Chancellors Of Germany

"We very deeply deplore that sentence should have been pronounced that allows of the interpretation as though our military successes were not of a kind which alone present the possibility of attained peace.... What was it that brought peace in the East? Not the talk of statesmen, not diplomatic negotiations, not diplomatic notes, not Reichstag resolutions, but "Ludendorff's Hammer," as Lloyd George has called it. The force of our army, the force of our power."

"It was with deep emotion that we read the announcement issued by the Council of Flanders at its plenary meeting of June 20, 1918, because it give expression to the fact that considerable and important sections of the Belgian people are advocating Germany's right to figure in the Belgian question, and that the voice of agitation over that which they have suffered is overtopped by the voice of consanguinity with the Teutonic race."

"I am gladly willing to use my connections to the party and the government to assure for your Imperial Highness the permission to return to Germany."

"I am delighted to inform you that in yesterday's sitting of the Cabinet it was unanimously agreed that your application of last August for authority to return to Germany should be sanctioned in principle.... While acquainting Your Imperial Highness of the Cabinet's decision, I cannot forbear expressing my own personal pleasure that this decision was given by the Cabinet on my proposal, and, as I may permit myself to add, as reached unanimously and without objection or criticism, after my statement had been heard."

"Even General Ludendorff would know that on all occasions when an appeal is made to the people, an appeal that concerns the vital interests of this land, the "Socialist Marxists" feel and vote as Germans."

"If one wants to avoid war in Europe for a long time, then one must remove the things which are unsettling to a certain extent, and they include the separation of Germany from East Prussia which in my opinion is unpolitical and is seen as oppressive. But it is not at all an immediate question and certainly not a question of war."

"International indebtedness involves not only the usual slavery of debt, but the interest of the creditor nations in the debtor country."

"Ah, gentlemen, if we had only been a little more dependent on this capital during the war, perhaps the world would have had different ideas as to how the war must end!"

"It is the policy of force which finally will always triumph. But when one has not got the force, one can also combat by the idea."

"The most important thing... is the liberation of German territory from foreign occupation. We must first get the strangler from our neck. Therefore German policy, as Metternich said of Austria—it must be after 1809—must in this respect consist first in showing finesse [finassieren] and avoiding fundamental decisions."

"The Government must not insist too much on the fact that Germany will integrally fulfil the conditions of the peace treaty. For all parties have been unanimous in considering that the treaty is unfulfillable."

"We agree to recognise Lithuanian independence on condition that the desire of the Lithuanians for a military convention and a customs, monetary and postal union with Germany, communicated to us some time ago by a Lithuanian delegation, still remains. For to be candid, the idea of full independence for these peripheral countries seems to me to be purely theoretical and impracticable.... The whole development of world politics shows that we have not only great and powerful individual countries like Germany on the one hand and Britain and France on the other, but associations of States fighting against each other.... I do not believe in Wilson's universal League of Nations, I think that after the peace it will burst like a soap bubble. Great and powerful complexes of nations with hundreds of millions of inhabitants, armies of millions of men and exports amounting to thousands of millions, will be confronting each other. In the circumstances such small fractional nationalities will not be able to exist in complete independence, without seeking to lean on one side or the other. Just as there is no independent Belgium in the sense that it gravitates towards one side or the other, so it is not possible to conceive of a completely independent Lithuania, Balticum or Poland without that provisio."

"He presented the world with a living, a struggling but also a friendly Germany; and when he enthusiastically quoted Goethe everyone felt that he was thinking of Bismarck, and felt the courage and ambition to become the Bismarck of a defeated nation.... He was Germany at the moment at which she cast aside the confusion of defeat and invested herself with the pride of a great nation."

"The Pact of Locarno was concerned only with peace in the West, and it was hoped that what was called “An Eastern Locarno” might be its successor. We should have been very glad if the danger of some future war between Germany and Russia could have been controlled in the same spirit and by similar measures as the possibility of war between Germany and France. Even the Germany of Stresemann was, however, disinclined to close the door on German claims in the East, or to accept the territorial treaty position about Poland, Danzig, the Corridor, and Upper Silesia. Soviet Russia brooded in her isolation behind the cordon sanitaire of anti-Bolshevik states. Although our efforts were continued, no progress was made in the East. I did not at any time close my mind to an attempt to give Germany greater satisfaction on her eastern frontier. But no opportunity arose during these brief years of hope."

