wandered sadly through the great house-cum-mausoleum he had named Karinhall. Many of the rooms were empty now; for weeks a large staff had been carefully packing the hundreds of art treasures for transporting to Berchtesgaden and other places. Valuable paintings, statues, priceless glass and porcelain, all had departed by lorry and train to the south, to be followed very soon by the crockery, furniture and a mountain of personal baggage. Within a month, nothing would remain at Karinhall except empty showcases, leaving the last evidence of Goering's years of triumph a deserted shell to be destroyed by high explosive on his orders. He was living in a nightmare: evacuating Karinhall before the Russian tanks and infantry blasted a path through the beautiful estate; trying to salvage a few baubles out of the wreckage of his former glory. He was already a commander without any forces; soon he would be a prince without a palace. Thus far had the mighty fallen; and Goering wept to think that at a time when Soviet guns were massed against Berlin, the amazing new aircraft that could have saved the Third Reich- and the Luftwaffe- were entering operational service. The Me 262, haunted by Hitler's interference; the Ta 152, Kurt Tank's replacement for the Fw 190; the rocket-driven Me 163 interceptor; the tandem-engine Do-335; all exceptional fighters, yet available in such pathetically small numbers. And Germany had new bombers, too: the Me 264, intended for the bombing of New York; the Ju 287; the Ar 234, first turbo-jet bomber in the world. Dozens of other projects still lay on abandoned drawing-boards, soon to be studied by the Allies. Did Goering, as he walked aimlessly through the vastness of Karinhall, remember Ernst Udet, and the wonderful new aircraft he had been promised back in 1941? there had been too many delays, too many tactical errors, too many wrong decisions. Now, time was the strongest enemy; the trees with their ripening fruit were about to come crashing down."

"For month after month during the summer of 1946 Hermann Goering sat in the dock beside Hess, von Ribbentrop, Keitel and the other defendants, eyes sunken in his head, the grey-blue Luftwaffe uniform hanging in folds on his shrunken frame. Despite his haggard appearance, he was mentally alert and followed the trial closely; during his cross-examination he crossed swords so deftly with the prosecution that the United States Prosecutor, Justice Robert H. Jackson, lost his temper. In his final statement, the former Reichsmarschall said: "I did not want a war, and I did not bring it about. I did everything to prevent it by negotiation. After it had broken out, I did everything to assure victory..." It was his last public speech, and there was no applause."

"For Hermann Wilhelm Goering, the fighter pilot of the First World War whose amazing rise to power brought him many high honors, including the title of Marshal of the Greater German Reich, it can only be said that he possessed great physical courage and an intelligence not readily apparent to those who only saw the bemedalled facade. He was also a skillful hunter who could be an amusing and lively host. But Goering was frequently cunning, deceitful and vindictive, a man given to wild boasting- "My bombers will darken the sky over London!"- and fits of childish temper. He was blinded by the vanity that destroyed his career; his craving for riches became such an obsession that even personal ambition ceased to be of any importance. He sought a life of luxury, and having achieved untold wealth, loved it not wisely but too well, to the exclusion of responsibility, the Nazi Party and all else. He ransacked the art museums of Europe while German military aviation fell in flames. The organization and administration of the Luftwaffe paid a bitter price for his indolence."

"After lunch [in March 1935] Goering told me that the British treated their Cabinet ministers very shabbily. In the matter of official residences or even motor-cars, for example, little or nothing was done for them. "I have 42 official cars," he told me proudly, "and that is not enough. I have had to buy a giant Mercedes for myself." Goering's uninhibited vulgarity was at once revolting and rather comic. At an official dinner-party in his house he produced samples of table-glass he had ordered, heavily cut objects with gold rims. "And when this is delivered," he explained, "the muck you now see on the table will be taken down to the kitchen and smashed with a hammer.""

"German troops crossed the frontier and marched on Vienna... As luck would have it, Goering was giving a monster party at the Haus der Flieger that night [11 March 1938]... News of the Austrian coup had reached the guests... As usual after a coup, the Germans showed signs of nervousness and did all they could to reconcile foreign opinion. Goering at once took Henderson into a corner and urged him to use his good offices to see that peace was not broken. He even sought to placate Mastny, the Czech Minister in Berlin, to whom he gave his word of honour that events in Austria would have no detrimental effect on relations between the Reich and Czechoslovakia. He then sought out the Minister again and repeated the assurance, adding that he was able to give Hitler's word as well. It was a perfect example of Nazi technique. First you brutally assault a man; then you rush round to his neighbours to express the pious hope that there will be no breach of the peace, particularly since you do not intend to assault them."

"For over two hours Goering and I chatted about the war... [H]e readily admitted that Hitler had made mistakes. Of these the gravest and the one most damaging to German fortunes was Hitler's failure to seize Spain and North Africa in 1940. Goering said that Germany should have resolved immediately after the fall of France to march through Spain, with or without Franco's assent, capture Gibraltar and spill into Africa. This could very easily have been done and it would have altered the whole course of the war. He had pressed Hitler, but in vain. When asked to explain why Hitler had rejected his advice, Goering replied that Hitler was convinced in 1940 that he had won the war... I asked Goering whether Hitler had not made two bad mistakes in attacking Russia and gratuitously declaring war on the United States. Goering agreed, but thought that if in 1941 Hitler had been in possession of Africa, he could have safely afforded the luxury of attacking Russia and America simultaneously."

"I...asked Goering whether he considered that our strategic bombing of Germany had paid off. He said it had without a doubt. But for the bombing, the war would have gone on a great deal longer, and in that event rockets and buzz bombs would have devastated Britain. As it was, we had only scraped home by a very short head. If he had had his way, Hitler would have allowed him to build special broad-gauge railways to bring the missiles to the bomb sites. If the R.A.F. had not disrupted communications, the Germans could have launched very many more missiles than they in fact did. In reply to a further question Goering admitted that the Battle of Britain had been a turning-point in the war. It had been a great disappointment to him. But he was very scornful about the R.A.F. claims of German losses and regarded the issue of the battle as a draw. But a draw was of no use to Germany, and her tragedy was that she failed to achieve victory."

"At the start of the Second World War, there were still some questions, at least on the Allied side, about what constituted a legitimate target (a British Cabinet minister is said to have protested in 1939, ‘But that’s private property,’ when the possibility of bombing German industry in the Ruhr came up). The all-out nature of the war swept such issues aside, although, again on the Allied side, they never completely disappeared. All the belligerents used bombing of civilians to disrupt enemy war efforts and weaken the will to fight on. Ports, factories, railway marshalling yards, oil depots, dams and bridges were all targets, but so too were housing and city centres. Hermann Goering promised Hitler in the summer of 1940 that he could force Britain to sue for peace by bombing its airfields and key cities, especially London. Sir Arthur Harris, chief of Britain’s Bomber Command, was convinced, and managed to persuade his superiors, including Winston Churchill, that the war against Germany could be won by the bomber and that the critical target was German morale."

"Among the higher leadership [in the Nazi Party], while there is still a certain unity, personalities are beginning to play a constantly greater part. Hitler is perhaps more powerful than before, but he becomes more and more a figure separated from actualities. He depends a great deal on Hess, who is really his confidential man now and whom it is likely he may make Foreign Minister. Goering and Goebbels still remain good comrades of Hitler and are undoubtedly attached to him, but the difference* between Goering and Goebbels are becoming more evident. Goering is more moderate, while Goebbels, sensing the feeling of the masses and being above all an opportunist is becoming more radical. If It would come to a show-down between the radical and moderate elements, Goering would, however, undoubtedly be likely to be on the radical side as the one having the more chances. ... If this Government remains in power for another year and carries on in the same measure in this direction, it will go far towards making Germany a danger to world peace for years to come. This is a very disjointed and incoherent letter. I am dictating it under pressure as I wish to catch the courier pouch. What I do want to say really is that for the present this country is headed in directions which can only carry ruin to it and will create a situation here dangerous to world peace. With few exceptions, the men who are running this Government are of a mentality that you and I cannot understand. Some of them are psychopathic cases and would ordinarily be receiving treatment somewhere. Others are exalted and in a frame of mind that knows no reason. The majority are woefully ignorant and unprepared for the tasks which they have to carry through every day. Those men in the party and in responsible positions who are really worth-while, and there are quite a number of these, are powerless because they have to follow the orders of superiors who are suffering from the abnormal psychology prevailing in the country."

"World War I air ace and heir to the Red Baron's (von Richtofen's) Squadron. Hitler's closest and most loyal associate in the Nazi High Command. Head of the Luftwaffe. The Reich's main economic planner. Diplomat. Superb art collector. Overweight morphine addict. Gourmand and dandy. Defeated war criminal. Suicide... The events of Hermann Goering's life comprise a tragedy of truly dramatic proportions. Yet even more fascinating was the private man behind the public figure, for as Leonard Mosley writes in this definitive biography, "he was, nonetheless, at the same time both the strongest and the weakest man in the Nazi ruling circle, the only human being. Surrounded as he was by fanatics, madmen, zealots, and petty-crooks-jumped-to-high-places, he was the only one among them dogged in his dark moments by a tremendous sense of guilt and aware right from the beginning that he would have to pay." That is the final judgement rendered here of the extraordinary and terribly misguided man who, next to Hitler, played the largest part in the shaping of the Nazi inferno."

"I remember coming away from my first meeting and asking myself the question: How had such a worldly, cultivated man got himself mixed up with such a sleazy and murderous gang as the Nazis? I was somewhat chastened shortly afterward when I went to one of his meetings and saw on the platform not the charming art and animal lover I had first encountered but a raving anti-Semite mouthing all the shibboleths of the Party, a quivering mass of hate and rancor. I was to meet hims several times before I finally left Berlin on the outbreak of World War II, and each encounter made me more conscious of the contradictions of his nature. Which was the real Hermann Goering? The self-proclaimed friend of Britain who seemed to be sincerely and genuinely trying to prevent an Anglo-German war in 1939? The family man, the ecologist, the lover of art and beauty? The Party hack and Hitler's fawning slave? The peacock, the bully, the cunning deceiver of foreign statesmen? By the time I left Berlin, I had still not made up my mind. The last time I saw Hermann Goering, he was so confident that his efforts to prevent World War II would succeed that he bet me a bottle of champagne that Britain would not fight Germany. Was it a brave effort on his part to frustrate Hitler's plans, or was it merely a trick?"

"History will no doubt recognize that he was a man of extraordinary talents and considerable achievements. He played a large part in restoring the self-respect of the German people and forcing the world to pay attention to them. He built up the German Luftwaffe into a formidable force which might have won World War II for Germany in 1940 had it been used the way he planned. He worked hard, and at considerable risk, to prevent the war in the West from starting in 1939 and the war in Russia in 1941. He was an extremely brave man, and faced manfully up to the challenges of war, of pain, and, at the end, of death without flinching. No future historian will be able to avoid conceding that at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, with a poor case to fight, he challenged his opponents and won. His supreme victory was to cheat them in the end of his body dangling from their gallows. But for all his fearlessness and defiance, there is once vice from which Hermann Goering suffered which will prevent any history book from accepting him as a great man. It was not the vice of vanity, from which, when all's said and done, many great men have suffered. It was not his hard-driving and ruthless ambition, for that has carried many a great leader to the top in times gone by. It was not his flamboyance, which outraged so many of his contemporaries, but would not be unnoticed on Carnaby Street or Sunset Boulevard today. It was not even his Nero-like capacity for fiddling while Rome was burning, or, rather, playing with his jewels and drooling over his pictures while Germany was sinking into defeat, because what else was there to do? The vice from which Goering suffered, and for which the history books will undoubtedly blame him, was his moral cowardice. It was his great crime. All through his association with Adolf Hitler, there were moments when he might have changed the course of National Socialism and Germany's race to perdition- by arguing with and persuading the Fuehrer to begin with, by usurping him when that was no longer possible."

"Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, the psychiatrist at Nuremberg, was talking to Goering one day when the Reich Marshal recounted how he and Ernst Roehm had built up the Brownshirt Army between them. "It was evident," Kelley noted at the time, "that Roehm and Goering were more than brothers in arms, they were friends." Then Goering went on to tell how he and Roehm had become rivals for Hitler's favor, and how he finally had arranged for Roehm to be shot during the purge. Kelley broke in and asked him how he could have brought himself to arrange the killing of a friend. "Goering stopped talking and stared at me, puzzled, as if I were not quite bright," Kelley noted. "Then he shrugged his great shoulders, turned up his palms and said slowly, in simple, one-syllable words: 'But he was in my way...'""

"There came a time when Adolf Hitler was in his way too, and when his elimination would not only have resulted in the apotheosis of Hermann Goering but in the re-emergence of sanity in Germany. But it turned out that the man who was not afraid of anything else, danger or death, was afraid of Adolf Hitler. Rather than challenge him in a last mortal combat and finish him off, for Germany's sake, as well as for the world, he opted out of the struggle. It is that failure to show his abhorrence, to take a stand, to oust Hitler before it was too late, for which history will not forgive him."

"Goering's great air offensive against Great Britain, Operation Eagle (Adlerangriff), had been launched on August 15 with the objective of driving the British Air Force from the skies and thus achieving the one condition on which the launching of the invasion depended. The fat Reich Marshal, as he now was, had no doubts about victory. By mid-July he was confident that British fighter defenses in southern England could be smashed within four days by an all-out assault, thus opening the way for the invasion. To destroy the R.A.F. completely would take a little longer, Goering told the Army High Command: from two to four weeks. In fact, the bemedaled German Air Force chief thought that the Luftwaffe alone could bring Britain to her knees and that an invasion by land forces probably would not be necessary."

"At eleven minutes past 1 A.M. on October 16, 1946, Ribbentrop mounted the gallows in the execution chamber of the Nuremberg prison, and he was followed at short intervals by Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Seyss-Inquart, Sauckel and Jodl. But not by Hermann Goering. He cheated the hangman. Two hours before his turn was to have come he swallowed a vial of poison that had been smuggled into his cell. Like his Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, and his rival for the succession, Heinrich Himmler, he had succeeded at the last hour in choosing the way in which he would depart this earth, on which he, like the other two, had made such a murderous impact."

"Now, for example, Göring made an excellent impression. I must say I rather liked him. The fashion was for 'strong men.' Göring had his weaknesses — he was like a child in many respects — but he was a human being."

"Hermann Göring, at this time Hitler’s most important associate, held overall responsibility for economic planning. His Four-Year-Plan Authority had been charged with preparing the German economy for war between 1936 and 1940. Now his Four-Year-Plan Authority, entrusted with the Hunger Plan, was to meet and reverse Stalin’s Five-Year Plan. The Stalinist Five-Year Plan would be imitated in its ambition (to complete a revolution), exploited in its attainment (the collective farm), but reversed in its goals (the defense and industrialization of the Soviet Union). The Hunger Plan foresaw the restoration of a preindustrial Soviet Union, with far fewer people, little industry, and no large cities. The forward motion of the Wehrmacht would be a journey backward in time. National Socialism was to dam the advance of Stalinism, and then reverse the course of its great historical river. Starvation and colonization were German policy: discussed, agreed, formulated, distributed, and understood. The framework of the Hunger Plan was established by March 1941. An appropriate set of “Economic Policy Guidelines” was issued in May. A somewhat sanitized version, known as the “Green Folder,” was circulated in one thousand copies to German officials that June. Just before the invasion, both Himmler and Göring were overseeing important aspects of the postwar planning: Himmler the long-term racial colony of Generalplan Ost, Göring the short-term starvation and destruction of the Hunger Plan. German intentions were to fight a war of destruction that would transform eastern Europe into an exterminatory agrarian colony. Hitler meant to undo all the work of Stalin. Socialism in one country would be supplanted by socialism for the German race. Such were the plans."

"I learned that besides Hitler, only Göring was charismatic and powerful enough to have had a German constituency of his own. (...) In the early days of Hitler's regime he was the man of action."

"Even the last scintillating assembly of the leaders of the Reich could scarcely distract me from my cares. That was the gala celebration of Goering's birthday on January 12, 1944, which he held at Karinhall. We all came with expensive presents, such as Goering expected: cigars from Holland, gold bars from the Balkans, valuable paintings and sculptures. Goering had let me know that he would like to have a marble bust of Hitler, more than life size, by Breker. The overladen gift table had been set up in the big library. Goering displayed it to his guests and spread out on it the building plans his architect had prepared for his birthday. Goering's palace-like residence was to be more than doubled in size. At the magnificently set table in the luxurious dining room flunkies in white livery served a somewhat austere meal, in keeping with the conditions of the time. Funk, as he did every year, delivered the birthday speech at the banquet. He lauded Goering's abilities, qualities, and dignities and offered the toast to him as "one of the greatest Germans." Funk's extravagant words contrasted grotesquely with the actual situation. The whole thing was a ghostly celebration taking place against a background of collapse and ruin."

"Around the middle of February, I called on Goering one evening in Karinhall. I had discovered from studying the military map that he had concentrated his parachute division around his hunting estate. For a long time he had been made the scapegoat for all the failures of the Luftwaffe. At the situation conferences Hitler habitually denounced him in the most violent and insulting language before the assembled officers. He must have been even nastier in the scenes he had with Goering privately. Often, waiting in the anteroom, I could hear Hitler shouting at him. That evening in Karinhall, I established a certain intimacy with Goering for the first and only time. Goering had an excellent Rotschild-Lafite served at the fireplace and ordered the servant not to disturb us. Candidly, I described my disappointment with Hitler. Just as candidly, Goering replied that he well understood me and that he often felt much the same. However, he said, it was easier for me, since I had joined Hitler a great deal later and could free myself from him all the sooner. He, Goering, had much closer ties with Hitler; many years of common experiences and struggles had bound them together- and he could no longer break loose."

"At Mondorf and Nuremberg, Goering had undergone a systematic withdrawal cure which had ended his drug addiction. Ever since, he was in better form than I had ever seen him. He displayed remarkable energy and became the most formidable personality among the defendants. I thought it a great pity that he had not been up to this level before the outbreak of the war and in critical situations during the war. He would have been the only person whose authority and popularity Hitler would have had to reckon with. Actually, he had been one of the few sensible enough to foresee the doom that awaited us. But having thrown away his chance to save the country while that was still possible, it was absurd and truly criminal for him to use his regained powers to hoodwink his own people. His whole policy was one of deception. Once, in the prison yard something was said about Jewish survivors in Hungary. Goering remarked coldly: "So, there are still some there? I thought we had knocked off all of them. Somebody slipped up again." I was stunned."

"The Germans did not succeeded in gaining undisputed control of the air, a prerequisite for a successful land invasion. As later revealed, German production hadn't concentrated on building sufficient air strength, either in type or numbers. Moreover, Goering continually interfered with operations during the critical period of the Battle of Britain, ordering costly daylight bombing attacks that resulted in a tremendous attrition of Nazi planes. There seemed to be a total lack of firm objectives- "too many targets", as General Kreipe has said. Although Goering was a disciple of the doctrines of General Douhet, he was often guilty of dissipation of means."

"Professional Luftwaffe officers, realizing that German bombers were not armored or otherwise equipped for defense against enemy fighters, were opposed to the Battle of Britain. But Hitler, supported of course by Hermann Goering, overruled his professional airmen and insisted upon carrying through."

"Krieg ohne Haß"

"The art of concentrating strength at one point, forcing a breakthrough, rolling up and securing the flanks on either side, and then penetrating like lightning, before the enemy has time to react, deep into his rear."

"The German soldier has astonished the world; the Italian Bersagliere has astonished the German soldier."

"One must not judge everyone in the world by his qualities as a soldier: otherwise we should have no civilization."

"Gentlemen, you have fought like lions and been led by donkeys."

"Be an example to your men in your duty and in private life. Never spare yourself, and let the troops see that you don't, in your endurance of fatigue and privation. Always be tactful and well-mannered and teach your subordinates to be the same. Avoid excessive sharpness or harshness of voice, which usually indicates the man who has shortcomings of his own to hide."

"Lieber zuviel als zu wenig Spatengebrauch! Diese Arbeit spart Blut."

"Den Kampf Mann gegen Mann gewinnt bei gleichwertigen Gegnern, wer eine Patrone mehr im Lauf hat."

"When a commander has won a decisive victory - and Wavell's victory over the Italians was devastating - it is generally wrong for him to be satisfied with too narrow a strategic aim. For that is the time to exploit success. It is during the pursuit, when the beaten enemy is still dispirited and disorganised, that most prisoners are made and most booty captured. Troops who on one day are flying in a wild panic to the rear, may, unless they are continually harried by the pursuer, very soon stand in battle again, freshly organised as fully effective fighting men."

"Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas."

"The Italian command was, for the most part, not equal to the task of carrying on war in the desert, where the requirement was lightning decision followed by immediate action. The training of the Italian infantryman fell far short of the standard required by modern warfare. ... Particularly harmful was the all pervading differentiation between officer and man. While the men had to make shift without field-kitchens, the officers, or many of them, refused adamantly to forgo their several course meals. Many officers, again, considered it unnecessary to put in an appearance during battle and thus set the men an example. All in all, therefore, it was small wonder that the Italian soldier, who incidentally was extraordinarily modest in his needs, developed a feeling of inferiority which accounted for his occasional failure and moments of crisis. There was no foreseeable hope of a change for the better in any of these matters, although many of the bigger men among the Italian officers were making sincere efforts in that direction."

"Anyone who has to fight, even with the most modern weapons, against an enemy in complete command of the air, fights like a savage against modern European troops, under the same handicaps and with the same chances of success."

"The military career of most of the people who aimed these accusations at us was notable for a consistent absence from the front, on the principle of "weit vom Schuss gibt alte Kreiger" - "far from the battle makes old soldiers.""

"But courage which goes against military expediency is stupidity, or, if it is insisted upon by a commander, irresponsibility."

"Thus the British lost the very able and adaptable commander David Stirling of the desert group SAS which had caused us more damage than any other British unit of equal strength."

"In Tunisia the Americans had to pay a stiff price for their experience, but it brought rich dividends. Even at that time, the American generals showed themselves to be very advanced in the tactical handling of their forces, although we had to wait until the Patton Army in France to see the most astonishing achievements in mobile warfare."

"Don't fight a battle if you don't gain anything by winning."

"Good soldiers, bad officers; however don't forget that without them we would not have any Civilization."

"Krieg ohne Haß (War without Hate)"

"He was a tactician of the greatest ability, with a firm grasp of every detail of the employment of armour in action, and very quick to seize the fleeting opportunity and the critical turning point of a mobile battle. I felt certain doubts, however, about his strategic ability, in particular as to whether he fully understood the importance of a sound administrative plan. Happiest while controlling a mobile force directly under his own eyes he was liable to overexploit immediate success without sufficient thought for the future."

"There exists a real danger that our friend Rommel is becoming a kind of magical or bogey-man to our troops, who are talking far too much about him. He is by no means a superman, although he is undoubtedly very energetic and able. Even if he were a superman, it would still be highly undesirable that our men should credit him with supernatural powers. I wish you to dispel by all possible means the idea that Rommel represents something more than an ordinary German general. ... I am not jealous of Rommel."

"He was a splendid military gambler, dominating the problems of supply and scornful of opposition ... His ardour and daring inflicted grievous disasters upon us, but he deserves the salute which I made him — and not without some reproaches from the public — in the House of Commons in January 1942, when I said of him, "We have a very daring and skilful opponent against us, and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general." He also deserves our respect because, although a loyal German soldier, he came to hate Hitler and all his works, and took part in the conspiracy of 1944 to rescue Germany by displacing the maniac and tyrant. For this, he paid the forfeit of his life. In the sombre wars of modern democracy chivalry finds no place ... Still, I do not regret or retract the tribute I paid to Rommel, unfashionable though it was judged."

"Rommel was jumpy, wanted to do everything at once, then lost interest. Rommel was my superior in command in Normandy. I cannot say Rommel wasn't a good general. When successful, he was good; during reverses, he became depressed."

"Hitler might have accepted his military leaders' advice (notably that of Admiral Raeder) and focused his attention on winning the war in the Mediterranean in 1941, before invading the Soviet Union. He might, for example, have struck across the Eastern Mediterranean to Cyprus, Lebanon and Syria; or through Turkey (violating her neutrality) towards the Caucasus; or across Egypt to Suez and beyond. Even as it was, the British positions in Malta and Egypt were acutely vulnerable. Rommel might well have been able to drive the British out of Egypt if he had been sent the twenty-nine German divisions that were sitting more or less idle in Western Europe."

"Rommel's presence, as ever, acted as a tonic on his troops. Anybody who once came under the spell of his personality, a brother officer wrote, turned into a "real soldier". However tough the strain Rommel seemed inexhaustible, seemed to know exactly how the enemy would probably react. The same officer wrote that Rommel had an exceptional imagination, seemed to know no fear whatsoever, and that his men "idolized him"."

"Beyond dispute, Rommel was a master of manoeuvre on the battlefield and a leader of the purest quality. Wherever he appeared he inspired. His speed of perception and decision, his energy of execution and his boldness of concept placed him among the great; and his military exploits have left a footprint in history as clear as that of Prince Rupert, to whom Montgomery once, in a somewhat uncharacteristic flight of imagery, likened him. Certainly he erred badly at times. The first attack on Tobruk was hasty and ill-prepared, the 'dash to the wire' was prompted by a misreading of the situation, Alam Halfa offered only improbable chances of success (and was called off early), Medenine was a disaster. But the victories, generally with the dice loaded against him, display a very recognizable quality of command, a quintessential 'Rommel'."

"But he was more than a tactical commander of bravery and genius. He was reflective. He evolved from his own experience and observations solderly lessons which he committed to paper and from which all learned and continue to learn. Wherever he went, as has been remarked, he taught; and he teaches still. Rommel was not only a master practitioner; he deduced theory from practice and the military art benefited therefrom."

"Montgomery claimed that his own achievements derived from the fact that he never fought an unsuccessful battle, and for Montgomery this was both an accurate statement and a wise policy. It was, however, a policy only available to one with both time and resources. Rommel, more often than not, had insufficient of either. Nor was he ever in a position to wait until his situation and the odds improved. He fought at a numerical disadvantage again and again, and his exploits can only be measured against that fact. He relied on skill to offset quantitative inferiority. The bitter exclamation, already quoted, comes to mind: 'If one considers what the German Marshal could have achieved with the superiority enjoyed by his opponents...' War is usually an option of difficulties. Again and again Rommel could choose inactivity or take a calculated risk. He believed that inactivity is seldom forgiven a general by fate."

"Of course, Rommel, ultimately, was beaten. He lost. But, although what matters in war is to win, that truism cannot provide the sole criterion for judgment of military talent. War may also be considered as a business, but its conduct is also an art. Ultimately Napoleon was beaten. So was Montrose. So was Lee. Few could deny their genius. With all his imperfections, Rommel as a leader of men in battle stands in their company."

"Until I delved into Rommel's own papers I regarded him as a brilliant tactician and great fighting leader, but did not realize how deep a sense of strategy he had — or at any rate, developed in reflection."

"He was the best leader of fast-moving troops but only up to army level. Above that level it was too much for him. Rommel was given too much responsibility. He was a good commander for a corps of army but he was too moody, too changeable. One moment he would be enthusiastic, next moment depressed."

"Born in southern Germany to middle-class parents, Rommel had won acclaim during World War I for his personal heroism as a young officer who specialized in tactics of infiltration behind enemy lines. Hitler's willingness to adopt new and unorthodox military ideas quickly won Rommel's admiration, and Rommel's relatively humble origins endeared him to the Fuehrer, who often felt uncomfortable in the presence of aristocratic generals. Hitler appointed Rommel to command his personal bodyguard in 1938. Until 1939, Rommel had always been an infantry officer, but the success of the Blitzkrieg in Poland made him a true believer in armored warfare. Soon afterward, Hitler helped him obtain command of a panzer division. Despite his lack of previous experience with tanks, Rommel mastered armored operations in a remarkably brief time. Indeed, his division performed with conspicuous success during the 1940 campaign in Western Europe. Like Guderian, he believed in he swiftest possible exploitation of a breakthrough. This continued to be his philosophy when he took over his new command in Libya."

"Self-restraint, even chivalry... distinguished the combatants on both sides throughout the North Africa campaign... The leading exemplar of this code was Rommel himself. When orders from Hitler mandated the execution of captured British commandos, Rommel tossed the document in the trash. He insisted that the Allied prisoners receive the same rations he was given. He even wrote a book about the conflict called Krieg ohne Haß (War Without Hate). Memoirs of the North Africa campaign attest that, fierce and brutal as much of the fighting was, relations between individual enemies retained a quality of forbearance that seems, today, almost impossible to imagine."

"Rommel had gained the world's respect for his military genius. He was a legend. ... Rommel was reminiscent of the more romantic, chivalrous days of old — and was a genuinely humane military officer. Rommel was Germany's best General. You have to remember all of Europe was in Nazi hands at the time. The Americans hadn't entered the war yet. Russia was being attacked by 166 Nazi divisions. Things were grim. And Rommel, the greatest desert fighting general of all time, and his Africa Korps, were kicking the British's butt, pushing them back to Cairo. It became a case where the war might have been lost right there."

"He was ordered several times by Hitler to "Stand and Die." To fight to the last bullet, the last man. To execute and torture prisoners. He defied those orders."

"Rommel had a feel for the battlefield like no other man."

"At about twelve o'clock a dark-green car with a Berlin number stopped in front of our garden gate. The only men in the house apart from my father, were Captain Aldinger [Rommel's aide] , a badly wounded war-veteran corporal and myself. Two generals — Burgdorf, a powerful florid man, and Maisel, small and slender — alighted from the car and entered the house. They were respectful and courteous and asked my father's permission to speak to him alone. Aldinger and I left the room. "So they are not going to arrest him," I thought with relief, as I went upstairs to find myself a book. A few minutes later I heard my father come upstairs and go into my mother's room. Anxious to know what was afoot, I got up and followed him. He was standing in the middle of the room, his face pale. "Come outside with me," he said in a tight voice. We went into my room. "I have just had to tell your mother," he began slowly, "that I shall be dead in a quarter of an hour." He was calm as he continued: "To die by the hand of one's own people is hard. But the house is surrounded and Hitler is charging me with high treason. 'In view of my services in Africa'," he quoted sarcastically, "I am to have the chance of dying by poison. The two generals have brought it with them. It's fatal in three seconds. If I accept, none of the usual steps will be taken against my family, that is against you. They will also leave my staff alone." "Do you believe it?" I interrupted. "Yes," he replied. "I believe it. It is very much in their interest to see that the affair does not come out into the open. By the way, I have been charged to put you under a promise of the strictest silence. If a single word of this comes out, they will no longer feel themselves bound by the agreement." I tried again. "Can't we defend ourselves…" He cut me off short. "There's no point," he said. "It's better for one to die than for all of us to be killed in a shooting affray. Anyway, we've practically no ammunition.""

""Rommel, Rommel, Rommel!" Churchill had cried, as he paced up and down his room in the Cairo Embassy. "What else matters but beating him!" The Rommel magic had become legend even among British troops. A shake-up might help break the spell, Churchill reasoned. General Sir Claude Auchinleck was a much admired soldier, but his command seemed poorly coordinated and his troops lacking in confidence in their leaders. "To take or destroy" Rommel was now the assigned task of [two men], the very able General Sir Harold Alexander and the then little known General Bernard Montgomery."

"Rommel was bitter afterward about Hitler's "victory or death" order, which, he said, kept him fighting at El Alamein twenty-four hours longer than he should have. As a result, a large part of Rommel's infantry and motorized troops were lost. After Axis forces began withdrawing on November 2, Montgomery sent armor sweeping around behind them, and two days later Rommel's escape road was blocked; yet somehow he slipped his forces around the barrier. Sudden, heavy rains that bogged down vehicles in mud were all, according to Montgomery, that saved his foe from annihilation. The R.A.F. constantly bombed Rommel; Montgomery's armor slashed at his columns. Rommel abandoned every non-essential, including his Italian infantry. His route was littered with burned-out vehicles and other debris of war. The Nazi leader had no choice but to try to continue his retreat some one thousand miles until he could link up with German forces in Tunisia and with them turn on Montgomery- and on the American forces newly landed in North Africa."

"Rommel was a military phenomenon that can occur only at rare intervals; men of such bravery and daring survive only with exceptional fortune. He was as brave on the battlefield as Ney, with much better brains; as dashing as Murat, with better balance; as cool and as quick a tactician as Wellington."

"Anybody who came under the spell of his personality turned into a real soldier. However tough the strain he seemed inexhaustible. He seemed to know just what the enemy were like and how they would probably react. His plans were often startling, instinctive, spontaneous and not infrequently obscure."

"The rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet."

"We knew that we had created a new means of warfare, and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision more than anything else. We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through, and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured."

"Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing."

"Everything in space obeys the laws of physics. If you know these laws, and obey them, space will treat you kindly. And don't tell me that man doesn't belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go — and he’ll do plenty well when he gets there."

"We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming."

"There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program: Your tax dollar will go farther."

"Science, by itself, has no moral dimension. The drug which cures when taken in small doses may kill when taken in excess. The nuclear energies that produce cheap electrical power when harnessed in a reactor may kill when abruptly released in a bomb. Thus, it does not make sense to ask a scientist whether his poison or his nuclear energy is “good” or “bad” for mankind."

"If our intention had been merely to bring back a handful of soil and rocks from the lunar gravel pit and then forget the whole thing, we would certainly be history's biggest fools. But that is not our intention now — it never will be. What we are seeking in tomorrow's trip is indeed that key to our future on earth. We are expanding the mind of man. We are extending this God-given brain and these God-given hands to their outermost limits and in so doing all mankind will benefit. All mankind will reap the harvest. … What we will have attained when Neil Armstrong steps down upon the moon is a completely new step in the evolution of man."

"I'm convinced that before the year 2000 is over, the first child will have been born on the moon."

"For me, the idea of a creation is not conceivable without invoking the necessity of design. One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind it all."

"My experiences with science led me to God. They challenge science to prove the existence of God. But must we really light a candle to see the sun?"

"It is in scientific honesty that I endorse the presentation of alternative theories for the origin of the universe, life and man in the science classroom. It would be an error to overlook the possibility that the universe was planned rather than happening by chance."

"Can a physicist visualize an electron? The electron is materially inconceivable and yet, it is so perfectly known through its effects that we use it to illuminate our cities, guide our airlines through the night skies and take the most accurate measurements. What strange rationale makes some physicists accept the inconceivable electrons as real while refusing to accept the reality of a Designer on the ground that they cannot conceive Him?"

"The materialists of the nineteenth century and their Marxist heirs of the twentieth, tried to tell us that, as science gives us more knowledge about the creation, we could live without faith in a Creator. Yet so far, with every new answer, we have discovered new questions. The better we understand . . . the master plan for the galaxies, the more reason we have found to marvel at the wonder of God’s creation."

