Hitler Quotes

“After 1945, the myth of the Führer as saviour flipped into its absolute negative. Hitler was declared a monster, a demon in human guise whose infernal powers of seduction the German people had been helpless to resist.23 It was a convenient way of evading accountability or having to take stock of one’s own complicity in National Socialism.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“Victor Klemperer, who had escaped the February inferno in Dresden with his wife by fleeing to Bavaria, noted: “Now everyone here was always an enemy of the party. If only they really had always been that…The Third Reich has been practically forgotten.”16 Twelve years previously, the opposite had been the case, as Friedrich Kellner recalled all too well. When Hitler had come to power in early 1933, he wrote, many Germans had tried to prove “with the most threadbare arguments” that they had “always been National Socialists.”17”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“One of Hitler’s most prominent traits had been his constant mistrust of others. Towards the end of the war it turned into paranoia, especially in his relationships with his military commanders.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“Richard Walther Darré made in his testimony at Nuremberg about the general law that governed the development of National Socialism: “When one looks at the basics of things, the force driving this rotating stage is always Hitler himself. He causes…the motion that is transferred to figures whose dynamics release other dynamics, but the central figure Hitler with his surprising impetuses always remains the actual motor of the rotating stage.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“Der »Fall Hitler« bleibt für alle Zeiten ein warnendes Exempel. Wenn er etwas lehrt, dann dies: Wie rasch eine Demokratie aus den Angeln gehoben werden kann, wenn die politischen Institutionen versagen und die zivilgesellschaftlichen Kräfte zu schwach sind, um der autoritären Versuchung zu begegnen. Und: Wie dünn die Decke ist, welche die Zivilisation von der Barbarei trennt, und wozu Menschen fähig sind, wenn alle rechtsstaatlichen und moralischen Normen außer Kraft gesetzt werden und sie uneingeschränkt über das Leben anderer Menschen verfügen können.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall, 1939-45

“Reinhold Schneider in 1946. “In a certain sense, we will be bound to him for all eternity.”111 Schneider’s words remain pertinent today. Hitler will remain a cautionary example for all time. If his life and career teaches us anything, it is how quickly democracy can be prised from its hinges when political institutions fail and civilising forces in society are too weak to combat the lure of authoritarianism; how thin the mantle separating civilisation and barbarism actually is; and what human beings are capable of when the rule of law and ethical norms are suspended and some people are granted unlimited power over the lives of others.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“The course of the Second World War directly reflected the man who started it. Hitler’s hostile personality and conviction that Germany needed additional “living space” made war inevitable, and at the start of the conflict, his tendency to go for broke and act in surprising and outrageous ways worked astonishingly well on the battlefield. Those same qualities, however, also proved his undoing because they led him to overstretch himself—there is no way to understand the key moments in the conflict, Operation Barbarossa and declaring war on the United States, except as consequences of Hitler’s personality. Meanwhile, his role as field commander gradually overwhelmed him so that he could no longer call upon useful traits such as strategic flexibility or ruthless realism. And once things began going wrong, they rapidly spiralled out of control, as Hitler’s alternately hot-headed and intransigent responses—constantly dismissing his military professionals, ruling out tactical retreats—only made the situation worse. By the conclusion of the war, the catastrophe he wreaked on Germany, with the support of the German people, was mirrored by the physical and psychological catastrophe he wreaked on himself. Germany ended up in ruins, just as its Führer ended his life as a complete wreck.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“Sebastian Haffner wrote in 1940 that it was a tragic coincidence that Hitler’s “personal plight coincided so much with the German plight in 1919.”43 Indeed, the frustration of the young failed individual dovetailed with the traumas of the wartime and post-war generations, and when they came together they released tremendous destructive energy, without which it is impossible to understand the later crimes of National Socialism.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“In 1939 “removal” still meant social exclusion and displacement, not physical annihilation. Only after Germany’s occupation of Poland and its invasion of the Soviet Union did genocide become an option. The search for a written command by Hitler ordering the Holocaust is a pointless exercise. As we have seen, it was his style of leadership to express decisions of fundamental scope in terms of general wishes, which were then to be translated into concrete instructions by the executors of his policies. We should not forget that this abominable crime against humanity could not have been carried out without the participation of hundreds of thousands of ready helpers.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“This phenomenal rise would have been impossible had Hitler not possessed some extraordinary talents other populist agitators in the early 1920s lacked. First and foremost, there was his speaking ability. Hitler’s discovery of his power as an orator in the autumn of 1919 can be considered his central “breakthrough” as a politician.32 He was incomparably skilled at pulling the strings of his listeners’ emotions and successful at playing on not only their fears and resentments, but also their hopes and desires. For the historian Ludolf Herbst he was a “virtuoso at reeling people in.”33”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“Those who uttered doubts about Germany’s ultimate victory, who hung a white flag from their window, who opposed senseless acts of destruction or who tried to get their hometown to surrender without a fight had to fear for their life if they fell into the clutches of the SS, the Gestapo or fanatical Nazi supporters. The terror the regime had exported to the occupied countries of Europe was now being turned against the German populace.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“The minutes of the meeting quote Hitler as saying: “As is so often the case in world history, the main thing is that a man determinedly stays his course with the power of his heart and his faith in the future of his people. [The Führer] was firmly convinced that triumph could be compelled in the end.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“By this point, the Red Army had commenced its long-feared major offensive in the east. Much more so than at Margival, things got tetchy when Rommel demanded that Hitler draw the political consequences and try to negotiate a settlement to end the war in the west so as to hold the front in the east. This time Hitler’s reaction was more brusque: he told his field marshal that he was only to speak on military matters. When Rommel pressed the point, the Führer banished him from the room.