"During this session [in 1927], Stresemann also came to luncheon, when I sat next to him. I recall chiefly his quick, clear brain, forceful character and formidable appetite. Throughout the meal he laughed often and spoke his part in a harsh voice. His bonhomie gave no inkling of the fixed purpose to restore Germany's power. Had he lived, his ambitions might have been dangerous, but he would have disclosed them carefully."

"Many people believed that the Treaty of Locarno was of importance, and Austen Chamberlain received the Order of the Garter in recognition of his services in concluding it. People believed that it had brought Germany back into the comity of nations and that it would serve as the basis of her future relations with France and England. But the Germans saw it merely as a step towards recovering the strength they needed to wage a war of revenge, and they broke its terms as soon as it suited them to do so. Their true intentions were made perfectly plain to the ex-Crown Prince of Germany at the time by Stresemann, who had signed the treaty on behalf of Germany. Later, when I came to know Grandi while he was Italian Ambassador in London and before we had driven Italy into the arms of Germany, he told me that during the Hague Conference he had seen a great deal of Stresemann and would often go back with him to his hotel after the day's work was over. Stresemann would always drink a bottle of champagne before going to bed, and in the course of one of their late conversations he said to Grandi with unusual solemnity: "I am an old man, and I am dying, but you are young and you will live to see the second Punic War." This was told to me long before the formation of the Axis or the advent of Hitler to power, and should be remembered by those who are inclined to attribute all the crimes of Germany to the Nazis."

"From the evidence that has been presented it should be abundantly clear that Stesemann supported, at times actively and always in his heart, any move on the army's part that tended to remedy Germany's military impotence. He did so partly because of all the army had meant to Germany in the past—in other words, Stresemann was a nationalist and there is ample evidence that he remained one to the end of his life; although his nationalism became more moderate and tolerant as he grew in stature. But more decisive than such personal admiration for things military in shaping Stesemann's attitude were reasons of state. Among all the various elements which determine a country's international rank, from size and geographic location to natural resources and industrial potential, the possession of a powerful army has always proved the most immediately effective. As Stresemann once put it: "The main asset [of a strong foreign policy] is material power—army and navy.""

"The picture of Stresemann that emerges from all we have said, then, is that of a great German statesman, the greater perhaps for the two-faced policy which devotion to his country and the belief in its future made him pursue, and which at the same time was so at variance with his upright character as an individual. Yet he was not the "good European," the "honest dreamer of peace and apostle of reconciliation," as he appeared to many of his contemporaries and most of his biographers. We might call him a "good European" if we thought of Europe as ending on the Vistula. Or we might say he was as good a European as Bismarck had been, the one among his predecessors to whom he has often been compared, whose concept of Realpolitik he admired, and with whom he shared the realization that politics is the art of the possible. But when all is said and done, truly good Europeans are extremely rare, and one should least expect to find them among politicians of a defeated country in an age where nationalism is still a potent force."

"This Alsace and vast tracts of Lorraine are German regions, and their inhabitants are of German blood. The tricolour may float above Strasbourg cathedral, but that imposing edifice was born of the German spirit, it has nothing in common with the French spirit; it was there that one of the greatest geniuses Germany has given the world first felt the great breath of German architecture. It all bears the impress of the German character and is animated by the German spirit. That is why we shall never forget that Alsace-Lorraine is German, that it will always belong to us in spirit and that our task will be to preserve for Germany this spiritual patrimony."

"Dr. Stresemann was generally regarded as a representative of the 'good' Germany, and Sir Austen Chamberlain and M. Briand certainly did their best to give him every chance. After Dr. Stresemann's death, however, his memoirs showed that his apparent moderation was a mere cloak under which to prepare an eventual policy of force."

"For him the only thing that mattered was the interest of the Reich."

"Mr Asquith is recorded to have warned Sir Austen Chamberlain against him as a "typical Junker"."

