Hitler Quotes

“Hitler’s technique of throwing out a torrent of statistics – correct, fabricated, or embellished – to support an argument made countering it extremely difficult. Adam, struck – so he later claimed – by Hitler’s ‘lack of education (Unbildung)’, inability to confront reality, and readiness to resort to lies to get his way, retorted provocatively that if that was the case, there was little point in worrying any longer about the western”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“Consistent only with his own warped and peculiar brand of logic, he was prepared to take measures with such far-reaching consequences for the German population that the very survival he claimed to be fighting for was fundamentally threatened. Ultimately, the continued existence of the German people – if it showed itself incapable of defeating its enemies – was less important to him than the refusal to capitulate.”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler, Vol. 2: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“The army leadership, taking these wishes of Hitler on board and also bearing in mind the outcome of the war games, had already adjusted its strategic thinking when, on 18 February, Hitler spoke of the favourable impression he had gained of Manstein’s plan the day before.42 The die was now cast. By chance, the basic thoughts of the amateur had coincided with the brilliantly unorthodox planning of the professional strategist. Further refined by the OKH, the Manstein plan gave Hitler what he wanted: a surprise assault in the most unexpected area which, though not without risk, had the boldness of genius. The”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler, Vol. 2: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“He was a quiet man behind the scenes who, at another time in another place, might have become a company secretary. But Bouhler, still bearing a walking disability – and perhaps psychological scars – from the serious injuries to his legs sustained towards the end of the war which had prevented him from pursuing an officer’s career in the army as his father had done, was ambitious.”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler, Vol. 2: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“It was a problem that afflicted the entire dictatorship – up to and including Hitler himself. Only positive messages were acceptable. Pessimism (which usually meant realism) was a sign of failure. Distortions of the truth were built into the communications system of the Third Reich at every level – most of all in the top echelons of the regime.”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“Hitler held forth, among other things, on his theory that cancer was caused by smoking.”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“the introduction of the Yellow Star met with general approval but, in the eyes of some, did not go far enough, and needed to be extended to Mischlinge as well as full Jews. Some said the Yellow Star should also be worn on the back.”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“The war could have been over had the French government been bold enough to send at least the forty divisions it had promised the Poles into action against the far smaller German forces left guarding the western front in September 1939.”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“Hitler’s technique of throwing out a torrent of statistics – correct, fabricated, or embellished – to support an argument made countering it extremely difficult.”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“Without Hitler’s backing, his power would evaporate like a breath in the chill morning air. This was as true in late 1944 as at any other time during the Third Reich.”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“Its bragging and brash tone was downright repulsive. One had the feeling that here a man spoke who had lost all feeling of responsibility and any clear conception of what a victorious war signified, and who, with unsurpassed wantonness, was determined to leap into the dark.”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“He summarized his brutal philosophy in a single, short sentence: ‘He who does not possess power loses the right to life.’141”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“The result only reinforced Hitler’s self-belief that he was a ‘man of destiny’, treading his path ‘with the certainty of a sleepwalker’.”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“His success as a demagogue lay in his ability to say what the disaffected masses wanted to hear, to speak their language – to capture and exploit a psychology of despair and invest it with new hope for a phoenix-like resurgence of the nation. He was able as no one else to give voice to popular hatreds, resentments, hopes, and expectations. He spoke more stridently, more vehemently, more expressively and appealingly than any of those with a similar ideological message. He was the mouthpiece of the nationalist masses at a decisive time of all-embracing national crisis.”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“That this new deed of Hitler is another milestone on the way to the hell’s jaws of destruction,’ the same perceptive report of the exiled Social Democratic movement added, ‘seems hardly to have entered the consciousness of anyone.”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“Generalizations about the mentalities and behaviour of millions of Germans in the Nazi era are bound to be of limited application – apart, perhaps, from the generalization that, for the great mass of the population, the figurative colours to look for are less likely to be stark black and white than varying and chequered shades of grey.”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler, Vol. 2: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“In the west, too, the Reich would have to be strengthened. The French would ‘have to bleed for that’. But there it was a strategic, not an ethnic, question. ‘We must solve the ethnic (völkischen) questions in the east.”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler, Vol. 2: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“The Treaty of Versailles was ‘the blackmailer’s lucky find’.”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler, Vol. 2: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“That the notion of 'national community' gained its definition by those it excluded from it...”
