Day of No Return Quotes

“We shall have no leaders left before long!” the pastor cried bitterly. “We are not abandoned,” the doctor told him quietly. “Neither is one man indispensable, however much we may mourn him personally. Each of us does as much as he can and when he disappears someone else finds the courage to take his place.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“Leopold Wilhelm Bernhard was born June 15, 1915 in Berlin, Germany, to parents from two old and well- known German families. His mother, Franziska, was a Bokelmann of Lubeck, of an aristocratic line with university educations, MDs, etc.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“For two months I did attend the American services and I heard the Thanksgiving declaration of the American President read, and in the free discussions after the service I listened with amazement to excerpts from the speeches of American senators, or the editorials from some great newspaper. The freedom of language was almost shocking to me. In Germany we had so long been walled in by fear we had learned to set so close a guard upon our tongues that it was actually frightening to hear the openness of uncensored speech.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“This was in the year 1937. There was no escaping the fast-moving trend of events. There was not even an opportunity to protest against them. You could only watch and be swept along. I found the increased taxes and the incessant demands for “donations” by the party a heavy drain on my slender purse.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“He requested an opportunity to address the Officer Corps in Berlin, and General von Fritsch, who was in command at the time, agreed but only on condition that Rosenberg would refrain from attacking the Church in his talk. The newspapers the next day announced that he had made an impressive address, but all Berlin was buzzing with the true story. Rosenberg had broken his promise and had flung his customary accusations against the Church. Fritsch, followed by his entire Officer Corps, had risen and walked out, leaving Dr. Rosenberg an empty auditorium in which to fulminate. Rosenberg’s book, The Myth of the 20th Century, had become the Nazi bible. It was the book of the Hero-cult, of state worship, of the theory that the Nordic blood is divine; its pages were full of foul invective against the Lutherans, the Catholics, and the Jews. In 1935, the Bruederrat published a series of papers assailing The Myth of the 20th Century, refuting its absurdities in clear language and opening fire on the very heart of the Nazi beliefs. These papers were widely disseminated although the government made frantic efforts to confiscate them. It is probable that no copies of any of these papers exist in the United States, since it was too dangerous––rather, it was impossible––to bring them out of Germany.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“The Nazis had adopted similar tactics all over Germany. The hour for religious teaching in the schools had become no longer available. It was used for physical exercises or for the teaching of “Aryan blood” theories. The German Christians had been set to work upon the children.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“In America there seems to be a widespread supposition that German soldiers always goosestep. This is not only a mistake; it would be an impossibility. The goosestep is a tribute and is performed before those of higher rank, and always when troops pass in review before the head of the government. The step is not a simple lifting of the leg stiffly and high on the upswing. It is a muscular feat that takes at the least three months of practice to acquire, and it requires a great physical effort and is a tremendous strain. Two hundred feet of goosestepping are all that the best”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“From the southern windows of the university that look out on Unter den Linden could be seen the small dome of the monument to the Unknown Soldier. I stood with Erich Doehr one afternoon in April of 1934 at a high window, looking down upon it and upon the briskly moving traffic and the pedestrians with which the mile-wide square teemed. Everywhere your eye moved it caught sight of a uniform.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“The house filled rapidly; cheerful talk overflowed the rooms and children were bobbing in and out everywhere with their shining new toys, until finally, at a very late hour, we all sat down to the Christmas dinner, before the huge, crisp and crackling brown body of the Christmas goose. Everything but the holiday was forgotten. That was the last night I remember, in the years in which I was to remain in Germany, over which no shadow fell.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“He is the King of kings; He is the Lord of lords and His dominion is over the whole world. It is of Him the prophet said, ‘and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of peace––and the government shall be upon His shoulder.’ The earth and the heavens are God’s house, for He has made them, and the center in His house is Christ, who must be worshiped before all. Let no man claim a share of that reverence, for He tolerates no idol before Him.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“The text we shall consider this morning,” he said clearly and with a cutting edge to his voice, “is found in the twenty-first chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, in the thirteenth verse. ‘My house shall be called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.’” A gasp went over the auditorium as if a quick wind had stirred through dry leaves. He turned and his big hand pointed above the banks of massed flags to the shining slenderness of the Crucifix, high before the people’s eyes. In a clarion tone he cried: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” Then his voice sank to solemnity.