"For the old great, mighty Germany, which was the epitome of the yearning of our ancestors and our pride when one could still hold one's head high at being a German, is going under. One cannot say: it is long gone because it is not long at all but already it sounds to our ears like a fairy tale from a distant time."

"The renunciation of war indemnities, which has been greatly lauded in some quarters here, does not appear to me only in the shining light of the conciliation it will lead to, but, as a citizen, I also see it in the light of the colossal burdens to which Germany will be exposed if this struggle ends without war indemnities."

"It is absolutely necessary to strengthen the Government. We must have a Government that in case of necessity will shoot. Germany cannot stand Bolshevism fomenting mischief. There must be shooting. Perhaps we shall bring Noske back—he was a good man, and shot in case of necessity. Even the Majority Socialists agree that order has go to be maintained with vigour.... The truth is the German people cannot stand a President in a high hat. They think he looks peculiar at a review. They must have a military uniform with plenty of orders."

"If the allies had obliged me just one single time, I would have brought the German people behind me, yes; even today, I could still get them to support me. However, they (the allies) gave me nothing and the minor concessions they made, always came too late. Thus, nothing else remains for us but brutal force. The future lies in the hands of the new generation. Moreover, they, the German youth, who we could have won for peace and reconstruction, we have lost. Herein lies my tragedy and there, the allies' crime."

"The question of Belgium must not be detached from the complex of the Western questions as a whole. Belgium is a most valuable pledge in our hands."

"We... would nevertheless make it clear that entirely independent political structures are impossible here [in the Baltic].... They cannot lead an isolated existence between the colossi of West and East. We hope that they will seek and find this support with us. The German occupation will have to continue for a long time, lest the anarchy we have just been combating should arise again. We shall have to safeguard the position of the Germans, a position consistent with their economic and cultural achievements.... Herr Scheiddemann, said that we have made ourselves new enemies in the world through our push in the East.... Had we continued the negotiations, we should still be sitting with Herr Trotski in Brest-Litovsk. As it is, the advance has brought us peace in a few days and I think we should recognise this and not delude ourselves, particularly as regards the East, that if by resolutions made here in the Reichstag or through our Government's acceptance of the entirely welcome initiative of His Holiness the Pope, we had agreed to a peace without indemnities and annexations, we should have had peace in the East. In view of our situation as a whole, I should regard a fresh peace offer as an evil. My chief objection is against the detachment of the Belgian question from the whole complex of the question of peace. It is precisely if Belgium is not to be annexed that Belgium is the best dead pledge we hold, notably as regards England. The restoration of Belgium before we conclude peace with England seems to me an utter political and diplomatic impossibility.... There is a great difference between the first set of terms at Brest-Litovsk and the ultimatum that we have now presented, and the blame for this change rests with those who refused to come to an agreement with Germany and who, consequently, must now feel her power. We are just as free to choose between understanding and the exploitation of victory in the case of the West, and I hope that these eight or fourteen days that have elapsed between the first set of peace terms in Brest-Litovsk and the second set, may also have an educational effect in that direction."

"Nearly the entire Reichstag, including the Social Democrats, agrees that we must not allow ourselves to be deprived of the weapon of the U-boat war."

"In the West our hand of peace has reached out into empty air. The responsibility there falls on our enemies. If we have to continue the struggle, then the hearts of the people will be where the flags of the country are flying, and we hope and pray for a German victory that will bring us the peace that has been denied to us.... We thank Secretary of State von Kuehlmann and his collaborators for the tenacity and diplomatic skill with which they represented our German interests at the negotiations in Brest.... I now come to the question of the strategic demarcation of frontiers, the possible allocation of Polish territories to Germany and Prussia. My political friends are of the opinion that in the question of the strategic safeguarding of frontiers decisive importance should be attached to the voice of the Supreme Command. From our own national point of view we are not at all interested in having Polish territory added to Germany in any way.... It will be a matter for our military leaders to examine the question to what extent strategic security of our frontiers is a vital necessity to Germany. If so, we shall accept it because there is a national need for it."