"In this age of space flight, when we use the modern tools of science to advance into new regions of human activity, the Bible ... this grandiose, stirring history of the gradual revelation and unfolding of the moral law ... remains in every way an up-to-date book. Our knowledge and use of the laws of nature that enable us to fly to the Moon also enable us to destroy our home planet with the atom bomb. Science itself does not address the question whether we should use the power at our disposal for good or for evil. The guidelines of what we ought to do are furnished in the moral law of God. It is no longer enough that we pray that God may be with us on our side. We must learn again that we may be on God's side."

"The body of knowledge is advancing at an absolutely incredible rate, and new tools are constantly being made available to the researcher that were previously not only unavailable, but often not even dreamed of."

"Without wanting to seem overly partisan, I would like simply to point out that the space program has by all standards become America's greatest generator of new ideas in science and technology. It is essentially an organization for opening new frontiers, physically and intellectually. Today we live in a different world because in 1958 Americans accepted the challenge of space and made the required national investment to meet it. Young people today are learning a new science, but even more importantly, they are viewing the earth and man's relationship to it quite differently — and I think perhaps more humanly — than we did fifteen years ago. The space program is the first large scientific and technological activity in history that offers to bring the people of all nations together instead of setting them further apart."

"One of the most disconcerting issues of our time lies in the fact that modern science, along with miracle drugs and communications satellites, has also produced nuclear bombs. What makes it even worse, science has utterly failed to provide an answer on how to cope with them. As a result, science and scientists have often been blamed for the desperate dilemma in which mankind finds itself today. Science, all by itself, has no moral dimension. The same poison-containing drug which cures when taken in small doses, may kill when taken in excess. The same nuclear chain reaction that produces badly needed electrical energy when harnessed in a reactor, may kill thousands when abruptly released in an atomic bomb. Thus it does not make sense to ask a biochemist or a nuclear physicist whether his research in the field of toxic substances or nuclear processes is good or bad for mankind. In most cases the scientist will be fully aware of the possibility of an abuse of his discoveries, but aside from his innate scientific curiosity he will be motivated by a deep-seated hope and belief that something of value for his fellow man may emerge from his labors. The same applies to technology, through which most advances in the natural sciences are put to practical use."

""Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun."

""In German or English, I know how to count down, und I'm learning Chinese" says Wernher von Braun."

"Actions speak louder than words. In the days to come the Goddess of Victory will bestow her laurels only on those who prepared to act with daring."

"The moral and intellectual condition of a nation may certainly prove of decisive importance on its own account, but all due attention must also be paid to material considerations. When a nation has to reckon with a struggle against superior forces on several fronts, it must neglect nothing that may conduce to the betterment of its situation."

"We have severely underestimated the Russians, the extent of the country and the treachery of the climate. This is the revenge of reality."

"To imitate the ostrich in political matters has never been a satisfactory method of avoiding danger; yet this is what Hitler, as well as his more important political, economic and even military advisers, chose to do over and over again. The consequences of this deliberate blindness in the face of hard facts were devastating; and it was we who now had to bear them."

"It has been deduced from Hitler's great power over the masses that the Germans are an unusually suggestible race. But in all countries and at all times men have succumbed to the suggestive powers of unusual personalities, even if the wielders of those powers were not always good men in the Christian sense."

"Es gibt keine verzweifelten Lagen, es gibt nur verzweifelte Menschen."

"Man schlägt jemanden mit der Faust und nicht mit gespreizten Fingern."

"Der Motor des Panzers ist ebenso seine Waffe wie die Kanone."

"It's simply our duty to save these people, and we still have time to remove them! But it's useless to sacrifice men in this senseless way. It's high time! We must evacuate those soldiers at once!"

"Logistics is the ball and chain of armored warfare."

"When the situation is obscure, attack."

"Nicht Kleckern sondern Klotzen!"

"If the tanks succeed, then victory follows."

"Fahrkarte bis zur Endstation."

"New weapons require new tactics. Never put new wine into old bottles."

"The good news for Liddell Hart was that his work was hugely influential. The bad news was that it was hugely influential not in Britain but in Germany. With the notable exception of Major-General J. F. C. Fuller, senior British commanders like Field Marshal Earl Haig simply refused to accept that 'the aeroplane, the tank [and] the motor car [would] supersede the horse in future wars', dismissing motorized weapons as mere 'accessories to the man and horse'. Haig's brother concurred: the cavalry would 'never be scrapped to make room for the tanks'. By contrast, younger German officers immediately grasped the significance of Liddell Hart's work. Among his most avid fans was Heinz Guderian, commander of the 19th German Army Corps in the invasion of Poland. As Guderian recalled, it was from Liddell Hart and other British pioneers of 'a new type of warfare on the largest scale' that he learned the importance of 'the concentration of armour'."

"Hitler might have waged his war against the Soviet Union more intelligently. Again, he might have listened to the experts (Halder and Guderian among them), who advised him to concentrate German efforts on capturing Moscow rather than diverting Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt's Army Group southwards towards Kiev. In a similar vein, Hitler might not have squandered his 6th Army so profligately at Stalingrad; Alan Brooke's fear was that Paulus might instead conquer the Caucasus, opening the way to the Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf oilfields."

"The party is Hitler, Hitler is Germany, and Germany is Hitler! Sieg heil!"

"You take an oath to a man whom you know follows the laws of providence, which he obeys independently of the influence of earthly powers, who leads the German people rightly, and who will guide Germany's fate. Through your oath you bind yourselves to a man who — that is our faith — was sent to us by higher powers. Do not seek Adolf Hitler with your mind. You will find him through the strength of your hearts!"

"Our nation has the good fortune today to be led largely by front soldiers, by front soldiers who carried the virtues of the front to the leadership of the state. The rebuilding of the Reich was guided by the spirit of the front. It was the spirit of the front that created National Socialism. In the face of looming death at the front, ideas of social standing and class collapsed. At the front, the sharing of common joys and common sorrows led to a previously unknown camaraderie between citizens. At the front, everyone could see that the common fate towered above the individual fate."

"The units of the Waffen-SS, consisting of National Socialists, are more suitable than other armed units for the specific tasks to be solved in the Occupied Eastern Territories due to their intensive National Socialist training in regard to questions of race and nationality."

"My coming to England in this way is, as I realize, so unusual that nobody will easily understand it. I was confronted by a very hard decision. I do not think I could have arrived at my final choice unless I had continually kept before my eyes the vision of an endless line of children's coffins with weeping mothers behind them, both English and German, and another line of coffins of mothers with mourning children."

"I was permitted to work for many years of my life under the greatest son whom my people has brought forth in its thousand year history. Even if I could, I would not want to erase this period of time from my existence. I am happy to know that I have done my duty, to my people, my duty as a German, as a National Socialist, as a loyal follower of my Führer. I do not regret anything. If I were to begin all over again, I would act just as I have acted, even if I knew that in the end I should meet a fiery death at the stake. No matter what human beings may do, I shall some day stand before the judgment seat of the Eternal. I shall answer to Him, and I know He will judge me innocent."

"Bravo, Streicher!"

"Thanks to the directors for addressing this message to my home. Written several minutes before my death."

"People don't forget, do they?"

"I have been reading about the problems of youth. You know, with all the criticism that was levelled at von Schirach and his Hitler Jugend, it is forgotten that he did a fantastic thing with Germany's young. He kept them busy, he kept them out of trouble. In those years we did not have to concern ourselves with the worry of youths taking drugs, getting involved in crime, and sexual permissiveness. We did not have burning of national flags and draft cards. We had a healthy youth with healthy minds, all pulling together to build a nation. That is what we need today. We need to get them back on the right track."

"Among the higher leadership [in the Nazi Party], while there is still a certain unity, personalities are beginning to play a constantly greater part. Hitler is perhaps more powerful than before, but he becomes more and more a figure separated from actualities. He depends a great deal on Hess, who is really his confidential man now and whom it is likely he may make Foreign Minister. Goering and Goebbels still remain good comrades of Hitler and are undoubtedly attached to him, but the difference between Goering and Goebbels are becoming more evident. Goering is more moderate, while Goebbels, sensing the feeling of the masses and being above all an opportunist is becoming more radical. If It would come to a show-down between the radical and moderate elements, Goering would, however, undoubtedly be likely to be on the radical side as the one having the more chances. [...] If this Government remains in power for another year and carries on in the same measure in this direction, it will go far towards making Germany a danger to world peace for years to come. This is a very disjointed and incoherent letter. I am dictating it under pressure as I wish to catch the courier pouch. What I do want to say really is that for the present this country is headed in directions which can only carry ruin to it and will create a situation here dangerous to world peace. With few exceptions, the men who are running this Government are of a mentality that you and I cannot understand. Some of them are psychopathic cases and would ordinarily be receiving treatment somewhere. Others are exalted and in a frame of mind that knows no reason. The majority are woefully ignorant and unprepared for the tasks which they have to carry through every day. Those men in the party and in responsible positions who are really worth-while, and there are quite a number of these, are powerless because they have to follow the orders of superiors who are suffering from the abnormal psychology prevailing in the country."

"A few attempts have been made to argue that a Nazi victory over the Soviet Union might not have been wholly disadvantageous to the Western powers, and that therefore a second phase of appeasement after 1941 might have been preferable to continued war. Some British Tories, notably the late Alan Clark, have suggested that the British Empire might have been spared ignominious bankruptcy, decline and fall, had a separate peace been made along the lines Rudolf Hess seems to have envisaged and Hitler repeatedly mused about in his evening monologues; in a similar vein, some American conservatives argue that the Cold War might have been avoided had Roosevelt kept the United States out of the shooting war in Europe. On the whole, however, most writers have tended to take the view that a Nazi victory would have been a worse outcome than that of 1945. Even if a victorious Third Reich had opted for peace with Britain and America - which cannot be regarded as very probable - the price would have been horrendously high for the millions of people left under Nazi rule. All nine million of the Jews of Europe might have been murdered, rather than the nearly six million who actually were, to say nothing of the vast human suffering that would have been inflicted on other ethnic groups by the implementation of the Generalplan Ost, which envisaged deporting around fifty million East Europeans to Siberia."

"I saw Hess's pendulum and he used it. I never paid any attention to his strange ideas. He was quiet and bothered nobody. I knew a great surgeon who believed in a similar pendulum, using it the same way Hess did. Apparently, it's a common superstition."

"Hess was slightly off balance for as long as I can recall. Why the Fuhrer kept him on as head of the party was a mystery to most people, but to me I always felt it was Hitler's loyalty to his old friends. I remember Hess had a bright idea once in treating me for some neuralgia that I had at the time. It was in 1936 or so. Anyway, one day lots of pots and pans arrived of all different sizes. I didn't know what they were for. One was for soaking my arm, another my forearm, another size for my leg, my thing, and so on. I called him up and asked him what he had sent me so many pots for - did he think I wanted to start an aquarium? But Hess explained that I told him I had neuralgia and that this was the treatment for it. I thanked him over the telephone and laughed for days."

"The zealot Hess, before succumbing to wanderlust [flew to Scotland in May 1941], was the engineer tending the party machinery, passing orders and propaganda down to the Leadership Corps, supervising every aspect of party activities, and maintaining the organization as a loyal and ready instrument of power."

"A number three man who was merely an innocent middleman transmitting Hitler's orders without even reading them, like a postman or delivery boy."

"Reflecting upon the whole of the story, I am glad not to be responsible for the way in which Hess has been and is being treated. Whatever may be the moral guilt of a German who stood near to Hitler, Hess had, in my view, atoned for this by his completely devoted and frantic deed of lunatic benevolence. He came to us of his own free will, and, though without authority, had something of the quality of an envoy. He was a medical and not a criminal case, and should be so regarded."

"I was suspicious for several reasons... after all, Hess who had been held in Spandau for almost 30 years was by then 93-years-old and fragile. I doubted he had the strength to kill himself with a cord which was not attached at both ends to anything."

"I often found him warm and humourous."

"I was the only man he trusted."

"I still lack to a considerable degree that naturally superior kind of manner that I would dearly like to possess."

"In the course of history periods of capitalism and socialism alternate with one another; capitalism is the unnatural, socialism the natural economic system.... The National Socialists and the Red Front have the same aspirations. The Jews falsified the Revolution in the form of Marxism and that failed to bring fulfilment."

"Anyone who thinks of homosexual love is our enemy. We reject anything which emasculates our people and makes it a plaything for our enemies, for we know that life is fight, and it is madness to think that men will ever embrace fraternally."

"I know there are some people in Germany who become sick when they see these black uniforms, we understand the reason for this, and do not expect we shall be loved by all that number of people; those who come to fear us in any way or at any time must have a bad conscience towards the Fuhrer and the nation. For these persons we have established an organisation called the Security Service."

"We shall unremittingly fulfill our task, to be the guarantors of the internal security of Germany, just as the Wehrmacht guarantees the safety of the honor, the greatness, and the peace of the Reich from the outside. We shall take care that never more in Germany, the heart of Europe, can the Jewish-Bolshevistic revolution of subhumans be kindled internally or by emissaries from abroad. Pitilessly we shall be a merciless executioner's sword for all these forces whose existence and doings we know... whether it be today, or in decades, or in centuries."

"It is vital we rid ourselves of homosexuals]; like weed we must pull them up, throw them on the fire and burn them. This is not out of a spirit of vengeance, but of necessity; these creatures must be exterminated."

"A consequence of the over-privileged woman is that in America no man any more dares to look at a girl, since otherwise he will be brought before the marriage court and made to pay for it. In America homosexuality is absolutely a defensive measure for the men because they have fallen into such slavery to the women. The women can behave like an axe there: she just starts hacking away on something. She is never rebuked: the best example of tyranny by women! There is no danger among us, however, that the chivalry of the man be overplayed and exploited by the other side, since the women in Germany by habit and education are not inclined to do that."

"We won't waste much time on the Jews. It's great to get to grips with the Jewish race at last. The more that die the better; hitting them represents a victory for our Reich. The Jews should feel that we've arrived. We want to put half to three quarters of all Jews east of the Vistula. We will crush these Jews wherever we can. Everything is at stake. Get the Jews out of the Reich, Vienna, everywhere. We have no use for Jews in the Reich. Probably the line of the Vistula, behind this line no more. We are the most important people here."

"One rejects as un-German and impossible the Bolshevist method of physical extermination of a people."

"I hope to see the very concept of Jewry completely obliterated."

"It is a war of ideologies and a struggle of races. On one side stands National Socialism: ideology, founded on the values of our Germanic, Nordic blood. It is worth the world as we want to see: beautiful, orderly, fair, socially, a world that may be, still suffers some flaws, but overall a happy, beautiful world filled with culture, which is precisely Germany. On the other side stands the 180 million people, a mixture of races and peoples, whose names are unpronounceable, and whose physical nature is such that the only thing that they can do - is to shoot without pity or mercy. These animals, which are subjected to torture and ill-treatment of each prisoner from our side, which do not have medical care they captured our wounded, as do the decent men, you will see them for yourself. These people have joined a Jewish religion, one ideology, called Bolshevism, with the task of having now Russian, half [located] in Asia, parts of Europe, crush Germany and the world. When you, my friends, are fighting in the East, you keep that same fight against the same subhumans, against the same inferior races that once appeared under the name of Huns, and later - 1,000 years ago during the time of King Henry and Otto I, - the name of the Hungarians, and later under the name of Tatars, and then they came again under the name of Genghis Khan and the Mongols. Today they are called Russian under the political banner of Bolshevism."

"...the curse of the great to have to walk over corpses."

"I don't want to hear anymore of your difficulties. For an SS officer there are no difficulties; his duty is always to remove difficulties himself as soon as they arise. How you do it is for you to figure out, not me."

"[We have] the moral duty toward our race to kill this [Jewish] race that wanted to kill us."

"I also want to talk to you, quite frankly, on a very grave matter. Among ourselves it should be mentioned quite frankly, and yet we will never speak of it publicly. Just as we did not hesitate on June 30th, 1934 to do the duty we were bidden, and stand comrades who had lapsed, up against the wall and shoot them, so we have never spoken about it and will never [p. 65] speak of it. It was that tact which is a matter of course and which I am glad to say, is inherent in us, that made us never discuss it among ourselves, never to speak of it. It appalled everyone, and yet everyone was certain that he would do it the next time if such orders are issued and if it is necessary. I mean the evacuation out of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race. It's one of those things it is easy to talk about - "The Jewish race is being exterminated", says one party member, "that's quite clear, it's in our program - elimination of the Jews, and we're doing it, exterminating them." And then they come, 80 million worthy Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. Of course the others are vermin, but this one is an A-1 Jew. Not one of all those who talk this way has witnessed it, not one of them has been through it. Most of you must know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500 or 1000. To have stuck it out and at the same time - apart from exceptions caused by human weakness - to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be [p. 66] written, for we know how difficult we should have made it for ourselves, if - with the bombing raids, the burdens and the deprivations of war - we still had Jews today in every town as secret saboteurs, agitators and trouble-mongers. We would now probably have reached the 1916/17 stage when the Jews were still in the German national body."

"One basic principle must be the absolute rule for the S.S. men. We must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and nobody else. What happens to a Russian and a Czech does not interest me in the least. What the nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture: otherwise it is of no interest to me. Whether ten thousand Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished. We shall never be tough and heartless where it is not necessary, that is clear. We, Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these human animals. But it is a crime against our blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult time with them. When somebody comes up to me and says: 'I cannot dig the anti-tank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it would kill them,' then I have to say: 'You are the murderer of your own blood, because if the anti-tank ditch is not dug German soldiers will die, and they are the sons of German mothers. They are our own blood....' Our concern, our duty, is our people and our blood. We can be indifferent to everything else. I wish the S.S. to adopt this attitude towards the problem of all foreign, non-Germanic peoples, especially Russians...."

"The Slav is never able to build anything himself. In the long run, he's not capable of it. I'll come back to this later. With the exception of a few phenomena produced by Asia every couple of centuries, through that mixture of two heredities which may be fortunate for Asia but is unfortunate for us Europeans — with the exception, therefore, of an Attilla, a Ghenghis Khan, a Tamerlaine, a Lenin, a Stalin — the mixed race of the Slavs is based on a sub-race with a few drops of blood of our blood, blood of a leading race; the Slav is unable to control himself and create order. He is able to argue, able to debate, able to disintegrate, able to offer resistance against every authority and to revolt. But these human shoddy goods are just as incapable of maintaining order today as they were 700 or 800 years ago, when they called in the Varangians, when they called in the Ruriks."

"However, in their centuries-long history the Poles were never able to create such an organization that could be called a state."

"Anti-Semitism is exactly the same as delousing. Getting rid of lice is not a question of ideology, it is a matter of cleanliness. In just this same way anti-Semitism for us has not been a question of ideology but a matter of cleanliness."

"Some information and observations of recent date have led me to draw up plans that I would like to bring to your attention. This concerns Jehovah’s Witnesses. . . . How are we going to govern and pacify Russia when . . . we will have conquered vast areas of its territory? . . . All forms of religion and the pacifist sects must be supported . . . , among all the others the beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is well-known that the latter have characteristics incredibly positive for us: Apart from the fact that they refuse military service and anything to do with war . . . , they are incredibly reliable, do not drink, do not smoke; they are relentless workers and of rare honesty. For them the spoken word stands. These are ideal characteristics . . . , enviable qualities."

"[T]o put an end to the epidemics, we were forced to burn the bodies of an incalculable number of people who were destroyed by the disease. So we were forced to build crematoria, and on this account they are loosing a bond for us. "He also stated that he punished the culprit if the atrocities occurred in the camps." On the Einsatzgruppen: "The war on the Eastern front made the demands more difficult for our soldiers. A terrible climate, never-ending distances, an enemy population and constantly apparent partisans. Just because it was difficult, the troops prevailed. So they were forced to destroy entire villages if there was resistance and gunfire from such a village. Russians are not ordinary enemies, we can not understand their mentality. In the most desperate situations, they would refuse to capitulate. If, because of these difficulties in the East, the Jewish people suffered large casualties, it must be remembered that the German people also suffered severely.""

"Ich bin Heinrich Himmler."

"I am Heinrich Himmler."

"The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love; only for their fear."

"In the brief monthly reports of the Security Police, I only want figures on how many Jews have been shipped off and how many are currently left."

"I must really say that he is a veteran Communist, this Herr Josip Broz, a consistent man. Unfortunately he is our enemy. He really has earned his title of Marshal. When we catch him we shall do him in at once; you can be sure of that; he is our enemy. But I wish we had a dozen Titos in Germany... The man had nothing at all. He was between the Russians, the British and Americans for a ride and to shit on them in the most comical way. He is a Moscow man … He has never capitulated."

"My honor is my loyalty."

"Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA — ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State."

"It was not Goebbels but his rival Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) who would become, next to Hitler, the most powerful man in the Third Reich. Head of the elite Nazi guard known as the Schutzstaffel (SS) from 1929 to 1945, by 1936 Himmler had become chief of all German police. In these positions he presided over a vast network of offices and agencies that implemented terror and mass murder all over German-occupied Europe."

"Himmler was neither flashy like Göring nor educated like Goebbels. Mousy and awkward as a young man, he read voraciously and had developed his own conspiratorial view of the world even before he met Hitler in 1926. Like Hitler, Himmler feared and hated Jews and believed in the superiority of the so-called Aryan race. Himmler too was convinced that Germany had to expand to the east. Dogged and capable of meticulous attention to detail, Himmler involved himself directly in projects that targeted homosexual men and Roma as well as Poles and Jews. With justification the historians Richard Breitman and Peter Longerich consider Himmler the "architect" of the Nazi genocide."

"Himmler was not personally charismatic, but his enormous power and access to Hitler caused ambitious men to flock to him. He had a knack for identifying highly capable, driven individuals who would prove ruthless in pursuit of their goals. Some, like Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942), whom Himmler personally recruited for the SS and named chief of its Security Service, became almost as famous as their boss. Others, with Himmler's help, made tremendously successful careers, particularly during the war, but are no longer household names. For example, Odilo Globocnik, Friedrich Jeckeln, and Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, three of Himmler's trusted associates, achieved positions of almost unbounded power in the occupied east. Together they were responsible for the murder of literally millions of people."

"There was also Himmler the crusader and visionary, the man who built a romantic castle in a German forest where the knights of the S.S., many of whom could hardly read or write, were required to repair at intervals to contemplate the glory of their order and establish spiritual contact with the heroes of mediaeval Germany."

"For him the Russian war offered a glorious opportunity for comparative anatomy: while immense armies were manoeuvring over the frozen plains and smashing each other to pieces, Himmler set himself the urgent task of building up a collection of skulls of Jewish-Bolshevik Commissars: such things were impossible to come by in Germany."

"The SS came into being in early 1925, by Hitler's order, as a select corps drawn from SA membership to serve as an efficient, elite, and completely dependable bodyguard for the party's leadership. The emphasis from the start was on loyalty, obedience, and discipline, but the SS remained insignificant in size and undistinguished in function until Hitler appointed Heinrich Himmler to head it and conferred upon him, in January 1929, the grandiose title of Reichsführer-SS. Himmler soon transformed the SS into an organized guided solely by the will of the Führer and that became, in Hans Buchheim's words, "the real and essential instrument of the Führer's authority." Indeed, Himmler came to regard himself as an instrument of Hitler's will."

"Himmler's name and title have come to evoke images of a demonic evil contained within a frame of steely iciness, rigor, and discipline, unloosed not in the passion of rage or hate, but on calculation. Yet his early life, shaped by familial authoritarianism, seemed ordinary and dull, never suggestive of the sinister role he would later assume. Born in 1900 in Munich, the second son of middle-class Catholic parents, Himmler had an unexceptional youth. The diary that he started to keep in 1914 shows him as pedantic, pedestrian, and unimaginative, already molded according to the parental tradition of rigid self-discipline. When war broke out, he was stricken with patriotic passion. At seventeen, when he reached the age of eligibility, he applied to an officer training program and was eventually admitted, but while he was still in training the armistice was signed. However, the cadets in training were not discharged until after the military had suppressed the revolution, dissolved its institutions, and regained political control. Here the young Himmler may have had his first lessons in the uses of the military for political suppression."

"In June 1924 Himmler finally found a job he wanted, one that would satisfy him ideologically and provide him with the political environment he had come to need. He became secretary and general assistant to Strasser, who was the NSFB Gauleiter for Lower Bavaria. Early in May 1925 the whole Strasser organization, lock, stock, and barrel, went over to the NSDAP, which Hitler had begun to rebuild after his release from Landsberg. Thus Himmler automatically became the NSDAP Party Gauleiter of Bavaria. A year later, when Strasser became the party's propaganda leader, Himmler was once again made his deputy. In 1927 Himmler was appointed deputy leader of the SS, and finally, in 1929, at the age of twenty-nine, with the appointment as Reichsführer-SS, he emerged at the top of the field in his chosen career- the professional Nazi. As Reichsführer-SS Himmler was able to integrate his diverse compulsions and obsessions- with the military, the occult, racial nationalism, and anti-Semitism- and give them form and substance. The SS became a proving ground for Himmler's romantic, grandiose, and sinister ideas and offered scope for him to exercise his pedantry and his proclivities for spying and informing. It became the vehicle through which his meanness, hardness, and vindictiveness found deadly expression. His rigid sense of duty and obedience turned him into a zealot carrying out Hitler's murderous ideology with fanatical "idealism." No wonder the SS's most distinctive insignia was to become the death's-head."

"Himmler, too, was developing the idea of the Jew as an enemy of the state, less in a legal sense than in a combative sense. Early in 1937, in a lecture to the Wehrmacht on the nature and purpose of the SS, he spelled out the idea that "the enemy in a war is an enemy not only in the military sense, but also an ideological enemy."... Thus, at a time when talk of war was becoming the everyday rhetoric of National Socialist Germany, the SS, too, despite the careful paperwork of the SD, began increasingly to talk of war against an ideological enemy."

"Although at the time I knew but little of the crimes he had committed, it was obvious to me that Himmler, as far as I was concerned, was intolerable. This I had to make quite clear to him, and one way or the other, I had to have a swift and final showdown with him. On the evening of April 30, shortly after the receipt of the telegram I told my ADC to telephone to Himmler, from whom I had parted in Luebeck only a few hours before, and ask him to come to Ploen forthwith. To my ADC he retorted with a blunt refusal, but when I myself spoke to him and told him that his presence was essential, he eventually consented to come."

"At about midnight he arrived, accompanied by six armed SS officers, and was received by my aide-de-camp, Ludde-Neurath. I offered Himmler a chair and myself sat down behind my writing desk, upon which lay, hidden behind some papers, a pistol with the safety catch off. I had never done anything of this sort in my life before, but I did not know what the outcome of this meeting might be. I handed Himmler the telegraph containing my appointment. 'Please read this,' I said. I watched him closely. As he read, an expression of astonishment, indeed, of consternation spread over his face. All hope seemed to collapse within him. He went very pale. Finally he stood up and bowed. 'Allow me,' he said, 'to become the second man in your state.' I replied that that was out of the question and that there was no way in which I could make use of his services. Thus advised, he left me at about one o'clock in the morning. The showdown had taken place without force, and I felt relieved."

"Himmler's political tendencies were philo-monarchist and Right-wing conservative, inherited from his father who had been the loyalist instructor of Heinrich, hereditary prince of Bavaria. He was especially fascinated by the ideal of the Order of Teutonic Knights, which we spoke of earlier. He wanted to make the SS a corps that would perform the same function of the state's central nucleus that the nobility had played with its unquestioning loyalty to the regime, but in a new form. For the formation of a man of the SS, he considered a blend of Spartan spirit and Prussian discipline. But he also had in view the order of Jesuits (Hitler jokingly used to call Himmler 'my Ignatius of Loyola')."

"The most impenetrable of all Hitler's disciples was the National Leader of the SS, Heinrich Himmler. An inconspicuous man with all the marks of racial inferiority, the impression he made was one of simplicity. He went out of his way to be polite. In contrast to that of Goering his private life might be described as positively Spartan in its austerity. His imagination was all the more vivid, and even fantastic. He seemed like a man from some other planet. His racial doctrine was fallacious and led him to commit terrible crimes. His attempt to educate the German people in National-Socialism resulted only in concentration camps. As late as 1943, long after Stalingrad, he still believed that Russia should be colonised by Germans as far as the Urals. On one occasion, when I said to him that it was already impossible to find volunteer colonists for the east, he insisted that the land as far as the Urals must be Germanised by compulsory colonisation if necessary and by planting the land with German peasants conscripted for that purpose."

"As far as the consequences of Himmler's racial theories, I have, from personal observation and experience, nothing to say. Hitler and Himmler succeeded in keeping this part of their programme strictly secret. Himmler's 'methods of education,' as practised in the concentration camps, have meanwhile become sufficiently well known. During his lifetime the general public knew only a little about this. The atrocities carried out in those camps were made known to most people, as to myself, only after the collapse. The way the concentration camp methods were kept secret can only be described as masterly."

"After 20th July Himmler became filled with military ambition: this led him to have himself appointed commander of the Training Army and even commander of an army group. In military matters Himmler proved an immediate and total failure. His appreciation of our enemies was positively childish. His decisions when in command of Army Group Vistula, in 1945, were dictated by fear. Despite this he retained Hitler's confidence almost up to the end. All the same even this paladin bowed down before the dictator. I was in a position on several occasions to observe his lack of self-assurance and of civil courage in Hitler's presence."

"Himmler ended his life by committing suicide though he had previously consistently condemned such an action, which he had claimed to regard as contemptible and which he had forbidden the SS. He therefore escaped his judges here below and left behind less responsible men to carry on the burden of his great guilt."

"He had a pale, round, expressionless face, almost Mongolian, and a completely inoffensive air. Nor in his early years did I ever hear him advocate the race theories of what he was to become the most notorious executive."

"In the summer of 1941, I was called to Berlin to see Himmler. I was given the order to erect extermination camps. I can almost give you Himmler's actual words, which were to the effect: "The Fuhrer has ordered the final solution to the Jewish problem. Those of us in the SS must execute these plans. This is a hard job, but if the act is not carried out at once, instead of us exterminating the Jews, the Jews will exterminate the Germans at a later date.""

"No doubt the bespectacled S.S. Fuehrer, who had almost fainted at the sight of a hundred Eastern Jews, including women, being executed for his own delectation, would have seen in the efficient working by S.S. officers of the gas chambers in the extermination camps an even more glorious page in German history. For it was in these death camps that the "final solution" achieved its most ghastly success."

"Because the SS was the chosen instrument of the murder campaign, Himmler moved closer to the center of power. The SS, now separated institutionally from the SA, became the most powerful institution within the National Socialist party. After the Night of the Long Knives, its task would be to subordinate the many German police institutions to Nazi ideology. Himmler would seek to merge his SS with Germany’s established police forces by way of rotation of personnel and institutional centralization under his personal command. In 1936 Hitler named Himmler the Chief of German Police. This placed him in charge of the uniformed men of the Order Police, the detectives of the Criminal Police, and the operatives of the Secret State Police (Gestapo). The police was a state institution (or rather comprised a number of different state institutions) and the SS was a Nazi party institution; Himmler sought to bring the two together. In 1937, Himmler established the office of Higher SS and Police Leaders, regional chiefs who in theory commanded both SS and police forces, and unified the hierarchy of command."

"At this time a high-ranking SS leader hinted to me that Himmler was preparing decisive steps. In February 1945, the Reichsführer-SS had assumed command of the Vistula Army Group, but he was no better than his successor at stopping the Russian advance. Hitler was now berating him also. Thus what personal prestige Himmler had retained was used up by a few weeks of commanding frontline troops. Nevertheless, everyone still feared Himmler, and I felt distinctly shaky one day on learning that Himmler was coming to see me about something that evening. This, incidentally, was the only time he ever called on me. My nervousness grew when Theodor Hupfauer, the new chief of our Central Office- with whom I had several times spoken rather candidly- told me in some trepidation that Gestapo chief Kaltenbrunner would be calling on him at the same hour. Before Himmler entered, by adjutant whispered to me: "He's alone." My office was without window panes; we no longer bothered replacing them since they were blasted out by bombs every few days. A wretched candle stood at the center of the table; the electricity was out again. Wrapped in our coats, we sat facing one another. Himmler talked about minor matters, asked about pointless details, and finally made the witless observation: "When the course is downhill there's always a floor to the valley, and once it is reached, Herr Speer, the ascent begins again." Since I expressed neither agreement nor disagreement with this proverbial wisdom and remained virtually monosyllabic throughout the conversation, he soon took his leave. I never found out what he wanted of it, or why Kaltenbrunner called on Hupfauer at the same time. Perhaps they had heard about my critical attitude and were seeking allies; perhaps they merely wanted to sound us out."

"I am still today a soldier and only a soldier. (Ich bin noch heute Soldat und nur Soldat)"

"Since I am an immature and wicked man, war and unrest appeal to me more than good bourgeois order. Brutality is respected, the people need wholesome fear. They want to fear someone. They want someone to frighten them and make them shudderingly submissive."

"Many things are between us and the Communists, but we respect the sincerity of their conviction and their willingness to bring sacrifices for their own cause, and this unites us with them."

"Adolf is a swine. He will give us all away. He only associates with reactionaries now. His old friends aren't good enough for him. Getting matey with the East Prussian generals. They're his cronies now. Adolf is turning into a gentleman. He's got himself a tail-coat now. Adolf knows exactly what I want. I've told him often enough. Not a second edition of the old imperial army. Are we revolutionaries or aren't we? Allons, enfants de la patrie! If we are, then something new must arise out of our élan, like the mass armies of the French Revolution. If we're not, then we'll go to the dogs. We've got to produce something new, don't you see? A new discipline. A new principle of organization. The generals are a lot of old fogeys. They never had a new idea."

"Hitler can't walk over me as he might have done a year ago; I've seen to that. Don't forget that I have three million men, with every key position in the hands of my own people, Hitler knows that I have friends in the Reichswehr, you know! If Hitler is reasonable I shall settle the matter quietly; if he isn't I must be prepared to use force - not for my sake but for the sake of our revolution."

"All revolutions devour their own children."

"He (Hitler) is thinking about the peasant girls. When they stand in the fields and bend down at their work so that you can see their behinds, that's what he likes, especially when they've got big round ones. That's Hitler's sex life. What a man."

"I expect that on the 1st of August, the SA will be once more ready for duty. If the enemies of the SA are hoping that the SA will not return from leave, we are ready to let them enjoy the hope for a short time. The SA is, and remains, Germany's destiny."

"If I am to be killed, let Adolf do it himself!"

"Mein Führer, mein Führer!"

"Röhm deceived himself when he thought that his closeness to Hitler would allow him to survive while other German homosexual men were being persecuted. Röhm was not murdered because he was homosexual, but the fact that he was so gave his enemies a means of turning Hitler against him and securing his destruction."

"Röhm, then very much a leading personality, was a more flamboyant figure, scarred and scented, with a jewelled dagger at his waist. We met for the first time at von Neurath's luncheon. Afterwards we had some talk, when he told me of his frightening experiences the world over, the last instalments of which had been, if I recall correctly, in Bolivia. But he was not just a perverted swashbuckler, he had intelligence of a kind and, a rarity in the modern world, he was a man who boasted of his bravery, yet was brave. But he was hardly of the modern world; a condottiere of the Middle Ages might have looked and behaved like that."

