Prisoners

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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!"

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

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"All wars will be settled by sea power."

"...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."

"...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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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 '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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"I was one of you."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"We simply believed."

"[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"

"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."