"There is much sentimentality in the Fourteen Points of Wilson's peace program. As far as we are concerned the question of Alsace-Lorraine is one that we cannot discuss and it cannot even be raised at any international conference. The territorial integrity of Turkey must be maintained. The Reich Chancellor has declared that we do not seek the annexation of Belgium. However, the Flemish movement is working for independence. The Reich Government should make it its task to support this movement. With regard to the question of self-determination... it must be remembered that there is no political education in Lithuania and that from seventy to eighty per cent of the population there is illiterate.... [Poland does] not need freedom."

"The question poses itself whether we should look on with folded arms while those Germans of the Baltic countries who, despite all the persecution, all the misery and all the difficulties have stuck to the German language and German culture, are being slaughtered.... It would be incomprehensible if we, who have exerted ourselves for the freedom of ethnically foreign nations, failed to let our hearts beat first of all for the Balts, who are our own flesh and blood.... If to-day you go to Riga or Mitau, you will be confronted by such a pure, unadulterated Germanism that sometimes you would wish it could be united with Germany.... When, in addition to Courland, we have also occupied Latvia and Estonia, then I hope that the day will also come when this old German soil will lie under the protection of the great Reich.... This does not mean annexation of these territories. But it does mean a free Baltic in close dependence on Germany, under our military, moral, political, and cultural protection. I think it would be one of the finest aims of this world war if we could merge this piece of loyal Germanism with ourselves as intimately as it desires to be merged.... The Baltic Germans have completely preserved their German culture: a shining example for the Americanized grandchildren of German grandfathers."

"We are not continuing the war for the sake of theoretical plans of conquest. It will and must bring the necessary guarantees for Germany's future, which cannot consist in a League of Nations by the grace of Wilson, but only in real guarantees. I close with the words of Hindenburg: "The times are hard, but victory is certain.""

"Napoleon once compared England with Carthage. Carthage sank down from her height. England also can sink and will sink. For on our side is the true right and on our side the might to strike the blow at her heart, if we understand how to exploit the hour."

"We also concur with the Reich Chancellor's program as regards the Flemish people. However, the Belgian question also has an important political aspect. If Belgium is not to become a glacis for our enemies again, then not only must the status quo ante be precluded, but Germany's military, political and economic supremacy must be guaranteed."

"The restoration of German vitality is not guaranteed by the status quo ante. It will also be necessary to make territorial changes; don't let us hamper our statesmen with assertions to the effect that the German people do not want this."

"We must become so strong and must so ruthlessly weaken our opponents that no enemy will ever dare to attack us again. To achieve this a modification of frontiers in the west as in the east is essential."

"From Antwerp to Baghdad there lies before us a large economic field in which German enterprise can develop. If we succeed in translating into reality the idea of a Central European customs agreement, which is in the air, and to which at one time Friedrich List in Germany and a man like Schäffle in Vienna devoted their energies, then the way to an understanding may be left open—and a large economic area opposed to Chamberlain's Greater Britain and the power of the United States, which would afford sufficient space for the co-existence and co-operation of the German and Austro-Hungarian national economies through the exchange of goods and through an advance towards Asia Minor, which the policy of Emperor William II has indicated and upon which German enterprise has already started through the grandiose project of the Baghdad Railway."

"We see the strongest guarantee of peace for Europe in a policy of expansion. When have we exploited the embarrassments of other peoples? When Russia was at war with Japan, the Tsar was able to take his last regiment away from our frontier. We did not regard Morocco as an object of war, we looked on while East Africa was divided, while France was creating a great colonial empire of Tunis, Algiers and Morocco, while Italy occupied Tripolis, while Persia was divided between Britain and Russia into two spheres of interest—the world could always rely on the German Kaisers and the German people's love of peace. And what thanks have we had? A world of enemies.... When one awakens in this way from a beautiful dream one must not follow that dream again, must not in future believe that renunciation of a world policy will be a guarantee of permanent freedom. They grudged us the right to economic development. We thank the Chancellor for what he said yesterday concerning our security in the East and West."