"I pointed out to the Führer at length that in 1934 we unfortunately failed to reform the Wehrmacht when we had an opportunity of doing so. What Roehm wanted was, of course, right in itself but in practice it could not be carried through by a homosexual and an anarchist. Had Roehm been an upright solid personality, in all probability some hundred generals rather than some hundred SA leaders would have been shot on June 30. The whole course of events was profoundly tragic and today we are feeling its effects. In that year the time was ripe to revolutionise the Reichswehr. As things were the Führer was unable to seize the opportunity. It is questionable whether today we can ever make good what we missed doing at that time. I am very doubtful of it. Nevertheless the attempt must be made."

"Röhm presented himself as a ‘rational’ anti-Semite, and as man who had more empathy with his radical opponents on the left in the Communist party than with the moderate politicians of the centre."

"Roehm was an extraordinary character, who should have been a seventeenth-century soldier of fortune... He was firmly convinced, and he was right, that without his own strong arm it would have been impossible for Hitler to have climbed into power. His private life was deplorable and he made no attempt to conceal his homosexual tastes, his extravagance and his contempt for all ideals. Yet in many ways I found this shameless bandit less repugnant than many of his colleagues in the Government. On the first occasion on which I met him he was at pains to impress on me his devotion to the soldier's career and his dislike of any other. He asked me if I had served in the war and, if so, why I had left the Army. I told him that England had truly disarmed and that I had decided to seek my future elsewhere. “What a mistake,” he replied, and he continued, patting me consolingly on the shoulder, “Never mind. As a result of Germany's present proceedings England will soon be obliged to have a much larger Army. I admit freely that I would sooner talk to an enemy soldier than a German civilian. He is a swine and I do not understand his language.” ... Not long before his fall he took part in one of the many celebrations of Nazi anniversaries...and in the course of his speech he intimated that he had little interest in the affair. “I prefer,” he said, “to make revolutions rather than to celebrate them.”"

"The most prominent target of Hitler’s purge was Ernst Röhm, the leader of one of the Nazi paramilitaries, the SA brownshirts. The SA had helped Hitler assert his personal authority, to intimidate opponents (and voters), and to come to power in 1933. The streetfighting of the SA was less useful to Hitler as chancellor than it had been for Hitler as politician. Röhm spoke in 1933 and 1934 of the need for a second revolution, an idea that Hitler rejected. Röhm also nurtured personal ambitions that ill fit Hitler’s plans to rebuild the German military. Röhm portrayed his SA as a better reflection of the Nazi spirit than the German armed forces, which he wished to control himself. His three million SA brownshirts far outnumbered the hundred thousand soldiers permitted to the German armed forces by the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler meant to break those treaty obligations, but by rebuilding the German army rather than by replacing or merging it with a paramilitary. In late June 1934 Hitler ordered the SS to murder Röhm and several dozen of his associates, as well as other rivals within the Nazi movement and a few other politicians. The SS was led by Heinrich Himmler, who emphasized racial purity, ideological training, and personal loyalty to Hitler. In what came to be known as the “Night of the Long Knives,” Hitler was using one of the Nazi paramilitaries, the SS, to master the other, the SA. He was endorsing Himmler’s work, and putting an end to Röhm—and dozens of other people. Hitler told the parliament on 14 July 1935 that seventy-four men had been killed; the true number was at least eighty-five, several of whom were (Nazi) parliamentary deputies. He claimed, naturally, that Röhm and the others had been planning a coup against his legitimate government, and had to be stopped in advance. In addition to the SA leadership, Hitler’s blood purge had reached conservatives and former heads of government. Of the three chancellors who had preceded him, one was murdered, one was arrested, and the third fled."

"Ernst Roehm was a thug. He was a brutish and zealous believer in National Socialism. If anything, he was more radical than Hitler. He believed in the elimination of anyone connected with the old order, businessmen, office holders of any kind. He became the leader of the SA, the Storm Troopers, whose terror tactics had helped make Hitler the leader of Germany."

"I have loved my German people and my fatherland with a warm heart. I have done my duty by the laws of my people and I am sorry this time my people were led by men who were not soldiers and that crimes were committed of which I had no knowledge. Germany, good luck."

"All offices of the SD and the security police are to be informed that pogroms of the populace against English and American terror-fliers were not to be interfered with; on the contrary, this hostile mood is to be fostered."

"I do not feel guilty of any war crimes, I have only done my duty as an intelligence organ, and I refuse to serve as an ersatz for Himmler."

"Please report to RF SS and to the Fuehrer that all arrangements against Jews, political and concentration camp internees in the Protectorate have been taken care of by me personally today."

"Oppression is the essence of power."

"Armenia was always a minority nation. The Armenians were annihilated by the Russians and then by the Turks."

"Russia demanded Armenian territories, very cleverly using long-standing, bitter fights between Armenians and Turks."

"When I saw the newspaper headline "Gas Chamber Expert Captured" and an American lieutenant explained it to me, I was pale in amazement. How can they say such things about me? I told you I was only in charge of the Intelligence Service from 1943 on. The British even admitted that they tried to assassinate me because of that, not because of having anything to do with atrocities, you can be sure of that."

"In the first place, I should like to state to the Tribunal that I am fully aware of the serious character of the charges against me. I know the hatred of the world is directed against me; that I particularly since Himmler, Müller, and Pohl are no longer alive, must here, alone, give an account to the world and the Tribunal. I realize that I shall have to tell the truth in this courtroom, in order to enable the Court and the world to fully recognize and understand what has been going on in Germany during this war and to judge it with fairness."

"I know only that in my belief in Adolf Hitler I put all my strength at the disposal of my people. As a German soldier I could only put myself at the service of the defense against those destructive forces which had once brought Germany close to the abyss, and which today, after the collapse of the Reich, are still threatening the world. If I have made mistakes in my work through a false conception of obedience, if I carried out orders, all of which, insofar as they are alleged to be cardinal orders, were issued before my time of office, then they are part of a fate which is stronger than myself and which is carrying me along with it. I am accused here because substitutes are needed for the missing Himmler and other elements which were completely contrary to me. Whether my point of view and explanation are accepted or rejected, I ask you not to connect the fate and honor of hundreds of thousands of the living and dead of the General SS, of the Waffen-SS, and of the civil servants who, believing in their ideal, bravely defended, their Reich to the last, with your just curse against Himmler. Like myself, they believed that they were acting according to law."

"Among the spiritual forces secretly working in the camp of Germany's enemies and their allies in this war, as in the last, stands Freemasonry, the danger of whose activities has been repeatedly stressed by the Fuehrer in his speeches. The present brochure, now made available to the German and European peoples in a 3rd edition, is intended to shed light on this enemy working in the shadows. Though an end has been put to the activities of Masonic organizations in most European countries, particular attention must still be paid to Freemasonry, and most particularly to its membership, as the implements of the political will of a supra-governmental power. The events of the summer of 1943 in Italy demonstrate once again the latent danger always represented by individual Freemasons, even after the destruction of their Masonic organizations. Although Freemasonry was prohibited in Italy as early as 1925, it has retained significant political influence in Italy through its membership, and has continued to exert that influence in secrecy. Freemasons thus stood in the first ranks of the Italian traitors who believed themselves capable of dealing Fascism a death blow at a critical juncture, shamelessly betraying the Italian nation. The intended object of the 3rd printing of this brochure is to provide a clearer knowledge of the danger of Masonic corruption, and to keep the will to self-defence alive."

"I have talked to you in the past but we have always exchanged pleasantries. And it has always been assumed that I am Kaltenbrunner, the big bad man next to Himmler and the successor of Himmler. But I think you can see by this time, after having treated my brain hemorrhages, both in the hospital and here in my cell, that I am not the disagreeable, uncouth fellow the public probably thinks because of all the atrocities committed under Himmler's rule, and of which I am totally innocent."

"I am thought of as another Himmler. I'm not. The papers make me out as a criminal. I never killed anyone."

"There is no human law or law of God or national law that states that any healthy being has to permit the snake to eat the mouse - but on the other hand, it is perfectly justified to defend the mouse."

"The quicker humanity advances, the more important it is to be the one who deals the first blow."

"I was appointed by Hitler to succeed Canaris because it was well known and proven that my abilities were greater than those of Canaris."

"(While smiling, and jokingly) You haven't come to see me for three weeks. I wondered whether you had become disgusted with us war criminals - particularly me, the so-called archcriminal of them all."

"It is precisely the immediate and thorough eradication of the Jews in Italy which is the special interest of the present internal political situation and the general security in Italy."

"The colonel in charge of the London prison that I was in has told me that I would be hanged in any case, no matter what the outcome would be. Since I am fully aware of that, all I want to do is to clear up on the fundamental things that are wrong here."

"Don't even step out of your garden gate until this matter has been clarified."

"(While playing solitaire and sipping cognac) It's all a lot of crap. The game is up."

"Ich bekenne mich nicht schuldig. (I do not believe that I have made myself guilty.)"

"Where do you think I was today? I stood straight in front of him (Himmler) for a whole hour and talked, and he... he played with a puzzle the whole time – you know, this glass cube with three balls on the inside... When I finished, he took off his pince-nez, wiped it with a handkerchief – he has a skull even on his handkerchief – and said, "Listen, Ernst! Have you by any chance, ever had a dream, where you're riding in the back of a ragged truck to who knows where, and some monsters are sitting around you?" I didn’t say anything. Then he smiled and said, "Ernst, you know, I know as well as you that no astral exists. But what do you think, if you, and even Canaris, have your own people in 'Annenerbe', shouldn’t I have my own people there as well?" I did not understand what he meant. "Think Ernst, think!" he said. I kept silent. Then he smiled and asked, "Whose man do you think is Kröger?" …Yes, Emma... It seems I'm too simple for all these intrigues... But I know that while the Führer needs me, my heart will keep beating...You know, Emma... Sometimes it seems to me, that it's not me who is alive, but it's the Führer who is living inside me..."

"The Prosecution holds me responsible for the concentration camps, for the destruction of Jewish life, for Einsatzgruppen and other things. All of this is neither in accord with the evidence nor with the truth. The accusers as well as the accused are exposed to the dangers of a summary proceeding. It is correct that I had to take over the Reich Security Main Office. There was no guilt in that in itself. Such offices exist in governments of other nations too. However, the task and activity assigned to me in 1943 consisted almost exclusively in the reorganization of the German political and military intelligence service, though not as Heydrich's successor. Almost a year after his death I had to accept this post under orders and as an officer at a time when suspicion fell on Admiral Canaris of having collaborated with the enemy for years. In a short time I ascertained the treason of Canaris and his accomplices to the most frightful extent."

"As early as January 1934, Dr. Kaltenbrunner was jailed by the Dollfuss Government on account of his Nazi views and sent with other leading National Socialists into the concentration camp Kaisersteinbruch. He caused and led a hunger strike and forced the government to dismiss 490 National Socialist prisoners. In the following year he was jailed again, because of suspicion of high treason, and committed to the court martial of Wels (Upper Danube). After an investigation of many months, the accusation of high treason collapsed; but he was sentenced to 6 months' imprisonment for subversive activities. After the spring of 1935, Dr. Kaltenbrunner was the leader of the Austrian SS, the right to practice his profession having been suspended because of his National Socialist views. It rebounds to his credit that in this important position he succeeded through energetic leadership in maintaining the unity of the Austrian SS, which he had built up, in spite of all persecution, and succeeded in committing it successfully at the right moment."

"Kaltenbrunner came and things became worse from day to day. More and more we learned that perhaps the impulsive actions of a murderer like Heydrich were not so bad as the cold, legal logic of a lawyer who took over the administration of such a dangerous instrument as the Gestapo."

"Yes. I know that Heydrich, in a certain sense, really had something akin to a bad conscience when he committed his crimes. At any rate, he did not like it when those things were discussed openly in Gestapo circles. Nebe, who as Chief of the Criminal Police had the same rank as the Chief of the Gestapo, Mueller, always told me that Heydrich took care to conceal his crimes. With the entry of Kaltenbrunner into that organization, this practice ceased. All those things were now openly discussed among the department chiefs of the Gestapo. By now the war had started, of course. These gentlemen lunched together, and Nebe often came to me from such luncheons so completely exhausted that he had a nervous breakdown. On two occasions Nebe had to be sent on long sick leave because he simply could not stand the open cynicism with which mass murder, and the technique of mass murder, were discussed."

"A security chief who was of the impression that the policing functions of his Gestapo and SD were somewhat on the order of directing traffic;"

"Kaltenbrunner, the grand inquisitor, took up the bloody mantle of Heydrich to stifle opposition and terrorize compliance, and buttressed the power of National Socialism on a foundation of guiltless corpses."

"You will remember his description of those horrible luncheon parties at which Kaltenbrunner discussed every detail of the gas chambers and of the technique of mass murder."

"The assassination must be attempted at all costs. Even if it should not succeed, an attempt to seize power in Berlin must be made. What matters now is no longer the practical purpose of the coup, but to prove to the world and for the records of history that the men of the resistance dared to take the decisive step. Compared to this objective, nothing else is of consequence."

"It is almost certain that we will fail. But how will future history judge the German people, if not even a handful of men had the courage to put an end to that criminal?"

"The whole world will vilify us now, but I am still totally convinced that we did the right thing. Hitler is the archenemy not only of Germany but of the world. When, in few hours' time, I go before God to account for what I have done and left undone, I know I will be able to justify what I did in the struggle against Hitler. God promised Abraham that He would not destroy Sodom if just ten righteous men could be found in the city, and so I hope that for our sake God will not destroy Germany. No one among us can complain about his death, for whoever joined our ranks put on the shirt of Nessus. A man's moral worth is established only at the point where he is ready to give up his life in defense of his convictions."

"Remember this moment. If we don't convince the field marshal (Fedor von Bock) to fly to Hitler at once and have these orders (Commissar Order) canceled, the German people will be burdened with a guilt the world will not forget in a hundred years. This guilt will fall not only on Hitler, Himmler, Göring, and their comrades but on you and me, your wife and mine, your children and mine, that woman crossing the street, and those children over there playing ball."

"Isn't it dreadful? Here we are, two officers of the German General Staff, discussing how best to murder our commander in chief. It must be done. This is our only chance... Hitler must be cut down like a rabid dog."

"I cannot understand how people can still call themselves Christians and not be furious adversaries of Hitler's regime."

"The idea of freedom can never be disassociated from real Prussia. The real Prussian spirit means a synthesis between restraint and freedom, between voluntary subordination and conscientious leadership, between pride in oneself and consideration for others, between rigor and compassion. Unless a balance is kept between these qualities, the Prussian spirit is in danger of degenerating into soulless routine and narrow-minded dogmatism."

"I would like to show the German people a film with the title "Germany at the end of the war". Then perhaps people would be alarmed and would realize where we are heading. People would agree with me that the superior warlord (Hitler) must disappear. But since we cannot show this movie people will create the legend of the "stab in the back" whenever we will act against Hitler."

"Every day, we are assassinating nearly 16,000 additional victims."

"Hitler is a dancing dervish. He must be shot down."

"Bans are laws for the stupid."

"I am thankful for the kind treatment during my captivity and I ask God to accept me with mercy."

"Death by hanging...I deserved it and I expected it, as I've always told you. I am glad that I have had the chance to defend myself and to think things over in the last few months."

"This war would be only a partial success if the whole lot of Jewry survived it, while we shed our best blood to save Europe. My attitude toward the Jews will therefore be based solely on the expectation that they must disappear. They must be done away with. Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourself of all feeling of pity. We must annihilate the Jews wherever we find them and wherever it is possible."

"We must not be squeamish when we learn that a total of 17,000 have been shot. We are now duty bound to hold together, we who are gathered together here figure on Mr. Roosevelt's list of war criminals. I have the honour of being Number One."

"If the authority of the National-Socialist Reich is to be upheld, then it is unacceptable that representatives of the Reich should be obliged to meet Jews when they enter or leave the house, and are in this way liable to infection with epidemics. I therefore intend to clear the city of Cracow, the seat of the Governor-General of the General Government, of Jews, as far as at all possible, by November 1, 1940. There will be a major operation to move the Jews, on the grounds that it is absolutely intolerable that thousands upon thousands of Jews should go slinking around and occupy apartments in the city which the Führer has granted the great honor of becoming the seat of a high Reich Authority..."

"In Prague, big red posters were put up on which one could read that seven Czechs had been shot today. I said to myself, 'If I had to put up a poster for every seven Poles shot, the forests of Poland would not be sufficient to manufacture the paper."

"Let me tell you quite frankly: in one way or another we will have to finish with the Jews. The führer once expressed it as follows: should Jewry once again succeed in inciting a world war, the bloodletting could not be limited to the peoples they drove to war but the Jews themselves would be done for in Europe. If the Jewish tribe survives the war in Europe while we sacrifice our blood for the preservation of Europe, this war will be but a partial success. Basically, I must presume, therefore, that the Jews will disappear. To that end I have started negotiations to expel them to the east. In any case, there will be a great Jewish migration. But what is to become of the Jews? Do you think that they will be settled in villages in the conquered eastern territories? In Berlin we have been told not to complicate matters: since neither these territories, nor our own, have any use for them, we should liquidate them ourselves! Gentlemen, I must ask you to remain unmoved by pleas for pity. We must annihilate the Jews wherever we encounter them and wherever possible, in order to maintain the overall mastery of the Reich here... For us the Jews are also exceptionally damaging because they are being such gluttons. There are an estimated 2.5 million Jews in the General Government, perhaps. 3.5 million. These 3.5 million Jews, we cannot shoot them, nor can we poison them. Even so, we can take steps which in some way or other will pave the way for their destruction, notably in connection with the grand measures to be discussed in the Reich. The General Government must become just as judenfrei (free of Jews) as the Reich!"

"I did not care for Wagner. My tastes are more classical. Der Fuhrer had no musical taste and liked Wagner because of the bombastic Teutonic glories."

"I tried to commit suicide because I sacrificed everything for Hitler. And that man whom we sacrificed everything for left us all alone. If he had committed suicide four years before, it would have been all right."

"Ah! American cigarettes are like the American soul - sweet and light."

"It doesn't matter whether I'm judged criminal. I have a great feeling of guilt - I have a feeling that I ran after Hitler like a wildfire without reason. If I can sacrifice my life to make something good, I'd gladly do it."

"All these things are still apparent today. You Americans can see for yourselves how impossible it is to feed the German people from the German soil itself. From the viewpoint of a historian, one can say that Hitler never would have arisen if the Allies had not treated Germany so poorly. Justice Jackson said so himself. Today things are more impossible than ever. The East has been taken away from Germany - in other words, hunger created Hitler, and paradoxically, Hitler created still greater hunger."

"After the deed is done, one always becomes clever and philosophical."

"I feel that I am obligated to my people - that is not pessimism. If I tried to prove that I was innocent, it would be the same as trying to prove that the German people are guilty. Only one innocent man sits in that dock - and that man is the symbol of the German people. An epoch with such happenings as the murder of 5 million Jews, the projective extermination of millions of Slavs - such an epoch must close up definitely once and for all. It cannot go dragging on and on. Those of us who are guilty must pay the price and set the German people free, no longer to be blamed for our stupidity."

"You can't indict a government and its organizations as criminal. The conception of the Reich government is a hundred years old. The general staff is several hundreds of years old. The case of the SS is another matter, because it was started with the party and by the party. But it's quite impossible to indict or convict an organization as criminal if it has in its membership millions of innocent people."

"Even in art, there is no light without shadows, and no shadows are cast without some light. Even the shadow of Adolf Hitler is accompanied by some light."

"I think of these things frequently, because I know the German people. Among them might arise the legend of Hitler, because Hitler was not heard from in this trial. Time always has some reconciling effect. On every ruin there eventually grows grass, and then some shrubbery, and finally, before you realize it, what is really an old hideous ruin becomes a romantic sight and legend."

"I think that Hitler was abnormal in his sexual needs. That is, he needed too little from the opposite sex. He considered women as objects of beauty, and he often talked with affection about his own mother. I obtained the impression that he disliked his father, because he never mentioned him. But it is a bad thing if a man has too little Eros in him. It makes him insensitive, and probably leads to cruelty. Freud, Sigmund Freud, the last of the great German psychiatrists, who died in England, pointed out the relationship between frustrated love and cruelty. I believe it is what you psychiatrists term sadism. I'm convinced that a man who does not need the love of a woman, and thinks he can forgo it, or who does forgo it, can turn to cruelty and sadism as a substitute."

"Both Einstein and Freud were clever in leaving Germany, because both of them would doubtlessly have been caught by Himmler and murdered."

"What a horrible system we had. How blind we were."

"A thousand years will pass and still this guilt of Germany will not have been erased."

"On the witness stand I said that a thousand years would not suffice to erase the guilt brought upon our people because of Hitler's conduct in this war. Every possible guilt incurred by our nation has already been, completely wiped out today, not only by the conduct of our war-time enemies towards our nation and its soldiers, which has been carefully kept out of this Trial, but also by the tremendous mass crimes of the most frightful sort which - as I have now learned - have been and still are being committed against Germans by Russians, Poles, and Czechs, especially in East Prussia, Silesia, Pomerania, and Sudetenland. Who shall ever judge these crimes against the German people?"

"Hitler is lonely. So is God. Hitler is like God."

"The job of realizing Hitler's vision in the new Government-General fell to a Bavarian named Hans Frank, who had been among the Nazis' earliest recruits from the legal profession. Aged thirty-nine when he installed himself in the historic Wawel Castle in Krakôw, Frank was immediately gripped by delusions of grandeur. He told his wife she was to be the 'queen of Poland', though in practice he was in charge of only the four districts of Krakôw, Radom, Warsaw and Lublin. The Government-General was to become 'the first colonial territory of the German nation'."

"For a while, Himmler and Frank toyed with the idea of sending the Jews to the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar, which the Polish government had already considered; it was agreed that this could happen only after the war. Then Hitler spoke of concentrating them on the new Poland's eastern frontier, between the Vistula and the Bug. Later, Siberia was mentioned. In the meantime, the Lublin district became a kind of dumping ground for deported Jews, tens of thousands of whom were crowded into hastily constructed camps, while the supposedly transitional ghettos of Lodz, Warsaw, Lowicz and Glowno took on a more permanent quality. Not that they could have endured indefinitely. For one thing, they were intolerably cramped; a third of the population of Warsaw was crammed into 2.4 per cent of the city's residential area. At the same time, food rations for Jews were reduced so that by 1941 their daily calorific content was just over 25 per cent of the standard Polish allocation and a meagre 7 per cent of the German, far less than the subsistence minimum. Overcrowding and underfeeding were themselves intended to be lethal - which indeed they were, with mortality rates soaring to 10 per cent in Warsaw in 1941. 'It's high time that this rabble is driven together in ghettos,' declared Himmler, 'and then plague will creep in and they'll croak.' In the summer of 1942 Frank described sentencing 1.2 million Jews to death by starvation as 'just a marginal issue'."

"Yet the more Frank got to know his fiefdom, the more he began to doubt the wisdom of expelling or starving nearly one in ten of the population, to say nothing of the dangers of allowing epidemics to break out in the principal cities. In the early 1930s, Jews had accounted for nearly half of Poland's highest income-earners. A very high proportion of the entrepreneurs, managers and skilled workers of Polish cities were Jewish. One of the first acts of the German occupation had been to authorize the seizure of all Jewish property - the beginning of a campaign of systematic and ruthless plunder. At around the same time Frank had issued an edict imposing a general obligation for forced labour on all male Jews between the ages of twelve and sixty. Whether for their capital or their labour, Jews had an unquestionable economic value; simply stealing the former and eliminating the latter was patently not a profit-maximizing strategy. Unless Frank wanted to return the Polish economy to the Middle Ages, he needed to work out a compromise between the dictates of racist ideology and the economics of empire."

"Long live eternal Germany!"

"Hitler was undoubtedly a genius but he lacked self-control. He recognized no limits. Otherwise the thousand-year Reich would have lasted more than twelve years."

"It was sad. It's war. Many others died, too. It's war."

"I am skeptical about preventing wars. I doubt if they can be prevented. There will always be wars. Judging by past experiences, working for peace now would be as ineffective as ever. It's a law of nature."

"Personally, he is not particularly depressed, because of the "nature of life, the laws of nature, the ways of war.""

"In the testimony of each defendant, at some point there was reached the familiar blank wall: Nobody knew anything about what was going on. Time after time we have heard the chorus from the dock: "I only heard about these things here for the first time." These men saw no evil, spoke none, and none was uttered in their presence. This claim might sound very plausible if made by one defendant. But when we put all their stories together, the impression which emerges of the Third Reich, which was to last a thousand years, is ludicrous. … A minister of interior who knew not even what went on in the interior of his own office, much less the interior of his own department, and nothing at all about the interior of Germany. … Frick, the ruthless organizer, helped the party to seize power, supervised the police agencies to insure that it stayed in power, and chained the economy of Bohemia and Moravia to the German war machine."

"It is tragic that the Fuehrer should have the whole nation behind him with the single exception of the Army generals. In my opinion it is only by action that they can now atone for their faults of lack of character and discipline."

"The Pact of Munich is signed. Czechoslovakia as a power is out. The genius of the Führer and his determination not to shun even a world war have again won victory without the use of force. The hope remains that the incredulous, the weak and the doubters have been converted and will remain that way."

"In view of the vast size of the occupied areas in the East the forces available for establishing security in these areas will be sufficient only if all resistance is punished not by legal prosecution of the guilty but by the spreading of such terror by the occupying power as is appropriate to eradicate every inclination to resist among the population. The competent commanders must find the means of keeping order not by demanding more security forces but by applying suitable Draconian methods."

"My most profound confidence is however based upon the fact that at the head of Germany there stands a man by his entire development, his desires, and striving can only have been destined by fate to lead our people into a brighter future."

"But then I ask myself, I have never truly known the man whose flank I have led one difficult and ascetic life for. Perhaps he has played with my idealism, taking advantage for dark scopes that he has held hidden within himself. How can I expect to know a man who has never opened his heart to me? Till now, I do not know what he really thought, knew or wanted. I was alone with my thoughts and my suspicions. And now, the veil that covered this statue has fallen to the ground and instead of an art work, a monster has revealed itself. Now we leave to the historians of the future the task of discussing if that statue was therefore a sin from the beginning, or was changed because of the circumstances. I continue to make the same error: I try to think back to his humble origins. But then I remember how many sons of these people have sealed their history with his name."

"Ah, you come to see the others but rarely to see me."

"Yes, I'm very normal, everything is okay, I won't become a psychiatric case."

"Death - by hanging! - that, at least, I did not deserve. The death part - all right, somebody has to stand for the responsibility. But that - that I did not deserve!"

"My greetings to you, my Germany."

"Heil Hitler! (when asked to state his name) You know my name well. Julius Streicher! The Bolsheviks will hang you one day! (to the hangman) Purim festival, 1946! I am now by God my father! Adele, my dear wife."

"I have to repeat again and again: He who knows the Talmud, knows the Jew! The laws of the Talmud are contrary to the German system of laws. You should acknowledge the importance of discussing this matter in connection with the judiciary budget. Once you know what the Talmud orders the Jew to do, you will understand today's state of affairs."

"We handed the most important belongings of our people -- the railroads and the banks -- to aliens who 2000 years ago had turned the temple into a house of usury. Back then there was a man who had the bravery to drive out these scoundrels with a whip! If today a national socialist is seen with such a temple-whip, he's thrown into jail."

"When one listens to your speeches it sounds as if you had always fought against capitalism. The truth is that it was you who gave all the power to capitalism. In this republic capitalism has grown as it had never before. You can think about the old state as you will, one thing is certain: it was not as rotten as the one you brought about! … What shall one say when Reich president Ebert in his letters addresses the Jewish scoundrel Barmat as "My dear Barmat" and closes with the greeting "Yours Ebert"? Despite all the veneration that I feel for this man, whom by the way I respect more as a master saddle-maker than as a Reich president, I simply have to be astonished. Gentlemen, where is the "beauty and dignity"?"

"Moreover I want to tell Dr. Süßheim -- who wants to portray every anti-Semite as a psychopath -- about his racial fellow Dr. Otto Weininger, who as an honest Jew wrote down his thoughts in the book "Sex and Character": "Jewry seems to be somewhat anthropologically related to the Negroes and the Mongolians. To the Negro points the readily curling hair, to an admixture of Mongolian blood points the very Chinese or Malayan formed skull, that one finds so often among Jews, which matches the usually yellowish complexion … The fact that excellent men have almost always been anti-Semites (Tacitus, Pascal, Voltaire, Goethe, Kant, Jean Paul, Schopenhauer, Grillparzer, Richard Wagner) can be explained in the following way: they, who have so much more in their own nature than other men, can also better understand Jewry.""

"The Roman historian Tacitus once said, that the health and the disease of a state can be measured in the number of its laws. If we Germans nowadays look at the huge number of laws, we have to say, that it's not health, but death that we're approaching. … It is strange that it is Social Democracy of all movements, which in the old state complained about exceptions, that now issues exception laws itself. These exception-laws are means of force and are created in the parliaments with the help of supranational financial powers. … In the old state an interest rate of more than 6 percent was deemed usury. Today this usury is legalized. It was YOU, the men of the left -- who always pretend to fight against capitalism and exploitation -- who accomplished this. It will be your downfall!"

"If you know these things, the question has enormous importance: who will be the judge in the future? It is not trivial, who is the judge. It's not sufficient to dress somebody in a robe, put a beret on his head and open the lawbook! It's a big difference whether a German or a negro takes place on the judgement seat. Sure, you can teach a negro the German language, the schematic application of laws and paragraphs -- and yet the negro will always judge like his blood commands!"

"And further, I tell you that the Jew is right, when he acts as he does – because we are too timid to be as German as the Jew is Jewish! … It happened at the time of the [Bavarian] Soviet Republic: When the unleashed subhumans rambled murdering through the streets, the deputies hid behind a chimney in the Bavarian parliament."

"Who are the moneylenders? They are those who were driven out of the Temple by Christ Himself 2000 years ago. They are those who never work but live on fraud."

"Social Democracy preached against capitalism for half a century. After the November revolution the Reds had the opportunity to direct capitalism into the proper paths: but nothing happened!"

"In Soviet-Russia the Jew is forging the tool with which he wants to enslave Europe."

"A moment ago a deputy of the communist party pleaded for the abortion of developing life. … In Russia there has been a soviet rule for ten years already. … Where is the promised paradise after these ten years? Where is the foretold happiness? Is that supposed to be the happiness that in Russia the abortion has been legalized?"

"You may baptize as long as you want, but the Jew remains a Jew, the Chinese a Chinese and the Negro a Negro."

"Can't you feel that the German people has carried for seven years from one station of pain to another a huge cross? Can't you feel that it is persecuted, hounded and whipped bloody like the Nazarene? If you cannot feel that it is gasping under the weight of the cross which was burdened on it and that it walks on its way to Golgatha -- then you're not worth that God the Lord will again let the sun of his mercy shine upon you. … Help us so that in this decisive hour the German people will be freed from the weight of the cross of the yoke of Jewry! Help us, so that a mighty man who's been gifted by God can give us back our freedom and that it will again be a proud people in a German country! Take care that Germany is freed from the chains she has been bound with for seven years. Put an end to this slavery! Our people shall again be great, proud and beautiful!"

"In spite of the fact that the Jews do not even refrain from attacking Christendom, they are protected by those who wear the cassock. The Christendom of the early time was different to the one of today. The first Christians were fighters, who wanted to free their people from the Jewish ignominy. Then the Jew crept into that community and had the originally pure Christendom ridiculed by mankind. The first Christians were willing to die to defend the Christian doctrine."

"You are blinded and you serve the God of the Jews, who is not the God of love but the God of hatred. Why don't you listen to Christ Himself, who said to the Jews: "Ye are of your father the devil!""

"That's why the peoples have to die -- so that the Jew can live. He drives the peoples to war to make a profit from the fratricide of the white race. In the World War II million gentiles had to die. The Jew was the winner."

"They are hated because they satisfy their greed according to Talmudic principles. In the Jewish lawbook "Talmud" the Jews are told that the possessions of gentiles were "ownerless property", which the Jew was allowed to obtain through deceit and cheating. Whatever the "profession" may be called where the Jew earns his money, everywhere he remains a Jew. Such criminal behavior must inevitably provoke the hatred of Jews (anti-Semitism) and fighting repulsion. The fight that the Nazarene led 2000 years ago against the Jewish usurers resulted in a gruesome way of suffering and his slaughter at Calvary. The judgement passed by Jesus on the Jews marks the Jewish people for all time: "Ye are of your father the devil! He was a murderer from the beginning." (John 8:44-45)"

"The way that Adolf Hitler chose to follow to rescue the German people was an inner and outer one. Inwards he overcame the Jewish power by destroying Marxism and the secret lodges. Thereby he removed the hindrances which prevented building a German people's community. Outwards he broke the slave chains of Versailles by rebuilding the People's Army, bringing home those of the German people that had been ripped out, defeating Jewry's vassals and laying the foundation for a Europe that is liberated from Jewish financial power."

"When the Jew says "mankind" he is talking about himself. It is written in the Talmud, that only Jews were human beings, gentiles on the other hand were animals created to serve the chosen people. If looking back and comparing the corresponding articles in the "democratic" and "neutral" countries, one is astonished at the systematic nature of the propaganda whose final goal was the creation of a state of affairs in which a war was inevitable."

"In all peoples where Jews have lived as tolerated people or do so today, they prove to be disturbers of the inner peace and thus the destroyers of naturally grown people's communities. The Old Testament, which as the Jews claim tells their history, is at the same time the history of the peoples that the Jews destroyed physically and spiritually. The Jew does not only prove to be the disturber of the natural development within the peoples. He is also the destroyer of peace between the peoples."

"The Jew always lives from the blood of other peoples, he needs such murders and such sacrifices. The victory will be only entirely and finally achieved when the whole world is free of Jews."

"There must be a punitive expedition against the Jews in Russia, a punitive expedition which will expect: death sentence and execution. Then the world will see the end of the Jews is also the end of Bolshevism."

"This is our mission at home, to approach these future decisions without hesitation, to do our duty and to remain strong. We know the enemy, we have called him by name for the last twenty years: he is the World Jew. And we know that the Jew must die."

"Developments since the rise of National Socialism make it probable that the continent will be freed from its Jewish destroyers of people and exploiters forever, and the German example after the German victory in World War II will also serve to bring about the destruction of the Jewish world tormentors on other continents."

"When one speaks of America, millions of Germans think of their relatives who either recently or long ago left their German homeland to seek their fortune in the “New World.” When someone succeeded in quickly making a lot of money in America, people said he had made his fortune. The result was that the “rich uncle” in America was envied and his nephews and nieces were encouraged to join the fortune-seeker. Seeking fortunes in America led to Germany losing people, and the American continent received many people whose contributions are particularly clear in the agricultural and technical fields. That these people and their descendants now give great help to the enemies of Germany in this Second World War is a tragic fact."