― ian kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“The ‘either-or’ dogmatism, the stubbornly principled refusal to entertain compromise or concession, had served him well and had invariably proved successful in his political ‘career’ as long as he was combating weak, divided, and irresolute opponents. But it was a massive and insuperable obstacle when enemy positions were strong and united, when initiative had been irretrievably lost, bargaining power was weakening by the day, and more flexible military tactics and more subtle political skills were desperately needed. Not”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“By the end of that decade, Hitler’s ideological vision that had existed unchangingly from the time of Mein Kampf onwards had come sharply into focus; it had been transmuted from a distant, utopian goal into a conceivable, practical objective. As we saw, within weeks of the conquest of France, Hitler’s eyes had turned to the east, to the war he knew he had one day to fight.”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“But a change of personnel — the capable Austrian Colonel-General Lothar Rendulic in place of Reinhardt, and General Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller for Hoßbach — could do nothing to alter the disastrous German collapse in the face of hopeless odds, in East Prussia as on the rest of the eastern front. This proved equally true in Hitler's replacement on 17 January of Colonel-General Josef Harpe, made the scapegoat for the collapse of the Vistula front, by his favourite, Colonel-General Ferdinand Schörner, and his ill-judged appointment on 25 January of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, in the teeth of Guderian's strident objections, to take command of the newly formed and hastily constituted Army Group Vistula which aimed to stave off the Soviet advance into Pomerania. The hope that 'triumph of the will' and the toughness of one of his most trusted 'hard' men would prevail rapidly proved ill-founded. Himmler, backed by courageous but militarily inexperienced Waffen-SS officers, soon found that combating the might of the Red Army was a far stiffer task than rounding up and persecuting helpless political opponents and 'racial inferiors'. By mid-February, Hitler was forced to concede that Army Group Vistula was inadequately led.”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“The war was all that mattered to Hitler. Yet, cocooned in the strange world of the Wolf's Lair, he was increasingly severed from its realities, both at the front and at home. Detachment ruled out all vestiges of humanity. Even towards those in his own entourage who had been with him for many years, there was nothing resembling real affection, let alone friendship; genuine fondness was reserved only for his young Alsatian. He had described the human being the previous autumn as no more than 'a ridiculous "cosmic bacterium" (eine lächerliche "Weltraumbakterie")'. Human life and suffering was, thus, of no consequence to him. He never visited a field-hospital, nor the homeless after bomb-raids. He saw no massacres, went near no concentration camp, viewed no compound of starving prisoners-of-war. His enemies were in his eyes like vermin to be stamped out. But his profound contempt for human existence extended to his own people. Decisions costing the lives of tens of thousands of his soldiers were made — perhaps it was only thus possible to make them — without consideration for any human plight. As he had told Guderian during the winter crisis, feelings of sympathy and pity for the suffering of his soldiers had to be shut out. For Hitler, the hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed were merely an abstraction, the suffering a necessary and justified sacrifice in the 'heroic struggle' for the survival of the people.”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis

“But if the generals were not enthused by what Hitler had to say, they posed no objections. The mood was largely fatalistic, resigned. After the war, Liebmann tried to summarize the broad impact of the speech. The assembled generals, he commented, were certain that the picture was less rosy than Hitler’s description. But they took the view that it was too late for objections, and simply hoped things would turn out well.161 No one spoke out against Hitler.162 Brauchitsch, who ought to have replied if anyone were to do so, said nothing. Any objections on his part, in Liebmann’s view, could only have been made as representing all the generals. Evidently he doubted whether Brauchitsch could have spoken for all. In any case, he thought such objections would have to have been raised by spring. By August it was too late. Liebmann added one other telling point. For Hitler it was only a matter of a war against Poland. And the army felt up to that.163 The disastrous collapse in the army’s power since the first weeks of 1938 could not have been more apparent. Its still lamented former head, Werner von Fritsch, had remarked to Ulrich von Hassell some months earlier: ‘This man – Hitler – is Germany’s fate for good or evil. If it’s now into the abyss, he’ll drag us all with him. There’s nothing to be done.”
― Ian Kershaw, Hitler, Vol. 2: 1936-1945 Nemesis