1924 Quotes

“His actions as dictator, warlord, and mass murderer bore out the hubristic plans he developed in Landsberg Prison and crystallized in Mein Kampf. The entire war in the West—what Americans think of as World War II—was in fact just Rückendeckung, or covering his rear, for Hitler’s forward thrust to the East—just as he explained in Mein Kampf.3 From the minute he left Landsberg until his final moment on earth, Hitler was obsessed with two things: capturing Lebensraum from Russia and ridding the world of Jews.”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“dressed in a formal frock coat—with an Iron Cross still pinned on its front3—the same outfit he’d worn for the putsch, for his failed march to Odeon Square, and during his escape to Ernst Hanfstaengl’s villa. Beside him, “their shadows flickering and dancing in the darkness before them,” walked Landsberg Prison warden Otto Leybold and two police officers, one of them leading a “strong dog” on a chain. The prison was still, except for the slamming of iron doors behind the men. In the dead of night, Adolf Hitler had arrived at what would be his home for most of the next thirteen months. Located”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“discussed. Nowhere else in the book does Hitler more blatantly display his exponentially growing “self-belief,” sense of divine calling, and hardening infallibility. His gifts as a politician are manifest, he believes. Nobody else has his combination of practical and philosophical talents. If there were a single month, a critical pivot point, a precise moment that can be said to be the one that made Hitler in 1924, this was it. It was from this point forward that Hitler “acquired that fearless faith, that optimism and confidence in our destiny that absolutely nothing could shake afterwards,” as he put it.55 With his claim to”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“In early July 1924 Haushofer’s intriguing phrase—“living space” (also translatable as “habitat”)—was suddenly much talked about at Landsberg, but not fully understood. Heated discussions had broken out among the Hitler crew. “Kriebel and a few others teased me in the garden about the geopolitical Lebensraum,” wrote Hess to Ilse Pröhl. “I said, ‘Living space is a more or less well-defined piece of the earth with all its life forms and influences.’ But Kriebel claimed to be too dumb to understand that.… When the general [Haushofer] was here on Tuesday, I asked him to write for us a more precise definition.”44”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“As the head of Eher Verlag—essentially the Nazi Party publishing house—he commissioned market research on the viability of a Hitler book. The response he received was astonishing: “If the publisher issues a limited collector’s edition of only 500 copies of a work by Hitler with special treatment [laid paper and semi-leather binding], each numbered and signed by Mr. Hitler, it would have a collector’s value of at least 500 marks each,” wrote the assessor.12 Amann”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“Hitler was ranting and perhaps even panting by now. When he finished, Deputy Prosecutor Ehard said: “I simply wanted to ask Mr. Hitler a calm and sober question.” “I didn’t mean to offend you,” said Hitler. EHARD: Excuse me—I don’t even think of being offended. I just mean that it might not have been necessary to reply in such a polemical way. HITLER: Nothing of the sort. But my temperament is somewhat different from that of a state’s attorney. EHARD: Probably a good thing in this case.5 Not”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“In his rambling rhetoric, Hitler sought to undermine the very legitimacy of the charge against him. “High treason is the only crime that is punishable only if it fails,” he noted, stating a truism as though it somehow annulled the law. In a self-conscious display of manly courage, Hitler took “sole responsibility” for the putsch—thus emphasizing his role as the soul of the enterprise—but at the same time he denied the commission of a crime. Flatly rejecting his accomplice Colonel Kriebel’s right to take any responsibility for events, Hitler hogged the self-sacrifice halo for himself, saying, in a typical twist of logic, “I confess to the deed but not to high treason, because there’s no charge of high treason against the traitors of 1918.” With”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“the art of proper reading.” Reading, he insisted, was “no end in itself, but only the means to an end.” That end was, in his case, the confirmation of his own prejudices and previously held beliefs.63 Hitler’s recommended method was combing “every book, newspaper or pamphlet” for material to “increase the correctness or clarity” of one’s own point of view. In a conversation with Hans Frank, Hitler asserted that, after all his reading in Landsberg, “I recognized the correctness of my views”64—yet another step in Hitler’s growing conviction of his infallibility. In”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“When he returned to the Bürgerbräukeller, he was appalled to learn that Ludendorff had let his hostages go on their words of honor. Hitler exploded. He began a stream of abuse that was abruptly cut short by the general. “I forbid anyone to challenge in my presence the word of honor of a German officer.” The”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“When faced with high-risk situations, Hitler’s instinct was almost always to take the leap. Action was his aphrodisiac, his catnip, his default. His impetuosity often overwhelmed all other considerations, as the world would later learn, to its horror and sorrow. Hitler had whipped his audiences, as well as himself, into a frenzy of expectation. His increasingly grandiose self-image demanded that he go for the bold stroke.”