"The family ties between hundreds of thousands of German families and their American relatives led many to think that America would never join a second war against Germany. Now that that has happened, many Germans still believe that America will never allow Bolshevism to conquer and destroy Germany. Recent events have proven how false and dangerous this idea is. One has to be foolish or irredeemably stupid to believe that anything good can come to Europe from the land of presumed opportunity. That that did not happen after the First World War, and will not happen after the second. The Jews have made America what it is today: a nation raped by the Jews, a nation whose 130,000,000 people of many colors and races have been forced into helping the Jews achieve world domination! The descendants of European immigrants do not govern the United States of America today. The foreign and domestic policies of the country are made by the Jews and their lackeys. The American people wanted peace, but were maneuvered into war by Delano Roosevelt, a tool of World Jewry who himself has Jewish blood in his veins. It was the same in World War I, when Woodrow Wilson, also a tool of the Jews, maneuvered it into the war."

"My publication was for a fine purpose. Certain snobs may now look down on it and call it common or even pornographic, but until the end of the war, I had Hitler's greatest respect, and Der Stürmer had the party's complete support. At our height, we had a circulation of 1.5 million. Everybody read Der Stürmer, and they must have liked it or they wouldn't have bought it. The aim of Der Stürmer was to unite Germans and to awaken them against Jewish influence which might ruin our noble culture."

"Hitler promised me protection after I had participated in the Munich putsch in 1923. I am very proud that I marched alongside Hitler in that affair. Hitler was never forgetful of that fact, and his faith and confidence in me was unshaken until the end. I, in turn, never broke my oath of loyalty to him."

"Christ was a Jew, and God, he is supposed to have made the universe. That's a little far-fetched because if God made the world, who made God?"

"I was all for setting up a separate Jewish state in Madagascar or Palestine or someplace, but not to exterminate them. Besides, by exterminating 4 million Jews - they say 5 or 6 million at this trial, but that is all propaganda, I am sure it wasn't more than 4.5 million - they have made martyrs out of those Jews. For example, because of the extermination of these Jews, anti-Semitism has been set back many years in certain foreign countries where it had been making good progress."

"The main thing I tried to stress was how badly I was treated in the American camp at Freising, but the American prosecutor and the judges ruled that my comments on my poor treatment there had to be expunged from the record because it was irrelevant. I don't think it is irrelevant when we National Socialists are accused of war crimes and of murdering 5 million Jews and millions of other innocent people such as partisans, hostages, war prisoners. Therefore, I should have been allowed to insert into the record of this trial how badly I was treated personally as a prisoner of war, after the war was over, mind you, in Freising."

"It is a trial within a nation but a trial of victors against the vanquished. Even before the trials started, the victors who are our judges were quite convinced that we were guilty and that we should all pay the price."

"I remember reports that the American and English newspapers were very happy about the fact that so many were killed in Dresden. There are many instances of barbarity and cruelty on the part of the Allies which I could tell you."

"It's perfectly understandable and proper for one to be anti-Semite, but to exterminate women and children is so extraordinary, it's hard to believe. No defendant here wanted that."

"Yes, I believe I had a part in it insofar as for years I have written that any further mixture of German blood with Jewish blood must be avoided. I have written such articles again and again; and in my articles I have repeatedly emphasized the fact that the Jews should serve as an example to every race, for they created the racial law for themselves - the law of Moses, which says, "If you come into a foreign land you shall not take unto yourself foreign women." And that, Gentlemen, is of tremendous importance in judging the Nuremberg Laws. These laws of the Jews were taken as a model for these laws. When after centuries, the Jewish lawgiver Ezra demonstrated that notwithstanding many Jews had married non-Jewish women, these marriages were dissolved. That was the beginning of Jewry which, because it introduced these racial laws, has survived throughout the centuries, while all other races and civilizations have perished."

"Germans must fight Jews, that organized body of world criminals against whom Christ, the greatest anti-Semite of all time, had fought."

"Only the Jews had remained victorious after the dreadful days of World War I. These were the people of whom Christ said, "Its father is the devil.""

"Anti-Semitic publications have existed in Germany for centuries. A book I had, written by Dr. Martin Luther, was, for instance, confiscated. Dr. Martin Luther would very probably sit in my place in the defendants' dock today, if this book had been taken into consideration by the Prosecution. In this book The Jews and Their Lies, Dr. Martin Luther writes that the Jews are a serpent's brood and one should burn down their synagogues and destroy them..."

"Two niggers undressed me and tore my shirt in two. I kept only my pants. Being handcuffed, I could not pull them up when they fell down. So now I was naked. Four days! On the fourth day, I was so cold that my body was numb. I couldn't hear anything. Every two - four hours (even in the night!) Niggers came along under command of a white man and hammered at me. Cigarette burns on the nipples. Fingers gouged into eye-sockets. Eyebrows and chest hair pulled out. Genitals beaten with an oxwhip. Testicles very swollen. Spat at. "Mouth open" and was spat into. When I refused to open, my jaws were pried apart with a stick and my mouth spat into. Beaten with a whip - swollen, dark-blue whelps all over the body... Photographed naked! Jeered at wearing an old army greatcoat which they hung round me."

"He who knows the truth and does not speak it is a miserable coward."

"A people that does not protect its racial purity will perish!"

"Bravo, Streicher!"

"This Streicher affair is a tragedy. At the origin of the conflict lies the hatred sworn between two women. In any case, there's just one statement I Have to make that Streicher is irreplaceable. His name is engraved in the memory of the people of Nuremberg. There's no question of his coming back but I must do him justice. If one day I write my memoirs, I shall have to recognize that this man fought like a buffalo in our cause. The conquest of Franconia was his work. I have a bad conscience when I get the feeling that I've not been quote fair to somebody. When I go to Nuremberg, it's always with a feeling of bitterness. I can't help thinking that, in comparison with so many services, the reasons for Streicher's dismissal are really very slender. All that's said about his alleged disease is false. Streicher had only one disease, and that was nympholepsy. In one way or another, we shall have to find a solution. I cannot dream of holding a rally at Nuremberg from which the man who gave Nuremberg to the party is banished."

"A Gauleiter of Franconia whose occupation was to pour forth filthy writings about the Jews, but who had no idea that anybody would read them;"

"Streicher, the venomous Bulgarian, manufactured and distributed obscene racial libels which incited the populace to accept and assist the progressively savage operations of "race purification.""

"Of Streicher, one need say nothing. Here is a man more responsible, perhaps, than any, for the most frightful crime the world has ever known. For 25 years the extermination of the Jews had been his terrible ambition. For 25 years he had educated the German people in the philosophy of hate, of brutality, of murder. He had incited and prepared them to support the Nazi policy, to accept and participate in the brutal persecution and slaughter of millions of his fellow men. Without him these things could not have been. It is long since he forfeited all right to live."

"Streicher's incitement to murder and extermination at the time when Jews in the East were being killed under the most horrible conditions clearly constitutes persecution on political and racial grounds in connection with war crimes as defined by the Charter, and constitutes a crime against humanity."

"A soldier's first duty is to obey, otherwise you might as well do away with soldiering."

"War is possible only if you have a lot of enemies. If all the enemies get together and form one front - if you cut down the number of enemies - there would be no war."

"I have always had plenty of friends, and now at age sixty, I face four walls as a common prisoner."

"A military leader often faces a situation he has to deal with, but because it is his duty, no court can try him."

"Understanding of other nations does not mean a feeling against your own country. That's the whole trouble with Germans. They can see only their own country, the local church steeples only. If only German youth could go abroad, and youth from other countries come to Germany. You always have to have criticism if you wish to become better."

"The partisan situation in the Italian theater, particularly central Italy, has deteriorated to such an extent that it constitutes a serious danger to troops, supply lines, war industry and economic potential. The fight against the partisans must be carried out with all means at our disposal and with utmost severity. I will protect any commander who exceeds our usual restraint in the choice of methods in executing one's orders is better than failure or neglect to act."

"Allied air power was the greatest single reason for the German defeat."

"It is the duty of all troops and police in my command to adopt the severest measures. Every act of violence committed by partisans must be punished immediately. Reports submitted must also give details of countermeasures taken. Wherever there is evidence of a considerable number of partisan groups a proportion of the male population of the area will be arrested, and in the event of an act of violence being committed these men will be shot."

"About mid-day, Kesselring telephones me and tells me that we shall probably have to wait three or four days before our large-scale counter-measures begin to get under way. Until then there can be no major shift of developments in our favour. Kesselring is nevertheless in good heart. He is assured and full of character in his estimate of the situation and there is not a trace of defeatism with him. He tells me also that the attitude of the civil population has somewhat improved under the influence of our propaganda."

"I call on God Almighty to have mercy on the German people. More than two million German soldiers went to their death for the fatherland before me. I follow now my sons - all for Germany."

"I am a soldier and I worked for the kaiser, under Ebert, Hindenburg, and Hitler, all the same way, for the past 44 years."

"I believe German soldiers are good and decent, and if they did anything wrong it was because of military necessity."

"Hitler gave us orders - and we believed in him. Then he commits suicide and leaves us to bear the guilt. He should have remained alive to bear his share."

"It isn't right to be obedient only when things go well; it is much harder to be a good, obedient soldier when things go badly and times are hard. Obedience and faith at such time is a virtue."

"Death by hanging. That, at least, I thought I would be spared."

"Why did the generals who have been so ready to term me a complaisant and incompetent yes-man fail to secure my removal? Was that all that difficult? No, that wasn't it; the truth was that nobody would have been ready to replace me, because each one knew that he would end up just as much a wreck as I."

"It is tragic to have to realize that the best I had to give as a soldier, obedience, and loyalty, was exploited for purposes which could not be recognized at the time, and that I did not see that there is a limit set even for a soldier's performance to his duty. That is my fate."

"The Führer has ordered that the enemy employs in partisan warfare Communist-trained fanatics who do not hesitate to commit any atrocity. It is more than ever a question of life and death. This fight has nothing to do with soldierly gallantry or principles of the Geneva Convention. If the fight against the partisans in the East, as well as in the Balkans, is not waged with the most brutal means, we will shortly reach the point where the available forces are insufficient to control the area. It is therefore not only justified, but it is the duty of the troops to use all means without restriction, even against women and children, so long as it ensures success. Any consideration for the partisans is a crime against the German people."

"If you want my own plain opinion about Keitel's orders, I will tell you. They were the orders of a stupid follower of Hitler. I myself paid very little attention to them and I think any attempt to justify his orders would be a mistake on the part of those of us who are steeped in military tradition and good conduct. I trust you will not quote me on these observations. I knew Keitel fairly well and I think that he is a decent person. It was simply that Hitler wanted a weak general in that powerful position in order to be able to have complete control of him. If I had held Keitel's position under Hitler, I wouldn't have lasted two weeks."

"A field marshal who issued orders to the armed forces but had no idea of the results they would have in practice."

"Keitel, the weak and willing tool, delivered the armed forces, the instrument of aggression, over to the party and directed them in executing its felonious designs."

"God protect Germany. God have mercy on my soul. My final wish is that Germany should recover her unity and that, for the sake of peace, there should be an understanding between East and West. I wish peace to the world."

"Death, death. Now I won't be able to write my beautiful memoirs."

"I think the only way one can arrive at an understanding of his anti-Semitism growing all the time is because in America your Mr. Roosevelt had his brain trust which was made up of so many Jews, Felix Frankfurter, Claude Pepper - was it Pepper? I can't recall the other names. Oh yes, Morgenthau. It made Hitler feel more and more that an international conspiracy had caused the war, with the Jews behind it."

"I rather liked Stalin and Molotov, got along fine with them."

"I don't mean that it is important whether a few of us like Goering, myself, or the others are sentenced to death or hard labor or whatever, but to the German people we will always remain their leaders, right or wrong, and in a few years even you Americans and the rest of the world will see this trial as a mistake. The German people will learn to hate the Americans, distrust the British and French, and unfortunately, perhaps be taken in by the Russians. That will be the worst calamity of all. I hate to think of Moscow ruling Germany or Germany becoming a territorial possession of the Soviet Union. The Allies should take the attitude, now that the war is over, that mistakes have been made on both sides, that those of us here on trial are German patriots, and that though we may have been misled and gone too far with Hitler, we did it in good faith and as German citizens. Furthermore, the German people will always regard our condemnation by a foreign court as unjust and will consider us martyrs."

"I was truly under Hitler's spell, that cannot be denied. I was impressed with him from the moment I first met him, in 1932. He had terrific power, especially in his eyes. Now the tribunal accuses us of conspiracy. I say, how can one have a conspiracy in a dictatorship government? One man and one man only made all the crucial decisions. That was the Fuhrer. In all my dealings with him I never discussed the exterminations or anything of that sort. What I shall never comprehend is that six weeks before the end of the war he assured me we'd win by a nose. I left his presence then and said that from that time forth I was completely at a loss — that I didn't understand a thing. Hitler always, until the end, and even now, had a strange fascination over me. Would you call it abnormal of me? Sometimes, in his presence, when he spoke of all his plans, the good things he would do for the Volk, vacations, highways, new buildings, cultural advantages and so forth, tears would come to my eyes. Would that be because I'm a hysterical weak man?"

"I know for a fact that this idea of the Jews causing the war and the Jews being so all important is nonsense. But that was Hitler's idea, and... was pure fantasy. As I say, Hitler is a riddle to me and will always remain so."

"Tell them in Moscow that I was against this attack."

"Vain, arrogant and shallow, Joachim von Ribbentrop had been trying to foster ties between the British and the Nazis since 1933. Born into the officer class of the old Wilhelmine Germany – though without the ‘von’, which he later bought – he had made his fortune by marrying the daughter of the largest German producer of sparkling wine, before going on to become the agent for such well-known brands as Green and Yellow Chartreuse, Johnnie Walker whisky and Pommery champagne. Having played a minor role in Hitler’s accession to power, the highly ambitious and, by now, devoted Ribbentrop managed to carve a niche for himself, in the early years of the Third Reich, as the Führer’s unofficial emissary and propagandist abroad. Initially, his political efforts were unsuccessful. Sir John Simon responded coolly to his advances, while other Government figures, such as Ramsay MacDonald and Neville Chamberlain, regarded him as an interfering parvenu. He was, however, favoured by a number of leading hostesses, including Lady Londonderry and ‘Emerald’ Cunard, and in 1935 successfully negotiated the Anglo-German Naval Agreement."

"On 24 July 1936, Hitler rewarded him by appointing him Ambassador to the Court of St James, though not, as Ribbentrop had hoped, State Secretary.According to Frau von Ribbentrop, the Führer’s parting words to her husband were: ‘Ribbentrop, bring me the English alliance.’ This was not to be. Although the newspapers put a brave face on it, Ribbentrop’s tenure in London was, as many predicted, a disaster. Arriving at Victoria station on 26 October 1936, he shocked political opinion by breaking with protocol and making a bombastic speech on the platform. He astounded the congregation in Durham Cathedral by giving the Nazi salute during the hymn "Glorious things of Thee are spoken" – which can employ the same Haydn melody as "Deutschland über Alles" – while the repetition of this gesture to King George VI, in February 1937, became infamous. Soon the object of ridicule, he was christened ‘Ambassador Brickendrop’ and even the pro-appeasement Nancy Astor accused him, to his face, of being a ‘damned bad Ambassador’. Before this reputation was cemented, however, Ribbentrop enjoyed a certain amount of social if not political success, while, at the same time, the Nazis benefited from a series of propaganda coups."

"Domestic pressures also played a part in Hitler’s decision making. In February 1938 he had replaced Constantin von Neurath, foreign minister since 1933, by Joachim von Ribbentrop, former ambassador to Britain. Ribbentrop, in earlier life a wine salesman, had been a long-standing Anglophile, with a penchant for bowler hats and umbrellas. But in London his wooden manner and aggressive Nazism turned people off. Worse still, his frequent gaffes, such as greeting the king with a Nazi salute, made him a laughing stock as “Ambassador Brickendrop.” As a result Ribbentrop’s Anglophilia turned into visceral hatred of Britain. Once foreign minister, he seized every opportunity to incite Hitler to war and to persuade him that the Western powers would not fight."

"When apprehensions abroad threatened the success of the Nazi regime for conquest, it was the duplicitous Ribbentrop, the salesman of deception, who was detailed to pour wine on the troubled waters of suspicion by preaching the gospel of limited and peaceful intentions."

"You are mistaken. We've hired him."

"We must no longer have a pacific conception of peace. In the Middle Ages it was otherwise. The existence of the individual had no exaggerated importance. Pacifist literature depicts death on the field of battle as an unnatural death because it does not understand the ancient Germanic horror of death on a bed, and arteriosclerosis appears to it more virile than a bullet. Pacifists dwell on the horrors of the war dead as if a peace corpse were more aesthetic. The representatives of the national revolution are men and soldiers who are physically and morally warriors."

"The events of the past one and one-half years have gripped the whole German people and affected them deeply. It seems almost like a dream that out of the valley of misery, hopelessness, hate, and fragmentation we have found our way back to a German national community. The horrendous tensions in which we have lived since the August days of 1914 have dissolved, and out of this discord, the German soul has emerged once again, before which the glorious and yet so painful history of our people pass in review, from the sagas of the German heroes to the trenches of Verdun, and even to the street fights of our time."

"Allow me to say how manly and humanly great of you I think this is. Your courageous and firm intervention have met with nothing but recognition throughout the entire world. I congratulate you for all you have given anew to the German nation by crushing the intended second revolution."

"But Hitler didn't strive for the annihilation of the Jews - he stressed that fact in public life and in the newspapers. Hitler merely said at the beginning that Jewish influence was too great, that of all the lawyers in Berlin, eighty percent were Jewish. Hitler thought that a small percentage of the people, the Jews, should not be allowed to control the theater, cinema, radio, et cetera."

"Himmler hated the church. He and Bormann were the two people who influenced Hitler most. When I spoke to Hitler in the beginning he agreed with me and said that no state could be governed without religion. In Mein Kampf he said that a man was a fool if he destroyed the religion of the people. Hitler also made the statement that the political reform should not be a religious reform."

"In the interest of the entire nation we decline the claim to power by parties which want to own their followers body and soul, and which want to put themselves, as a party or a movement, over and above the whole nation."

"The hope in the hearts of millions of national socialists can be fulfilled only by an authoritarian government."

"Names and individuals are unimportant when Germany's final fate is at stake."

"It is to be hoped that the leaders of this movement will place the nation above the party."

"Heinrich Bruning of the Catholic Centre Party offered government by presidential decree and dreamt vaguely of restoring the monarchy. But his deflationary policies only served to deepen the slump. Franz von Papen, another Catholic, betrayed his party for the sake of becoming Chancellor, in the vain belief that he could do better than Bruning. But neither he nor his successor General Kurt von Schleicher - whom Papen had picked as his own Defence Minister - had anything resembling popular support and, while the Reichstag had been temporarily sidelined by Bruning, it proved impossible to rule indefinitely without some kind of parliamentary majority. Elections in July 1932 saw the Nazi vote soar above 37 per cent. True, it fell back to 33 per cent when new elections were held in November, not least because signs of economic recovery were at last manifesting themselves, but the party's entitlement to form a government was by now hard to dispute since it was still easily the biggest grouping in the Reichstag. Ever the schemer, Papen now persuaded Hindenburg to dump Schleicher and, against the President's better judgement, to appoint Hitler to lead a coalition with the conservative German Nationalist Party - the only party except for the Communists to gain significant numbers of new votes in the November election. Hitler duly became Chancellor on January 30, 1933. Thus did German democracy wreak its own destruction. Given the paralysing enmity between the Social Democrats and the Communists, the only way to avoid the Third Reich would have been if Hindenburg himself had shut down the Reichstag and banned the Nazis, an option he does not seem to have contemplated."

"He has the distinction of not being taken at all seriously either by his friends or his enemies. His face bears the mark of an ineradicable frivolity of which he has never been able to rid himself. As for the rest, he is not a personality of the first rank. ... He is regarded as superficial, mischief-making, deceitful, ambitious, vain, crafty, given to intrigue. One quality he clearly possesses: cheek, audacity, an amiable audacity of which he seems unaware. He is one of those persons who shouldn't be dared to undertake a dangerous enterprise because they accept all dares, take all bets. If he succeeds, he bursts with pleasure; if he fails, he exits with a pirouette."

"Von Papen, pious agent of an infidel regime, held the stirrup while Hitler vaulted into the saddle, lubricated the Austrian annexation and devoted his diplomatic cunning to the service of Nazi objectives abroad."

"Franz von Papen – from a Westphalian aristocratic family, married to the daughter of a Saarland industrialist, well connected to industrial leaders, landowners, and Reichswehr officers – a somewhat lightweight, dilettante politician, but one who epitomized the ingrained conservatism, reactionary tendencies, and desire for a return to ‘traditional’ authoritarianism of the German upper class."

"No attempt of any kind must be made at rescuing members of ships sunk, and this includes picking up persons in the water and putting them in lifeboats, righting capsized lifeboats, and handing over food and water. Rescue runs counter to the most primitive demands of warfare for the destruction of enemy ships and crews. Be hard, remember that the enemy has no regard for women and children when he bombs German cities."

"Our losses...have reached an intolerable level. The enemy air force played a decisive role in inflicting these high losses."

"The enemy holds every trump card, covering all areas with long-range air patrols and using location methods against which we still have no warning...The enemy knows all our secrets and we know none of his."

"What would have become of our country today if the Fuehrer had not united us under National Socialism? Split parties, beset with the spreading poison of Jewry, and vulnerable to it because we lacked the defense of our present uncompromising ideology, we would long since have succumbed under the burden of this war and delivered ourselves up to the enemy who would have mercilessly destroyed us."

"I would rather eat dirt than see my grandchildren grow up in the filthy, poisonous atmosphere of Jewry."

"At about midnight he arrived, accompanied by six armed SS officers, and was received by my aide-de-camp, Walter Luedde-Neurath. I offered Himmler a chair and sat down at my desk, on which lay, hidden by some papers, a pistol with the safety catch off. I had never done anything of this sort in my life before, but I did not know what the outcome of this meeting might be. I handed Himmler the telegram containing my appointment. "Please read this," I said. I watched him closely. As he read, an expression of astonishment, indeed of consternation, spread over his face. All hope seemed to collapse within him. He went very pale. Finally he stood up and bowed. "Allow me," he said, "to become the second man in your state." I replied that was out of the question and that there was no way I could make any use of his services. Thus advised, he left me at about one o'clock in the morning. The showdown had taken place without force, and I felt relieved."

"I could imagine that it would be very difficult for the population in the towns to hold out under the stress of heavy bombing attacks if such an influence were allowed to work"

"The north German does not go in for extremes. He has broader horizons than the men from the mountains of Bavaria and Austria."

"I'm an old man at 54, without teeth, and with rheumatism."

"Is to accept the leadership of a crumbling country a crime? Is to prevent the Russians, the natural enemy of Germany, from obtaining our arms and manpower a crime? In Russian eyes it probably is. But I'm referring to the eyes of a westerner. I knew that we had to capitulate and I wanted it to be to the Americans and British, and not to the East. I'm not even accused of war crimes in the sense of the atrocities. It's clear they have no case against me. I came into a powerful position in 1943. How can I be accused of a conspiracy?"

"The trial can only end in a mistake because it is founded on one. How can a foreign court try a sovereign government of another country? Could we have tried your President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Secretary Henry Morgenthau, or Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden, if we had won the war? We could not have done so and would not have. And trying that went on would have to be done by the nation itself and the courts set up there."

"To think of Russians sitting on a bench in Nuremberg, trying German leaders! The Russians sank a German boat with men, women, and children aboard. I know of the case. But is that investigated? You Americans weren't completely without fault, either. You armed merchant boats before the U.S.A. was in the war."

"I read sometime around 1938 of Jewish fines and some street actions against them. But I was too concerned with U-Boats and the naval problems to be concerned about Jews."

"By placing these people with foreign ideas in camps, German blood was saved. Would it have been better to have a civil war?"

"If Hitler had not thrown the Communists into camps in 1933, there would have been civil war and bloodshed. The Communists would have revolted against the legally-elected government. The greatest danger of civil war in Germany came in 1932, when it was clearly a choice between Communism and National Socialism. So Paul von Hindenburg and the other conservative bourgeois elements chose Hitler. So did I, and I would do it again if a choice between Communism and Nazism arose."

"Your American admiral said that he held me in the highest esteem, and thought that I conducted my defense perfectly. He said through his chief of staff that my conduct was beyond reproach and he had the greatest admiration for me."

"With the new weapons like the atom bomb, Russia would have it, too, and use it first. It is a very difficult world. But that trouble is imminent is obvious."

"I accept responsibility for U-boat warfare from 1933 onward, and of the entire navy from 1943 on, but to make me responsible for what happened to Jews in Germany, or Russian soldiers on the east front — it is so ridiculous all I can do is laugh."

"Certainly inside my heart I know degrees of difference. But I can't blame any of these men who share a common fate with me. The big folly of this trial is that it lacks the two men who are to blame for anything which is criminal, namely Hitler and Himmler."

"The biggest mistake of Hitler, I have to say the main fault, was that under his government these terrific exterminations of men happened, which went on behind the backs of the German nation, which would never have tolerated them, but the government kept these crimes completely secret from the German people."

"I think that I have now said enough about the war, which is past now for over twenty-five years. I bow in reverence before the memory of the men who lost their lives in this war on both sides, and I think that we all hope that we never shall have such a war again.""

"When responsible generals like Rommel subscribed to the idea in 1944 that we should make peace with the West and throw the whole weight of our military strength against the East, they failed to realize that the political prerequisites to such a move were lacking. The British and the Americans would never have considered an offer of this nature, as was proved by the attitude to which they still adhered even in May 1945. At the Casablanca conference in 1943 Roosevelt and Churchill declared that they would continue to fight until Germany and Japan 'surrendered unconditionally'. This meant that in the event of our submitting we should have no rights whatever, but would be wholly at the mercy of our enemies, and of what that meant some idea can be gathered from Stalin's demand at the Teheran conference at the end of November 1943, when he insisted that at least four million Germans should be deported for an unspecified number of years to Russia as forced labor."

"In view of the enemy's demand for unconditional surrender, it was quite useless for any senior commander of the German Armed Forces, who believed in 1943 or 1944 that the war could no longer be won, to tell Hitler that he must now put an end to the war and make peace; for, to unconditional surrender, which was wholly unacceptable, he could have no alternative proposal to submit to the German head of state. Moreover, if it were accepted in principle that when a commander realized that the military situation was hopeless, it was his duty to advocate the conclusion of peace, there would always be a danger that the struggle might be given up prematurely. A history shows, in war even a seemingly all but hopeless situation can sometimes be radically altered by unexpected political developments and similar occurrences; and, with the political situation what it was, it seemed to be that when I was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Navy I had no alternative but to carry on the struggle to the best of my ability."

"This took me completely by surprise. Since July 20, 1944, I had not spoken to Hitler at all except at some large gathering. … I had never received any hint on the subject from anyone else.... I assumed that Hitler had nominated me because he wished to clear the way to enable an officer of the Armed Forces to put an end to the war. That this assumption was incorrect I did not find out until the winter of 1945-46 in Nuremberg, when for the first time I heard the provisions of Hitler's will.... When I read the signal I did not for a moment doubt that it was my duty to accept the task … it had been my constant fear that the absence of any central authority would lead to chaos and the senseless and purposeless sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of lives … I realized … that the darkest moment in any fighting man's life, the moment when he must surrender unconditionally, was at hand. I realized, too, that my name would remain forever associated with the act and that hatred and distortion of facts would continue to try and besmirch my honor. But duty demanded that I pay no attention to any such considerations. My policy was simple — to try and save as many lives as I could ..."

"Although at the time I knew but little of the crimes he had committed, it was obvious to me that Himmler, as far as I was concerned, was intolerable. This I had to make quite clear to him, and one way or the other, I had to have a swift and final showdown with him. On the evening of April 30, shortly after the receipt of the telegram I told my ADC to telephone to Himmler, from whom I had parted in Luebeck only a few hours before, and ask him to come to Ploen forthwith. To my ADC he retorted with a blunt refusal, but when I myself spoke to him and told him that his presence was essential, he eventually consented to come."

"At about midnight he arrived, accompanied by six armed SS officers, and was received by my aide-de-camp, Ludde-Neurath. I offered Himmler a char and myself sat down behind my writing desk, upon which lay, hidden behind some papers, a pistol with the safety catch off. I had never done anything of this sort in my life before, but I did not know what the outcome of this meeting might be. I handed Himmler the telegraph containing my appointment. 'Please read this,' I said. I watched him closely. As he read, an expression of astonishment, indeed, of consternation spread over his face. All hope seemed to collapse within him. He went very pale. Finally he stood up and bowed. 'Allow me,' he said, 'to become the second man in your state.' I replied that that was out of the question and that there was no way in which I could make use of his services. Thus advised, he left me at about one o'clock in the morning. The showdown had taken place without force, and I felt relieved."

"The Führer has nominated me as his successor. In full consciousness of my responsibilities I therefore assume the leadership of the German people at this fateful hour. My first task is to save German men and women from destruction by the advancing Bolshevist enemy. It is to serve this purpose alone that the military struggle continues. For as long as the British and the Americans continue to impede the accomplishments of this task, we must also continue to fight and defend ourselves against them. The British and the Americans in that case will not be fighting in the interests of their own peoples, but solely for the expansion of Bolshevism in Europe."

"The Navy had done its duty to the end. Against its innermost wishes, which were for understanding and lasting peace, unconsulted and poorly equipped, it had been called upon, in 1939 to fight against the naval might of Great Britain. With the meagre forces at its disposal it had fought to the best of its ability against Britain and the United States and achieved successes out of all proportion to its strength. That it had been able to do so was in no small measure to the spirit and determination of its men, without which it would never have been able to stand up thus splendidly to the material superiority of these two great maritime powers."

"Those who were in Germany in September 1939 know that the people showed no enthusiasm for war. But war nevertheless came and demanded sacrifice after sacrifice. The German soldier fought with unsurpassed devotion to duty. The people and the armed forces marched shoulder to shoulder, in victory or defeat, to the very end."

"Every decent German today is ashamed of the crimes which the Third Reich committed behind the nation's back. To hold the people as a whole responsible for the misdeeds of a small minority is contrary to every canon of justice. Men cannot be condemned for things of which they did not even know. The assumption that any one people is morally worse than other peoples is, in itself, a false premise, and it comes particularly unjustly from nations who, during the war and after 1945, did things which were an offence against both legal and moral justice and which resulted in the sacrifice of millions of Germans. I therefore regard it as wrong that individual Germans should be constantly indulging, in the name of the whole German people, in public self-accusations and confessions of guilt. That sort of thing does not win us the respect of other nations; nor, be it noted, has any other nation done the same thing with regard to the inhuman acts committed against us."

"No nation, when selecting its leader, can foresee what characteristics in him will eventually gain the upper hand; and the lesson to be learnt from that is that any constitution must be so framed that it is able to prevent the misuse of power by the individual, and that it must be based on the principle of freedom and justice for the community as a whole. It is, then, an irrefutable fact that the democratic form of government, with its guarantees for the inviolability of individual liberty and of judicial security for all, is the right form for any highly developed nation; and to ensure that these guarantees are valid for all its citizens is the paramount duty of democratic policy and legislation."

"The only thing I truly feared during the war was Dönitz and his U-boats."

"As a submarine Admiral whom I knew to be held in the deepest admiration and respect by Officers and Men of the U-Boat Fleet, I held Admiral Dönitz in respect myself, and there is no doubt that he handled his U-Boat arm with masterly skill and efficiency. In return he was served with great loyalty."

"I rate Admiral Dönitz as the best of them all, land or sea. He was unique in his handling of the German submarines and they were our most dangerous enemy. His performance with them-and he did most of it himself-was the most outstanding Axis performance of the war. Then he succeeded to command all German Navy Forces. It was too late for real accomplishment, but he made no mistakes and no one could have done better. Then he succeeded the Führer himself, and his performance from there on seems to me to have been perfect. So I think Dönitz was the best."

"At a situation conference early in February the maps showed the catastrophic picture of innumerable breakthroughs and encirclements. I drew Doenitz aside: "Something must be done, you know." Doenitz replied with unwonted curtness: "I am here only to represent the navy. The rest is none of my business. The Fuehrer must know what he is doing.""

"In command of the whole Nazi U-boat offensive was tough, brilliant Admiral Karl Doenitz, who would one day succeed Hitler as head of the Third Reich."

"I'm iron. I lasted through ten years of war, and now I can last through this. It's true, it's not good for the nerves."

"I never actively engaged in politics, never made speeches. Politics is a whore. It's too high for me. Just as I don't understand American politics, so I don't understand German politics. The only interest in politics is to get to know how to lead a life under the most favorable circumstances."

"All Asiatics are cruel dogs. All they captured of my soldiers, they beat to death. The Russian soldiers are very brave, stable, tough."

"We fought against an enemy six times as large as us."

"There was no Geneva Convention. But we didn't shoot Russians either. Where would we get three million prisoners if we shot all the Russians? Propaganda! You can't open your mouth, even in the biggest democracy. Do you think it's so nice to sit in prison after ten years of war for the Fatherland? If I would be God, I would do it differently!"

"All I had to do was to cross the river, capture Brussels, and then go on to take the port of Antwerp. The snow was waist-deep and there wasn’t room to deploy four tanks abreast, let alone six armored divisions. It didn’t get light until eight and was dark again at four, and my tanks can’t fight at night. And all this at Christmas time!"

"He (Hitler) knew even less than the rest. He allowed himself to be taken for a sucker by everyone."

"(In early 1945) We call ourselves the "6th Panzer Army", because we've only got 6 Panzers left."

"I once spent an hour and a half trying to explain a situation to "Sepp" Dietrich with the aid of a map. It was quite useless. He understood nothing at all."

"It was the Hitler Offensive. It was brilliantly planned by Hitler but poorly executed by the generals. It was not Rundstedt who was at fault so much as Dietrich and his Sixth Army, which was not capable. Dietrich was no army commander and should never have been made one. This Sixth Army was an all-motorized panzer force."

"Dietrich quite openly criticised measures taken by the Führer. He complains that the Führer does not give his military staff a sufficiently free hand and that this tendency has now become so pronounced that the Führer even lays down the employment of individual companies. But Dietrich is in no position to judge. The Führer cannot rely on his military advisers. They have so often deceived him and thrown dust in his eyes that he now has to attend to every detail. Thank God he does attend to them, for if he did not, matters would be even worse than they are anyway."

"My chief qualification for the job is that I have been in almost every cell in the Moabit Prison in Berlin."

"If Paulus's army had capitulated before the end, the Russians would have had the advantage of withdrawing forces against Paulus and against the southern front, where I had only two Romanian armies. Therefore, the resistance of the Sixth German Army, even to the death of the last man, was necessary."