"The conquest of Riga is of the greatest importance not only from the military, but also form the political point of view.... Our military situation was never more glorious than it is at present. Meanwhile, there is also the U-boat war, which is taking its course. The destruction of enemy tonnage that was expected of it on the basis of official predictions, has not only been achieved, but partly exceeded by more than half.... Time is working for us. Britain to-day is fighting the war with a watch in her hand, and it is in this that I see the fundamentally decisive effect of the U-boat weapon for us and the approach of peace.... If we are to achieve anything through compromise and understanding, then the Government must not be forced to make any statements renouncing something from the outset. For this reason the tactics by which it has been and is still being tried to make the Government declare its disinterestedness in Belgium, are wrong. Even those who share the attitude of Herr Scheidemann ought to fight for the last stone in Belgium, in order to exploit to the utmost that which possession has made into a dead pledge.... However, the fact that we are going to have peace—and, we hope, soon—will in my conviction be due, apart from our military achievements, to the effects of unrestricted U-boat warfare, of which I have repeatedly said before the Main Committee that while I reject the formula that it will force Britain to her knees, I believe as firmly in the formula that it will force Britain to the conference table."

"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."

"The world is listening with bated breath to the struggle which to-day is rending the peoples of Europe to pieces. The knowledge that England is our chief enemy in this struggle is altogether good. 'On thine island, envious England, thou art the fundamental enemy.' The present world war may, in future, be described as the most gigantic economic struggle of all time. Economic in its origin, through British jealousy of the amazing development of German national and world economy, it has essentially also become a struggle waged with economic weapons and will be continued in the economic field even when the military weapons are silenced."

"We ask you to be convinced that millions of Germans with us, even under the new conditions... will adhere to the monarchic idea and will stand against any undignified estrangement (Abkehr) from the august ideals of the German Emperordom and Prussian Kingdom."

"Despite all the obscuration of history and all the incomplete diplomatic documents... and despite all the recent systematic endeavours to represent Russia as the incendiary of the world war, those who have carefully followed the economic struggle between Britain and Germany for a long time will not in the least depart from the view that this war is in the first place an economic war between Germany and Britain and that—even though the external cause of the outbreak of war may have lain in St. Petersburg—the inward cause was Britain's jealousy of Germany's world economy."

"Great Germany can only be created on a republican basis."

"The era of Schmidt and of his East German counterpart, Erich Honecker, Party Chief from 1971 and Chairman of the Council of State from 1976 to 1989, led to a sober, measured rapprochement and a resolution of relations between the two states. The West Germans sought to foster a German-German community of responsibility against the background of a reduction in international tension. Uneasiness in the early 1980s about the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in West Germany was a product of these attitudes. Nevertheless, as part of this community of responsibility, concern within West Germany about the plight of East Germans, let alone support for reunification, markedly declined, reflecting the extent to which the Germans had also been major players in creating the reality of two separate nations. There was no real West German support for the citizens’ rights movements in East Germany. Instead, stabilisation was more significant as a goal. The easing of relations thus entailed an acceptance of the governing system in Eastern Europe, for example of the suppression of the Czech Spring in 1968. East Germany, recognised for the first time as a state by much of the world in 1973, was admitted to the United Nations and other international bodies."

"Had Brandt not taken the lead in ‘normalisation’, other powers would probably have done so. At the same time, West German governmental and, to some degree, public complicity in the East German regime increased alongside engagement with it. This complicity was displayed both by Brandt’s SPD successor, Helmut Schmidt, the Chancellor from 1974 to 1982, and by the latter’s CDU replacement from 1982, Helmut Kohl. Complicity, however, may be an inappropriate as well as harsh judgment, as little would have been achieved by upholding the Hallstein Doctrine and continuing to refuse to enter into dialogue with East Germany. Moreover, the change in policy brought real relief in the form of visiting rights and family reunifications, not to mention buying ‘regime opponents’ out of jail."

"Helmut Schmidt continues to speak of a sense of duty, predictability, feasibility, firmness [...] These are secondary virtues. Simply put precise:.. So you can also run a concentration camp with them."

"Science and future, that is a contradiction."

"It seems to me that the German people can - pointedly - tolerate 5 percent price increase better than 5 percent unemployment."