Chancellors Of Germany

"No major US ally has been spared from the president's indignities. In private, he pillories partner nations and their leaders and is not shy about doing the same in the open, as in the case of his comment about the Canadian prime minister being "very dishonest & weak," only hours after being hosted by the northern neighbor. He's done the same with France, mocking President Emmanuel Macron on Twitter for his low approval ratings and high unemployment, and with Germany, criticizing Chancellor Angela Merkel's administration for failing to reduce crime and accusing its leaders of being freeloaders that take advantage of US generosity."

"I think when she focuses on this principle of the right to asylum, she is morally and politically correct."

"One of my favorites is Angela Merkel because I think she's been an extraordinary, strong leader during difficult times in Europe, which has obvious implications for the rest of the world and, most particularly, our country... her bravery in the face of the refugee crisis is something that I am impressed by."

"Russia was now becoming a dominant factor in European diplomacy. It had copious natural resources, a large army, a nuclear arsenal and a reckless capacity for mischief-making, cyber attacks and overseas assassination. As Churchill had said in 1939, Russia might always be ‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’, but on one matter Putin was crystal clear. He did not like NATO’s encirclement of his borders or meddling within his ‘sphere of interest’. In this he had an increasingly sympathetic ear from Germany’s Angela Merkel and from some former Warsaw Pact leaders. Geography mattered. It was easy for Britain and France to play belligerence with Moscow. It was less easy for Germany and the still ingénue democracies to its east."

"We’ve discussed this topic election period after election period and every single time it was the CDU/CSU who blocked equal rights for lesbians and gays [...] Mrs. Merkel, I can’t spare you this, it was pathetic, it was embarrassing, since 2005 you have supported discrimination against lesbians and gays and done nothing to achieve equal rights."

"In recent years, key European politicians have also used language not dissimilar to Mr Brevik. Last year, Angela Merkel asserted that multikulti, or multiculturalism, had failed."

"German law takes precedence over sharia. The full face veil should be banned, wherever legally possible."

"Our interests are very much aligned. Our attempts of cooperation are very much aligned."

"I invite Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy to visit Bucha and see what the policy of concessions to Russia has led to in 14 years. To see with their own eyes the tortured Ukrainian men and women."

"Freedom is the very essence of our economy and society. Without freedom the human mind is prevented from unleashing its creative force. But what is also clear is that this freedom does not stand alone. It is freedom in responsibility and freedom to exercise responsibility."

"Even after the end of the Cold War we are […] faced with the task of tearing down the walls between different concepts of life, in other words the walls in people's minds that make it difficult time and again to understand one another in this world of ours. This is why the ability to show tolerance is so important. While, for us, our way of life is the best possible way, others do not necessarily feel that way. There are different ways to create peaceful coexistence. Tolerance means showing respect for other people's history, traditions, religion and cultural identity. But let there be no misunderstanding: Tolerance does not mean "anything goes". There must be zero tolerance towards all those who show no respect for the inalienable rights of the individual and who violate human rights."

"The Freedom Bell in Berlin is, like the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, a symbol which reminds us that freedom does not come about of itself. It must be struggled for and then defended anew every day of our lives.'"

"Nicht die Welt muss dem Iran nachweisen, dass er eine Bombe baut, sondern der Iran muss die Welt überzeugen, dass er die Atombombe nicht will."

"Some of our opponents cannot help putting ourselves in the extreme right corner in the immigration discussion just because we draw attention to the danger of parallel societies in connection with immigration. That, dear friends, is the pinnacle of mendacity, and one such hypocrisy will collapse like a house of cards in front of people. That is why we will continue to demand regulated control and limitation of immigration."

"Und so wünsche ich mir, dass die Bürgerinnen und Bürger Europas in 50 Jahren sagen werden: Damals, in Berlin, da hat das vereinte Europa die Weichen richtig gestellt. Damals, in Berlin, da hat die Europäische Union den richtigen Weg in eine gute Zukunft eingeschlagen. Sie hat anschließend ihre Grundlagen erneuert, um nach innen, auf diesem alten Kontinent, wie nach außen, in dieser einen großen-kleinen Welt, einen Beitrag zu leisten."

"Of course the tendency had been to say, 'Let's adopt the multicultural concept and live happily side by side, and be happy to be living with each other.' But this concept has failed, and failed utterly."