"I tried at that time to relieve the Sixth Army, of which I was supreme commander, above Paulus, by counterattacks - but it was not possible. I gave the order finally for the Sixth Army to break out, but then Paulus said it was too late and not possible. Hitler did not want the Sixth Army to break out at any time, but to fight to the last man. I believe that Hitler said if the Sixth Army tried to break out, it would be their death."

"The will for victory which gives a commander the strength to see a grave crisis through is something very different from Hitler's will, which in the last analysis stemmed from a belief in his own 'mission'. Such a belief makes a man impervious to reason and leads him to think that his own will can operate even beyond the limits of hard reality - whether these consist in the presence of far superior enemy forces, in the conditions of space and time, or merely in the fact that the enemy also happens to have a will of his own."

"It has always been the particular forte of German leadership to grant wide scope to the self-dependence of subordinate commanders - to allot them tasks which leave the method of execution to the discretion of the individual. From time immemorial - certainly since the elder Moltke's day - this principle has distinguished Germany's military leadership from that of other armies."

"But it is a well-known maxim of war that whoever tries to hold on to everything at once, finishes up by holding nothing at all."

"He was not only the most brilliant strategist of all our generals, but he had a good political sense. A man of that quality was too difficult for Hitler to swallow for long. At conferences Manstein often differed from Hitler, in front of others, and would go so far as to declare that some of the ideas which Hitler put forward were nonsense."

"The general verdict among the German generals I interrogated in 1945 was that Field-Marshal von Manstein had proved the ablest commander in their Army, and the man they had most desired to become its Commander-in-Chief. It is very clear that he had a superb sense of operational possibilities and equal mastery in the conduct of operations, together with a greater grasp of the potentialities of mechanized forces than any other commander who had not been trained in the tank arm. In sum, he had military genius."

"He is the best tactician and combat commander we have."

"Master of the Blitzkrieg."

"Manstein despised Göring and loathed Himmler. To his most trusted colleagues he admitted to Jewish antecedents. He could also be scathing about Hitler. As a joke, his dachshund Knirps had been trained to raise his paw in salute on the command "Heil Hitler". On the other hand, his wife was a great admirer of Hitler, and more importantly, Manstein, as already mentioned, had even issued that order to his troops mentioning "the necessity of hard measures against Jewry""

"He had utter disdain for the Nazis and had no time for their racial purity agenda."

"I asked the Field Marshal von Manstein if he would take part in the actions against Hitler. Manstein was sitting in a chair and reading the Bible. Quick, almost embarrassed, he put it aside and covered it with some papers."

"There were a large number of Jews who held more favorable positions than they should have, according to their percentage of the population. Germans should have held those positions."

"Fascism is a purely stately principle. Mussolini said in 1932, 'The first thing is the state - and from the state are derived the rights and fate of the people. Humans come second.' In National Socialism, it was the opposite. People and humans come first, and the state is secondary."

"In the child, we see the grown-up. I see the problem differently."

"Those Jews stood up, were lined up, and were shot in true military fashion. I saw to it that no atrocities or brutalities occurred."

"The treatment of the Germans by the Allies was at least as bad as the shooting of those Jews. The bombing of cities with men, women, and children burning with phosphorus - these things were all done by the Allies."

"Because to me it is inconceivable that a subordinate leader should not carry out orders given by the leaders of the State."

"I surrendered my moral conscience to the fact that I was a soldier, and therefore a cog in a relatively low position of a great machine."

"The men of my group who are under indictment here were under my military command. If they had not executed the orders which they were given, they would have been ordered by me to execute them. If they had refused to execute the orders they would have had to be called to account for it by me. There could be no doubt about it. Whoever refused anything in the front lines would have met immediate death. If the refusal would have come about in any other way, a court martial of the Higher SS and Police Leader would have brought about the same consequences."

"There was no distinction made between Gypsies and Jews, the same order applied to both."

"Now, the prosecution will probably bring up Ohlendorf, who worked for me and who admitted before his tribunal he killed ninety thousand Jews. I was quite upset when I heard Ohlendorf. I didn't know things like that existed. And secondly, I didn't know Ohlendorf was involved."

"I always had the feeling that Ohlendorf was spiritually depressed. I mentioned several times to my wife, when we had Ohlendorf to dinner, that he seemed like a man who just could not be happy. Ohlendorf must have been very depressed on account of that experience. He could not laugh heartily - and a man who cannot is either depressed, or sick, or bad. I thought he had something in his soul which bothered him."

"Most of these handpicked leaders were lawyers, and a few were physicians or educators; most had earned doctoral degrees. Among the more exotic specimens were Otto Ohlendorf, a handsome but argumentative young economist who had fallen into disfavor with Himmler."

"I am dying innocent. The sentence is wrong. God protect Germany and make Germany great again. Long live Germany! God protect my family!"

"Slaves who are underfed, diseased, resentful, despairing, and filled with hate will never yield that maximum of output which they might achieve under normal conditions."

"Although as a sailor I despised politics - for I loved my sailor's life and still love it today - conditions forced me to take up a definite attitude towards political problems."

"I'm a sailor, not a politician."

"In order to provide the German housewife, above all mothers of many children...with tangible relief from her burdens, the Fuhrer has commissioned me to bring into the Reich from the eastern territories some four to five hundred thousand select, healthy, and strong girls."

"Many years before, I had left a beautiful country and a rich nation and I returned to that country six years later to find it fundamentally changed and in a state of upheaval, and in great spiritual and material need."

"What would you do if your country's welfare depended on labor? When a ship is in a storm it requires one captain."

"Himmler, Bormann, and Goebbels, they were probably bad fellows."

"I had nothing to do with concentration camps - Himmler's work. There was a labor minister, Ley, whose position is like your John Lewis in America. My duties were to assign POW and foreign labor to factories or whatever work had to be done. I had nothing to do with punishment, criminals, and so forth. That's Himmler's work. If someone had told me as a seaman I should have engaged in politics I would have taken it as an insult. After my return from France, when I found the workers in the Schweinfurt factory all divided up into groups, many parties - I want to give you an honest reason - that's why I became a National Socialist. In 1922-23 I knew, by fate, I must find a solution to the labor and social problem."

"Only Communists and Social Democrats who acted against the state were incarcerated. Most of the Communists and Social Democrats I had known became Nazis later. Only those who were doing anything against the state were thrown in concentration camps."

"I never burned down synagogues. It was a revolution, and Russians burned churches during their revolution. If there are many different nationalities in a country, the leadership should be divided among people by percentages. In finance, press, radio - the Jews had taken over positions. That feeling existed before Hitler."

"You must understand that the meaning of the word 'unemployed' in Germany is different than in America. In America, 'unemployed' means that a man may be unable to obtain work in his profession. In Germany it means he can't get work in any profession. In Thuringia there were 1.7 million people, of whom 500,000 men were unemployed in 1932 before Hitler came to power. In the whole of Germany, there were 8 million unemployed and 7 million half-time workers."

"America is so big that it cries for work. In Germany, if you tried to find work, you couldn't. In America, it was a strange economy which caused unemployment. German unemployment was due to the boycott of German goods. Not an official boycott. The world market refused to accept German goods. France, England, and America refused. Germany had no colonies and she had to export manufactured goods for grain. We had nothing to speak of. We managed to live during the war by rations. We all lived on a strict ration - even ministers in the government like myself - and we lived on things from the conquered countries, including Africa and Russia."

"That man who is responsible for slave labor in Germany does not have my sympathy. I did not like the whole idea of what he did. After all, there are limits to what one can do with foreign populations in the forced labor business. In the first place, the whole idea is completely unproductive. One needs three or four men to watch one compulsory worker. Sauckel deserves the severest punishment."

"...a plenipotentiary for the war economy who secretly marshaled the entire economy for armament, but had no idea it had anything to do with war."

"The defendant Sauckel, Plenipotentiary General for the Utilization of Labor, is authority for the statement that "out of 5,000,000 foreign workers who arrived in Germany, not even 200,000 came voluntarily." It was officially reported to defendant Rosenberg that in his territory "recruiting methods were used which probably have their origin in the blackest period of the slave trade." Sauckel himself reported that male and female agents went hunting for men, got them drunk, and "shanghaied" them to Germany. These captives were shipped in trains without heat, food, or sanitary facilities. The dead were thrown out at stations, and the newborn were thrown out the windows of moving trains. Sauckel ordered that "all the men must be fed, sheltered, and treated in such a way as to exploit them to the highest possible extent at the lowest conceivable degree of expenditure.""

"Sauckel, the greatest and cruelest slaver since the pharaohs of Egypt, produced desperately needed manpower by driving foreign peoples into the land of bondage on a scale unknown even in the ancient days of tyranny in the kingdom of the Nile."

"I hope that this execution is the last act of the tragedy of the Second World War, and that the lesson taken from this world war will be that peace and understanding should exist between peoples. I believe in Germany."

"Death by hanging...well, in view of the whole situation, I never expected anything different. It's all right."

"The National Socialist Party in Austria never tried to hide its inclination for a greater Germany. That Austria would one day return to the Reich was a matter of course for all National Socialists and for true Germans in Austria."

"The Jews are the enemy of National Socialism. From the time of their emancipation their methods were directed to the annihilation of the folkish and moral worth of the German people and to replace a national and responsible ideology with international nihilism. It was really they who stabbed the Army in the back which broke the resistance of the Germans in the First World War. The Jews are the enemy with whom no armistice or peace can be made. We will smite the Jews where we meet them and whoever goes along with them must take the consequences."

"The Fuehrer declared that the Jews have played their final act in Europe, and therefore they have played their final act."

"Bedell Smith: Well, in any case, you are going to be shot. Seyss-Inquart: That leaves me cold. Bedell Smith: It will."

"Seyss-Inquart, spearhead of the Austrian fifth column, took over the government of his own country only to make a present of it to Hitler, and then, moving north, brought terror and oppression to the Netherlands and pillaged its economy for the benefit of the German juggernaut."

"Soon after taking over in Austria, Klausner, Globocnik, and I flew to Berlin to report to Hitler's deputy, Hess, about the events which led to our taking over the government. We did this because we had the impression that the general opinion, perhaps also Hitler's own, was that the liberation depended more on Austrian matters of state rather than the Party. To be more exact, Hitler especially mentioned Dr. Seyss-Inquart alone; and public opinion gave him alone credit for the change and thus believed him to have played the sole leading role."

"If today he descended from Heaven, the great warrior who struck the money changers, You would once again shout 'crucify!' And nail him to the cross that he himself carried. But he would gently laugh at your hatred. 'The truth remains even when your bearers are passed. Faith remains, because I give my life...' And the fighter of all the world towers on the cross."

"A socialist and anti-capitalist attitude is the most salient characteristic of the Young National Socialist Germany."

"The body expresses our very being. The striving for beauty is inborn among the Aryan."

"To us Germans everything is religion. What we do we do not merely with our hands and brains, but with our hearts and souls. This has often become a tragic fate for us."

"Faust, the Ninth Symphony, and the will of Adolf Hitler are eternal youth and know neither time nor transience."

"He who serves our Führer, Adolf Hitler, serves Germany, and he who serves Germany, serves God."

"In the presence of this blood banner which represents our Führer, I swear to devote all my energies and my strength to the saviour of our country, Adolf Hitler. I am willing and ready to give up my life for him, so help me God."

"That is the greatest thing about him. That he is not only our leader and a great hero. But himself, upright, firm and simple. In him the roots of our world. And his soul touches the stars. And yet he remains a man like you and me."

"To the Führer. This is the truth which bound me to thee: I looked for thee and found my Fatherland. I was a leaf floating in limitless space. Now thou art my homeland and my tree. How far would I be carried by the wind, wert thou not the strength that flows up from the roots. I believe in thee, for thou art the nation. I believe in Germany. For thou art Germany's son."

"Adolf Hitler, you are our great Führer. Thy name makes the enemy tremble. Thy Third Reich comes, thy will alone is law upon the earth. Let us hear daily thy voice and order us by thy leadership, for we will obey to the end and even with our lives. We praise thee! Heil Hitler!"

"Führer, my Führer given me by God. Protect and preserve my life for long. You rescued Germany from its deepest need. I thank you for my daily bread. Stay for a long time with me, leave me not. Führer, my Führer, my faith, my light. Hail my Führer."

"They say of us that we are an anti-Christian movement. They even say that I am an outspoken paganist.... I solemnly declare here, before the German public, that I stand on the basis of Christianity, but I declare just as solemnly that I will put down every attempt to introduce confessional matters into our Hitler Youth."

"When I came here in 1940, I told our Führer that I consider my main task to be making this city free of Jews. This evening, I can tell you that in the autumn of this year, 1942, we will experience the celebration of a Vienna purified of Jews [sustained thunderous applause]. Now, as far as the Czechs in this city are concerned... I give my subordinate offices of the state and the party the order after the complete evacuation of the Jews to remove all Czechs [sustained thunderous applause]... just as I will make this city free of Jews, I will also make it free of Czech! [sustained rapturous applause]"

"Jewry attempted with all available means to spoil the healthy youth... Ethos is alien to the Jew... every Jew at large in Europe is a danger to European culture. If one wished to confront me with the accusation that I have deported tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of Jews to the eastern ghetto from this city that was once the metropolis of Jewry, I must answer that I consider it an active contribution to European culture."

"It is the greatest, the most devilish mass murder known to history... The murder was ordered by Adolf Hitler, as is obvious from his last will and testament... He and Himmler jointly committed that crime which, for all time, will be a stain in the annals of our history. It is a crime which fills every German with shame."

"I have educated this generation in faith and loyalty to Hitler. The Youth Organization which I built up bore his name. I believed that I was serving a leader who would make our people and the youth of our country great and happy and free. Millions of young people believed this, together with me, and saw their ultimate ideal in National Socialism. Many died for it. Before God, before the German nation, and before my German people I alone bear the guilt of having trained our young people for a man whom I for many long years had considered unimpeachable, both as a leader and as the head of the State, of creating for him a generation who saw him as I did. The guilt is mine in that I educated the youth of Germany for a man who murdered by the millions. I believed in this man, that is all I can say for my excuse and for the characterization of my attitude. This is my own—my own personal guilt. I was responsible for the youth of the country. I was placed in authority over the young people, and the guilt is mine alone. The younger generation is guiltless. It grew up in an anti-Semitic state, ruled by anti-Semitic laws. Our youth was bound by these laws and saw nothing criminal in racial politics. But if anti-Semitism and racial laws could lead to an Auschwitz, then Auschwitz must mark the end of racial politics and the death of anti-Semitism. Hitler is dead. I never betrayed him; I never tried to overthrow him; I remained true to my oath as an officer, a youth leader, and an official. I was no blind collaborator of his; neither was I an opportunist. I was a convinced National Socialist from my earliest days—as such, I was also an anti-Semite. Hitler's racial policy was a crime which led to disaster for 5,000,000 Jews and for all the Germans. The younger generation bears no guilt. But he who, after Auschwitz, still clings to racial politics has rendered himself guilty."

"In this hour, when I can speak for the last time to the Military Tribunal of the four victorious powers, I should like, with a clear conscience, to confirm the following on behalf of our German youth: that it is completely innocent of the abuses and degeneration of the Hitler regime which were established during this Trial, that it never wanted this war, and that neither in peace nor in war did it participate in any crimes."

"If you outlaw half a million people you make martyrs of them. For example, if you outlaw Robin Hood, it is all very well, but if you outlaw a whole group of people around Robin Hood, then Robin Hood and his merry men become legends."

"I read world literature and I read French romances in the originals. I had quite a profound knowledge - no, that sounds conceited, but I did have a profound interest in everything spiritual."

"Power is what spoils people. Yes, it seems to me that the seeking after power is the great danger and the great corruptor of mankind."

"Some of the defendants say that dictatorship can be good if there is a good dictator. But I say that a man cannot stay good if he becomes a dictator. Authoritarianism is a system that destroys man's morality. If you take a saint and give him power, he will change into a Hitler or a devil."

"I lived with people who had varied opinions, some of whom did not accept my Nazi views. I encouraged this. If a man said something that was critical of me or my ideas, I wouldn't consider him an enemy."

"[Hitler was] a man without measure [i.e. without any sense of measure], a man with great gifts, a man who in some ways could be considered a genius"

"We simply believed."

"Frau von Schirach in particular behaves like a stupid turkey... The Führer doesn't want to know Schirach anymore. Schirach is a weakling, a windbag and an idiot when it comes to deep political matters. He would rather dismiss him from Vienna sooner than later, if only he had a successor."

"Schirach somehow lives in a different world, in a high tower, as it were, pursuing his hobbies. He thinks about foreign policy and wants to sort it out... Without noticing, Schirach lives a life that is not in keeping with the times. He cannot empathize with the life and way of living of the common people."

"Baldur von Schirach was guilty of far more than war crimes. His was the deadly evil of corrupting the young. He poisoned the minds of an entire German generation. He trained and schooled the SS men, the men of the gas vans, the men of Oswiecim and Maidanek."

"In 1937, Rommel was given the duties of liaison officer with the Hitler Jugend, under the charming but arrogant Baldur von Schirach. The two men did not like each other. Schirach, who was American-educated, disliked the ramrod-stiff Rommel whom he saw as a caricature of the Prussian officer. He was surprised when Rommel opened his mouth and spoke with a broad Swabian accent, and proved far less stiff than he had expected."

"Schirach corrupted millions of German children so that they became what they really are today, the blind instruments of that policy of murder and domination which these men have carried out."

"Von Schirach, poisoner of a generation, initiated the German youth in Nazi doctrine, trained them in legions for service in the SS and Wehrmacht [armed forces], and delivered them up to the Party as fanatic, unquestioning executors of its will."

"Have you at any time, instead of sitting in your cell studying philosophy, Latin, French, writing poetry, and thinking how to straighten out your position in history, as you call it, actually faced reality and wondered where the next meal was coming for your wife and children? You isolated yourself from everything and everyone, your head forever in the clouds as it almost always has been from the day of our marriage. As the years went by, I realized more than ever that your idealistic obsessions and dreams were taking you further from me and the children... I was ready to face death with you. Your answer to me was, "I cannot take my life. First I must make my place and my work clear before history." As always, you would not face facts. Had I taken poison, it would have saved me untold suffering in my fight to live and keep my children alive. I have expressed my feeling so many times before to you, but you have always preferred to ignore them as being distasteful. Reality has always been distasteful to you... I intend to divorce you immediately."

"in no way a criminal, but an idealist, and much too good for politics."

"I was one of you."

"At that time I believed in the Führer principle because to me it meant that the best one should be the leader. If the leader is good and responsible, then the government is good."

"Ach! I know. If I were to play the Pathetique or the Moonlight Sonata for the high judges, they would let me off. But my defense unfortunately will not be musical."

"But ignorance of the law is no excuse. A person is guilty even if he breaks the law unknowingly. I shall be perhaps the first of the defendants to get up on that stand and admit that I am at least partly guilty."

"I can spot a musical type. I can tell by looking at a woman whether she is a contralto or a soprano."

"I do feel ashamed of having participated to the slightest even as a tool in those dark days. But I was obliged to serve the state to which I had taken an oath. It was a tragic fate."

"I am guilty of one thing - that I should have cleared out and not had anything to do with these criminals in the first place. Later it was too late. I was in up to my neck. But as for the atrocities, I had not a thing to do with them, did not know about them. And as for conspiring against peace, that is false, too. And that is my plain line of defense."

"Those Russians. They did worse things when they entered Pomerania than we ever did in Russia."

"If you follow a certain road for some time, it takes an enormous willpower to leave, although you might recognize that the road was not good. But in my case I believed and was convinced that I was serving and helping the people until the last. However, it is a terrible fate that has befallen me. If I had remained with my writing and my music I would be working now and not a criminal in the Nuremburg prison."

"In world history we have other examples of frightful destruction. There was Alexander the Great and all of the destruction he caused. Napoleon, too, would have destroyed all of Europe. But unfortunately, the Nazi government, the government of which I unfortunately partook, had no Talleyrand, but we had a Ribbentrop. Through Talleyrand's policy France was saved from a catastrophe that Ribbentrop would have brought about."

"Funk succeeded me and he could not act individually as I could and did. The Reichsbank could give or deny credit under the rules at its own discretion while I was president of it. The very day I left the Reichsbank, Hitler issued a law which obliged the Reichsbank to give any credit he would ask for. It was under that law that Funk took office. Perhaps in that sense Funk was not responsible, but in another sense, of course, he was responsible because he was a willing tool. If he went so far as to take the post, he was willing to obey."

"A Reichsbank president who was totally ignorant of what went in and out of the vaults of his bank."

"As Minister of Economics, Funk accelerated the pace of rearmament and as Reichsbank president banked for the SS the gold teeth fillings of concentration camp victims, probably the most ghoulish collateral in banking history."

"Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler had made the clear political request to build up for him in 5 years, that is, by the first of April 1938, armed forces which he could place in the balance as an instrument of political power."

"National Socialism, which originates from the spirit of the German fighting soldier, has been chosen by the German people as its ideology. The German people follow the symbols of its regeneration with the same great love and fanatical passion. The German people has had practical experience of National Socialism and it has not been imposed, as so many outside critics believe. The Fuehrer has shown his people that in the National Socialist racial community lies the greatest and invincible sources of strength, whose dynamic power ensures not only peace at home, but also enables to make use of all the Nation's creative powers."

"This is the reason for the clear and unsparing summons to fight Bolshevism and international Jewry, whose race-destroying activities we have sufficiently experienced on our own people. Therefore, the alliance with all similar-minded Nations who, like Germany, are not willing to allow their strength, dedicated to construction and peaceful work at home, to be disrupted by alien ideologies as by parasites of a foreign race."

"If later on we instruct in the technical handling of weapons, this task demands that the young soldier should also be taught National Socialist ideology and the problems of life. This part of the task, which becomes for us both a duty of honor and a demand which cannot be refused, can and will be carried out if we stand shoulder to shoulder and in sincere comradeship to the Party and its organization. The armed forces and the Party thus became more and more united in attitude and spirit."

"...the basic principles of the military services are unchangeable. Courage and candor, obedience and comradeship, love of fatherland and loyalty to the State: these are ever the distinguishing characteristics of the soldier and sailor. Building character through intelligent training and education is always the first and greatest goal."

"...to protect our position in the Norwegian and Arctic areas by threatening the flank of enemy operations against the northern Norwegian areas, and by attacking White Sea convoys...to tie down enemy forces in the Atlantic, so that they cannot operate in the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean or the Pacific."

"All wars will be settled by sea power."

"Hitler might have accepted his military leaders' advice (notably that of Admiral Raeder) and focused his attention on winning the war in the Mediterranean in 1941, before invading the Soviet Union. He might, for example, have struck across the Eastern Mediterranean to Cyprus, Lebanon and Syria; or through Turkey (violating her neutrality) towards the Caucasus; or across Egypt to Suez and beyond. Even as it was, the British positions in Malta and Egypt were acutely vulnerable. Rommel might well have been able to drive the British out of Egypt if he had been sent the twenty-nine German divisions that were sitting more or less idle in Western Europe. Alternatively, Hitler might have diverted more resources into winning the Battle of the Atlantic in 1942. Certainly, the German submarines were inflicting severe losses on Allied shipping throughout 1942 and into the spring of 1943."

"My so-called foreign friends do neither me nor the situation nor themselves any good when they try to bring me into opposition to the allegedly impossible National Socialist economic theories and declare me to some extent the protector of economic reason. I can assure you that everything I say and do has the complete approval of the Fuhrer and that I would not say or do anything that does not have his approval."

"The Jews must realize that their influence in Germany has disappeared for all time. We wish to keep our people and our culture pure and distinctive, just as the Jews have always demanded this of themselves."

"It has been shown that, in contrast to everything which classical national economy has hitherto taught, not the producer but the consumer is the ruling factor in economic life."

"The memory of war weighs undiminished upon the people's minds. That is because deeper than material wounds, moral wounds are smarting, inflicted by the so-called peace treaties. … Material loss can be made up through renewed labor, but the moral wrong which has been inflicted upon the conquered peoples, in the peace dictates, leaves a burning scar on the people's conscience. … The Versailles Dictate cannot be an eternal document, because not only its economic, but also its spiritual and moral premises are wrong."

"Colonies are necessary to Germany. We shall get them through negotiation if possible; but if not, we shall take them."

"One thing I fear, that you Americans will do the same thing that you did after the last war. I mean that you will pull out of here and leave Europe, then Russia will have her way. Private enterprise and individual rights will be lost just as much as under a Nazi government. Frightful!"

"There was only the choice between Communism and Hitler, and I will tell you why Hitler won. People will not give up religion, rights, freedom of personality, the opportunity to develop by individual effort - which includes private property. And the other reason for Hitler's winning is that if a whole people is treated as the Germans were, everyone will say, 'Are we worse people than others? Are we of a minor race?' Just as every single individual needs and must have self-respect, just as every family is proud of decent traditions, so every nation wants to maintain her individual manner, culture, language, and customs. It was in these respects that Communism failed. The Communists said that God was nonsense and stupidity and preached internationalism without maintaining the natural national feelings of a nation."

"I was never in the army - I never had a uniform - I was never a soldier. I detest uniforms because they make one unfree. There is an old quotation that goes something like this: 'Your mind will be trained well, but confined to Spanish boots.' That quotation is very apt. It signifies how narrow the military mind becomes."

"I have never believed in war. It is a crime against humanity whether you win or lose. I just read an article in this magazine I have in my hands that one day the moon will fall on the earth, but it is my feeling that until then, we should try to make the world a better place to live in."

"Schacht is a disappointment because of another thing. If I would have had the terrible secrets of crimes committed by the Nazis in my hands, which Schacht said he possessed, then I would not have participated for ten years in a conspiracy. And I wouldn't participate in an Attentat solely in 1944, which incidentally was to be committed not by Schacht but by others - a cowardly Attentat at that, which meant placing a bomb under Hitler's table and then running off. If Schacht felt as nauseated by the Nazis as he now claims, he would have had to draw a pistol himself and shoot the man responsible for these dastardly actions, I mean Hitler himself. Anything else is unthinkable, with the knowledge that Schacht had."

"Others might argue, as Rathenau and Stresemann had, that Germany must try to pay reparations, if only to prove the impossibility of doing so, or must borrow to the hilt in New York so as to drive a rift between the Western creditors; Hitler essentially argued for default. It helped, of course, that the reparations system had itself collapsed by 1932; Germany had already defaulted, albeit with American consent, by the time Hitler came to power. It helped, too, that the Nazis were able to recruit the widely respected former Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht, who had resigned his post in 1930 after effectively endorsing Hitler's campaign against the revised reparations schedule known as the Young Plan."

"He seems unable to brook any criticism or challenging of his stories or statements. My comments from time to time, my obvious failure to be convinced of his complete innocence and lack of guile were irritating to him, and his voice reached heights of shrillness at times. As ever, his is still the pose of outraged innocence, and the honest banker indignant."

"The most dangerous and reprehensible type of all opportunists, someone who would use a Hitler for his own ends, and then claim, after Hitler was defeated, to have been against him all the time. He was part of a movement that he knew was wrong, but was in it just because he saw it was winning."

"It was Schacht, the facade of starched respectability, who in the early days provided the window dressing, the bait for the hesitant, and whose wizardry later made it possible for Hitler to finance the colossal rearmament program and to do it secretly."

"But Schacht was infinitely more reasonable than the Nazis. He was fundamentally a dynamic, changeable person. In the beginning, therefore, it was quite logical that he should be attracted by the dynamic, dramatic, short-term ideas of the Nazis. As I said, Schacht has intelligence, but is not particularly a man of principle, although I think he believes he is. But it is reasonable to assume that later on he differed with the Nazis. He was too intelligent to go along to the extremes, which they pursued in their folly."

"I was the only SS leader in Russia who was not assassinated or upon whom an assassination was never attempted. I could walk anywhere without a bodyguard."

"From May until August, I went on a search for Himmler. Finally, I gave myself up voluntarily in August 1945. I went from one village to another looking for Himmler in order to kill him. I also wanted to find my family, whose whereabouts I did not know. I didn't know what the future held in store for me. At that time, I thought it was certain that since I was an SS general, I would be taken prisoner and executed at once."

"Germany could not win this war because it was in league with the devil. This war would not have ended without revolution."

"I am the only living witness but I must say the truth. Contrary to the opinion of the National Socialists that the Jews were a highly organized group, the appalling fact was that they had no organization whatsoever. The mass of the Jewish people were taken completely by surprise. Never before has a people gone so unsuspectingly to its disaster. After the first anti-Jewish actions of the Germans, they thought now the wave was over and so they walked back to their undoing."

"Von dem Bach is so clever he can do anything, get around anything."

"I hardly recognize him here. He was very egocentric, tried to get ahead without considering others."

"Bach-Zelewski is a liar and a criminal — a terrible man. I repeat, he is a liar, a criminal, and a killer. I have proof of what I am saying about myself, but I know that Bach-Zelewski is a frightful liar."

"But to go back to Bach-Zelewski — I think Bach-Zelewski has the kind of personality that can't differentiate between the truth and lies. He gets himself so much into the whole thing he can't differentiate. He convinces himself and believes he has gone so far that he has to die for the cause. Originally it was not the truth, but he so convinces himself — he's ready to die for it."

"That Swine."

"Moreover, there is this completely false trial. I would participate wholeheartedly in a trial if it were to determine the guilt for 5 million murdered people and the guilt for the atrocities. But I see in this trial endless other things brought out and I have the feeling that in the shadow of the guilt of these murders the German people shall be considered guilty of everything, and in the shadow of this guilt the Americans, English, French, and especially the Russians will want to get rid of their own dirty linen."

"So if despite that, Hitler prepared war, he perpetrated the greatest lie and betrayal in the world. This trial clearly shows that Hitler did just that. I have no hesitation to state very clearly that Hitler was a liar and a betrayer on a mammoth scale. Even without the death of the 5 million extermination camp victims, Hitler would still go down in history as the greatest villain that ever lived."

"What I would like to emanate from the darkness of this tragedy is one spark of life. I mean, the realization that crime does not begin when you murder people. Crime begins with propaganda, even if such propaganda is for a good cause. The moment propaganda turns against another nation or against any human being, evil starts. Whereas the Germans started propaganda toward the end of this tragedy, you Allies stand at the beginning of the tragedy."

"We Germans carried our hatred from the First World War to the Second World War, and now you are about to carry the hatred about the murder of 5 million people on to another World War."

"The democracy which shows up in the United States and in England is not an ideal democracy, because the will of the people is under the pressure of property, which is in the hands of the wealthy capitalists."

"In the first place, there is the Hitler group, among whom are the most guilty of the defendants and about whom very little, if any, good can be spoken. By the Hitler group I include Göring, Ribbentrop, Kaltenbrunner, Keitel, Rosenberg, Frank, and Streicher. Then there is the group which one might call idealistic. Unfortunately, too many of us were indifferent. Not many belonged to the idealistic group, and I don't care to name them because I think I would be stretching a point to call any of the defendants idealists. I feel that perhaps of all the defendants I was the only idealist, although I suffered from blindness and indifference myself. In this respect, I am not like Speer, Schirach, and Funk. Schacht I consider an opportunist."

"I often said that never in the history of the world did one man receive so much faith and trust as Hitler. Similary, no one has ever betrayed so many people and abused so much good faith as he did."

"I do not by any means want to deny that I and my fellow workers selected news and quotations following a certain tendency. It is the curse of propaganda during war that one works only with black and white. But to my knowledge it is a mistake to believe that in the Propaganda Ministry thousands of little lies were hatched out. If we had lied on a thousand small things, the enemy would have been able to deal with us more easily than was the case."

"...the 'finely polished word' of Hans Fritzsche was as effective as the surgeon's knife in cutting through the putrefying tissue of lies and laying bare the truth."

"Fritzsche, radio propaganda chief, by manipulation of the truth goaded German public opinion into frenzied support of the regime and anesthetized the independent judgment of the population so that they did without question their masters' bidding."

"The Russian colossus...has been underestimated by us...whenever a dozen divisions are destroyed the Russians replace them with another dozen."

"Bad weather has grounded the Luftwaffe and now we must stand by and watch countless thousands of the enemy getting away to England under our noses."

"The Führer confirms my impressions of yesterday. He would like an understanding with Great Britain. He knows that war with the British will be hard and bloody, and knows also that people everywhere today are averse to bloodshed."

"It was a distance about twice as long as this room; then there was a wall, and just beyond it the crematory. When the wind blew in at the south I got smoke in my cell. It was a fat smoke, big flakes of smoke - human smoke."

"In Flossenbürg, you noticed things more; you had to notice every day so many people hanged in the courtyard. People were brought to their execution completely naked. They were driven into the courtyard and I could hear the noise of naked feet on the court ground right outside my window. Stretchers with corpses were carried past the doors of our cells. If by chance the peek holes were open, one could see them going by. In the courtyard where you took a walk, they had gallows arranged in such a way that you were obliged to look at them."

"There were daily quarrels all summer. The point upon which we had our final disagreement was the decision of an offensive on the Caucasus and Stalingrad - a mistake, and Hitler didn't want to see it. I told him the Russians would put in another million men in 1942 and get another million in 1943. Hitler told me that I was an idiot - that the Russians were practically dead already. When I told Hitler about Russian armament potentials, especially for tank materials, Hitler flew into a rage of fury and threatened me with his fists."

"Whenever I go and see the Führer, I've got a loaded pistol in my pocket."

"That Germany beat these countries was due to better planning and not better preparedness."

"Let them try me. I shall have plenty to say about the Allies. I have some very good friends among the Americans and English, and the French industrialists, too. I have done nothing of which I am ashamed."

"He is a shrewd, Napoleonic, short man, who is very affable, but as poisonous as hell with his affability."

"It was true enough, he did not appear ashamed — merely worried about his own immunity from trial as a war criminal."

"There is no reason to believe that Milch was not absolutely sincere in his idealistic belief in Imperial Germany. Its destruction, however, caused a fundamental change in him: idealism in Erhard Milch was extinguished forever. From this period on, Milch became more and more the slave of his own ruthless ambition."

"Recently I was discharged from the German army while in this prison and was informed that I am on the so-called war criminal list number seven. I haven't the faintest idea of what war crime I could have committed. The main thing is that I have a clear conscience."

"The Russians were five times superior to us poor but brave Germans, both in numbers and in the superiority of their equipment. My immediate commander was Hitler himself. Unfortunately, Hitler's advice in those critical periods was invariably lousy."

"It is interesting but it was tragic. If you receive a military order you must obey. That is where the big difference between a military and a political order comes in. One can sabotage a political order but to disobey a military command is treason."

"Ewald von Kleist was an officer and a gentleman in an era when such characteristics were liabilities."

"Hitler had a great dislike for the Danes for the following reason: the Danish king had been congratulated by Hitler on his birthday, and the king answered cryptically with 'Many thanks.' Hitler was said to have had an attack of rage. And ever since then Hitler hated Denmark."

"One night a German officer was shot in the back and the army asked for reprisals, but Best tried to impose money fines. Pancke became afraid of Himmler and ordered me to shoot several Danes at once. I told him I didn't know who, we just could not go on the street and shoot Danes. He ordered me to take political prisoners. Three internees, Communists, should be brought before a court-martial and shot while escaping. It was to be prearranged. Himmler was to be informed that three Danes were shot while escaping."