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“Hitler’s particular joy was preaching to his opponents and tormentors. Other politicians, he noticed, “made speeches to people who were already in agreement with them. But that missed the point: all that counted was using propaganda and enlightenment to convince people who… came from a different point of view.” Hitler already understood the importance of wooing the independents. The”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“He painted a rosy picture of prewar Germany in contrast to its current “disgrace and defeat.”8 He made complicated things simple. “Political agitation must be primitive,” he said.9”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“He cleverly branded the Nazi undertaking a “freedom movement.” This ingenious emotional strategy transformed his events into mass entertainments with an overlay of religious fervor, like revivalist tent meetings.”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“Unmarried and single-minded, obsessive, consumed with his own sense of mission, Hitler had no other life than politics. Hitler’s”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“From the minute he left Landsberg until his final moment on earth, Hitler was obsessed with two things: capturing Lebensraum from Russia and ridding the world of Jews.”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“Incredibly, Hitler and his eager putsch-planners had overlooked one of the first rules of any modern revolution: capture the communications system.”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“like so much Hitler would do in his political career, he painted the dream first, then tried to fill in the facts.”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“Hitler’s skill at galvanizing his audiences and striking deeper emotional chords than other politicians lay not merely in his demagoguery, but also in his ability to see beyond the political issues of the day to underlying themes and yearnings of his listeners. While he could rail with the best of them about the French occupation, inflation, unemployment, and the feckless government in Berlin, he also reached for something larger and broader—“a sense of greatness”—that resonated on a personal level among people feeling confused and buffeted by events beyond their control.”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“He made complicated things simple. “Political agitation must be primitive,” he said.9”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“Drawn originally from auspicious Hindu symbolism, and used by many religions and cults over the centuries, the swastika motif had been adopted by race-minded groups like the ultra-Germanic Thule Society as an emblem of Nordic supremacy.”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“It makes no difference whatever whether they laugh at us or revile us,” he wrote later. “The main thing is that they mention us.”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“he brazenly turned his monthlong, widely watched trial for treason into a political soapbox, catapulting himself from Munich beer-hall rabble-rouser to nationally known political figure.”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“less critical eyes, however, Hitler was a man with a vision and the willingness to act on it, a man of both fists and brains, with rapier language for his opponents’ weak spots. He was thus perfectly suited to serve as the average suffering German’s convenient alter ego. “What a tremendous guy, this Hitler!” one of the lay judges in the trial said within earshot of journalist Hans von Hülsen.39 That was exactly the impression Hitler had wanted to make. He was back.”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“The party contested no elections, offered no candidates, sat on no commissions or official bodies. It simply made noise. Propaganda was its reason for being. And Hitler had become its chief propagandist.”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“Was Adolf Hitler still a marketable brand?”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“Settling into prison life, Hitler was at a crossroads. At a classic midpoint in life—his thirty-fifth birthday was just days away—he faced six months of empty time and an uncertain future.”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“(Hitler would still have Frederick the Great on his wall in the Berlin bunker at the moment of his demise in 1945).”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“Once implanted, the idea of an audacious move took root in Hitler’s mind and became, said one adversary, an “idée fixe.” Hitler’s obsessions almost always were acted upon, sooner or later. CHAPTER THREE The Mounting Pressure “If [Hitler] lets his Messiah complex run away with him, he will ruin us all.” —DIETRICH ECKART, 1923 The”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“Not surprisingly, Hitler also thrilled to Hanfstaengl’s old Harvard fight songs, ending in “Rah! Rah! Rah!”21 Hanfstaengl’s”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler

“With his apocalyptic predictions, pat solutions, and unvarnished appeal to mass emotions, Hitler was able to fill the Circus Krone with up to six thousand listeners.”
― Peter Ross Range, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler