People Of Nazi Germany

"I interviewed Erich Priebke. For me, he was always a human being, not a monster. And I still think he was created as the “Monster of the Ardeatine” and a “victim of a justice system driven by hatred”, as I have written many times. I also think that the scene of the crowd kicking his coffin – any coffin – is disgusting. I wanted to highlight the process of media transformation of a person into a monster, beyond his responsibilities. I mean that he was never seen as a defendant, but immediately as a monster. It was a caricature of him. That said, I have always believed that the Fosse Ardeatine massacre was a crime committed by both sides. Before the reprisal, there had been a terrorist act by the gappisti, ordered by the Italian Communist Party, which wanted to incite the Romans to rise up."

"And if Priebke had refused to obey Kappler, he would have been a hero. But he was not Salvo D'Acquisto, he was not a hero. He was a man with the intellectual and moral depth of a servant dressed in a soldier's uniform. And I would really like to see who, among those journalists, opinion makers and television presenters who today act so tough and “beautiful souls”, would have dared in 1944 to resist an order that came directly from Adolf Hitler."

"I look at the prison where he is locked up awaiting a new trial [...]. One cannot help but admire the dignity with which he accepts, more than half a century after the crime of which he is accused, the entire solemn ritual of justice. [...] It was war. And war has nothing moral about it. Why hate? [...] Drop your sticks. And respect the wounded wolves of the world."

"National Socialism has disappeared and today it would have no chance of returning. There were no gas chambers in the concentration camps (...) only huge kitchens. Already during the war, the Allies began to fabricate false evidence of Nazi crimes. Even today, if we take the thousand richest and most powerful people in the world, we find that a significant proportion of them are Jews. The first laws, defined as Hitler's racial laws, did not restrict the rights of Jews any more than those of blacks in various US states. The British and French did not behave very differently towards their subjects in their colonies. Hitler encouraged them in every way to leave Germany."

"You could say he's my friend. [...] I consider him a German citizen, a Catholic Christian, a loyal soldier. [...] And then he's the only person over 70 behind bars who is innocent. It's scandalous, scandalous how Priebke has been treated. That's the scandal in Italy, not the dignified way in which refugees are being taken in at Lampedusa. Shame on you."

"There is no need for a constitution regulating the conduct of the affairs of state. One thing suffices in the National Socialist state: a fanatical will based on faith in the Fuhrer."

"Yes, This government half of which consists of men who once inspired to serve the arts is conscious of the artist role as an intermediary, this government borne out of the opposition of rationalism knows the people's inner longings, their boundless dreams to which only the artist can give form."

"I was blamed for being responsible for the death of the Jewish girls Ruth and Gisela, who lived in the so-called forester house. As it is known, these two girls lived in the forester house, and they were visited frequently by the SS men. Orgies were conducted there. They were attended by Kurt Bolender, Gomerski, Karl Ludwig, Franz Stangl, Gustav Wagner, and Steubel. I lived in the room above them and due to these celebrations could not fall asleep after coming back from a journey...."

"I estimate that the number of Jews gassed at Sobibor was about 350,000. In the canteen at Sobibor I once overheard a conversation between Frenzel, Stangl and Wagner. They were discussing the number of victims in the extermination camps of Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor and expressed their regret that Sobibor "came last" in the competition."

"I cannot exclude any member of the Sobibor camp staff of taking part in the extermination operation. We were a "blood brotherhood gang" in a foreign land. We were a band of "fellow conspirators" ("verschworener Haufen") in a foreign land, surrounded by Ukrainian volunteers whom we could not trust....The bond between us was so strong that Frenzel, Stangl and Wagner had had a ring with SS runes made from five-mark pieces for every member of the permanent staff. These rings were distributed to the camp staff as a sign so that the "conspirators" could be identified. In addition the tasks in the camp were shared. Each of us had at some point carried out every camp duty in Sobibor (station squad, undressing, and gassing)."

"Usually the undressing went smoothly. Subsequently, the Jews were taken through the "tube" to Camp III – the real extermination camp. The transfer through the "tube" proceeded as follows: one SS man was in the lead and five or six Ukrainian auxiliaries were at the back hastening the [Jews] along. The women were taken through a barrack where their hair was cut off. In Camp III the Jews were received by SS men.... As I already mentioned, the motor was then switched on by Go[t]ringer and one of the [Ukrainian] auxiliaries whose name I don't remember. Then the gassed Jews were taken out."

"Since Sevastopol, it has been my fate to cover the retreat of our armies and destroy the cities behind them."

"Even today, I can not say with certainty whether he himself believed in his words or whether he was knowingly deceiving those around him to urge him to keep to the end."

"Have you read Churchill's speech? Appalling beyond all words! A Jewish brigade to go to Germany! Then the French will take the west and the Poles the east. The hate in that speech! I am completely shattered."

"French officer: Do you speak German? Choltitz: Probably better than you."

"They were just a gang of riffraff. Everybody talks all the time of the "Resistance" or the "Forces Françaises de l'intérieur" as if they were organized and disciplined troops, as if they had any real authority. But they are nothing but freeshooters firing on my men. If it continues I promise you I will take tough action. I will order that Paris be defended and will destroy the city before evacuating it."

"Ever since our enemies have refused to listen to and obey our Führer, the whole war has gone badly."

"I was at Stalingrad, you know... And from that time onwards I have done nothing but manoeuvre to escape encirclement by the enemy: retreat on retreat, defeat upon defeat. And here I am in marvellous Paris. What do you think is going to happen now?"

"I asked the Field Marshal von Manstein if he would take part in the actions against Hitler. Manstein was sitting in a chair and reading the Bible. Quick, almost embarrassed, he put it aside and covered it with some papers."