"History has often showed us the strength of the forces that are unleashed by the yearning for freedom. It moved people to overcome their fears and openly confront dictators such as in East Germany and Eastern Europe about 22 years ago. […] The yearning for freedom cannot be contained by walls for long. It was this yearning that brought down the Iron Curtain that divided Germany and Europe, and indeed the world, into two blocs."

"Also today, the yearning for freedom may well make totalitarian regimes tremble and fall. We have followed with great interest and empathy the profound changes in North Africa and in the Arab world. Freedom is indivisible. Each and every one has the same right to freedom, be it in North Africa or Belarus, in Myanmar or Iran. Still, the struggle for freedom is demanding far too many sacrifices, and claiming far too many victims. My thoughts are with our soldiers, our policemen, and the many, many volunteers who try to help. I humbly bow to all those who risk their lives for the cause of freedom."

"We see that living in freedom and defending freedom are two sides of one and the same coin, for the precious gift of freedom doesn’t come naturally, but has to be fought for, nurtured, and defended time and time again. Sometimes this may seem like an endless fight against windmills. But you see, my personal experience is a quite different one. What we dare not dream of today may well become reality tomorrow. Neither the chains of dictatorship nor the fetters of oppression can keep down the forces of freedom for long."

"We Are All in the Same Boat."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"It's hard to be emperor under such a chancellor."

"His speeches are among the greatest literary compositions in the German language, despite their repetitions and their clumsy, fragmentary phrases."

"Fifty years ago Bismarck was admired as the great nationalist and revolutionary; now he is held up as the man who sought to preserve Europe's traditional civilisation. Both pictures are true, though of different times. All revolutionaries become conservative once they are in power; and Bismarck had always longed for tranquillity even when he was a revolutionary."

"It would be unfair to say that Bismarck took up social welfare solely to weaken the Social Democrats; he had had it in mind for a long time, and believed in it deeply. But as usual he acted on his beliefs at the exact moment when they served a practical need. Challenge drove him forward. He first avowed his social programme when Bebel taunted him with his old friendship with Lassalle. He answered by calling himself a Socialist, indeed a more practical Socialist than the Social Democrats... The system of Social Insurance which Bismarck inaugurated in 1881 and completed in 1889 just before his fall would be enough to establish his reputation as a constructive statesman even if he had done nothing else... German social insurance was the first in the world, and has served as a model for every other civilised country."

"Bismarck had never been liberal in thought, though sometimes in action. For him the state, not the individual, was the mainspring of political action; and he did not accept the "night-watchman" theory of the state which was common to all liberals. He held that the state could lead in economic affairs, just as he had tried to take the initiative in foreign policy and not wait upon events."

"Let us celebrate Bismarck's memory by making the great idea of his life, devotion to the Fatherland, the guiding star of our own lives. Each of us in the place where he can do his best work. Each of us is responsible for helping the country rise again to that greatness for which Bismarck, who also knew an Olmuetz, prepared the way."

"The real hit of the congress was the personal tie between Bismarck and Beaconsfield. No doubt Bismarck flattered "the old Jew" in order to extract concessions for Russia's benefit. But the mutual affection was genuine. The two men recognised their common qualities... Each admired the actor in the other, and characteristically each noted the beauty of the other's voice. Both had the brooding melancholy of the Romantic movement in its Byronic phase; both had broken into the charmed circle of privilege—Bismarck as a boorish Junker, Disraeli as a Jew; both had a profound contempt for political moralising. Was it Disraeli or Bismarck who said of himself: "My temperament is dreamy and sentimental. People who paint me all make the mistake of giving me a violent expression"? Was it Disraeli or Bismarck who said on becoming prime minister: "Well, I've climbed to the top of the greasy pole"? In politics both men had used universal suffrage to ruin liberalism or, in the English phrase, "to dish the Whigs". Both genuinely advocated social reform; Disraeli had once defended protective tariffs. Both used foreign success to strengthen their position at home. When Bismarck was told of the British occupation of Cyprus, he exclaimed: "This is progress! It will be popular: a nation loves progress!" Beaconsfield was annoyed at having the words taken out of his mouth and commented sourly: "His idea of progress obviously consists in taking something from somebody else"—an idea which Beaconsfield had made the basis of Tory policy."

