Quotes from Ian Kershaw

Plutarch's remark: 'When destiny raises a base character by acts of great importance, it reveals his lack of substance'

Governmental disorder and 'cumulative radicalization' were two sides of the same coin.

Without Captain Mayr's 'talent-spotting', Hitler might never have been heard of. As it was, if only on the beerhall fringes, he could now become a full-time political agitator and propagandist. He could do for a living the only thing he was good at doing: speaking.

The racial prejudice that Nazism could so easily exploit was something that few later wanted to admit to. But the old ideas died hard. According to American opinion surveys in October 1945, 20 per cent of those questioned 'went along with Hitler on his treatment of the Jews' and a further 19 per cent remained generally in favour but thought he had gone too far.

Without the changed conditions, the product of a lost war, revolution, and a pervasive sense of national humiliation, Hitler would have remained a nobody.

Ideological muddle-headedness, political

Generalizations about the mentalities and behaviour of millions of Germans in the Nazi era are bound to be of limited application – apart, perhaps, from the generalization that, for the great mass of the population, the figurative colours to look for are less likely to be stark black and white than varying and chequered shades of grey.

Desigur, viitorul este mereu deschis, niciodat? clar sau predeterminat de o cale unic? de urmat.

Hitler's achievement as a speaker was, therefore, to become the main popularizer of ideas that were in no way his invention, and that served other interests as well as his own.

By the end of that decade, Hitler's ideological vision that had existed unchangingly from the time of Mein Kampf onwards had come sharply into focus; it had been transmuted from a distant, utopian goal into a conceivable, practical objective. As we saw, within weeks of the conquest of France, Hitler's eyes had turned to the east, to the war he knew he had one day to fight.

In a tiny number of places I have added a personal recollection in a footnote. But I have kept them out of the text. Personal anecdote and historical evaluation are in my view best kept apart. Leaving aside the frailties of memory, most of what passes by on a daily basis has only ephemeral resonance. Assessment of the significance of major occurrences nearly always requires not just detailed knowledge but the passage of time in which to digest it.

Few at this point had the foresight to realize that the path laid out by Providence led into the abyss.

Spartacism.

In the absence of cabinet discussions which might have determined priorities, a flood of legislation emanating independently from each ministry had to be formulated by a cumbersome and grossly inefficient process whereby drafts were circulated and recirculated among ministers until some agreement was reached. Only at that stage would Hitler, if he approved after its contents were briefly summarized for him, sign the bill (usually scarcely bothering to read it) and turn it into law.

The road to Auschwitz was built by hate but paved with indifference

In each case the individuals made history-although,to adapt the thought of Karl Marx,not under circumstances of their choosing

Hitler's unmethodical, even casual, approach to the flood of often serious matters of government brought to his attention was a guarantee of administrative disorder. 'He disliked reading files,' recalled Wiedemann. 'I got decisions out of him, even on very important matters, without him ever asking me for the relevant papers. He took the view that many things sorted themselves out if they were left alone.

There are times – they mark the danger point for a political system – when politicians can no longer communicate, when they stop understanding the language of the people they are supposed to be representing

The anxiety to destroy democracy rather than the keenness to bring the Nazis to power was what triggered the complex developments that led to Hitler's Chancellorship.

I should like to think that had I been around at the time I would have been a convinced anti-Nazi engaged in the underground resistance fight. However, I know really that I would have been as confused and felt as helpless as most of the people I am writing about

Following a meeting with Hitler , Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, a man who had 'courageously criticized the Nazi attacks on the Catholic Church' - went away convinced that Hitler was deeply religious.

Hitler's technique of throwing out a torrent of statistics – correct, fabricated, or embellished – to support an argument made countering it extremely difficult. Adam, struck – so he later claimed – by Hitler's 'lack of education (Unbildung)', inability to confront reality, and readiness to resort to lies to get his way, retorted provocatively that if that was the case, there was little point in worrying any longer about the western

Consistent only with his own warped and peculiar brand of logic, he was prepared to take measures with such far-reaching consequences for the German population that the very survival he claimed to be fighting for was fundamentally threatened. Ultimately, the continued existence of the German people – if it showed itself incapable of defeating its enemies – was less important to him than the refusal to capitulate.

The wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of kings. Winston Churchill (1901)