"Oh, Field Marshal, so far it would have been a funeral without military honors, maybe now it can become one with military honors."

"No doubt: I was in front of a madman. The awareness that the existence of our people was in the hands of an insane person, unable to dominate the situation [...] weighed on me with all its strength."

"If for the first time I had disobeyed, it was because I knew that Hitler was insane."

"I stood in front of him and I saw an old, stooped, bloated man with gray, slick hair, barely standing on his legs."

"I am a soldier. I get orders. I execute them."

"He was trembling all over and the desk on which he was leaning shook. He was bathed in perspiration and became more agitated."

"Paris is like a pretty woman; when she gives you a smack, you don't smack back."

"Now you're going to Paris. The city must be utterly destroyed. On the departure of the Wehrmacht nothing must be left standing, no church, no artistic monument. Even the water supply must be cut off so that the ruined city may be prey to epidemics."

"The worst job I ever carried out - which however I carried out with great consistency - was the liquidation of the Jews. I carried out this thoroughly and entirely."

"We all share the guilt. We went along with everything, and we half-took the Nazis seriously instead of saying "to hell with you and your stupid nonsense". I misled my soldiers into believing this rubbish. I feel utterly ashamed of myself. Perhaps we bear even more guilt than these uneducated animals."

"Gentlemen, you are the leaders of the best soldiers in the world. I will give you five or six of my own men; we will cover your back with sustained barrage fire to protect you while you cross the rue de Rivoli. All you need to do is force open a door to fight your way to the tapestry."

"Brennt Paris?!"

"The car stopped and a general in a magnificent uniform stepped out; he was wearing a monocle and his chest was covered with decorations. He was a most corpulent man, strong-looking with wide shoulders, extremely stiff in manner, imposing, and what seemed to me a terribly Prussian appearance. The expression on his face was hard, hislips tiht, his gestures frigid. I kept myself modestly to one side, watching this character and thinking to myself that it would not be easy to deal with him."

"His care and many endeavors for the well-being of the ordinary soldier at the front are to be emphasized as special characteristics of our regimental commander and he did not shy away from his warning voice when commanded by the commando."

"Just as consistently as Colonel von Choltitz forbade the execution of the commissar order (to liquidate the Soviet commissioners after captivity) in his regiment during the conquest of Sevastopol, he ordered a humane treatment of the wounded and captured Russian soldiers."

"In any case, legal tools must be created so that all these activities or enterprises that are directed against the national health in a physical or intellectual way may be suppressed. The same is true of the exploitation of the distress of the population through profiteering and usury."

"But for National Socialism with this demand for social justice stands and falls the question of destiny for the German people, whether the German people can find its way to a noble nation, or whether it will eke out a miserable life in degradation and corruption as a fellaheen nation."

"But that the state in general sees as right the sole means of accepting interest-bearing loans - thus debts, when it needs money and applies its other sovereign rights today only in an underhand manner to collect the incurred debts from the people, these are conditions for which one seeks in vain for a reasonable explanation. There is indeed no reasonable explanation for it, but only the fact that our entire thought even in national financial political matters is directed or corrupted in a private capitalistic manner."

"Our anti-Mammonistic battle, which is ranged above the other two battle-fronts, is directed against the world-encompassing financial power, that is, against the permanent financial and economic bleeding and exploitation of our people through large loan capital. This battle however is, on the other hand, also a powerful intellectual struggle against the soul-destroying materialistic spirit of egoism and avarice with all its concomitant corrupting manifestations in all fields of our public, economic and cultural life."

"National Socialism like Anti-Semitism glimpses in the Jewish-materialistic spirit the primary root of the evil, but it also knows that this most powerful battle of world-history cannot remain standing in purely negative anti-Semitic demands, therefore the entire national- and economic programme of National Socialism rises far above the certainly ground-breaking but negative anti-Semitic battle by positively giving a creative constructive image of how the National Socialist state of work and performance should look. If this main goal is reached, then the National Socialist Party will be dissolved."

"The interest slavery of the nation means the rule of the bank and stock-exchange. The breaking of interest slavery is by far the greatest task of National Socialism."

"Removal of the housing shortage through comprehensive new housing buildings throughout the Reich by means of the new non-profit Construction and Economic Bank to be created according to Art. 21."

"Generous development of old age insurance through nationalisation of the life-annuity system. To every needy German national comrade an adequate pension will be guaranteed from a certain age or in the case of a premature occurrence of permanent inability to earn a living."

"Suppression of all harmful influences in literature and the press, stage, art and cinema."

"The introduction of a year of compulsory work for every German."

"Nationalisation of the Reichsbank Pub. Ltd. Co., and the central banks."

"But the capitalist idea of profitability actually becomes an economic nonsense in the branches of our economy that today rule everything, in the banking and stock-exchange system. The fact of the ruling position of the banks proves most strikingly the economic senselessness of the capitalist idea. With the ‘productions’ of the banks and stock-exchanges never yet has a child been fed, never yet has a freezing person been clothed, in general never has even the smallest requirement that is necessary for life been supplied."

"Our anti-Marxist battle is directed against the state-disintegrating doctrine of the Jew Karl Marx, against the people-disintegrating doctrine of class-struggle, against the economy-disintegrating doctrine of the denial of private property and against the purely economic materialistic conception of history."

"The interest capitalistic inflation however is like a devouring fire which is not extinguished until it has consumed all the treasures of the world and made the whole of mankind interest-slaves of international finance—or until the interest slavery is broken."

"Usury and racketeering, as well as ruthless enrichment at the cost and harm of the people, will be punished with death."

"The idea of interest on loans is the diabolical invention of big loan-capital; it alone makes possible the lazy drone's life of a minority of tycoons at the expense of the productive peoples and their work-potential."