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“There must have been a number of ballots marked ‘no,’” he said. “But if there were, they were simply discarded. Only the ‘yes’ ballots counted in the official vote.” His wry young face wrinkled with distress.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“I will tell you what I believe,” he said with simplicity. “I am an artist, and I believe that art is something that comes alive in the eyes that look and in the hearts that feel of people everywhere. It is like religion, my friend. It is not killed by being shut up or put away. The ones who think they have got rid of something by covering it up are the ones who are mistaken. They can destroy neither your belief nor mine by shutting them away in their nationalist attics, and some day, to their dismay, they will find that out.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“All right, Father. Those are their aims, of course. But can’t you see that the Nazis are not promoting them in any such rational way? They talk about their new form of government as divinely appointed, as if it had come into existence as an act of God. They aren’t pushing the political program of a party. Their acts are all cloaked in a religious fervor––the people must accept them as they accept religious laws, without doubt … Nothing else can be right.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“Nazism was itself becoming a religion.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“The suddenness of these changes, together with the Germanic instinct of obedience, caused them to be accepted passively. It was hard to say at the moment whether the new plans would turn out well or not. When systematized persecutions began to grow they were met with this same passivity, but here the desire for self-preservation played a large part. If your neighbor’s house rang with cries of terror during the night, if you saw a Jew dragged from his shop and beaten, still it was not happening to you and your acquiescence might be the price of your own safety.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“And he went on in his quiet voice with his eloquent interpretation of the ancient words: “For what if some did not believe? Shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid. Yea, let God be true, but every man a liar.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“Then one day the entire student body was summoned to a meeting, where we were to be addressed by Bernhard Rust, the grade-school teacher who had been named Minister of Culture and Education for Prussia. We were not invited, as had always been the custom; we were commanded to appear. I had a lecture at the same hour which I very much wished to attend, the class above all that I most enjoyed, but I decided to be prudent and go to the student body meeting. My individualism did not take the form of setting myself apart from the crowd by nonconformist action; I had no taste for notoriety and I did not see any point in encountering needless trouble.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“All political discussion is forbidden,” he snapped. “What price our free citizenship now?” said one of the boys to me as the group broke up. Our lively discussions had been the basis of our whole university life. Now a strange paralysis lay upon the great halls, and the aggressive thinking that had characterized our days had no more voice. This silence that had been imposed on us was something so new, so removed from all our tradition, that we hardly knew how to face it. Even the Nazi doctrines were not allowed to be debated. The supremacy of the Nordic race, anti-Semitism, the importance of the state and the unimportance of the individual were not to be discussed. They were to be learned and adopted.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“I have often wondered since if anything could have stemmed the tide at that time. The students saw in the Nazi promises a rising of Germany to her old power and glory. In Berlin, where patriotism had always been strong and the political sentiment conservative, the dream of a rejuvenated Germany turned their eyes and their hopes toward the coming movement. The professors were not so easily persuaded and tried to warn us that dangers lurked in the strong nationalistic and anti-Semitic theories of the Nazis, but great numbers refused to listen to them and there was a tremendous ferment among the student body.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“Under the Republic dueling was forbidden, but it was not in the German character to forego a custom so dear to our young fire-eaters and the authorities usually closed their eyes to the affairs. I attended one of Rudolph’s duels at a little beer hall near the university one evening. This was not to be a friendly Mensur but a duel with sabers, for Rudolph had happily managed to get himself grossly insulted. The heavy swords were ready, the opponents were just preparing to strip off their shirts when the outer door opened and in walked three stalwart members of the police. We all looked at them guiltily and Rudolph’s face grew as long as a hound’s, for he had been counting eagerly on this fight. The leader of the police came over to our table and bowed to us. “Gentlemen,” he observed gravely, “we have been notified that you are conducting a duel. We shall come to investigate. We shall be here in half an hour.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“In such an atmosphere discussion filled all of our time that was not spent over our books. The professors held open house at their homes for the students who attended their seminars, which were in themselves advanced classes for discussion; a topic would be announced and the talk would continue through a blue haze of tobacco smoke into the small hours––after which we would relax for supper and for music. These evenings provided almost our sole social diversion. We were not at the university to play but to learn, and after a lecture in the classroom we would form little groups, gathering on the grounds or hunting empty seminar rooms and arguing excitedly for hours. These gatherings had a name. They were called the Steh-Convent, which can be translated with approximate accuracy as the “standing convention,” and for them we always sought out acquaintances with whom we vigorously disagreed.