Takeover Quotes

“The National Socialist movement will achieve power in Germany by methods permitted by the present Constitution—in a purely legal way,” he told The New York Times. “It will then give the German people the form of organization and government that suits our purposes.”
― Timothy W. Ryback, Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power

“The Berlin Lokalanzeiger, a Hugenberg newspaper, published a story claiming that the Young Plan contained a provision for “human export and slave sales”—“Menschenausfuhr und Sklavenverkauf”—of German citizens to British and French colonies. There was to be an “annual governmental review of German boys and girls to determine their exportability”—“Exportfähigkeit”—as part of the reparations package. The political establishment decried the Hugenberg rumormongering as irresponsible and dangerous.”
― Timothy W. Ryback, Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power

“Hugenberg believed that the best way to bring down the existing political structure was through a strategy he called Katastrophenpolitik, or the politics of catastrophe. Rather than targeting the Reichstag, Hugenberg aimed to fragment and polarize the electorate, as a means of hollowing out, then destroying the political center and, with it, the collective understanding that sustained the democratic polity. With the center fragmented, he thought, the political system would collapse of its own accord. Hugenberg’s idea was to move inflammatory public policy issues, which were generally debated within the space and protocol of the Reichstag, onto the national agenda and into neighborhoods, taverns, and living rooms across the country. Such actions would place the government in an awkward position, and force neighbors, friends, and family members to confront one another with uncomfortable opinions. Civil discourse would fracture, opinions would polarize, public consensus would collapse. It was madness, of course, but there was constitutional method to the Hugenberg madness.”
― Timothy W. Ryback, Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power

“The big joke on democracy is that it gives its mortal enemies the tools to its own destruction,” Goebbels had written in May 1928.”
― Timothy W. Ryback, Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power

“When Hitler wrote of his disdain for democracy in Mein Kampf, he reserved particular ire for parliaments—“an assembly of idiots”—which he saw as the linchpin for destroying the system,”
― Timothy W. Ryback, Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power

“Schweinebande,”
― Timothy W. Ryback, Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power

“towns and villages he stoked nationalist anger, claiming the government was not protecting Germany’s borders. They let in foreigners from the east who brought chaos and crime and havoc into the country, he said, to undermine the political system and society, to despoil and violate the purity of the German race. Hitler once again evoked the specter of Potempa: “Here one Polish insurgent was killed, and for killing a Polish”
― Timothy W. Ryback, Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power

“crime”
― Timothy W. Ryback, Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power

“Hugenberg intended to put his media empire to work elevating exceptionally divisive issues, then, thanks to constitutionally guaranteed press freedoms, flood the public space with inflammatory news stories, half-truths, rumors, and outright lies.”
― Timothy W. Ryback, Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power

“Hugenberg’s idea was to move inflammatory public policy issues, which were generally debated within the space and protocol of the Reichstag, onto the national agenda and into neighborhoods, taverns, and living rooms across the country. Such actions would place the government in an awkward position, and force neighbors, friends, and family members to confront one another with uncomfortable opinions. Civil discourse would fracture, opinions would polarize, public consensus would collapse. It was madness, of course, but there was constitutional method to the Hugenberg madness.”
― Timothy W. Ryback, Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power

“No politician in post-war Germany had to endure the personal spitefulness, misrepresentation, and lies to which Hugenberg was subjected,”
― Timothy W. Ryback, Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power

“The big joke on democracy is that it gives its mortal enemies the tools to its own destruction,”
― Timothy W. Ryback, Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,” Goebbels allegedly said; this was in fact the distillation of a cynical truth Hitler had commented on in a chapter on reasons for Germany’s surrender at the end of the First World War in the first volume of Mein Kampf. But big lies require big audiences. The Hitler correctives to the Hindenburg meeting were extensive, pointed, and useless.”
― Timothy W. Ryback, Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power

“How do you legalize a coup d’état?” Hitler continued. You eliminate the political opposition, he answered. You restructure government. You rewrite laws. “The legalization of the ‘March on Rome’ was not completed until after Mussolini had undertaken an enormous cleansing process,” Hitler said. “That’s how you legalize high treason.” According to Hitler, his only crime was failure.”
― Timothy W. Ryback, Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power

“passions unleashed by politics and religion were vastly more dangerous than war.”
― Timothy W. Ryback, Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power