"Sabotage became more frequent. On December 18, I went on a furlough and was supposed to return on January 5. When I arrived home I got a wire to be back in Copenhagen on December 29. It came from Pancke through his deputy. I later learned the reason through the deputy. Best, Pancke, Hannekan, and Kaltenbrunner were all called to Hitler's headquarters on December 30 for lunch. I went to Berlin, reported to Mueller on December 28 and 29, and told him that because I didn't execute countersabotage orders these people were to be scolded by Hitler. Mueller said: 'Comrade Mildner, watch yourself. Himmler is angry with you.'"

"Present at the lunch with Hitler were Hannekan, Best, Pancke, Jodl, Kaltenbrunner, Keitel, and Himmler. Ribbentrop was ill at the time. The lunch took three hours and not because it was an elaborate meal. Hitler explained his plans for Denmark and said it could only be made peaceful through intensive countersabotage. In other words, murder and explosion. It shouldn't be kept at all secret. If a Dane who worked for the Nazis was murdered or a Danish factory working for Germany damaged, on the very same day a Danish factory or prominent person should be murdered, and the papers should carry the story prominently the next day. A prominent Danish scientist was murdered by unknown men, or a factory blown up, the papers should read, with satire and irony. In other words, it was not to be made secret anymore. The Danes were to know."

"Hitler explained quietly that he wanted these things done. It is of interest that no one objected or talked back. It was law and it was genius speaking."

"At present, there are hundreds of thousands of prisoners in Germany of all nationalities and degrees, partly in camps, but for the most part, however, as workers...The dangers of inter-mixing and bastardizing of our people are extraordinarily grave. They lie to a great extent in the almost unlimited lack of knowledge throughout our nation of the problems of blood."

"He was a powerless tool in the hands of Himmler, of whom he was afraid, and by whom he was treated poorly. Himmler insulted Pancke like a schoolboy. Pancke was about forty-eight to fifty years old, came from northern Germany."

"Pancke gave me orders to blow up a museum in Copenhagen, where students gathered, and some other places. I declined and said I needed a written order by Himmler. Pancke was angry, but it was not done. Another example: The State Police were billeted. These billets included the offices of Best, my own, Pancke, and staff, and commissioner of the Ordinary Police and his staff. Near it was a big tourist hotel. Pancke ordered that property blown up as an act of countersabotage. I asked why. The reason was that once in that hotel Pancke's secretary couldn't get a meal served after 7 p.m."

"In Copenhagen, there was an associate of Best, Paul Barandon. Pancke asked that I put an explosive in Barandon's desk or house. Barandon was a German. Pancke and Barandon had served in the same regiment in the last war; they had had an old quarrel years before, and that was enough for Pancke. It wasn't done."

"I don't hold it against the men who beat me because undoubtedly there are some ruffians of every nationality and the English are not exceptions."

"I assumed that some of the gold bars I received were melted gold teeth."

"I accept responsibility for the camps, but as far as measures against the Jews, I had nothing to do with them. Those orders came from the RSHA. Himmler sent orders to Kaltenbrunner, who transmitted them to Mueller of the Gestapo, and the latter had the entire extermination program under him. That was the way all of Himmler's orders went. I did not participate in the murder of the Jews."

"Himmler chose certain camps and, together with Kaltenbrunner and Mueller, ordered the commandants of these camps to carry out the extermination program. This was done in the chain of command as I have just told you. I emphasize that it was Himmler to Kaltenbrunner to Mueller to Gluecks, who was also one of my subordinate generals, to the individual concentration camp commandants, who had been selected by Himmler to perform the exterminations. Otherwise, Himmler would have had to give the orders to me because I was technically in charge of the concentration camps. What I am trying to bring out is that although I am responsible for the camps, and the extermination program took place within these camps, I am not responsible for the extermination program itself, because these orders did not go through me, but went through the chain of individuals I have just mentioned."

"I had eleven main concentration camps under my command. From these eleven camps, internees were sent to other so-called labor camps. That was my job. I had nothing to do with the final solution of the Jews. That was an act done by camp personnel such as the commandants. Of course, the center of all those orders for the extermination of the Jews was Mueller of the Gestapo, who received his orders from Kaltenbrunner, who carried out the plans of Himmler."

"What can I say? If I knew in 1934 what I know now, I would have remained in the navy. I didn't know that this was going to happen and I didn't know that Germany was going to lose the war and be in ruins."

"I would have left all the Jews in Germany, but put them on an alien status, under alien law, and naturally closed them out of jobs like doctor or lawyer. But why execute them? In that way, strong Jewish influence would have been cast aside and there would be no need for atrocities. Whenever we would have discussions in our own circle, I would mention my solution, whereupon Himmler would say to me, 'Pohl, you are too soft.' Therefore, I did my best to keep out of the whole final solution of the Jewish problem."

"I can only be responsible for my orders. I cannot be responsible for all the acts of Himmler."

"Well, it was war - I could not have carried on as an administrative officer if I had let myself be swayed emotionally by my feelings."

"Ach! If Hitler had given me an immoral order I would have refused. Think of it! To break teeth out of a dead body! Think of it! Why, if I had been only a simple soldier, I would not have obeyed. I would have said that it was against my religious conviction. That dog Pohl knew all about it."

"Pohl I did not know at all except, of course, that I had heard of him and perhaps I did see him occasionally at the Fuhrer's headquarters or at large meetings. But that a man could be in charge of all the concentration camps in Germany, Himmler's right-hand man without a doubt, making him one of the great criminals of our age - what sort of man is he? Does he talk? Does he proclaim innocence like Kaltenbrunner? I really can't understand such people."

"In my case, though I had an idea of what was going on - I purposely didn't see it."

"For instance, against the tremendous resistance of Hitler and Kaltenbrunner, and at first Himmler too, I managed to save nine thousand Norwegians and Danes, whom I had released from concentration camps."

"Many of my personal enemies picture me as a cold type - a person who acts according to a certain line, a calculating type."

"In my opinion, a war between England and Germany was a war between brothers. In my inner self I admired the English government and political system."

"I could not tell Himmler everything because he was too false and two-faced."

"No one. That was the difficulty of my position. Any day something might happen to me. Himmler told me at the end of April 1945, after I had held a conference with the Zionist leader in Sweden, that he felt sorry for what he had done in his life, regretted his sneakiness toward other people, and excused himself for that. He said, to quote Himmler from my memory: 'If I had only listened to you, Schellenberg, in 1943, there still would have been time to do something for the German people.' I always had the impression that Himmler was under the influence of Hitler. Himmler was suggestible - could easily have been under the influence of Hitler. Himmler conspired with me too much for it to be true that Hitler was under Himmler's influence. Himmler and I plotted against Hitler too much for that. Toward the end of 1943 Himmler actually talked with me about killing Hitler. That was the danger in my position. Should someone change his mind, it would be the end of me. It became even more obvious after the Attentat of July 20, 1944, when Kaltenbrunner worked more and more closely with Hitler. Kaltenbrunner conspired against Himmler."

"When in the summer of 1941 he (Hitler) gave me the order to prepare installations at Auschwitz where mass exterminations could take place, and personally to carry out these exterminations, I did not have the slightest idea of their scale or consequences. It was certainly an extraordinary and monstrous order. Nevertheless the reasons behind the extermination programme seemed to me right. I did not reflect on it at the time: I had been given an order, and I had to carry it out. Whether this mass extermination of the Jews was necessary or not was something on which I could not allow myself to form an opinion, for I lacked the necessary breadth of view."

"Not justified - but Himmler told me that if the Jews were not exterminated at that time, then the German people would be exterminated for all time by the Jews."

"There is a difference. If you kill to take money or rob, it is plain murder, but if you kill because of political reasons, that is a political murder."

"We cut the hair from women after they had been exterminated in the gas chambers. The hair was then sent to factories, when it was woven into special fittings for gaskets."

"You become hard when you carry out such orders."

"One woman approached me as she walked past and, pointing to her four children who were manfully helping the smallest ones over the rough ground, whispered: 'How can you bring yourself to kill such beautiful, darling children? Have you no heart at all?' One old man, as he passed me, hissed: 'Germany will pay a heavy penance for this mass murder of the Jews.' His eyes glowed with hatred as he said this. Nevertheless he walked calmly into the gas-chamber."

"This mass extermination, with all its attendant circumstances, did not, as I know, fail to affect those who took part in it. With very few exceptions, nearly all those detailed to do this monstrous "work," and who, like myself, have given sufficient thought to the matter, have been deeply marked by these events. Many of the men involved approached me as I went my rounds through the extermination buildings, and poured out their anxieties and impressions to me, in the hope that I could allay them. Again and again during these confidential conversations I was asked; is it necessary that we do this? Is it necessary that hundreds of thousands of women and children be destroyed? And I, who in my innermost being had on countless occasions asked myself exactly this question, could only fob them off and attempt to console them by repeating that it was done on Hitler's order. I had to tell them that this extermination of Jews had to be, so that Germany and our posterity might be freed for ever from their relentless adversaries. There was no doubt in the mind of any of us that Hitler's order had to be obeyed regardless, and that it was the duty of the SS to carry it out. Nevertheless we were all tormented by secret doubts."

"Those not able to work were marched to the farmhouses. These were a good kilometer from the side track. There they were made to undress. At first they had to undress in the open, where we had erected walls made of straw and branches of trees that kept them from onlookers. After a while we built barracks. We had big signs, all of which read 'To Disinfection' or 'Baths.' That was in order to give the people the impression that they would merely receive a bath or be disinfected, in order not to have any technical difficulty in the extermination processes."

"I believed that crematoriums could be erected fast and so wanted to burn the corpses in the mass graves in the crematory, but when I saw that the crematory could not be erected fast enough to keep up with the ever-increasing numbers exterminated, we started to burn the corpses in open ditches like in Treblinka. A layer of wood, then a layer of corpses, another layer of corpses, et cetera. To start the fire, we used a bundle of straw dipped in gasoline. The fire was usually started with about five layers of wood and five layers of corpses. When the fire was going strong, the fresh corpses which came from the gas chambers could merely be thrown on the fire and would burn by themselves."

"Burning 2000 people took about 24 hours in the five stoves. Usually we could manage to cremate only about 1700 to 1800. We were thus always behind in our cremating because as you can see it was much easier to exterminate by gas than to cremate, which took so much more time and labor."

"They developed out of the situation. The courts brought in a lot of people who had to be shot. I always objected to having to use the same men for firing squadrons over and over again. During that period one day my camp leader, Karl Fritzsch, came to me and asked me whether I could try to execute people with Zyklon B gas. Until that time, Zyklon B was used only to disinfect barracks which were full of insects, fleas, et cetera. I tried it out on some people sentenced to death in the cell prison and that is how it developed. I didn't want any more shootings, so we used gas chambers instead."

"Though it was the most efficient, Auschwitz was not necessarily the cruellest of the Nazi death camps. The first people to be gassed by the Third Reich were, as we have seen, German mental patients; they had been asphyxiated with pure carbon monoxide gas. This method was then exported to Eastern Europe, but using exhaust fumes, first in specially converted vans, then in static gas chambers equipped with large diesel engines. This was how people were killed at Sobibor, Treblinka and Belzec, the camps set up to implement the 'Action Reinhard' in the autumn of 1941. Compared with inhaling Zyklon B, which killed most victims within five to ten minutes, this was a slow way to die. Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, regarded his own methods as 'humane' compared with those of his counterpart at the last of these camps, the notoriously sadistic Christian Wirth."

"He struck me as a normal person that's the horrible thing about it. If he had been a monster you know if he'd gone in there like "I did.. I killed all these people. It was my war duty." But he just acted like an unimportant individual. He just answered the questions. Without emotion. Without emotion. Not in the slightest apologetic. Though I think there was a sense of pride. A sense of pride."

"The Slavs are to work for us. Insofar as we do not need them, they may die. Therefore, compulsory vaccination and German health service are superfluous. The fertility of the Slavs is undesirable. They may use contraceptives or practise abortion, the more, the better. Education is dangerous. It is enough if they can count up to one hundred. At best an education which produces useful coolies for us is admissible. Every educated person is a future enemy."

"Films and gramophone records, music, books and buildings show clearly how vigorously a man's life and work go on after his death, whether we feel it or not, whether we are aware of the individual names or not. There is no such thing as death according to our view!"

"National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable."

"My darling girl, Unfortunately, this earth is not a fairy-land, but a struggle for life, perfectly natural and therefore extremely harsh. All the same, or precisely for this reason, it is happiness and comfort for us men to have a precious sweetheart - and I have the most precious, the dearest and best of all!"

"Situation very serious... Those ordered to rescue the Führer are keeping silent... Disloyalty seems to gain the upper hand everywhere... Reichskanzlei a heap of rubble."

"There are people who have a true talent to spoil my every joy."

"Next to Himmler the most sinister member of Hitler's entourage was Martin Bormann. He was a thick-set, heavy jowled, disagreeable, conceited and bad-mannered man. He hated the army, which he regarded as the eternal barrier to the limitless supremacy of the Party, and attempted, with success, to do it harm whenever he could, to sow distrust, to prevent necessary measures from being taken, to drive all decent person away from Hitler's entourage and from positions of authority and to replace them with his creatures. Bormann saw to it that Hitler was not kept informed of the real internal political situation. He prevented even the Gauleiters from seeing Hitler. Thus a grotesque state of affairs by which the Gauleiters- in particular Forster of West Prussia and Greiser of the Warthegau- came for me, the representative of the military they so distrusted, and asked for my help in arranging that they be allowed to see Hitler since Bormann consistently prevented them from obtaining interviews through normal Party channels."

"The sicker that Hitler grew and the worse the military situation became, the fewer were the number of people who could reach the dictator. Everything had to be done through this sinister guttersnipe, Bormann, and thus his methods became increasingly successful. I had repeated angry altercations with him, because over and over again he would sabotage the taking of necessary military measures for the sake of the obscure political game that he was playing. He would also attempt to interfere in matters that purely concerned the Army, always with unfortunate results. Bormann was the éminence grise of the Third Reich."

"The powerful men under Hitler were already jealously watching one another like so many pretenders to the throne. Quite early there were struggles for position among Goebbels, Goering, Rosenberg, Ley, Himmler, Ribbentrop, and Hess. Only Roehm had been left by the wayside, and before long Hess was to lose all his influence. But none of them recognized a threat in the shape of trusty Bormann. He had succeeded in representing himself as insignificant while imperceptibly building up his bastions. Even among so many ruthless men, he stood out by his brutality and coarseness. He had no culture, which might have put some restraints on him, and in every case he carried out whatever Hitler had ordered or what he himself had gathered from Hitler's hints. A subordinate by nature, he treated his own subordinates as if he were dealing with cows and oxen."

"It was only when Bormann's disappearance became a matter for serious conjecture, and intelligence agents began to go into the ugly details, that an incredible episode in Hitler's life came to light. This explained exactly how Martin Bormann was able to gather into his hands all the strings required to make Hitler dance to his tune."

"You can see that there were no strong characters surrounding Hitler. There were only weaklings like Ribbentrop, Funk, and so forth. Hitler wanted a silent audience. Even Goering, who superficially gives the appearance of a strong man, was in reality a childlike, weak character who was known as a dope addict in the inner circles."

"I am naturally anti-Russian just as most Germans are. I admire their achievements in industrial fields. I was in Moscow personally. I would not be in favor of the Russian system in the western nations. I don't condemn the system — I recognize the good results that it has produced in its proper setting. But in order to be Communist, one must be a fanatic. I am very suspicious of all systems requiring fanaticism. I am convinced that the world would be a better place if people were satisfied with enough to eat and a job to keep them occupied."

"Our foreign policy was an improvisation. Like Schacht's financial policy, it lacked foresight. The Nazis kept talking about a thousand-year Reich, but they couldn't think ahead for five minutes!"

"The forty-eight hours after the march into the Rhineland were the most nerve-racking in my life. If the French had then marched into the Rhineland, we would have had to withdraw with our tails between our legs, for the military resources at our disposal would have been wholly inadequate for even moderate resistance."

"The Jewish question is no question of humanity, and it is no question of religion; it is solely a question of political hygiene."

"It is natural that people do not want to be involved with us too much. There is no problem down to the smallest egotistical longing which the Gestapo cannot solve. Regarded in this way we are, if a joke is permitted, looked upon as a cross between a general maid and the dustbin of the Reich."

"To take the place of emigration, and with the prior approval of the Führer, the evacuation of the Jews to the East has become another possible solution. Although both courses of action emigration and evacuation, must, of course, be considered as nothing more than... temporary expedients, they do help to provide practical experience which should be of great importance in view of the coming Endlösung (Final Solution) of the Jewish question."

"So far you have been treated as an officer and a gentleman, but don't think that this will go on if you don't behave better than you have done. You have two hours left in which to confess everything. If you don't, I shall hand you over to the Gestapo, who are used to dealing with such gangsters and criminals — you won't enjoy their methods a bit."

"We will Germanize the Czech vermin."

"The world is just a barrel-organ which the Lord God turns Himself. We all have to dance to the tune which is already on the drum."

"He was very young, very handsome, save that his eyes were too close-set; an outstanding example of that blond mixture of effeminacy and toughness which may be observed in any Teutonic night-club. He had immense drive, which was liable to carry him too far; total ruthlessness in the attainment of his own ends, which were wrapped up in personal ambition; no active enjoyment of cruelty except sometimes, perhaps, almost as an afterthought; and a devilish sense of humor. Vain as a peacock, but mockingly aware of his vanity, clever, perhaps too clever by half, and contemptuous of the clumsiness of most of his colleagues and superiors, he nevertheless could be clumsy in his use of force and, unlike Himmler, was liable to over-reach himself. He was dynamite, like a character in an American gangster story; and in the S.S. he was able to canalise his nihilism into a constructive purpose."

"What ever actions he took he carried them out as a National Socialist and an SS man, from the very bottom of his heart and through his blood, he carried out felt and understood Adolf Hitler's world vision."

"One of the best national socialists, one of the best believers in the German ideology, and one of the greatest opponents to all enemies of the Third Reich."

"Truth and goodness had no intrinsic meaning for him; they were instruments to be used for the gaining of more and more power. To debate whether any action was of itself right appeared so stupid to him that it was certainly a question he never asked himself."

"He was a terribly ambitious man with a great craving for power. This desire for power was measureless, and he was extraordinarily clever and cunning."

"Himmler was a rival of Bormann, and Heydrich played both against each other. Heydrich pretended to be friendly with Bormann, but Bormann realized that Heydrich was a follower of Himmler. Bormann was trying to use Heydrich. Himmler saw what was happening. Between Himmler and Bormann, Heydrich grew bigger and bigger, until he was personally received by Hitler. But both Bormann and Himmler recognized Heydrich's threat."

"I believe that Heydrich was the worst criminal of them all. I myself saw him and he looked with such a glance of hatred that I shall never forget it."

"Heydrich had an incredibly acute perception of the moral, human, professional and political weaknesses of others. His unusual intellect was matched by the ever-watchful instincts of a predatory animal. He was inordinately ambitious. It seemed as if, in a pack of ferocious wolves, he must always prove himself the strongest and assume the leadership."

"The irreplaceable loss of the most radical and successful persecutor of all enemies of the state."

"War is inevitable, and this time, it will be truly world wide. It will unravel everywhere and there will be no limit to its battlefields. The condemnations of Nuremberg will be one of the main reasons, which will cause this war to be a conflict whose horror will be unparalleled. These condemnations gave birth, in fact, to a new conception which makes the victor a hero and the vanquished an odious criminal. By this fact, each leader will wage war like a demon in order not to be the loser and become, consequently, a criminal. All the atrocities that can be imagined by man, will be committed during this next war, in order to prevent the enemy from acquiring victory. What I have just said, I have repeated to the American representatives and I have warned them that all of the mothers of the entire world will one day curse America."

"My knowledge of pain, learned with the sabre, taught me not to be afraid. And just as in dueling when you must concentrate on your enemy's cheek, so, too, in war. You cannot waste time on feinting and sidestepping. You must decide on your target and go in."

"Although care must be taken not to kill or injure anyone while these persons are being taken into custody, resistance must be broken!"

"Duce, the Führer has sent me to set you free!"

"Hitler decided that Mussolini must be freed from the Italian Partisans because Benito was his friend and had acted in good faith."

"I would never have surrendered, because of my pledge as a German officer. But when Hitler died, that pledge ended. By killing himself, Hitler saved thousands of lives. They relieved us of our oaths as soldiers."

"The most dangerous man in Europe."

"Otto Skorzeny was probably the most effective special forces commander of World War II."

"You have performed a military feat which will become part of history. You have given me back my friend Mussolini!"

"Skorzeny was a giant of a man with a chalk-line scar scribbled from the left temple to the corner of his mouth, above a massive chin."

"Don't worry about those Jewish bastards. You'll soon be on your way up the chimney and your troubles will be over."

"I was an idealist in my profession. If I used such expression as 'Jewish bastard' or 'Jewish sow,' it simply meant that this official language had become so much a part of my flesh and blood that I saw nothing unusual in it. I never used anything but spiritual weapons in dealing with offenders."

"This creature, this Baab, with his spiritual weapons, was in the end found guilty on fifty-five counts of murder, on twenty-one counts of attempted murder, on thirty counts of assault and battery, and a variety of lesser offences."

"He had beaten and tortured, dragged shrieking children away from their mothers, despatched his quotas of human cargo in sealed box-cars to the frontier, until finally he was able to declare that there were no more Jews in Frankfurt."

"There was one young man who sat regularly in a spectator's seat about whom it was later testified that not one thread of his under or outer garments had retained its original color, so drenched were they by his own blood after a visit to Heinrich Baab in 1942."

"Ethical obligation has to subordinate itself to the totalitarian nature of war."

"We are Socialists, enemies, mortal enemies of the present capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, with its injustice in wages, with its immoral evaluation of individuals according to wealth and money instead of responsibility and achievement, and we are determined under all circumstances to abolish this system! And with my inclination to practical action it seems obvious to me that we have to put a better, more just, more moral system in its place, one which, as it were, has arms and legs and better arms and legs than the present one!"

"We National Socialists want the economic revolution involving the nationalization of the economy...We want in place of an exploitative capitalist economic system a real socialism, maintained not by a soulless Jewish-materialist outlook but by the believing, sacrificial, and unselfish old German community sentiment, community purpose and economic feeling. We want the social revolution in order to bring about the national revolution.”"

"The spirit of our National Socialist idea has to overpower the spirit of liberalism and false democracy if there is to be a third Reich at all! Deeply rooted in organic life, we have realized that the false belief in the equality of man is the deadly threat with which liberalism destroys people and nation, culture and morals. violating the deepest levels of our being! We have to reject with fanatical zeal the frequent lie that people are basically equal and equal in regard to their influence in the state and their share of power! People are unequal, they are unequal from birth, become more unequal in life and are therefore to be valued unequally in their positions in society and in the state!"

"What we National Socialists want is revolution or, better said, the attainment of a German future by the ruthless implementation of national freedom, social justice and völkisch recovery."

"The emancipation of the German workers will be accomplished by their participation in profits, participation in ownership, participation in achievement."

"We must take from the right nationalism without capitalism and from the left socialism without internationalism."

"We do not want a new war. But we are not afraid of it if mobilisation of German power should prove to be the ultimate means of restoring German freedom."

"Yes, from the Right we shall take nationalism, which has so disastrously allied itself with capitalism, and from the Left we shall take Socialism, which has made such an unhappy union with internationalism. Thus we shall form the National-Socialism which will be the motive force of a new Germany and a new Europe."

"He is such a hysteric that they need not take him seriously, and so he will not carry out his threat unfortunately. But it is all or nothing for him now. If I know him, he will make one desperate attempt to get into power. If this fails and he does not get his way, he is finished. He will burst into pieces like a frog."

"The Capitalist system with its exploitation of those who are economically weak, with its robbery of the workers labour power, with its unethical way of appraising human beings by the number of things and the amount of money he possesses, instead of by their internal value and their achievements, must be replaced by a new and just economic system, in a word by German Socialism."

"The rise of National Socialism is the protest of a people against a State that denies the right to work. If the machinery for distribution in the present economic system of the world is incapable of properly distributing the productive wealth of nations, then that system is false and must be altered. The important part of the present development is the anti-capitalist sentiment that is permeating our people."

"Dr. Martin, I am a man marked by death. We shall not be able to go on seeing each other for long and in your own interests I suggest you do not come here any more. Whatever happens, mark what I say: From now on Germany is in the hands of an Austrian who is a congenital liar, a former officer who is a pervert, and a clubfoot. And I tell you the last is the worst of them all. This is Satan in human form."

"Hitler was deeply jealous of Gregor Strasser. He was the one potential indeed actual rival within the party. He had made the Rhineland his fief. I remember during one tour through the Ruhr towns seeing Strasser's name plastered up against the wall of every railway underpass. He was obviously quite a figure in the land. Hitler looked away. There was no comment about "Strasser seems to be doing well", or any approving sign. November brought Reichstag elections again, but in spite of a frenzied campaign, the Nazis lost ground. Their representation was reduced to 196, and it was at this point that Schleicher became Chancellor, to exercise the power he had so long controlled from the wings. His plan was to split off the Strasser wing of the Nazi Party in a final effort to find a majority with the Weimar Socialists and Centre. The idea was by no means so ill-conceived and amidst the momentary demoralization and monetary confusion in the Nazi ranks, very nearly came off. With the failure came the final break between Hitler and Strasser, who, two years later, paid for this disloyalty with his head."

"The S.S. man had shot the unsuspecting Strasser from behind and hit his main artery. A great stream of blood had spurted against the wall of the tiny cell. Apparently Strasser did not die at once. A prisoner in the adjoining cell heard him thrashing about on the cot for nearly an hour. No one paid any attention to him. At last the prisoner heard loud footsteps in the corridor and orders being shouted. The guards clicked their heels, and the prisoner recognized Heydrich's voice saying: 'Isn't he dead yet? Let the swine bleed to death.' The bloodstains on the wall remained for weeks. It was the pride of the S.S. squadron, a kind of museum piece. These cut-throats showed it to all the terrified inmates and boasted that it was the blood of a famous man, Gregor Strasser. It was only after he had received numerous complaints that Heydrich ordered the bloodstains to be cleaned."

"The tragedy in the long history of the German people is that it has seldom had real leaders. Not that it lacked military leadership. What was lacking was political leadership, the political idea, the Weltanschauung (worldview) that National Socialism gives. The S.A. man as a political soldier is the bearer of this Weltanschauung, this National Socialist idea. Political soldiery is the foundation of the state."

"Not a single Storm Trooper would have followed Röhm. The whole body was merely a revolt of leaders, and only quite a small group of the leaders were willing to take part."

"In order to give conscious expression to the fostering of a valiant spirit in all parts of the German people, I further decide that this SA Sport Insignia [badge] can also be earned and worn by persons who are not members of the movement insofar as they comply racially and ideologically with the National Socialist requirements."

"I must tell you first, in order to clear up any uncertainty about my own position, that I never speak primarily as a member of the S.A., but as a National Socialist, since the S.A. cannot be independent of the National Socialist movement but can only exist as a part of it."

"Unfortunately Lutze allowed his wife and the family's friendship with Brauchitsch to manoeuvre him into excessive opposition to the SS. Everywhere he criticizes and grumbles. Everywhere he feels that his SA has been put in the shade. He has got into the wrong hands."

"The day of Roehm's execution, Hitler blandly announced that he had "relieved...Roehm of his position and ejected him from the Party", and under colour of this macabre euphemism appointed Viktor Lutze as Roehm's successor. But Lutze was no Roehm, and the SA was never again to play a significant role in the power politics of the Third Reich."

"SA boys received him coolly."

"SA men should be leaders, not ludicrous apes."

"Stand us against a wall and shoot us, well and good, you are victors. But why should I be brought before a Tribunal like a c-c-c-... I can't even get the word [criminal] out!"

"When a Russian pig has to be beaten, it would be the ordinary German worker who would have to do it."

"The Weimar system appeared to me like a father who locks his little boys in a room and stirs them up against one another and says: 'Beat each other up as much as you want.'"

"We National Socialists have monopolized all resources and all our energies during the past seven years so as to be able to be equipped for the supreme effort of battle."

"The trade unions that were swayed by Marxist teaching did not want social peace. They calculated that their chances of acquiring political power would improve with the growing dissatisfaction of the workers. One of the first necessities with which the Hitler Government found itself faced was that of dissolving the organizations that kept alive the antagonism between employers and employees. They were replaced by the Labour Front."

"You know we have this new poison gas - I've heard about it. The Fuehrer must do it. He must use it. Now he has to do it!"

"Catastrophe was only narrowly averted. It was all due to the faith of one man! Yes, you who called us godless, we found our faith in Adolf Hitler, and through him found God once again. That is the greatness of our day, that is our good fortune!"

"Understanding sometimes is not enough to explain something. Only faith is sufficient. The Führer in Nuremberg said: 'Woe to him who does not believe!' He who does not believe has no soul. He is empty. He has no ideals. He has nothing to live for. He has no sunshine, no light, no joy in life. He is a poor, poor man. What is wealth? What are possessions? What does it all mean? Problems come despite them, only faith is left. Woe to him who does not believe!"

"Our god is the wonderful law of creation, whose amazing unity of all things shows itself if wonderful flowers, in growing trees, in new born children, in the secrets of a mother, in the growth of our people, in work and accomplishment and creation, in life itself. It is the joy we have in everything. How beautiful everything is. Do you feel the same way? I am so happy to be alive."

"We believe on this earth in Adolf Hitler alone! We believe in National Socialism as the creed which is the sole source of grace! We believe that Almighty God has sent us Adolf Hitler so that he may rid Germany of the hypocrites and Pharisees."

"We swear we are not going to abandon the struggle until the Last Jew in Europe has been exterminated and is actually dead. It is not enough to isolate the Jewish enemy of mankind - the Jew has got to be exterminated!"

"The second German secret weapon is anti-Semitism, because if it is consistently pursued by Germany, it will become a universal problem which all nations will be forced to consider."

"Workers of all lands, unite — to smash the rule of English capitalism! You young upward-striving nations of the earth, combine to annihilate the old English dragon who blocks the treasures of the earth and withholds from you the riches of the world."

"The fight against the Jews has not ended... it will not have ended until the Jews throughout the world have been exterminated."

"Christ, one of the great men of humanity, condemned Judah with the sharpest words. He cursed and damned their devilish goals. His whole life was an antisemitic struggle against Judah and its methods. The Jew Paul, born Saul, also called Schaul, transformed the honest, noble and elevated goals of the founder of the Christian religion into its very opposite, making them serve Jewish purposes. That may not dim the light of this great man of human history."

"I admire the new Turkey and its great leader Atatürk."

"Workers were encouraged to overcome a trades union mentality – Ley’s Germany Labor Front (DAF) rapidly ceased to describe itself as such – and to think in terms of a ‘socialism’ transcending mere bread and butter issues. In a departure from labourist economism, the Nazis recognized the workers’ need for respect, and the pride they took at their work, their skill, their tools, and the products of their labour, attitudes already evident in the modern technological sectors, such as aircraft or optical manufacturing. This lends plausibility to the idea that they were embarked on a revolution in consciousness, changing the way people perceived the world, rather than its material circumstances."

"The morale of the troops taking part was astonishingly high at the start of the offensive. They really believed victory was possible — unlike the higher commanders, who knew the facts."

"We are in no position to withstand a prolonged static war. Wherever the allies concentrate their forces they will break through. For us there can be no question of military victory or of winning the war. Our only hope is to hold on long enough to allow some development on the political front to save Germany from complete collapse."

"It is madness to attempt to hold. In the first place the troops cannot do it and in the second place if they do not retreat they will be destroyed. I repeat that this order be rescinded or that you find someone else."

"The vastness of Russia devours us."

"We should have known better after the first war. The French came close to collapse in 1917; der Englander, even after our 1918 offensive, never."

"Just as the defending force has gathered valuable experience from...Dieppe, so has the assaulting force...He will not do it like this a second time."

"I strongly object to the fact that this stupid operation in the Ardennes is sometimes called the 'Rundstedt Offensive'. This is a complete misnomer. I had nothing to do with it. It came to me as an order complete to the last detail. Hitler had even written on the plan in his own handwriting "not to be altered.""

"Make peace, you fools!"

"It is a pity that this faithful youth is sacrificed in a hopeless situation."

"Three factors defeated us in the West where I was in command. First, the unheard-of superiority of your air force, which made all movement in daytime impossible. Second, the lack of motor fuel - oil and gas - so that the Panzers and even the Luftwaffe were unable to move. Third, the systematic destruction of all railway communications so that it was impossible to bring one single railroad train across the Rhine."

"Nothing would have been changed for the German people, but my name would have gone down in history as that of the greatest traitor."

"If I had had my way the English would not have got off so lightly at Dunkirk. But my hands were tied by direct orders from Hitler himself. While the English were clambering into the ships off the beaches, I was kept uselessly outside the port unable to move. I recommended to the Supreme Command that my five Panzer divisions be immediately sent into the town and thereby completely destroy the retreating English. But I received definite orders from the Führer that under no circumstances was I to attack, and I was expressly forbidden to send any of my troops closer than ten kilometres from Dunkirk. At this distance I sat outside the town watching the English escape, while my tanks and infantry were prohibited from moving. This incredible blunder was due to Hitler's personal idea of generalship."

"Long before winter came the chances had been diminished owing to the repeated delays in the advance that were caused by bad roads, and mud. The 'black earth' of the Ukraine could be turned into mud by ten minutes rain - stopping all movement until it dried. That was a heavy handicap in a race with time. It was, increased by a lack of railways in Russia - for bringing up supplies to our advancing troops. Another adverse factor was the way the Russians received continual reinforcements from their back areas, as they fell back. It seemed to us that as soon as one force was wiped out, the path was blocked by the arrival of a fresh force."

"Hitler might have waged his war against the Soviet Union more intelligently. Again, he might have listened to the experts (Halder and Guderian among them), who advised him to concentrate German efforts on capturing Moscow rather than diverting Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt's Army Group southwards towards Kiev. In a similar vein, Hitler might not have squandered his 6th Army so profligately at Stalingrad; Alan Brooke's fear was that Paulus might instead conquer the Caucasus, opening the way to the Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf oilfields."

"The Allied airborne operation in Sicily was decisive despite widely scattered drops which must be expected in a night landing. It is my opinion that if it had not been for the Allied airborne forces (82nd) blocking the Hermann Goering Armd. Div. from reaching the beachhead, that division would have driven the initial seaborne forces back into the sea. I attribute the entire success of the Allied Sicilian Operation to the delaying of German reserves (by the 82nd ABN Div.) until sufficient forces had been landed by sea to resist the counterattacks by our defending forces, the strength of which had been held in mobile reserve."