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“In Hitler’s mind, the decisive factor was no longer professional military ability but ideological fanaticism, with which all energies should be rallied for the “final battle.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“By mid-June, any remaining German hopes of pushing the Allied invasion “back into the sea” had been well and truly dashed. Since the Allies dominated the skies, Rundstedt warned, “all major troop movements have become impossible in daylight.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“In the first months of 1944, Hitler occupied himself with the expansion of the Atlantic Wall to include a dense network of fortifications along the northwestern French coast. They were intended to prevent the Allies from establishing bridgeheads and advancing into the interior of the country. The dictator himself drew sketches for various types of bunkers, and with typical immodesty, he characterised himself as the “greatest fortification builder of all time.”6”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“But such forced optimism could no longer quell the growing doubts about Germany’s final victory, particularly among army officers who knew what was really happening at the front. As acknowledgement spread that the war was lost, so did the tendency not to follow orders from the Führer without question.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“example to view the destroyed parts of the city with his own eyes. As far as “retribution” was concerned, the Führer intended to resume massive air attacks on London after Christmas. He was more optimistic, however, about the potential effect of Germany’s new flying bombs and missiles, which would first be deployed in February and March 1944. After a certain time, he vowed, life in London would “no longer be possible.”141 But the German V-1 and V-2 rockets would take several months longer than that to be deployable, and when they were ready, they would not have anywhere near the destructive power the Nazi leadership had hoped.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“Yet despite all the efforts of the Nazi leadership, exhaustion and war fatigue were clearly taking hold of the German people. On the third anniversary of the start of the war in early September 1942, Security Service reports recorded an alarming phenomenon: “The increasing shortages of necessities; three years of constraints in all areas of daily life; more and more fierce, large-scale enemy attacks from the air; and fear for the lives of relatives at the front…are all factors exerting an increasing influence on the mood of broad sections of the population and causing increasingly frequent wishes that the war would end.”119 After the Stalingrad catastrophe at the latest, fewer and fewer Germans believed in slogans about imminent “final victory.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“In May 1943, meat rations had to be reduced again—a measure that caused considerable dismay because it gave the lie to Göring’s premature promise of the preceding October.88 In November 1943, when potatoes became scarce, Goebbels feared that Germany would have to use turnips as a “substitute food source,” which would surely awaken “an unpleasant memory” in the populace.89”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“Stalingrad severely dented Hitler’s popularity and his aura as a “genius field commander.” Jokes began to circulate: “What’s the difference between the sun and Hitler?”—“The sun rises in the east, Hitler goes down in the east.”237”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“in reality the positive resonance was not as universal as the Security Service suggested. Some Germans expressed unease and sympathy with the victims. “The majority of the people are not happy about the new ordinance,” the journalist and Hitler opponent Ruth Andreas-Friedrich wrote in her diary about the reaction in Berlin.154 In Breslau, Cohn, who like all Jews had to summon his courage every time he went out on the street to buy something, wrote that the Yellow Star was “more of an embarrassment to the ethnic-popular comrades than to us.”155 Ulrich von Hassell observed a scene that does not seem to have been unique: “On the train, a humongous labourer said to a poor old Jewish woman, ‘Come on, my little shooting star, have a seat.’ When someone complained, he growled, ‘I can do whatever I like with my behind!”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“The transition was officially announced on 19 December. Hitler’s total usurpation of military command elicited a mixed reaction from his generals.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“Hitler was confident that the US would no longer supply Britain with as much wartime materiel as previously since it would now be needed for America’s own war against Japan.148 In a small circle on 8 December, the beaming dictator proclaimed that Germany could no longer lose the war: “We now have an ally that has not been defeated in 3,000 years.”149”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“…November 1941 will go down as a black month in German military history.”137 In fact, the setback in the south was but a mild prelude to what would happen in the centre of the front in the days to come. In early December temperatures fell to minus 40 degrees Celsius, and heavy snowfall set in. The German soldiers were completely unprepared for the extreme cold, with many still wearing their ragged summer uniforms.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“cryptorchidism,”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“prison doctor Josef Brinsteiner examined Hitler and diagnosed a “right-sided cryptorchidism,” a non-descended testicle that he had since birth or early infancy. That spelled the end of rumours that Hitler had lost a testicle in 1916 when he was wounded in the First World War. The discovery also means that my assumption in the first volume of this biography that Hitler had normally developed sexual organs must be corrected. We can only speculate about the effects this physical anomaly may have had. Perhaps it explains Hitler’s reluctance to appear naked before others and was one cause of his difficult relations with women. It is very likely that the abnormality strengthened the feelings of inferiority Hitler carried from his failures”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“The terror the regime had exported to the occupied countries of Europe was now being turned against the German populace.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“If the war was lost, Hitler declared, the German people “will also be lost,” and there was no reason to consider “the basics which the people need for their continued existence” since they would have proven themselves to be “weaker” than their opponents. “Only the inferior ones will be left anyway,” Hitler raged. “The good ones will have fallen!”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“One participant at situation meetings described the atmosphere as a “miasma of servility, nervousness and dishonesty” that occasionally made him even “feel physically unwell.” The officer continued: “There was nothing there but fear: fear in all of its shades, from the anxiety of attracting the Führer’s displeasure or angering him with some ill-considered remark to the naked terror about how to survive the imminent end of the drama.”31”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945