First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
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"[opening narration] Adolf Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939, starting World War II. By the winter of 1942, his armies were freezing and starving in the snows of Russia, where his best general had died of a heart attack, and America had entered the war. For the first time, Hitler's dream of a German empire that would last a thousand years was in doubt. While he hired and fired generals and the winter grew colder, fifteen of his officials were ordered from their commands and ministries to meet at a quiet lakeside house in Wannsee in Berlin, far from the crisis at the front. In two hours, these men changed the world forever. Only one record of what was said and done here survives from the wreckage of what was "the Thousand-Year Reich"."
"[closing narration] Colonel Eichmann carefully edited the stenotype record of the conference. Copies were distributed to the participants to be read, and then destroyed. General Heydrich flew back to his headquarters in Czechoslovakia, where in a few terrible weeks, he had earned the nickname "the Butcher of Prague". In the spring, two Czech patriots, trained to assassinate him and dropped from a British bomber, succeeded in wounding him. In reprisal, thousands of Czechs were rounded up and shot. Heydrich's wounds grew infected, he fell into a coma and died. Eichmann, as Heydrich's deputy for Jewish affairs, was left to finish what they had begun at Wannsee. He considered it a matter of honor."
"Today, each of us becomes a bearer of secrets."
"All of Europe, England, from Lapland to Libya, from Vladivostok to Belfast, no Jews. Not one."
"We will not sterilize every Jew and wait for them to die. We will not sterilize every Jew and then exterminate the race. That's farcical. Dead men don't hump, dead women don't get pregnant. Death is the most reliable form of sterilization, put it that way."
"The machinery is waiting — feed it. Get them on the trains, keep the trains rolling, and history will honor us for having the will and the vision to advance the human race to greater purity in a space of time so short Charles Darwin would be astonished."
"This meeting is not taking place. You are to take no further phone calls from anyone - at all - unless the Führer calls. [long pause] And he won't."
"[to Dr. Klopfer, when asked about how he can speak "Jewish"] Well, I lived among them, I worked among them, and I picked up a few words; Jewish, Yiddish, not enough to speak. So I went in search of a rabbi. Rabbi means "teacher", I came to find out. Look, may I tell you the Lord's honest truth? So many of our highest-ranking officers, whose responsibility it is to deal with the Israelites, they make no attempt to get inside the Jewish head. I went to visit this rabbi - old man, long beard - in his one-room flat. And when he saw me, his eyes grew as large as hen's eggs. I asked him to teach me his language, and he agreed. He said that he would, but that he would charge me, of course. I applied to my commander for funds, and I was denied; now, I've run into this opposition all my life, so I paid my own money. Very little, not much. And he taught me some vocabulary, letters of the alphabet. But looking back, I realize it was poor judgment on my part, because I could have so easily had the old man arrested, put into prison, and demanded lessons from him, in his cell, free of charge. One day, he had gone out, and was rounded up and shipped off, because he had gone out unadvisedly. And I thought, that's so stupid... why are they so stupid? Didn't he know that I would have protected him? [pause] At least until my lessons were complete."
"Now, last summer Reichsführer Himmler asked me to visit a camp up in Upper Silesia, called Auschwitz, which is very well isolated, and close to significant rail access. And we are turning that camp into a major center, solid structures, and here's where your Jewish labor comes into play, Herr Neumann: the Jews haul the bricks and they build the buildings themselves. And when the structures are complete, we expect to be able to process 2500... an hour. Not a day, an hour."
"[to Dr. Meyer, regarding the Russians] The Russian is not a communist, my friend. The Russian does not give a damn who runs things. I have lived amongst them. The Russian only cares he has a bottle of vodka to suck and some form of domestic animal life to fuck, then he will happily sit in shit his whole life. That is his politics. I know those people. That is the distinction; I absolve the Jews of that!"
"The Jews go in red and come out pink. Now that is progress!"
"Kenneth Branagh - Reinhard Heydrich"
"Stanley Tucci - Adolf Eichmann"
"Colin Firth - Wilhelm Stuckart"
"David Threlfall - Wilhelm Kritzinger"
"Ian McNeice - Gerhard Klopfer"
"Barnaby Kay - Rudolf Lange"
"Ben Daniels - Joseph Bühler"
"Kevin McNally - Martin Luther"
"Jonathan Coy - Erich Neumann"
"Ewan Stewart - Georg Leibbrandt"
"Brian Pettifer - Alfred Meyer"
"Nicholas Woodeson - Otto Hofmann"
"Brendan Coyle - Heinrich Müller"
"Owen Teale - Roland Freisler"
"Peter Sullivan - Karl Eberhard Schöngarth"
Young though he was, his radiant energy produced such an impression of absolute reliability that Hedgewar made him the first sarkaryavah, or general secretary, of the RSS.
- Gopal Mukund Huddar
Largely because of the influence of communists in London, Huddar's conversion into an enthusiastic supporter of the fight against fascism was quick and smooth. The ease with which he crossed from one worldview to another betrays the fact that he had not properly understood the world he had grown in.
Huddar would have been 101 now had he been alive. But then centenaries are not celebrated only to register how old so and so would have been and when. They are usually celebrated to explore how much poorer our lives are without them. Maharashtrian public life is poorer without him. It is poorer for not having made the effort to recall an extraordinary life.
I regret I was not there to listen to Balaji Huddar's speech [...] No matter how many times you listen to him, his speeches are so delightful that you feel like listening to them again and again.
By the time he came out of Franco's prison, Huddar had relinquished many of his old ideas. He displayed a worldview completely different from that of the RSS, even though he continued to remain deferential to Hedgewar and maintained a personal relationship with him.