For All It Was Worth Quotes

“The lecture given by the sergeant major was short and to-the-point: you follow any order given to you, you don’t ask questions and you don’t think, because you are too stupid for that. This concluded our first day as defenders of the Vaterland.”
― Bernhard R. Teicher, For All It Was Worth

“Even in the early 1960s, my immediate boss in the US Army, a Jewish DA (Department of the Army) civilian, was told by a US Army Lieutenant Colonel not to expect a career in the US Army with his religion.”
― Bernhard R. Teicher, For All It Was Worth

“Up to very recent times, there was a definitive anti-Semitic undercurrent amongst the upper and middle classes in England. They may have courted the rich Jewish banker or merchant, but looked down on him with disdain. Barring a Jew from one’s club by black-balling him was the norm. These feelings were even stronger in the upper echelons of the Army. Not to mention the Navy!”
― Bernhard R. Teicher, For All It Was Worth

“The most ridiculous thing about the myth of the ‘pure Arian Race’ was the fact, that apart from Baldur von Schirach, the Commander-in-Chief of the Hitlerjugend, there was hardly anybody in the top ranks of the Party who even remotely looked like the cherished Arian ideal. Hitler himself reminded me of a southern European shopkeeper, Goebbels looked like a ladies’ hairdresser and Himmler could have been a Levantine bazaar merchant. Only Goering looked like a Germanic warrior as a fighter pilot in WW1 before he turned into a fat middle aged playboy. Today he would have worn a heavy gold chain with his open shirt, driving a Ferrari coupé.”
― Bernhard R. Teicher, For All It Was Worth

“there were now a certain number of people, very much a minority, the Nazis would later classify as Half-Jews. Ironically, Generalfeldmarschall Milch, in charge of the 1936 re-equipment of the German air force with new planes, and one of Hitler’s key officers, belonged to this group. He was an officer of such high caliber, that the Nazis conveniently overlooked his ‘unfortunate’ breeding background. How cynical can one get?”
― Bernhard R. Teicher, For All It Was Worth

“The Catholic church was instrumental in arranging the creation of Jewish ghettoes in all medieval towns, not only in Germany, but throughout Europe.”
― Bernhard R. Teicher, For All It Was Worth

“Richard Tauber, the famous tenor. He had the bad luck of being Jewish,”
― Bernhard R. Teicher, For All It Was Worth

“but I seem to remember that we did not have the use of toilet paper. Instead, we used square pieces of newspaper, as was the general habit in those days. Much cheaper, and eco-friendly as well.”
― Bernhard R. Teicher, For All It Was Worth

“My grandfather, vintage of 1871, was a Dekorations-Malermeister, a master house painter, and with this - for Germans - important qualification, and as he had his own business, he belonged to the established middle classes. He was spared the losses associated with the 1923 hyperinflation because he had no bank or savings accounts to speak of. At this stage, my own family was also in the lucky position of owning practically nothing, so they had nothing to lose.”
― Bernhard R. Teicher, For All It Was Worth