The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

by William L. Shirer

The Fuehrer thanked Chamberlain for his words and told him that he had similar hopes. As he had already stated several times, the Czech problem was the last territorial demand which he had to make in Europe.

It wasn’t that the “conspirators” missed the bus; they never arrived at the bus station to try to catch it.

“The victor,” he had told them, “will not be asked afterward whether he told the truth or not. In starting and waging a war it is not right that matters, but victory.”

It was symbolic of the brief Polish campaign. Horses against tanks!

But Nazism did not thrive in the fertile democratic soil of Norway.

Egomania, that fatal disease of all conquerors, was taking hold.

Hitler’s triumph over the Prussian officer corps was thus completed. The former Vienna vagabond and ex-corporal was now head of state, Minister of War, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and Commander in Chief of the Army.

“Fate,” as Speidel observed apropos of this vacillating general, “does not spare the man whose convictions are not matched by his readiness to give them effect.”