"Hitler was very upset by the heavy losses suffered by the parachute units, and came to the conclusion that their surprise value had passed. After that he often said to me: "The day of parachute troops is over." He would not believe reports that the British and Americans were developing airborne forces. The fact that none were used in the St. Nazaire and Dieppe raids confirmed his opinion. He said to me: 'There, you see! They are not raising such forces. I was right.' He only changed his mind after the Allied conquest of Sicily in 1943. Impressed by the way the Allies had used them there, he ordered an expansion of our own airborne forces. But that change of mind came too late - because by then you had command of the air, and airborne troops could not be effectively used in face of a superior air force."

"The limitations of our strength compelled us to concentrate on two objectives - the points which seemed the most essential to the success of the invasion. The main effort, under my own control, was directed against the bridges at Rotterdam, Dordrecht and Moerdijk by which the main route from the south was carried across the mouths of the Rhine. Our task was to capture the bridges before the Dutch could blow them up, and keep them open until the arrival of our mobile ground forces. My force comprised four parachute battalions and one air-transported regiment (of three battalions). We achieved complete success, at a cost of only 180 casualties. We dared not fail, for if we did the whole invasion would have failed. The secondary attack was made against The Hague. Its aim was to get a hold upon the Dutch capital, and in particular to capture the Government offices and the Service headquarters. The force employed here was commanded by General Graf Sponcck; it consisted of one parachute battalion and two air-transported regiments. This attack did not succeed. Several hundred men were killed and wounded, while as many were taken prisoner."

"I have never seen such a defiance of death."

"Kurt Student was a German professional soldier, typical of the best of his kind, totally devoted to his calling and to his country, though by no means in full sympathy with Nazi leadership."

"General Kurt Student was a German of the almost obsessively meticulous order and was determined to ensure that every unit involved in the forthcoming operation was kept fully briefed."

"The time is not far distant when I shall be able to say that one doctor, with, perhaps, ten assistants, can probably effect several hundred if not one thousand sterilizations in a single day."

"...Block 10 was made up of mostly married women between the ages of 20 and 40, preferably those who had not borne children. There was a constant fear in Block 10 of being killed, sterilized, or inseminated by Clauberg. He would often tease the female prisoners that they would all undergo sexual intercourse with a male prisoner chosen especially for this purpose. At least one of the Orthodox Jewish women who heard that Clauberg selected her to be a Block 10 prostitute decided to poison herself. After he inseminated the women, Clauberg would often taunt the strapped-in women by stating that he had inseminated their wombs with animal sperm and that monsters were growing in their wombs. Ultimately, 300 women prisoners were experimented on in Cell Block 10..."

"Thank God that sow's gone to the butcher."

"You will have very large quantities of clothes to disinfect, ten or twenty times as much as the "Textiles Collection," which is only being carried out in order to camouflage the origin of the Jewish, Polish, Czech, and other items of clothing. Your second job is to convert the gas- chambers, which have up to now been operated with exhaust gases from an old Diesel engine, to a more poisonous and quicker means, cyanide. But the Führer and Himmler, who were here on August 15, that is, the day before yesterday, gave orders that I am to accompany all persons who visit the installations."

"This is one of the most highly secret matters there are, perhaps the most secret. Anybody who speaks about it is shot dead immediately. Two talkative people died yesterday."

"Gentlemen, if ever a generation will come after us which is so weak and soft-hearted that it doesn't understand our task, then indeed the whole of National Socialism has been in vain. To the contrary, in my opinion one should bury bronze plates on which it is recorded that we have had the courage to carry out this great and so necessary work."

"I know that you observe Christmas Day as you learned it at home. I do not observe it. However, as assistant director of this prison, I allow all the Catholics to observe freely and with some joy this day in this home."

"Perhaps you think that any fool could become a member of the SS. Do you really know what an SS soldier is? He is a superman. He is a professional chosen personally by Hitler. A soldier whose antecedents are analyzed for four generations back before he is given the honor of being allowed to join this elite organization."

"If there were mistakes, there were mistakes. But a man has to have a line of work, no?"

"If I think of all those homosexuals in Germany today, I think I'd hand my German passport back, if I had one."

"Don't worry. Your friends are dead and you are going to join them."

"I admire you, but in the end everybody talks."

"When I stand before the throne of God, I shall be judged innocent."

"...Had the eyes of a monster. He was savage. My God, he was savage! It was unimaginable. He broke my teeth, he pulled my hair back. He put a bottle in my mouth and pushed it until the lips split from the pressure."

"...pale eyes, extraordinarily mobile, like those of an animal in a cage."

"There is only one certainty in life... A strong man stands above and conquers all!"

"After 19 days of interrogation, they put me in a cell. They would carry by the bodies of tortured people. With the point of a boot, Barbie would turn their heads to look at their faces, and if he saw someone he believed to be a Jew, he would crush it with his heel."

"In 1943, when the Germans began to crack down on saboteurs in grim earnest, the Alliance network was a chief target. Scores of agents were arrested in successive waves. Among them were women tortured by Klaus Barbie, the "Butcher of Lyon," who burned their breasts with cigarettes."

"We found a round figure of three million Jews in Poland, and then immediately after that came the Russian campaign and we found another five million Jews in Russia. How on Earth could we manage to emigrate this eight million by using long and tiresome official methods if we could not, as was planned somehow or other after the war organise a general and mass-protected and organised emigration to Madagascar? We had conquered France, after all, and we could have compensated France adequately from our other colonial possessions so we could have used Madagascar — the island was big enough to accommodate such a number of Jews — but in the war we were cut off. We had no other choice."

"My Führer, if it's not possible for you to give me a date for the wonder weapons, we Germans must approach the Anglo-Americans and seek peace."

"My Führer, I know, it is obvious from interrogations for one thing and from evidence I have from my particular field, that there are naturally differences among these unnatural Allies, but please do not be offended if I say that I do not believe the alliance will split up of itself without our own active intervention. Before that happens we shall be dead or beaten to the ground, and that must not happen — we must do something first."

"If you repeat to the Führer the story of the radio message from your agent, I won't go to the gallows alone. You and the Reichsführer will hang beside me."

"I was understandably deeply disappointed that the highest National Socialist leaders did not stand up and answer for the deeds they had done in the past and left those of us who could not be made personally responsible in the lurch."

"The unity of blood and soil must be restored."

"The concept of Blood and Soil gives us the moral right to take back as much land in the East as is necessary to establish a harmony between the body of our Volk and the geopolitical space."

"The United States is at present so demoralized and so corrupted that, like France and England, it need not be taken into consideration as a military adversary."

"As soon as we beat England we shall make an end of you Englishmen once and for all. Able-bodied men and women between the ages of 16 and 45 will be exported as slaves to the Continent. The old and weak will be exterminated. All men remaining in Britain as slaves will be sterilised; a million or two of the young women of the Nordic type will be segregated in a number of stud farms where, with the assistance of picked German sires, during a period of 10 or 12 years, they will produce annually a series of Nordic infants to be brought up in every way as Germans. These infants will form the future population of Britain. They will be partially educated in Germany and only those who fully satisfy the Nazi's requirements will be allowed to return to Britain and take up permanent residence. The rest will be sterilised and sent to join slave gangs in Germany. Thus, in a generation or two, the British will disappear."

"Soldiers! The great battle in the Vistula sector is finished. The Polish Army is annihilated. The operations against Poland are thus concluded."

"The German Army is tired. The vain effort to defeat Russia's armies has used up its equipment and reduced its morale."

"I myself won't do anything, but I won't stop anyone else from acting."

"Hitler is still such a popular man; we are afraid of the Hitler myth. We want to give to the German people and to the world the final proof by means of the Supreme Court-Martial and its verdict."

"Hitler was the fate of Germany and this fate could not be stayed."

"The Jews who already have been ousted were put out because they were morally and politically unfit to safeguard German interests."

"In the last 14 years Jewry has achieved positions of influence which it has grossly misused morally, financially and politically in an unheard-of manner, with the result that the German people crumbled morally, financially, and politically."

"The same Jewry now is seeking to smirch Germany's renaissance."

"Anti-Semitism is not based on strictly religious grounds and is not directed against the Jewish faith as such. However, all German Christians resent and denounce the fact that the Jews have been the chief advocates of atheism. They have influenced the workers' children through the Communist youth organizations, of which they are the leading spirit..."

"If we had wanted to conduct a pogrom against the Jews, it would all have been over now."

"Tell him the Reichstag is burning."

"The place looks like a delicatessen... You could have opened up a flower and fruit and wine shop with all the stuff stacked there. People were sending presents from all over Germany and Hitler had grown visibly fatter on the proceeds."

"I had by this time heard a number of his public speeches and was beginning to understand the pattern of their appeal. The first secret lay in his choice of words. Every generation develops its own vocabulary of catchwords and phrases, and these date thoughts and utterances. My own father talked like a contemporary of Bismarck, the people of my own age bore the stamp of Wilhelm II, but Hitler had caught the casual camaraderie of the trenches, and without stooping to slang, except for special effects, managed to talk like a member of his audience. In describing the difficulties of the housewife without enough money to buy the buy the food her family needed in the Viktualien Market he would produce just the phrases she would have used herself to describe her difficulties, if she had been able to formulate them. Where other national orators gave the painful impression of talking down to their audience, he had his priceless gift of expressing exactly their own thoughts."

"An eccentric, gangling man, whose sardonic wit somewhat compensated for his shallow mind."

"The purpose of the Reichsautobahnen is to become the roads of Adolf Hitler."

"The car is not a rabbit or a deer that jumps around in sweeping lines, but it is a man-made work of technology in need of an appropriate roadway. Rather, the car resembles a dragon fly or any other jumping animal that moves shorter distances in straight lines and then changes its direction at different points."

"I could not imagine that we should make much of an effort to preserve remainders of natural beauty in conquered Poland."

"The external appearance of any construction projects that are created during the time of the National Socialist Reich must take on the sensibility of our time. Factories are the workplaces of our National Socialist racial comrades. Streets and highways carry the name of the Führer. Settlements today are not isolated communities, but rather parts of greater city-construction plans. Every work site must be properly located within its neighborhood and surrounding setting (i.e., the natural world)."

"We do not build speedways, but roads which correspond to the character of the German landscape."

"For decades engineers have stood accused that their buildings do not have any cultural value. We have attempted to liberate engineering of this accusation. As National Socialists we are dedicated to working with boldness, but also with love of the Volk and our landscape in mind. These roads do not serve transportation alone, they also bind our Fatherland. In these highways our engineering will reflect the National Socialist movement."

"The German landscape is something unique that we cannot disturb and have no right to destroy. The more densely populated our 'living space' becomes with settlements, the greater our hunger will grow for unspoilt nature. The ever increasing spiritual damage caused by life within the big city will make this hunger practically uncontrollable... when we build here on this the landscape of our homeland we must be clear that we will protect its beauty; and in places where this beauty has already disappeared, we will reconstruct it."

"Troops without ammunition or food. Effective command no longer possible. 18,000 wounded without any supplies or dressings or drugs. Further defence senseless. Collapse inevitable. Army requests immediate permission to surrender in order to save lives of remaining troops."

"The Sixth Army, true to their oath and conscious of the lofty importance of their mission, have held their position to the last man and the last round for Führer and Fatherland unto the end."

"You are talking to dead men here."

"Everything you say, Reichenau, is totally unmilitaristic."

"Soldiers were and will remain soldiers. They fight, carrying out their duty, not thinking about the reasons, true to their military oath. And the beginning and the end of war is the business of politicians, to whom the situation at the front dictates these or other decisions."

"Hitler might have waged his war against the Soviet Union more intelligently. Again, he might have listened to the experts (Halder and Guderian among them), who advised him to concentrate German efforts on capturing Moscow rather than diverting Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt's Army Group southwards towards Kiev. In a similar vein, Hitler might not have squandered his 6th Army so profligately at Stalingrad; Alan Brooke's fear was that Paulus might instead conquer the Caucasus, opening the way to the Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf oilfields."

"What hurts me the most, personally, is that I still promoted him to field marshal. I wanted to give him this final satisfaction... a man like that besmirches the heroism of so many others at the last moment. He could have freed himself from all sorrow and ascended into eternity and national immortality, but he prefers to go to Moscow."

"A very clever man though perhaps not a very strong character."

"He is at pains to avoid making enemies. He is slow, but very methodical. He displays marked tactical ability, though he is inclined to spend overmuch time on his appreciation."

"Surrender is forbidden. Sixth Army will hold their positions to the last man and the last round and by their heroic endurance will make an unforgettable contribution toward the establishment of a defensive front and the salvation of the Western world."

"They attracted Hurricanes and Spitfires as honey attracts flies."

"The fighter must seek battle in the air."

"The wave of terror radiated from the suffering city and spread throughout Germany. Appalling details of the great fire were recounted. The glow of the fires could be seen for one hundred twenty miles. A stream of haggard, terrified refugees flowed into the neighbouring provinces. In every large town people said, 'what happened in Hamburg yesterday can happen to us tomorrow.' Berlin was evacuated amid signs of panic. In spite of strict reticence in official communiques, the terror of Hamburg spread rapidly to the remotest villages of the Reich. After Hamburg in the wide circle of the political and the military command could be heard the words: "The war is lost"."

"During the Battle of Britain the question "fighter or fighter-bomber?" had been decided once and for all: The fighter can only be used as a bomb carrier with lasting effect when sufficient air superiority has been won."

"Never abandon the possibility of attack. Attack even from a position of inferiority, to disrupt the enemy's plans. This often results in improving one's own position."

""He who wants to protect everything, protects nothing," is one of the fundamental rules of defense."

"To use a fighter as a fighter-bomber when the strength of the fighter arm is inadequate to achieve air superiority is putting the cart before the horse."

"Superior technical achievements — used correctly both strategically and tactically — can beat any quantity numerically many times stronger yet technically inferior."

"The colossus of World War II seemed to be like a pyramid turned upside down, and for the moment the whole burden of the war rested on the few hundred German fighter pilots on the Channel coast."

"I envy you Galland, for going into action. I wish I were a few years younger and less bulky. If I were, I would gladly put myself under your command. It would be marvelous to have nothing to worry about but a good fight, like it was in the old days."

"He who leads troops has no right to think about himself."

"Every minute that we lose will cost us great losses later that we will not be able to afford. We must push forward now, otherwise we risk everything. Hurry yourself with the technical aspects, a lot of time has already been lost."

"Mein Führer, who commands The Ninth Army, you or I?"

"We have lost a battle, but I assure to you that we will not lose the war! I cannot say more at the present moment although I know the losses are crowded in your minds. That this happened does not hold importance. What counts is not to lose confidence in the future of Germany. At the same time everyone must understand the gravity of the situation. This moment will be enough to distinguish the true men from the inept ones. Every soldier has the same responsibilities: if the advancing one falls, another must be ready to take his place in order to go on."

"I fully subscribe to those words with my special thanks to all officers, noncommissioned officers and men for the attitude displayed during this fighting."

"My Soldiers are My Children. (Meine Soldaten sind Meine Kinder)"

"The best Kamerad inside the pocket will be the Kamerad outside the pocket. (Der beste K.I.K wird K.A.K)"

"Has everything been done to justify our actions in the light of history? What can there be left for a commander in defeat? In antiquity they took poison."

"I sincerely believe that I have served a criminal. I led my soldiers in good conscience... but for a criminal government."

"Behr, I cannot imagine that I, as a Field Marshal, the one who out of conviction in victory for my country am responsible for the deaths of hundreds of my soldiers, should now emerge from these woods to approach Montgomery, or the Americans, with my hands in the air and say 'Here I am. Field Marshal Model, I Surrender.'"

"It should be prefaced by quotation from Goethe in which a special impression of Model's personality is given, "I love those who yearn for the impossible. (Faust)""

""Where Model is present, nothing can go wrong. (Wo Model ist, geht's nicht schief)" or "Model remodeled very well again. (Das hat Model wieder hingemodelt)" were, at that time, which were often mentioned in the Eastern Front."

"His firm belief in God, his homeliness and an strongly developed love for his family, as well as his heartfelt pleasure in men and nature, consummated the one of the most outstanding soldiers in World War 2. In the most intimate circles it was said of him, "Without fear and fault.""

"Field Marshal Model was a peerless master of the large-scale defensive battle. Always present himself at critical points, he asked a great deal of his troops. Often he was harsh, sometimes ruthless. But he always found the answer to the trickiest of situations, never leaving his men in the lurch."

"Field Marshal Model was a bold, inexhaustible soldier, who knew the front well and who won the confidence of his men by his habitual disregard for his personal safety. He had no time for lazy or incompetent subordinates. He carried out his intentions in a most determined fashion. He was the best possible man to perform the fantastically difficult task of reconstructing a line in centre of the Eastern Front."

"With regard to himself, Field Marshal Model allowed no compromise and was ruthless, but he was indulgent to the men in the front lines who adored him. He demanded nothing for himself."

"Model was a man who spent an incredible amount of time at the front. He didn't lead from behind, looking at maps, but he went wherever he believed his presence would help. In no way was he a politician. He was army through and through and all his thinking was military. In the high positions he later occupied he was criticize for this, with good reason."

"Model stood up to Hitler in a way that hardly anyone else dared and even refused to carry out orders with which he did not agree."

"Did you see that eye? I trust that man to do it, but I wouldn't want to serve under him."

"My best Field Marshal. (mein bester Feldmarschall)"

"In spite of intense efforts, the moment has drawn near when this front, already so heavily strained, will break. I consider it my duty to bring these conclusions to your notice...my Fuhrer."

"There are strong reasons to suspect that had Kluge not committed suicide he would have been arrested anyway."

"1. Political officials and leaders are to be liquidated. 2. Insofar as they are captured by the troops, an officer with authority to impose disciplinary punishment decides whether the given individual must be liquidated. For such a decision the fact suffices that he is a political official. 3. Political leaders in the troops (Red Army) are not recognized as prisoners of war and are to be liquidated at the latest in the prisoner-of-war transit camps."

"If one looks back at the short period of time of the Badoglio government, one must remember that the Italian longing and need for peace was no secret to the German command. Since the German retreat at el Alamein in November 1942 and the collapse of the Italian Army on the eastern front, the Italians had repeatedly stated their weariness of battle and had made certain suggestions. In steadily increasing numbers, measures were being taken by the German military command out of fear for the Axis loyalty of Italy. As the course of events showed, the view on betrayal dominated all other German reflections, nourished by the fall of Mussolini and his style of leadership."

"This decision is absolutely contrary to my understanding of what the plan was to be in the event of an invasion."

"You must attack as soon as possible."

"The Fuhrer has decided to raze the city of St. Petersburg from the face of the earth. After the defeat of Soviet Russia there will be not the slightest reason for the future existence of this large city."

"Hitler's large-scale demands for the Mediterranean meant that...the plans for...an 'Eastern Wall' were overtaken by the increasingly rapid advance of the Red Army."

"I was convinced before the war started that it was a great disaster, a great wrong. Even after the campaign in Poland my conviction didn't change because on 3rd September, the third day of our going to war, the Western Powers had declared war on Germany. After the campaign in France in 1940 my conviction became uncertain, but when I heard one or two months after the armistice with France that now Hitler was to go with Russia, the old conviction came up again and it was at this moment that I changed the place of living for my family, moved them from Berlin to the place where they are today."

"Keitel, Jodl and Warlimont had never been in the war....Their lack of fighting experience tended to make them underrate practical difficulties, and encourage Hitler to believe that things could be done that were quite impossible..."

"Warlimont became renowned, with Keitel and Jodl, as one of the German officers most loyal to Hitler and was accordingly sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment in 1949 as a minor war criminal..."

"Eichmann was in every respect a painstaking bureaucrat. He at once recorded in the files every discussion he ever had with any of his superiors. He always told me that the most important thing was to be covered at all times by one's superiors. He shunned all personal responsibility and took care to shelter behind his superiors - in this case Mueller and Kaltenbrunner - and inveigle them into accepting liability for his actions."

"It was perfectly clear to me that this order spelled the death of millions of people. I said to Eichmann, 'God grant that our enemies never have the opportunity of doing the same to the German people', in reply to which Eichmann told me not to be sentimental; it was an order of the Fuhrer's and would have to be carried out."

"Eichmann told me that the words "final solution" meant the biological extermination of the Jewish race... I was so much impressed with this document which gave Eichmann authority to kill millions of people that I said at the time: "May God forbid that our enemies should ever do anything similar to the German people". He replied: "Don't be sentimental – this is a Führer order". I realized at that time that the order was a death warrant for millions of people and that the power to execute this order was in Eichmann's hands subject to approval of Heydrich and later Kaltenbrunner. The program of extermination was already under way, and continued until late 1944. — SS-Hauptsturmführer Dieter Wisliceny, International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, 3 January 1946."

"The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and advisor of Eichmann and Himmler in execution of this plan...He was one of Eichmann's best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chamber of Auschwitz."

"It wasn’t Hitler, it wasn’t me [Wisliceny], it was the mufti... I am not sure if Wisliceny ever met the mufti. I doubt it, but it’s doesn’t matter. It’s clear that his account is untrue: the Germans had started annihilating the Jews half a year before Hitler and the mufti met."

"I once spent an hour and a half trying to explain a situation to "Sepp" Dietrich with the aid of a map. It was quite useless. He understood nothing at all."

"In all my years as a soldier, I have never seen men fight so hard."

"Other visits (to the front) showed me that efforts were being made on the Western Front to arrive at understandings with the enemy on special problems. At Arnhem, I found General Bittrich of the Waffen-SS in a state of fury. The day before, his Second Tank Corps had virtually wiped out a British airborne division. During the fighting the general had made an arrangement permitting the enemy to run a field hospital situated behind the German lines. But party functionaries had taken it upon themselves to kill British and American pilots, and Bittrich was cast in the role of a liar. His violent denunciation of the party was all the more striking since it came from an SS general."

"Dear Reichsführer, among 10's of millions of Jews in Europe, there are, I figure, at least 2-3 millions of men and women who are fit enough to work. Considering the extraordinary difficulties the labor problem presents us with, I hold the view that those 2-3 millions should be specially selected and preserved. This can however only be done if at the same time they are rendered incapable to propagate. About a year ago I reported to you that agents of mine have completed the experiments necessary for this purpose. I would like to recall these facts once more. Sterilization, as normally performed on persons with hereditary diseases is here out of the question, because it takes too long and is too expensive. Castration by X-ray however is not only relatively cheap, but can also be performed on many thousands in the shortest time. I think that at this time it is already irrelevant whether the people in question become aware of having been castrated after some weeks or months, once they feel the effects. Should you, Reichsführer, decide to choose this way in the interest of the preservation of labor, then Reichsleiter Bouhler would be prepared to place all physicians and other personnel needed for this work at your disposal. Likewise he requested me to inform you that then I would have to order the apparatus so urgently needed with the greatest speed. Heil Hitler! Yours, Viktor Brack."

"It was no secret in higher Party circles that the Jews were to be exterminated."

"Before 1938, the German generals were not opposed to Hitler because he produced the results they desired."

"Keitel is nobody but the man who runs my office."

"He became a willing tool in Hitler's hands for every one of his decisions."

"Having been informed of events by Vice-Chancellor von Papen, President Hindenburg summoned General Goering, in his capacity of Chief of Police, and myself to Neudeck. Our instructions are to consult with you on the measures to be taken to ensure internal peace. If a complete relaxation of tension does not immediately take place (and to this end we must avoid any ministerial crisis), martial law will be proclaimed."

"We Germans will never forget what the Soviet Army has accomplished for Germany during the past 10 years. I hope that in spite of all present existing difficulties our thanks will be expressed in deed. I drink a toast to the well-being and the future of the great and glorious Soviet Army and of loyal comradeship in arms for today and in the future."

"While soldiers were winning victories, so-called labor leaders were engaged in high treason."

"I die for my fatherland. I have a clear conscience. I only did my duty to my country when I tried to oppose the criminal folly of Hitler."

"Please don't worry about me, Captain Patzig. I'm an incurable optimist. And as far as those fellows are concerned, I think I know how to get along with them."

"You can talk to the man. He is reasonable, and sees your point of view, if you point it out properly."

"As the officer before the World War was naturally a monarchist...so it is naturally understandable today...to be a National Socialist...The Wehrmacht has become the tool of the National Socialist will for development."

"General Franco made it clear that Spain could enter the war only when England was about ready to collapse."

"You know, my dear Lahousen, the students of history will not need to trouble their heads after this war, as they did after the last, to determine who was guilty of starting it. The case is, however, different when we consider guilt for prolonging the war. I believe that the other side have now disarmed us of the last weapon with which we could have ended it. 'Unconditional surrender', no, our generals will not swallow that. Now I cannot see any solution."

"Badly mishandled. Nose broken at last interrogation. My time is up. Was not a traitor. Did my duty as a German. If you survive, please tell my wife..."

"One day the world will hold the Wehrmacht responsible for these methods since these things are taking place under its nose."

"His skill in acting a part, his cunning, his imagination, the ease with which he affected naive stupidity and then emerged into the most subtle reasoning disarmed the security agents who interrogated him."

"Canaris was a highly intelligent and sensitive man with many likeable qualities. He loved his dogs and his horse almost more than any other living creatures. He often said to me, 'Schellenberg, always remember the goodness of animals. You see, my dachshund is discreet and will never betray me — I cannot say that of any human being...'"

"Canaris hated not only Hitler and Himmler, but the entire Nazi system as a political phenomenon .. He was everywhere and nowhere at once. Everywhere he traveled, at home and abroad and to the front, he always left a whirl of confusion behind him .. In reality this small, frail, and somewhat timid man was a vibrating bundle of nerves. Extremely well read, oversensitive, Canaris was an outsider in every respect. In bearing and manner of work, he was the most unmilitary of persons."

"He hated Hitler, his system and his methods. He hated war. He was a human being..."

"During my imprisonment in the Soviet Union, I often heard of an imprisoned Swedish diplomat who had been active in Budapest. The Russian authorities were said to have accused him of espionage for the Germans."

"The battle will decide whether Germany is to live or die. Your soldiers must fight hard and ruthlessly. There must be no pity. The enemy must be beaten, now or never. Thus will live our Germany! Forward to and over the Meuse!"

"SS Colonel Wilhelm Mohnke was reportedly involved in more than one atrocity. A quick-tempered and harsh man — even toward other SS — he was generally disliked, even by his comrades. On June 11, he interrogated three Canadian prisoners and, after shouting at them and gesturing in anger, had them taken to the edge of a deep bomb crater and shot."

"Our men taking part in the executions suffered more from nervous exhaustion than those who were to be shot."

"The nervous strain was far heavier in the case of our men who carried out the executions than in that of their victims. From the psychological point of view they had a terrible time."

"The executions of agents, partisans, saboteurs, suspicious people, indulging in espionage and sabotage, and those who were of a detrimental effect to the German Army, were, in my opinion, completely in accordance with the Hague Convention."

"Every spy and saboteur knew what he had to expect when he was arrested."

"Out of the total number of the persons designated for the execution, fifteen men were led in each case to the brink of the mass grave where they had to kneel down, their faces turned towards the grave. When the men were ready for the execution one of my leaders who was in charge of this execution squad gave the order to shoot. Since they were kneeling on the brink of the mass grave, the victims fell, as a rule, at once into the mass grave."

"I have always used rather large execution squads, since I declined to use men who were specialists for shots in the neck (Genickschussspezialisten). Each squad shot for about one hour and was then replaced. The persons who still had to be shot were assembled near the place of the execution, and were guarded by members of those squads, which at the moment did not take part in the executions."

"After each firing order, when the shots were addressed, somebody looked at the victims, because the victims were then put into the grave when they did not fall into the grave themselves, and these tasks were in the field of tasks of the men of the individual Kommandos. The edge of the grave had to be cleaned, for instance. Two men who had spades dealt with this. They had to clean it up and then the next group was led there."

"I would not say that they were happy. They knew what was going to happen to them. Of course, they were told what was going to happen to them, and they were resigned to their fate, and that is the strange thing about these people in the East."

"Here lie my thirty-thousand Jews."

"I die in the faith of my people. May the German people be aware of its enemies!"

"I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage."

"Combat rules are for the stupid."

"I am ashamed to have belonged in an army, that witnessed and tolerated all these crimes."

"Like me, he came from the Third Regiment of Footguards and was, next to General von Schleicher, who had also served in our regiment, probably one of the cleverest people I've ever met. The saying 'Regulations are for the stupid,' by which he meant all average people, was his and was characteristic of the man. He would have been a outstanding commander in wartime. As Chief of Army Command in peace time, he lacked a feeling for the importance of detail just as he viewed 'diligence' with a feeling of pity, since this virtue was indispensable to the average person. He himself made modest use of it, something he could also afford due to his quickness of mind and his keen intelligence. His military talent was complemented by a markedly clear political judgement, formulated on the basis of a sober examination of the political situation and its conditions. He probably had less time for the imponderables of psychological factors. From the start, his mental attitude, related to the fact that his whole frame of mind was that of a grand seigneur, inevitably made him a firm opponent of the clamorous National Socialists."

"I was a Nazi and I remain one...The Germany of today is no longer a great nation, it has become a province of Europe."

"It's so long ago now. Even I don't know the truth. If I had ever known it, I have long forgotten it. All I know is that I took the blame as a good CO should have been and was punished accordingly."

"I admit willingly that after the Normandy battles, my unit was composed of young fanatic soldiers. Many of them had lost their parents, or brothers and sisters in the bombardments. Some had seen for themselves at Cologne where thousands of bodies were crushed after the terrorist raids. Their hatred of the enemy was such that I admit that I could not always control them. At Malmédy, there were, no doubt, some excesses."

"My boys may charge me with all they want. The main thing is, it helps them. They are not evil and no criminals. They are the products of total war, grown up on the streets of scattered towns without any education! The only thing [they] knew was to handle weapons for the Dream of [the] Reich. They were young people with a hot heart and the desire to win or to die, according to the word: right or wrong—my country!"

"When seeing today the defendants on the dock, don’t believe them to be the old Combat Group Peiper. All my old friends and comrades have gone before! These people who plead for mitigating circumstances are only the negative selection! The real outfit is waiting for me in Valhalla!"

"History is always written by the victor and histories of the vanquished belong to a shrinking circle of those who were there."

"Love is meant for husbands, but my love for Hitler is stronger. I would give my life for it."

"My God, what a lot of rubbish."

"He no longer listens to voices of reason. Those who tell him what he wants to hear are the only ones he believes."

"The Führer wants it thus, and Joseph must obey."

"I would rather have my children die, than live in disgrace, jeered at. My children stand no chance in Germany after the war."

"We will take them with us, because they are too good, too lovely for the world which lies ahead... no, no I must also take the children, I must! ...they will be given a strong sleeping draught. Afterwards, I mean when they are fast asleep, they will be given an injection of Evipan or something sufficient to...to..."

"We have demanded monstrous things from the German people, treated other nations with pitiless cruelty. For this the victors will exact their full revenge...we can't let them think we are cowards. Everybody else has the right to live. We haven't got this right—we have forfeited it. I make myself responsible. I belonged. I believed in Hitler and for long enough in Joseph Goebbels...Suppose I remain alive, I should immediately be arrested and interrogated about Joseph. If I tell the truth I must reveal what sort of man he was—must describe all that happened behind the scenes. Then any respectable person would turn from me in disgust. It would be equally impossible to do the opposite—that is to defend what he has done, to justify him to his enemies, to speak up for him out of true conviction...That would go against my conscience. So you see, Ello, it would be quite impossible for me to go on living. We will take the children with us, they are too good, too lovely for the world which lies ahead. In the days to come Joseph will be regarded as one of the greatest criminals that Germany has ever produced. His children would hear that said daily, people would torment them, despise and humiliate them. They would have to bear the burden of his sins and vengeance would be wreaked on them... It has all happened before. You know how I told you at the time quite frankly what the Führer said in the Café Anast in Munich when he saw the little Jewish boy, you remember? That he would like to squash him flat like a bug on the wall...I couldn't believe it and thought it was just provocative talk. But he really did it later. It was all so unspeakably gruesome..."

"Harald! My beloved son! By now we have been in the Führerbunker for six days already—daddy, your six little siblings and I, for the sake of giving our national socialistic lives the only possible honourable end ... You shall know that I stayed here against daddy's will, and that even on last Sunday the Führer wanted to help me to get out. You know your mother—we have the same blood, for me there was no wavering. Our glorious idea is ruined and with it everything beautiful and marvelous that I have known in my life. The world that comes after the Führer and national socialism is not any longer worth living in and therefore I took the children with me, for they are too good for the life that would follow, and a merciful God will understand me when I will give them the salvation ... The children are wonderful ... there never is a word of complaint nor crying. The impacts are shaking the bunker. The elder kids cover the younger ones, their presence is a blessing and they are making the Führer smile once in a while. May God help that I have the strength to perform the last and hardest. We only have one goal left: loyalty to the Führer even in death. Harald, my dear son—I want to give you what I learned in life: be loyal! Loyal to yourself, loyal to the people and loyal to your country ... Be proud of us and try to keep us in dear memory ..."

"We have made a solemn vow to each other: When we have conquered the Reich, we will become man and wife. I am very happy."

"My father and step-mother were left behind in Germany but, two days before the War started, they were asked to come to Gestapo Headquarters and given an exit visa. There is a story in the family which goes back to the First World War when my step-grandparents were asked to give shelter to a young woman who'd been displaced by the war in Belgium. Although she had a Jewish step-father, she eventually married Joseph Goebbels! My stepmother believes she may have acted as a sort of protecting hand and was involved with the exit visa. Certainly, the night before Kristallnacht, they got an anonymous phone call warning my father not to go home that evening but to go somewhere safe. My step-mother swore it was Magda Goebbels."

"Straight after Hitler's death, Mrs. Goebbels came down to the bunker with her children. She started preparing to kill them. She couldn't have done that above ground—there were other people there who would have stopped her. That's why she came downstairs—because no-one else was allowed in the bunker. She came down on purpose to kill them."

"Of course, the terrible things I heard from the Nuremberg Trials, about the six million Jews and the people from other races who were killed, were facts that shocked me deeply. But I wasn't able to see the connection with my own past. I was satisfied that I wasn't personally to blame and that I hadn't known about those things. I wasn't aware of the extent. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out."

"Now that I've let go of my story, I can let go of my life."

"We should listen to the voice of conscience. It does not take nearly as much courage as one might think to admit to our mistakes and learn from them. Human beings are in this world to learn and to change themselves in learning."

"I admit, I was fascinated by Adolf Hitler. He was a pleasant boss and a fatherly friend. I deliberately ignored all the warning voices inside me and enjoyed the time by his side almost until the bitter end. It wasn't what he said, but the way he said things and how he did things."

"They say something about being safe in the bunker, and how it's almost fun to hear the explosions when they know the bangs can't hurt them. Suddenly there is the sound of a shot, so loud, so close that we all fall silent. It echoes on through all the rooms. "That was a direct hit," cried Helmut [Goebbels] with no idea how right he is. The Fuhrer is dead now."

"Her story reflects the blind loyalty of far too many Germans whose allegiance to Hitler and the Nazi party enabled the implementation of the final solution."