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“I found myself rapidly revising my earlier political impressions. I saw that Germany was not a democracy in anything more than name, that there had been no clear vision of a new form of government nor yet a sufficient impression made upon the people of their responsibility in giving the Republic a purpose and a direction. Too many old forms had been held over from the monarchy. Too many special interests were using the new Republic to serve their own ends. But it was not easy to orient myself at once. There were as many shades of political opinion in evidence as there are colors in a line of drying wash. The Communists were extremely noisy, but the one group which was garnering large numbers of adherents among the students was the new National Socialist party, led by a remarkable orator named Adolf Hitler.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“At the time of my matriculation at Berlin political issues were in an uproar. One professor after another was attacking the Republic for its blunders. To many of them it appeared that our present leaders had misapprehended almost totally the vital potentialities of democratic government; they made direct demands upon the government for action. It required courage for the professors to enter into conflict with the powers who governed their appointments and paid their salaries. In my first year at the university a number of men were dismissed from their posts, martyrs to their convictions.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“This citizenship was quite literal and conveyed enormous privileges. The universities of Germany were, and I use the past tense with sorrow, powerful institutions in their own right who owed no obedience to the laws governing other civil organizations. They made and enforced their own rules. Police or even government officials were forbidden to so much as enter the university grounds except upon the invitation of the rector. To be a student in a university was to belong to a group which exercised a great formative power upon the life of the nation. Social trends were formed there and political doctrines originated. It is difficult to compare these institutions with the American colleges because our contact with the life of the nation was so close and we exerted a strong political leadership. The German universities are the greatest professional schools and all their entrants are already college graduates.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“stood one day by the river on a dock where the ships came in, and all at once I found myself thinking, “If I can see a tree and cannot understand at all how it grows or why, how much less can I hope to understand the Cause of that tree? If I cannot understand why my mind gathers impressions and sorts and arranges them as it does, how can I hope to reach the Source from which my mind sprang?” This idea came to me with the accompaniment of a clear and sudden peace, as if someone had quietly spoken the answer to my long turmoil; and I knew that I believed in God.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“But gradually through the tumultuous talk of the days and the nightlong wonderings when I sat groping for hope through the darkness, there began to form in me one deep belief, that if there were no God there was no meaning in life. Like a child with a foot rule trying to measure a mountain, I demanded of this Mystery what its attributes were, asking assurance, trying to frame a pattern for the Ultimate. Every time I turned back baffled from that hidden face I was brought up again by the beautiful symmetry of the world or by the strangeness of some everyday organism. The delicate beauty of leaves and of bare branches, the perfection with which the tiniest creatures were designed, the constant recurrence of the seasons were phenomena which tugged at my senses, saying, “Somewhere there is a Cause for us.” I grew thin with tension, straining beyond my strength. The more I tried to probe this Mystery the greater it became; the closer I attempted to approach Him to test Him the vaster and more impenetrable He appeared, until I saw I had no measure huge enough to encompass Him and began to sense why faith must accept Him without questioning.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“Those who still possessed means spent lavishly for the most extravagant diversions, as if they wanted a last fling while their pockets were still lined, and decency and the concern for one’s fellows were lost in the frantic scramble to survive.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“There was a fetid atmosphere throughout the cities of Germany during the postwar years that laid its breath on all of the generation who grew up under the Republic. It was as if the stresses of recurrent catastrophe, the defeat, the shame of the peace, the inflation, the grinding poverty had crushed the steadfast and simple qualities of the people, so that they moved in an amazed and hectic round above the rotting body of their old, sure beliefs. There were social degeneracy and political unease; there were mental skepticism and moral profligacy.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return

“His preaching was incisive, direct and forceful, and he used to say he knew when he had delivered a good sermon by the number of abusive letters he received on Monday. He had no patience with equivocators. “There isn’t any way to protect yourself from the truth, except to like it,” he told me. His forcefulness was kept balanced by a great human gentleness and by the quietness of his deep and unshakable belief. He walked like a man who bore a light inside him, and many who came to see him in serious trouble or bewildered by pain, told afterward that, sitting in front of him and looking into his eyes, their problems seemed solved before they had spoken them.”
― Kathrine Kressmann Taylor, Day of No Return