"I found Bismarck's personality fascinating...and he became one of the few I should like to recall from the dead."

"The sharp down-turn in the European economy in the 1870s had produced in most advanced economies save Britain a 'return to protection', marked especially by Bismarck's split with the Liberals, his imposition of protective tariffs in 1879, and the development in the Second Reich of a political economy of cartelization married to harrying the trade unions and suppressing the S.P.D. For those who wished an alternative to the British liberal state, here was one, with all its implications and consequences. Few, of course, advocated out-and-out Germanization, but increasingly Germany was coming to be regarded as the alternative model, the seed-bed for the future."

"For nearly twenty years, Bismarck preserved the peace and eased international tension with his moderation and flexibility. But he paid the price of misunderstood greatness, for his successors and would-be imitators could draw no better lesson from his example than multiplying arms and waging a war which would cause the suicide of European civilization."

"The prototype of localized imperialism is to be found in the monarchical policies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries... In the nineteenth century, Bismarck was the master of this imperialistic policy which seeks to overthrow the status quo and to establish political preponderance within self-chosen limits. The difference between such a localized imperialistic policy, continental imperialism, and unlimited imperialism is the difference between the foreign policies of Bismarck, William II, and Hitler. Bismarck wanted to establish Germany's preponderance in Central Europe; William II, in all of Europe; Hitler, in the whole world."

"Otto von Bismarck was no social reformer in the Frances Perkins mold. His motives were defensive. He feared that the public would turn to the revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels unless the German government intervened. Bismarck hoped his welfare provisions would be just generous enough to keep the public quiescent. That is a time-honored political tactic: when the Roman emperor Trajan distributed free grain, the poet Juvenal famously grumbled that citizens could be bought off by “bread and circuses.” You could tell much the same story about Italy’s welfare state, which took shape in the 1930s as the fascist Mussolini tried to undercut the popular appeal of his socialist opponents."

"The great statesman has always used tariffs deliberately. It is only when political energy is dead that people refer to them as expedients. Bismarck understood the subject at a time when the mind of the Englishman was becoming confused. Like all statesmen he asked himself first where he was going, and secondly what was his object in arriving. He knew that trade could be raised to any state of artificiality if it could be controlled within a self-sufficient unit. Although he did not possess such a unit he was not frustrated, and counted on an armed conquest at some future date... In 1834 he used Free Trade to unify Germany by the Zollverein. The same policy used Protection to encourage intensively the larger unit of the Nation. Here was an example of the use of each system according to the end in view and proof of the subservience of economics to the politic will."

"He trusted to the levelling effect of time and to the pressure exercised by the process of evolution, the steady action of which appeared more effective than an attempt to break the resistance which the individual states offered at the moment. By this policy he showed his great ability in the art of statesmanship. And, as a matter of fact, the sovereignty of the Reich has continually increased at the cost of the sovereignty of the individual states."

"In the nineteenth century, the element of choice characteristic of the policy of localized imperialism is paramount in the history of Bismarck's foreign policy. First, he had to overcome the opposition of the Prussian conservatives who favored a policy of the status quo for Prussia over Bismarck's policy of localized imperialism aiming at hegemony within Germany. When victorious wars had made Bismarck's policy feasible, it had to be defended against those who now wanted to go beyond the limits which Bismarck had set for Prussian and later German hegemony. The dismissal of Bismarck by William II in 1890 marked the end of localized and the beginning of at least a tendency toward continental imperialism as the foreign policy of Germany."

"Bismarck soars above all: he is six foot four I shd. think, proportionately stout; with a sweet and gentle voice, and with a peculiarly refined enunciation, wh. singularly and strangely contrasts with the awful things he says: appalling from their frankness and their audacity. He is a complete despot here, and from the highest to the lowest of the Prussians, and all the permanent foreign diplomacy, tremble at his frown and court most sedulously his smile. He loads me with kindnesses, and, tho' often preoccupied, with an immediate dissolution of Parliament on his hands, an internecine war with the Socialists, 100's of whom he puts daily into prison in defiance of all law, he yesterday exacted from me a promise that, before I depart, I will once more dine with him quite alone. His palace has large and beautiful gardens. He has never been out since I came here, except the memorable day when he called on me to ascertain whe[the]r my policy was an ultimatum. I convinced him it was, and the Russians surrendered a few hours afterwards."