People From Berlin

"The Hebrew race are my most inveterate enemies at home and abroad; they remain what they are and always were: the forgers of lies and the masterminds governing unrest, revolution, upheaval by spreading infamy with the help of their poisoned, caustic, satyrical spirit. If the world once wakes up it should mete out to them the punishment in store for them, which they deserve."

"Our Christian God, the merciful, forgiving God, the personification of eternal love, our father, as Christ has taught us, had absolutely not the slightest thing in common with the vengeful bloodthirsty, angry old Jahweh of the Jews...the old Jew-God Jahweh is...identical with Satan!"

"They [Jews] belong to the Coloured Races and not the European White Race...which they intend to enervate, subjugate and destroy!"

"England, France, and Russia have conspired...to wage a war of annihilation against us."

"All the Jews needed to be expelled from the press, none of them could be allowed to work their poison in this way, one day I would see, on his restoration, what a pogrom there would then be, but of a different and more effective kind than all those in Galicia!"

"A Jew cannot be a true patriot. He is something different, like a bad insect. He must be kept apart, out of a place where he can do mischief – even by pogroms, if necessary. The Jews are responsible for Bolshevism in Russia, and Germany too. I was far too indulgent with them during my reign, and I bitterly regret the favors I showed the prominent Jewish bankers."

"The Engl[ish], French and German Jews were all in cahoots with one another. Their sole aim was to establish the Jewish domination of the world. Therefore they first had to enslave the German people completely. The Engl[ish] Prime Minister [David Lloyd George] was completely in the hands of the Jews...When a new era dawned once more in Germany the Jews would meet their fate in no uncertain terms. They had syphoned off some 80 billions out of the country. They would have to repay all of this, the government must start by demanding 15 billions immediately. They would have to forfeit everything, their art collections, their houses, all their property. They would have to be removed once and for all from all their public offices, they must be thrown completely to the ground."

"The deepest, most disgusting shame ever perpetrated by a people in history, the Germans have done onto themselves. Egged on and misled by the tribe of Juda whom they hated, who were guests among them! That was their thanks! Let no German ever forget this, nor rest until these parasites have been destroyed and exterminated from German soil! This poisonous mushroom on the German oak-tree!"

"Well, this is a strange reversal of the situation. The English are at loggerheads with the Americans. The Lansdowne Clique has coalesced with the Labour Party to obtain a swift acceptable peace for Germany. It seems that Lloyd George put pressure on him to this end. On the other hand we know that the Paris Senate has said that it will not come to the conference table to sue for peace but pursue the war with every means in its power. After your report I'll read you a confidential letter I have received from an agent in Holland...The agent...points to a possibility of coming to terms with England, which is obviously perturbed by American numerical superiority, and thinks we should have done better not to make peace overtures to America but to England...An agreement with England, to include a treaty with Japan to fling the Americans out of Europe. A European Monroe doctrine therefore to which I outlined to Hintze at Spa as the policy to be followed in future."

"The war has ended - quite differently, indeed, from how we expected. Our politicians have failed us miserably."

"But there have been those who did not want to work, but wanted to rest on their laurels. They were our enemies. We angered them through our prosperous development, our industry and science, our art and popular education, social legislation, etc. That raised our nation to a high place, and then came envy. Envy caused our opponents to fight, and so the war came over us who had no idea of it."

"I haven't had a wink of sleep since I left Wilhelmshohe. I'm gradually cracking up. The troops continue to retreat. I have lost all confidence in them."

"I see that we must strike a balance. We have nearly reached the limit of our powers of resistance. The war must be ended."

"Either Germanic ideals or Anglo-Saxon ones must prevail. Justice, freedom, honor, and virtue will triumph, or the worship of money. There can be only one victor in this struggle. German ideals are at stake!"