"And what have we now in Germany? A land of bankers and car-makers. Even our great army has gone soft. Soldiers wear beards and question orders. I am not ashamed to say I believed in National Socialism. I still wear the Iron Cross with diamonds Hitler gave me. But today in all Germany you can't find a single person who voted Adolf Hitler into power. Many Germans feel guilty about the war. But they don't explain the real guilt we share — That we lost."

"If I tell the Berliners to step forward, they do it. If I tell the Viennese to step forward, they do it, but then they ask why."

"Those who have achieved all their aims probably set them too low."

"A New York City taxi driver asked him where to go; Karajan replied "No matter - I am in demand everywhere.""

"Isaiah Berlin referred to Karajan as "a genius, with a whiff of sulphur about him"."

"La vie même de Herbert von Karajan est un roman: petit aristocrate salzbourgeois devenu enfant prodige; étudiant viennois bûcheur acharné; chef d'orchestre de province pour qui seule compte la musique."

"Herbert von Karajan always rolled out a magic carpet for us, the singers. With him, our musical work took on another dimension."

"If you do not like it here, you can leave, but under the earth, not over it."

"Though it was the most efficient, Auschwitz was not necessarily the cruellest of the Nazi death camps. The first people to be gassed by the Third Reich were, as we have seen, German mental patients; they had been asphyxiated with pure carbon monoxide gas. This method was then exported to Eastern Europe, but using exhaust fumes, first in specially converted vans, then in static gas chambers equipped with large diesel engines. This was how people were killed at Sobibor, Treblinka and Belzec, the camps set up to implement the 'Action Reinhard' in the autumn of 1941. Compared with inhaling Zyklon B, which killed most victims within five to ten minutes, this was a slow way to die. Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, regarded his own methods as 'humane' compared with those of his counterpart at the last of these camps, the notoriously sadistic Christian Wirth."

"Wirth was a gross and florid man. My heart sank when I met him. He stayed at Hartheim for several days that time and often came back. Whenever he was there he addressed us daily at lunch. And here it was again this awful verbal crudity: when he spoke about the necessity of this euthanasia operation, he was not speaking in humane or scientific terms, the way Dr. Werner at T-4 had described it to me. He laughed. He spoke of 'doing away with useless mouths', and that 'sentimental slobber' about such people made him 'puke'."

"From my activity in the camps of Treblinka and Sobibor, I remember that Wirth in brutality, meanness, and ruthlessness could not be surpassed. We therefore called him 'Christian the Terrible' or 'The Wild Christian'. The Ukrainian guardsmen called him 'Stuka'. The brutality of Wirth was so great that I personally see it as a perversity. I remember particularly that on each occasion, Wirth lashed Ukrainian guardsmen with the whip he always kept..."

"If only someone had had the courage to kill Christian Wirth — then Aktion Reinhard would have collapsed. Berlin would not have found another man with such energy for evil and nastiness."

"To tell the truth, one did become used to it... they were cargo. I think it started the day I first saw the Totenlager [extermination area] in Treblinka. I remember Wirth standing there, next to the pits full of black-blue corpses. It had nothing to do with humanity — it could not have. It was a mass — a mass of rotting flesh. Wirth said 'What shall we do with this garbage?' I think unconsciously that started me thinking of them as cargo."

"You cannot wage war with sentimentality. The more ruthlessly war is conducted, the more merciful is it in fact, for it finishes the war the sooner."

"Fundamentally, Britain is responsible for the war. She was jealous. British business men wanted this war. It is a British business war. ... We have no dislike for France, nor Russia. We think highly of the French. But Britain! We hate Britain!"

"I need them for the manoeuvring of my left wing in the next war."

"1866 was a duel between two gentlemen; in 1870-71 we were obliged to chastise an impudent street arab; but to-day we must knock down a scoundrel."

"In consequence of the disaster on the Macedonian front, with its attendant weakening of the reserves of the West front, and in consequence of the impossibility of replacing the great losses sustained in the recent encounters, there is now, humanly speaking, no longer any possibility of our being able to impose peace on the enemy. Our opponents are constantly receiving reinforcements; the old elements of our Army still hold together, and may still offer some resistance to renewed attacks of the enemy, but our situation is becoming very precarious, and may at any moment place the Army Command under the necessity of taking a comprehensive decision. In these circumstances, it is imperative to cease the struggle in order to save the German people and our allies from unnecessary sacrifices. Every day's loss in this respect costs the lives of thousands of German soldiers."

"If I address the following lines to you, I do so because I am credibly informed that you, like myself, as a true German, love your fatherland before everything, putting aside personal opinions and wishes, as I have had to do in order to help my country in its hour of need. In this spirit I have joined forces with you to rescue our people from a threatening collapse. ... The fate of the German people has been laid in your hands. Upon your determination it will depend whether the German Reich acquires a new impetus. I am ready, and behind me stand the whole Army, to support you unreservedly. We all know that after this lamentable upshot of the war, the reconstruction of the realm can only be effected upon new foundations and in new forms."

"In case of a resumption of hostilities we are militarily in a position to reconquer, in the east, the province of Posen and to defend our frontier. In the west, we cannot, in view of the numerical superiority of the Entente and its ability to surround us on both flanks, count on repelling successfully a determined attack of our enemies. A favorable outcome of our operations is therefore very doubtful, but as a soldier I would rather perish in honor than sign a humiliating peace."

"An English general has said, with justice: ‘The German Army was stabbed in the back.’ No blame is to be attached to the sound core of the Army. Its performances call, like that of the officer corps, for our equal admiration. It is perfectly plain on whom the blame rests. If any further proof were necessary to show it, it is to be found in the statement made by the British general and in the utter amazement of our enemies at their victory."

"I was never able to understand how it was that here and there the welfare of the Fatherland had to be sacrificed to mere petty party interests, and from the point of view of political conviction felt myself most at home in the shade of that tree which was firmly rooted in the ethico-political soil of the epoch of our great and venerable Emperor. That epoch, with what I regarded as its wonderful glories, seemed to have become part of me, and I adhered firmly to its ideals and principles. The course of events in the present war have hardly been of a kind to make me particularly enthusiastic about the developments of later times. A powerful, self-contained State in Bismarck's sense was the world in which I preferred my thoughts to move. Discipline and hard work within the Fatherland seemed to me better than cosmopolitan imaginings. Moreover, I fail to see that any citizen has rights on whom equal duties are not imposed."

"You are all young men and you have played to me the “March of Entry into Paris” well. But I hope that one day you will be playing this military march where you should, at the same spot where I was in 1870."

"Prosperity can come through peace alone. The German people are in favor of all possible means to make war impossible. I have seen three wars. A man who has seen three wars never will wish another war. He must be a friend of peace. But I am not a pacifist. All my impressions of war are so bad that I could be for it only under the sternest necessity — the necessity of fighting Bolshevism or of defending one's country."

"Interview of 1929, as quoted in "Nations are greatly concerned over death of German President" in Berkeley Daily Gazette (1 August 1934)"

"I have always been a Monarchist. In sentiment I still am. Now it is too late for me to change. But it is not for me to say that the new way is not the better way, the right way. So it may prove to be."

"Recently, a whole series of cases has been reported to me in which judges, lawyers, and officials of the Judiciary who are disabled war veterans and whose record in office is flawless, have been forcibly sent on leave, and are later to be dismissed for the sole reason that they are of Jewish descent. It is quite intolerable for me personally…that Jewish officials who were disabled in the war should suffer such treatment, [especially] as, with the express approval of the government, I addressed a Proclamation to the German people on the day of the national uprising, March 21st, in which I bowed in reverence before the dead of the war and remembered in gratitude the bereaved families of the war dead, the disabled, and my old comrades at the front. I am certain, Mr. Chancellor, that you share this human feeling, and request you, most cordially and urgently, to look into this matter yourself, and to see to it that there is some uniform arrangement for all branches of the public service in Germany. As far as my own feelings are concerned, officials, judges, teachers and lawyers who are war invalids, fought at the front, are sons of war dead, or themselves lost sons in the war should remain in their positions unless an individual case gives reason for different treatment. If they were worthy of fighting for Germany and bleeding for Germany, then they must also be considered worthy of continuing to serve the Fatherland in their professions."

"I thank Providence for allowing me, in the evening of my life, to see the hour of recuperation. I thank all those who, with selfless patriotism, have collaborated in Germany’s resurgence. My Chancellor Adolf Hitler and his movement have made a decisive step towards the great goal of bringing the German people together to an inner unity above all differences of rank and class. I know that much remains to be done and I wish with all my heart that, behind the act of national resurgence and national coalescence, there should be an act of conciliation comprising the entire German Fatherland. ... I say farewell to my German people in the firm hope that that for which I longed in the year 1919 and which by a slow maturing process led to 30 January 1933, will mature to the complete fulfilment and consummation of the historic mission of our people. In this firm faith in the future of the Fatherland I am content to close my eyes!"

"In the middle of August I did not consider that the time had come for us to despair of a successful conclusion of the war. In spite of certain distressing but isolated occurrences in the last battle, I certainly hoped that the Army would be in a position to continue to hold out. I fully realised what the homeland had already borne in the way of sacrifices and privations and what they would possibly still have to bear."

"In the Great War ledger, the page on which the Russian losses were written has been torn out. No one knows the figure. Five or eight Million?"

"All we know is that, sometimes, in our battles with the Russians, we had to remove the mounds of enemy corpses from before our trenches, in order to get a clear field of fire against fresh assaulting waves."

"The name Hindenburg is the terror of our enemies and electrifies our army and our people, who have boundless faith in him."

"Criticism of Hindenburg, Papen, and Schleicher cannot, therefore, be justly based on the accusation that they intentionally brought Hitler to total power, but it must be limited to the charge that their dilettante methods resulted in bringing about precisely what they had wanted to avoid. It is not evil intent but political folly that they may be reproached for—the imprudence of political dilettantes let loose on Germany at Germany’s expense, combined with breach of the Constitution, with weakness of character in critical situations, and with a more than average self-confidence, in Papen’s case based on a strange mixture of piety and personal vanity."

"The real surprise was not Hindenburg’s victory, which in view of the lack of pro-democratic majorities was quite logical, in case the Communists abstained. The real surprise came later. It was the unexpected fact that Hindenburg subjected himself quite loyally to the Weimar Constitution and maintained this attitude unhesitantly during his first term in office. Both sides had expected his support for right-wing attempts to restore the monarchy, to abolish the colors of the democratic republic in favor of the former black-white-red, to reduce the rights of the working classes, to reintroduce more patriarchal conditions. The great surprise—disappointment on the one side, relief on the other—was that he did not do any of this. During the election campaign he said that now he had read the Constitution for the first time and had found it quite good. “If duty requires that I act as President on the basis of the Constitution, without regard to party, person, or origin, I shall not fail.” Campaign promises are often mere sedatives; no one trusts them. But the Field Marshall kept his for seven years. He swore an oath to the Constitution before the Reichstag. He had the black-red-gold standard fly above his palace and on his car and made no attempt to show the black-white-red colors instead. He made no step toward a monarchistic restoration. He performed his presidential functions conscientiously in the manner prescribed by the Constitution. During the first five years, he did not even once make use of the President’s emergency power under article 48, as Ebert, much to Hindenburg’s annoyance, had done repeatedly, and then did so only at Chancellor Brüning’s request. For seven years he dismissed and appointed chancellors in strict accordance with the Constitution without regard to his personal preferences; the Social Democrat Hermann Müller was chancellor under him for two years (1928–1930). He signed all acts passed by the Reichstag, whether or not he liked them, even the first extension of the Act for the Protection of the Republic in 1927, though with a little grumble about the paragraph on the further exile of former royal families, the “Kaiser-Paragraph.”"

"Four points about the election of Hindenburg are worth stressing. First, there was a close correlation between the electorate which voted for Hindenburg in 1925 and those who supported the National Socialists in September 1930 and July 1932. Second, both the election and Hindenburg Day took on counter-symbolic importance, underlining the fact that the ‘Reds’ were no longer masters of the streets, but could be challenged and defeated, not least by the Stahlhelm, with its sizable following of workers. Third, rightist activism had no consolidated political home, since the conservative nationalists and right liberals could not co-operate with each other, their leaders – Stresemann and Hindenburg – being personally antagonistic. And finally, although Hindenburg promised to uphold the constitution, his election meant a return to influence, often exercised through backstairs channels, of the armed forces and major landowners, for the new President was very much one of their own. Germany’s anti-democratic elites were back in business."

"The victors imposed upon the Germans all the long-sought ideals of the liberal nations of the West. They were relieved from the burden of compulsory military service and from the need of keeping up heavy armaments. The enormous American loans were presently pressed upon them, though they had no credit. A democratic constitution, in accordance with all the latest improvements, was established at Weimar. Emperors having been driven out, nonentities were elected. Beneath this flimsy fabric raged the passions of the mighty, defeated, but substantially uninjured German nation. The prejudice of the Americans against monarchy, which Mr. Lloyd George made no attempt to counteract, had made it clear to the beaten Empire that it would have better treatment from the Allies as a republic than as a monarchy. Wise policy would have crowned and fortified the Weimar Republic with a constitutional sovereign in the person of an infant grandson of the Kaiser, under a council of regency. Instead, a gaping void was opened in the national life of the German people. All the strong elements, military and feudal, which might have rallied to a constitutional monarchy and for its sake respected and sustained the new democratic and parliamentary processes, were for the time being unhinged. The Weimar Republic, with all its liberal trappings and blessings, was regarded as an imposition of the enemy. It could not hold the loyalties or the imagination of the German people. For a spell they sought to cling as in desperation to the aged Marshal Hindenburg. Thereafter mighty forces were adrift; the void was open, and into that void after a pause there strode a maniac of ferocious genius, the repository and expression of the most virulent hatreds that have ever corroded the human breast – Corporal Hitler."

"These achievements made the reputation of Hindenburg as a virtually invincible general. A cult of the hero quickly developed around him, and his massive, stolid presence seemed to provide an element of stability amid the changing fortunes of the war. But he was in fact a man of limited political vision and ability. He acted in many ways as a front for his energetic subordinate Ludendorff, whose ideas about the conduct of the war were far more radical and ruthless than his own. The pair's triumphs in the East contrasted sharply with the stalemate in the West, where within a few months of the outbreak of war, some eight million troops were facing each other along 450 miles of trenches from the North Sea to the Swiss border, unable to penetrate to a meaningful degree into the enemy lines."

"Once in office, and influenced by his strong sense of duty, Hindenburg, to the surprise of many, stuck to the letter of the constitution; but, as his seven-year term of office wore on, and he moved into his eighties, he became ever more impatient with the complexities of political events and ever more susceptible to the influence of his inner circle of advisers, all of whom shared his instinctive belief that the monarchy was the only legitimate sovereign power in the German Reich. Persuaded by the correctness of the use of Presidential emergency powers by the example of his predecessor, Hindenburg began to feel that a conservative dictatorship exercised in his name was the only way out of the crisis into which the Republic fell at the beginning of the 1930s. Whatever influence Hindenburg's election might therefore have had in reconciling opponents of the Republic to its existence in the short run, in the long run it was an unmitigated disaster for Weimar democracy. By 1930 at the latest, it had become clear that the Presidential power was in the hands of a man who had no faith in democratic institutions and no intention of defending them from its enemies."

"Elections in July 1932 saw the Nazi vote soar above 37 per cent. True, it fell back to 33 per cent when new elections were held in November, not least because signs of economic recovery were at last manifesting themselves, but the party's entitlement to form a government was by now hard to dispute since it was still easily the biggest grouping in the Reichstag. Ever the schemer, Papen now persuaded Hindenburg to dump Schleicher and, against the President's better judgement, to appoint Hitler to lead a coalition with the conservative German Nationalist Party - the only party except for the Communists to gain significant numbers of new votes in the November election. Hitler duly became Chancellor on January 30, 1933. Thus did German democracy wreak its own destruction. Given the paralysing enmity between the Social Democrats and the Communists, the only way to avoid the Third Reich would have been if Hindenburg himself had shut down the Reichstag and banned the Nazis, an option he does not seem to have contemplated."

"In the year 1925, General Field Marshall von Hindenburg became president of the republic. With this imperial soldier, who personified for the great masses of Volk the experience of the Great War, the democracy of Weimar garnered its first pillar of moral authority. With it also disappeared, however, the last possibility for toppling the state of Weimar illegally and by force. The only possibility left was to overpower it by legal means."

"He is not only a monarchist, but in the true sense of honorable old Prussianism a Royalist. The splendor of the Borusso-militaristic Hohenzollern Reich is to him the highest reason of the world's creation. Arts, sciences and politics are as far removed from him as Mount Athos from Hanover."

"In these hours of overwhelming concern for the existence and the future of the German nation, the venerable World War leader appealed to us men of the nationalist parties and associations to fight under him again as once we did at the front, but now loyally united for the salvation of the Reich at home. The revered President of the Reich having with such generosity joined hands with us in a common pledge, we nationalist leaders would vow before God, our conscience and our people that we shall doggedly and with determination fulfill the mission entrusted to us as the National Government. It is an appalling inheritance which we are taking over."

"And why had the German people failed to see through Hitler before 1933? Oughtn’t so early an event as the Munich Putsch have shown them what he was? Why, instead of upholding and nurturing the German Republic, the one gratifying consequence of the First World War, had they been almost unanimous in sabotaging it, voting for Hindenburg and later for Hitler, under whom, to be sure, it became very dangerous to behave like a decent human being?"

"The mass of the [German] nation...swung round to the deepest distrust of those who had hitherto been their idols—especially of Ludendorff, whom they dissociated from Hindenburg and recognised as the man who had dominated German policy during the latter part of the War, whereas Hindenburg rather embodied the nation's patriotic spirit. In this connection it is interesting to recall a comment made by Marshal Foch, when I asked him his opinion in June 1918 about the two outstanding German military leaders. What, I said, did he think of Ludendorff? His reply was: “Un bon soldat!” And how, I continued, would he describe Hindenburg? He answered: “Un grand patriote!”"

"Field Marshal von Hindenburg has forfeited the right to wear the field grey uniform of the army and to be buried in it. Herr Paul von Hindenburg has destroyed the very thing he fought for as Field Marshal."

"Thus was the German Republic born, as if by a fluke. If the Socialists themselves were not staunch republicans it could hardly be expected that the conservatives would be. But the latter had abdicated their responsibility. They and the Army leaders, Ludendorff and Hindenburg, had pushed political power into the hands of the reluctant Social Democrats. In doing so they managed also to place on the shoulders of these democratic working-class leaders apparent responsibility for signing the surrender and ultimately the peace treaty, thus laying on them the blame for Germany’s defeat and for whatever suffering a lost war and a dictated peace might bring upon the German people. This was a shabby trick, one which the merest child would be expected to see through, but in Germany it worked. It doomed the Republic from the start."

"The political power in Germany no longer resided, as it had since the birth of the Republic, in the people and in the body which expressed the people’s will, the Reichstag. It was now concentrated in the hands of a senile, eighty-five-year-old President and in those of a few shallow ambitious men around him who shaped his weary, wandering mind. Hitler saw this very clearly, and it suited his purposes. It seemed most unlikely that he would ever win a majority in Parliament. Hindenburg’s new course offered him the only opportunity that was left of coming to power. Not at the moment, to be sure, but soon."

"Hindenburg represents to us timelessness, history, myth, and national faith, so that the task of national leaders can only consist in utilizing as a specific Hindenburg faith the moral strength which he represents in their own work. The quarrel about Hindenburg cannot help us. We can progress only inspired by a sincere, humble, dynamic faith in Hindenburg. And the nation is going to follow whoever, inspired by this faith in Hindenburg, will renew and reshape that Prussia and that Germany which is shiningly reflected in Hindenburg."

"I hope that you will be in agreement with me when I beg you to do everything possible to prevent Hindenburg's retirement. We must under no circumstances bear the responsibility before the bar of history for having overthrown Hindenburg. I feel that even the abdication of the Kaiser would be easier to bear than the retirement of Hindenburg."

"To the public the savior of East Prussia was the nominal commander, Hindenburg. The elderly general dragged from retirement in his old blue uniform was transformed into a titan by the victory. The triumph in East Prussia, lauded and heralded even beyond its true proportions, fastened the Hindenburg myth upon Germany. Not even Hoffmann's sly malice could penetrate it. When, as Chief of Staff on the Eastern Front later in the war, he would take visitors over the field of Tannenberg, Hoffmann would tell them: "This is where the Field Marshal slept before the battle, this is where he slept after the battle; here is where he slept during the battle.""

""The marshal and the corporal are standing alongside us, struggling for peace and egalitarianism"."

"Weimar’s demise was, in the final accounting, the result of a conspiracy of a small group of powerful men around the president who conspired to place Adolf Hitler in power. There was nothing inevitable about this development. The Third Reich did not have to come into existence."

"Wenn ich Kultur höre … entsichere ich meinen Browning!"

"The disdain for culture expressed by Johst and Fanon is not identical, however. Both despise the deceit of culture, but for opposite reasons. For Johst, culture is in itself a fraud, the cheap talk of weaklings; for Fanon, culture deceives by reneging on its promises. Johst and the Nazis hated culture itself; Fanon hated its hypocrisy, a very different notion."

"Mammonism is the heavy, all-encompassing and overwhelming sickness from which our contemporary cultural sphere, and indeed all mankind, suffers. It is like a devastating illness, like a devouring poison that has gripped the peoples of the world."

"By Mammonism is to be understood: on the one hand, the overwhelming international money-powers, the supragovernmental financial power enthroned above any right of self-determination of peoples, international big capital, the purely Gold International; on the other hand, a mindset that has taken hold of the broadest circle of peoples; the insatiable lust for gain, the purely worldly-oriented conception of life that has already led to a frightening decline of all moral concepts and can only lead to more."

"This [mammonist] mindset is embodied and reaches its acme in international plutocracy. The chief source of power for Mammonism is the effortless and endless income that is produced through interest."

"The idea of interest on loans is the diabolical invention of big loan-capital; it alone makes possible the lazy drone's life of a minority of tycoons at the expense of the productive peoples and their work-potential."

"The only cure, the radical means to heal suffering humanity is the abolition of enslavement to interest on money."

"The abolition of enslavement to interest on money signifies the only possible and conclusive liberation of productive labor from the hidden coercive money-powers."

"The abolition of enslavement to interest signifies the restoration of the free personality, the redemption of man from slavery, from the curse whereby Mammonism has bound his soul."

"All state revenues flowing from direct and indirect sources pour constantly into the pockets of big loan-capital."

"Therefore we demand as a fundamental law of the state: ..."

"In our Mammonistic blindness we have unlearned how to see clearly that the doctrine of the sanctity of interest is a monstrous self-deception, that the gospel of the loan-interest that alone makes one blessed has entangled our entire thinking in the golden web of international plutocracy."

"All of our tax-legislation is and remains, so long as we do not have liberation from enslavement to interest, only a tribute-obligation to big capital, and not, as we would imagine, a voluntary sacrifice for the accomplishment of labor for the community."

"Liberation from enslavement to interest on money is the clear motto for the global revolution, for the liberation of productive labor from the chains of the supragovernmental money-powers."

"Mammonism is the sinister, invisible, mysterious reign of the great international money-powers. Mammonism is however also a mindset; it is the worship of these money-powers on the part of all those who are infected with the Mammonistic poison."

"Mammonism is the unlimited hypertrophy of the — in itself healthy — human drive for acquisition. Mammonism is the lust for money grown into a madness, which knows no higher goal than to pile money on top of money, which seeks with unequaled brutality to coerce all forces of the world into its service, and must lead to the economic enslavement, to the exploitation of the work-potential of all peoples of the world."

"But the capitalist idea of profitability actually becomes an economic nonsense in the branches of our economy that today rule everything, in the banking and stock-exchange system. The fact of the ruling position of the banks proves most strikingly the economic senselessness of the capitalist idea. With the ‘productions’ of the banks and stock-exchanges never yet has a child been fed, never yet has a freezing person been clothed, in general never has even the smallest requirement that is necessary for life been supplied."

"Usury and racketeering, as well as ruthless enrichment at the cost and harm of the people, will be punished with death."

"The introduction of a year of compulsory work for every German."

"Nationalisation of the Reichsbank Pub. Ltd. Co., and the central banks."

"Generous development of old age insurance through nationalisation of the life-annuity system. To every needy German national comrade an adequate pension will be guaranteed from a certain age or in the case of a premature occurrence of permanent inability to earn a living."

"Removal of the housing shortage through comprehensive new housing buildings throughout the Reich by means of the new non-profit Construction and Economic Bank to be created according to Art. 21."

"Suppression of all harmful influences in literature and the press, stage, art and cinema."

"Our anti-Marxist battle is directed against the state-disintegrating doctrine of the Jew Karl Marx, against the people-disintegrating doctrine of class-struggle, against the economy-disintegrating doctrine of the denial of private property and against the purely economic materialistic conception of history."

"Our anti-Mammonistic battle, which is ranged above the other two battle-fronts, is directed against the world-encompassing financial power, that is, against the permanent financial and economic bleeding and exploitation of our people through large loan capital. This battle however is, on the other hand, also a powerful intellectual struggle against the soul-destroying materialistic spirit of egoism and avarice with all its concomitant corrupting manifestations in all fields of our public, economic and cultural life."

"National Socialism like Anti-Semitism glimpses in the Jewish-materialistic spirit the primary root of the evil, but it also knows that this most powerful battle of world-history cannot remain standing in purely negative anti-Semitic demands, therefore the entire national- and economic programme of National Socialism rises far above the certainly ground-breaking but negative anti-Semitic battle by positively giving a creative constructive image of how the National Socialist state of work and performance should look. If this main goal is reached, then the National Socialist Party will be dissolved."

"But for National Socialism with this demand for social justice stands and falls the question of destiny for the German people, whether the German people can find its way to a noble nation, or whether it will eke out a miserable life in degradation and corruption as a fellaheen nation."

"In any case, legal tools must be created so that all these activities or enterprises that are directed against the national health in a physical or intellectual way may be suppressed. The same is true of the exploitation of the distress of the population through profiteering and usury."

"But that the state in general sees as right the sole means of accepting interest-bearing loans - thus debts, when it needs money and applies its other sovereign rights today only in an underhand manner to collect the incurred debts from the people, these are conditions for which one seeks in vain for a reasonable explanation. There is indeed no reasonable explanation for it, but only the fact that our entire thought even in national financial political matters is directed or corrupted in a private capitalistic manner."

"The interest slavery of the nation means the rule of the bank and stock-exchange. The breaking of interest slavery is by far the greatest task of National Socialism."

"The interest capitalistic inflation however is like a devouring fire which is not extinguished until it has consumed all the treasures of the world and made the whole of mankind interest-slaves of international finance—or until the interest slavery is broken."

"Gottfried Feder gave the Nazi Party an ideology. Its essential points were paramount State ownership of land and the prohibition of private sales of land, the substitution of German for Roman law, nationalization of the banks and the abolition of interest by an amortization service. It was he, too, who inspired the Party with its doctrine of the distinction between productive and non-productive capital and of the necessity for destroying the ‘slavery of profits.’"

"Nazi leaders almost without exception ensured that their ‘anti-capitalism’ remained highly selective. Their definition of capitalism and capitalists made it possible to exonerate some of Germany’s most rapacious and reactionary employers from the charge of profiteering."

"Even today, I can not say with certainty whether he himself believed in his words or whether he was knowingly deceiving those around him to urge him to keep to the end."

"Ever since our enemies have refused to listen to and obey our Führer, the whole war has gone badly."

"Gentlemen, you are the leaders of the best soldiers in the world. I will give you five or six of my own men; we will cover your back with sustained barrage fire to protect you while you cross the rue de Rivoli. All you need to do is force open a door to fight your way to the tapestry."

"Have you read Churchill's speech? Appalling beyond all words! A Jewish brigade to go to Germany! Then the French will take the west and the Poles the east. The hate in that speech! I am completely shattered."

"He was trembling all over and the desk on which he was leaning shook. He was bathed in perspiration and became more agitated."

"I am a soldier. I get orders. I execute them."

"I asked the Field Marshal von Manstein if he would take part in the actions against Hitler. Manstein was sitting in a chair and reading the Bible. Quick, almost embarrassed, he put it aside and covered it with some papers."

"I stood in front of him and I saw an old, stooped, bloated man with gray, slick hair, barely standing on his legs."

"I was at Stalingrad, you know... And from that time onwards I have done nothing but manoeuvre to escape encirclement by the enemy: retreat on retreat, defeat upon defeat. And here I am in marvellous Paris. What do you think is going to happen now?"

"If for the first time I had disobeyed, it was because I knew that Hitler was insane."

"No doubt: I was in front of a madman. The awareness that the existence of our people was in the hands of an insane person, unable to dominate the situation [...] weighed on me with all its strength."

"Oh, Field Marshal, so far it would have been a funeral without military honors, maybe now it can become one with military honors."

"Paris is like a pretty woman; when she gives you a smack, you don't smack back."

"French officer: Do you speak German? Choltitz: Probably better than you."

"Since Sevastopol, it has been my fate to cover the retreat of our armies and destroy the cities behind them."

"They were just a gang of riffraff. Everybody talks all the time of the "Resistance" or the "Forces Françaises de l'intérieur" as if they were organized and disciplined troops, as if they had any real authority. But they are nothing but freeshooters firing on my men. If it continues I promise you I will take tough action. I will order that Paris be defended and will destroy the city before evacuating it."

"We all share the guilt. We went along with everything, and we half-took the Nazis seriously instead of saying "to hell with you and your stupid nonsense". I misled my soldiers into believing this rubbish. I feel utterly ashamed of myself. Perhaps we bear even more guilt than these uneducated animals."

"The worst job I ever carried out - which however I carried out with great consistency - was the liquidation of the Jews. I carried out this thoroughly and entirely."

"Brennt Paris?!"

"His care and many endeavors for the well-being of the ordinary soldier at the front are to be emphasized as special characteristics of our regimental commander and he did not shy away from his warning voice when commanded by the commando."

"Just as consistently as Colonel von Choltitz forbade the execution of the commissar order (to liquidate the Soviet commissioners after captivity) in his regiment during the conquest of Sevastopol, he ordered a humane treatment of the wounded and captured Russian soldiers."

"Now you're going to Paris. The city must be utterly destroyed. On the departure of the Wehrmacht nothing must be left standing, no church, no artistic monument. Even the water supply must be cut off so that the ruined city may be prey to epidemics."

"The car stopped and a general in a magnificent uniform stepped out; he was wearing a monocle and his chest was covered with decorations. He was a most corpulent man, strong-looking with wide shoulders, extremely stiff in manner, imposing, and what seemed to me a terribly Prussian appearance. The expression on his face was hard, hislips tiht, his gestures frigid. I kept myself modestly to one side, watching this character and thinking to myself that it would not be easy to deal with him."

"Usually the undressing went smoothly. Subsequently, the Jews were taken through the "tube" to Camp III – the real extermination camp. The transfer through the "tube" proceeded as follows: one SS man was in the lead and five or six Ukrainian auxiliaries were at the back hastening the [Jews] along. The women were taken through a barrack where their hair was cut off. In Camp III the Jews were received by SS men.... As I already mentioned, the motor was then switched on by Go[t]ringer and one of the [Ukrainian] auxiliaries whose name I don't remember. Then the gassed Jews were taken out."

"I was blamed for being responsible for the death of the Jewish girls Ruth and Gisela, who lived in the so-called forester house. As it is known, these two girls lived in the forester house, and they were visited frequently by the SS men. Orgies were conducted there. They were attended by Kurt Bolender, Gomerski, Karl Ludwig, Franz Stangl, Gustav Wagner, and Steubel. I lived in the room above them and due to these celebrations could not fall asleep after coming back from a journey...."

"I cannot exclude any member of the Sobibor camp staff of taking part in the extermination operation. We were a "blood brotherhood gang" in a foreign land. We were a band of "fellow conspirators" ("verschworener Haufen") in a foreign land, surrounded by Ukrainian volunteers whom we could not trust....The bond between us was so strong that Frenzel, Stangl and Wagner had had a ring with SS runes made from five-mark pieces for every member of the permanent staff. These rings were distributed to the camp staff as a sign so that the "conspirators" could be identified. In addition the tasks in the camp were shared. Each of us had at some point carried out every camp duty in Sobibor (station squad, undressing, and gassing)."

"I estimate that the number of Jews gassed at Sobibor was about 350,000. In the canteen at Sobibor I once overheard a conversation between Frenzel, Stangl and Wagner. They were discussing the number of victims in the extermination camps of Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor and expressed their regret that Sobibor "came last" in the competition."

"Yes, This government half of which consists of men who once inspired to serve the arts is conscious of the artist role as an intermediary, this government borne out of the opposition of rationalism knows the people's inner longings, their boundless dreams to which only the artist can give form."

"There is no need for a constitution regulating the conduct of the affairs of state. One thing suffices in the National Socialist state: a fanatical will based on faith in the Fuhrer."

"National Socialism has disappeared and today it would have no chance of returning. There were no gas chambers in the concentration camps (...) only huge kitchens. Already during the war, the Allies began to fabricate false evidence of Nazi crimes. Even today, if we take the thousand richest and most powerful people in the world, we find that a significant proportion of them are Jews. The first laws, defined as Hitler's racial laws, did not restrict the rights of Jews any more than those of blacks in various US states. The British and French did not behave very differently towards their subjects in their colonies. Hitler encouraged them in every way to leave Germany."

"I interviewed Erich Priebke. For me, he was always a human being, not a monster. And I still think he was created as the “Monster of the Ardeatine” and a “victim of a justice system driven by hatred”, as I have written many times. I also think that the scene of the crowd kicking his coffin – any coffin – is disgusting. I wanted to highlight the process of media transformation of a person into a monster, beyond his responsibilities. I mean that he was never seen as a defendant, but immediately as a monster. It was a caricature of him. That said, I have always believed that the Fosse Ardeatine massacre was a crime committed by both sides. Before the reprisal, there had been a terrorist act by the gappisti, ordered by the Italian Communist Party, which wanted to incite the Romans to rise up."

"I look at the prison where he is locked up awaiting a new trial [...]. One cannot help but admire the dignity with which he accepts, more than half a century after the crime of which he is accused, the entire solemn ritual of justice. [...] It was war. And war has nothing moral about it. Why hate? [...] Drop your sticks. And respect the wounded wolves of the world."

"And if Priebke had refused to obey Kappler, he would have been a hero. But he was not Salvo D'Acquisto, he was not a hero. He was a man with the intellectual and moral depth of a servant dressed in a soldier's uniform. And I would really like to see who, among those journalists, opinion makers and television presenters who today act so tough and “beautiful souls”, would have dared in 1944 to resist an order that came directly from Adolf Hitler."

"You could say he's my friend. [...] I consider him a German citizen, a Catholic Christian, a loyal soldier. [...] And then he's the only person over 70 behind bars who is innocent. It's scandalous, scandalous how Priebke has been treated. That's the scandal in Italy, not the dignified way in which refugees are being taken in at Lampedusa. Shame on you."