The Third Reich in Power Quotes

“In each of the following chapters, dealing in turn with policing and repression, culture and propaganda, religion and education, the economy, society and everyday life, racial policy and antisemitism, and foreign policy, the overriding imperative of preparing Germany and its people for a major war emerges clearly as the common thread. But that imperative was neither rational in itself, nor followed in a coherent way. In one area after another, the contradictions and inner irrationalities of the regime emerge; the Nazi's headlong rush to war contained the seeds of the Third Reich's eventual destruction. How and why this should be so is one of the major questions that run through this book and binds its separate parts together. So do many further questions: about the extent to which the Third Reich won over the German people; the manner in which it worked; the degree to which Hitler, rather than broader systematic factors inherent in the structure of the Third Reich as a whole, drove policy onward; the possibilities of opposition, resistence, and dissent or even non-conformity to the dictates of National Socialism under a dictatorship that claimed the total allegiance of all its citizens; the nature of the Third Reich's relationship with modernity; the ways in which its policies in different areas resembled, or differed from, those pursued elsewhere in Europe and beyond during the 1930s; and much more besides.”
― Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power

“The Nazis saw the educational system in the first place as a means for inculcating the young with their own view of the world, still more as a means of training and preparing them for war.”
― Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power

“It was a Nazi epidemiologist who first established the link between smoking and lung cancer, establishing a government agency to combat tobacco consumption in June 1939.”
― Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power

“In the 1920s and early 1930s there was no doubt which newspaper in Germany had the widest national and international reputation. The Frankfurt Newspaper (Frankfurter Zeitung) was renowned the world over for its thorough and objective reporting, its fair-minded opinion columns and its high intellectual standards. If there was one German newspaper to which foreigners who wished to know what was going on in the country turned, this was it. Although its readership was not large, it was highly educated and included many key formers of opinion.”
― Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power

“Of all the things that made the Third Reich a modern dictatorship, its incessant demand for popular legitimation was one of the most striking.”
― Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power

“Whether people’s sensibilities had been dulled by five years of incessant antisemitic propaganda, or whether their human instincts were inhibited by the clear threat of violence to themselves should they express open condemnation of the pogrom, the result was the same: the Nazis knew that they could take whatever further steps against the Jews they liked, and nobody was going to try to stop them.”
― Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power

“Cât de oribil, fantastic, incredibil poate să fie”, spunea Chamberlain..., ”că trebuie să săpăm tranșee și să probăm măști de gaze aici din cauza unei certe dintr-o țară îndepărtată, între oameni despre care nu știm nimic.”
Cehoslovacia era în mod clar mai departe ca India, Africa de Sud sau Australia pe harta mentală a poporului britanic...”
― Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power