"[Peace] is completely impossible between Slavs and Germans...Peace with Russia can only be maintained by fear of us. The Slavs will always hate us and remain our enemies! they are only frightened of a man and they only respect him if he hits them hard! S. [see] Japan! So it will be with us, too! The Entente, if it wants, and if my diplomacy is too stupid, can always do what it likes in Russia - it has driven it into war; but our preponderance in the German area is necessary to keep Russia away from our eastern frontier once and for all; no peace with Russia, however favourable, will give us that!"

"If a British parliamentarian comes to sue for peace, he must first kneel before the imperial standard, for this is a victory of monarchy over democracy."

"The battle is won, the English have been utterly defeated."

"I will take the Duchy of Courland, I, the victor by the strength of my sword, but not from the hand of the assembly."

"The victory of the Germans over Russia was the pre-condition for the revolution, which was the pre-condition for Lenin, who was the pre-condition for Brest! The same applies in the west! First victory in the west and collapse of the Entente, then we shall make conditions which they have to accept! And they will be framed purely in accordance with our interests."

"God willing we shall be able to impose the coming peace upon our enemies, which we must do. They will only sue for peace when they have been beaten so badly that they have had enough. Once they admit to that they will have to accept a peace which takes into account the new and heavy loss of blood suffered by the German people solely as a result of their pigheadedness. The peace must – if needs be at their expense and without regard for their feelings in the future – contain such real guarantees for us that a world combination such as the present one can never again be successfully put together against us. That is to say a genuine, proper, common-or-garden peace of the kind that has so far always been signed after a victorious war. There is no place in such a peace for dreams of human happiness or humanitarian cosmopolitanism, only one's own naked self-interest and the guarantee of one's own security and greatness must count. The vanquished must submit to his fate!"

"Where my Guards appear, there is no room for democracy."

"Agreed, reject...This is the end of negotiations with America, once and for all! If Wilson wants war, let him provoke it and then have it."

"I shan't give this up again, I swear to you."

"The enemy must be vanquished completely and I will dictate the peace terms at the point of my soldiers' bayonets."

"[I myself will] never acknowledge an Englishman again for the rest of [my] life, nor wear an English Order on [my] chest. The fellows must be brought to their knees."

"The shotgun is the most immoral and reprehensible weapon to ever be deployed. We fight this war with the hopes of vanquishing these weapons from the continent."

"The population of Belgium...behaved in a diabolical, not to say bestial, manner, not one iota better than the Cossacks. They tortured the wounded, beat them to death, killed doctors and medical orderlies, fired secretly...on men harmlessly standing in the street - in fact by prearranged signal, under leadership...The King of the Belgians has to be notified at once that since his people have placed themselves outside all observance of European customs - from the frontier on, in all the villages, not only in Liege - they will be treated accordingly. Conditions for Belgium will become immensely more difficult."

"Remember that you are a chosen people! The spirit of the Lord has descended upon me, because I am Emperor of the Germans! I am the instrument of the Most High. I am His sword, His representative. Woe and death to all those who resist my will! Woe and death to those who do not believe in my mission! Woe and death to the cowards! Let them perish,—all the enemies of the German people! God demands their destruction,—God who, through my mouth, commands you to execute His will."

"With his contempt for everything civil, his contempt for the Slavs, his hatred of the Jews, his escalating fantasies of world power, he represented attitudes and ideas that were taken up, radicalized and put into practice by the National Socialists. In this respect, it is quite justified to call him a harbinger of Hitler."

"[G]ifted, with a quick understanding, sometimes brilliant, with a taste for the modern — technology, industry, science — but at the same time superficial, hasty, restless, unable to relax, without any deeper level of seriousness, without any desire for hard work or drive to see things through to the end, without any sense of sobriety, for balance and boundaries, or even for reality and real problems, uncontrollable and scarcely capable of learning from experience, desperate for applause and success — as Bismarck said early on in his life, he wanted every day to be his birthday — romantic, sentimental and theatrical, unsure and arrogant, with an immeasurably exaggerated self-confidence and desire to show off, a juvenile cadet, who never took the tone of the officers' mess out of his voice, and brashly wanted to play the part of the supreme warlord, full of panicky fear of a monotonous life without any diversions, and yet aimless, pathological in his hatred against his English mother."

"Every new publication makes the image of this weakling, coward, domineering brute and braggart, this posing dunce who plunged Germany into misfortune even more repugnant. There is not a single trait in him that could arouse sympathy or pity; he is entirely contemptible."

"I do not think there is another ruler who had better intentions than he had. He lived only for his calling—as he viewed it. All his thoughts and longings were centred round Germany. His relations, pleasures and amusements were all subservient to the one idea of making and keeping the German people great and happy, and if good will were sufficient to achieve great things William II would have achieved them."

"No one should judge the career of the Emperor William II without asking the question, "What should I have done in his position?" Imagine yourself brought up from childhood to believe that you were appointed by God to be the ruler of a mighty nation, and that the inherent virtue of your blood raised you far above ordinary mortals. Imagine succeeding in the twenties to the garnered prizes, in provinces, in power and in pride, of Bismarck's three successive victorious wars. Imagine feeling the magnificent German race bounding beneath you in ever-swelling numbers, strength, wealth and ambition; and imagine on every side the thunderous tributes of crowd-loyalty and the skilled unceasing flattery of courtierly adulation."

"The present situation arose not from temporary conflicts of interest or diplomatic combinations, but is the result of ill-will existing for years against the strength and prosperity of the German Empire. We are not pushed on by the desire of conquest; we are moved by the unbending desire to secure for ourselves and those coming after us the place on which God has put us."

"It is, of course, my first duty to do everything that is possible to preserve peace, this is only natural, considering what work The North German Lloyd is called upon to perform; for trade and commerce can only thrive and flourish when business can be conducted under sure care and protection."

"The German Empire, far from being a danger to other States, will be respected and trusted by the nations, and will remain as heretofore a mainstay of peace."

"I only wish that European peace lay in my hands. I should certainly take care it should never be disturbed."

"I lend my hand to any plan that can help to further the great cause of peace."

"I do not disguise from myself the fact that I can never make all the members of our nation equally happy and contented. But I have good hope that I shall succeed in bringing about a state of things with which all can be content who have the will to be so."

"My House has always cared for the working classes. The welfare of the working men lies near to my heart. Every subject who prefers a wish or petition has, as a matter of course, the ear of his Emperor."

"The man who breaks away from the law of beauty, the feeling for aesthetics and harmony, of which every human heart is sensible, even when it is unable to give it expression, and finds his main principle in the thought of some special tendency, some definite solution of what are rather technical problems, sins against the primary source and origin of art."

"Sculpture has still for the most part remained untouched by the so-called modern tendencies and movements. It still stands there, noble and sublime."

"I regard it as my duty, in the spirit of my parents, to hold my hand over my German people, its rising generation, to cultivate in them the sense of the beautiful, to develop in them a taste for art, but only on a definite path, only within definite limits, which lie in the feeling for beauty and harmony, that exists in the hearts of men."

"Under the much-used word freedom, and under its banner, artists often degenerate into monstrosity and exaggeration and conceit."

"Every man, however simple-minded he may be, has a feeling for what is beautiful or ugly."

"In the century to come, in spite of all new spirits and ideas, may the old loyalty to the monarchy show itself firm as a rock and as an example for other countries."

"There will come a day when Berlin will be the most beautiful city in the world."

"If civilization is to fully perform its task, it must permeate to the lowest ranks of the people."

"Why are so many of our young men led astray? Why do so many reformers of the world make their appearance with their incoherent, confused theories? Why is it that there is always so much grumbling at our Government, and why are we so often referred to foreign countries for an example? Because young men do not know how our conditions have developed, and further, that they are but the outcome of the era of the French Revolution."

"Why did the German Empire sink into decay? Because the old Empire was not founded on a strictly national basis. The idea of universal rule that underlay the Holy Roman Empire precluded a development on national German lines."