Quotes from William L. Shirer

To get the votes Hitler had only to take advantage of the times, which once more, as the Thirties began, saw the German people plunged into despair; to obtain the support of those in power he had to convince them that only he could rescue Germany from its disastrous predicament

What the masses needed, he thought, were not only ideas—a few simple ideas, that is, that he could ceaselessly hammer through their skulls—but symbols that would win their faith, pageantry and color that would arouse them, and acts of violence and terror, which if successful, would attract adherents (were not most Germans drawn to the strong?) and give them a sense of power over the weak.

Hitler reveled in his unique creation. "A symbol it really is!" he exclaims in Mein Kampf. "In red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalist idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man."20

Germans did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away, that so much of their culture had been destroyed and replaced with a mindless barbarism, or that their life and work had become regimented to a degree never before

Not a gun was fired—not even by the Fascist militia—to save him. Not a voice was raised in his defense. No one seemed to mind the humiliating nature of his departure—being hauled away from the King's presence to jail in an ambulance. On the contrary, there was general rejoicing at his fall. Fascism itself collapsed as easily as its founder.

Reparations were to be fixed later, but a first payment of five billion dollars in gold marks was to be paid between 1919 and 1921, and certain deliveries in kind—coal, ships, lumber, cattle, etc.—were to be made in lieu of cash reparations.

That I was poor and without means seemed to me the most bearable part of it, but it was harder that I was numbered among the nameless, that I was one of the millions whom chance permits to live or summons out of existence without even their closest neighbors condescending to take any notice of it. In addition, there was the difficulty which inevitably arose from my lack of schooling.

In this period the Prime Minister had great confidence in the Fuehrer's word, remarking privately a day or two later, "In spite of the hardness and ruthlessness I thought I saw in his face, I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word."46

As the year of 1931 ran its uneasy course, with five million wage earners out of work, the middle classes facing ruin, the farmers unable to meet their mortgage payments, the Parliament paralyzed, the government floundering, the eighty-four-year-old President fast sinking into the befuddlement of senility, a confidence mounted in the breasts of the Nazi

All this was made clear enough to the assembled industrialists and they responded with enthusiasm to the promise of the end of the infernal elections, of democracy and disarmament.

Thus was parliamentary democracy finally interred in Germany. Except for the arrests of the Communists and some of the Social Democratic deputies, it was all done quite legally, though accompanied by terror. Parliament

Heinrich Himmler is such a mild little fellow when you talk to him, reminding you of a country school-teacher, which he once was—pince-nez and all. Freud, I believe, has told us why the mild little fellows or those with a trace of effeminacy in them, like Hitler, can be so cruel at times. I guess I would prefer my cruelty from great thundering hulks like Göring.

totalitarian dictatorship, by its very nature, works in great secrecy and knows how to preserve that secrecy from the prying eyes of outsiders.

Despite his feverish state of excitement he was in sufficient control of himself to realize that he lacked the strength to overcome the police and the Army.

One of the appalling aberrations of the German officer corps from this point on rose out of this conflict of "honor"—a word which, as this author can testify by personal experience, was often on their lips and of which they had such a curious concept. Later and often, by honoring their oath they dishonored themselves as human beings and trod in the mud the moral code of their corps.

Hitler reveled in his unique creation. "A symbol it really is!" he exclaims in Mein Kampf. "In red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalist idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man.

The plotters finally had someone to give orders—without such, a German officer seemed lost, even a rebellious one, even on this crucial day—and they began to act.

five thousand guns.

Deprived of his trade unions, collective bargaining and the right to strike, the German worker in the Third Reich became an industrial serf, bound to his master, the employer, much as medieval peasants had been bound to the lord of the manor. The so-called Labor Front, which in theory replaced the old trade unions, did not represent the worker.

Between the Left and the Right, Germany lacked a politically powerful middle class, which in other countries—in France, in England, in the United States—had proved to be the backbone of democracy

This of course was heresy to Hitler, who accused Otto Strasser of professing the cardinal sins of "democracy and liberalism.

He was asked by his interrogator what his feelings were at the time, and he gave a memorable answer that gives insight into a phenomenon in the Third Reich that has seemed so elusive of human understanding. I had no feelings in carrying out these things because I had received an order to kill the eighty inmates in the way I already told you.

Nazism appeared to be a dying cause. It had mushroomed on the country's misfortunes; now that the nation's outlook was suddenly bright it was rapidly withering away. Or so most Germans and foreign observers believed.

It seems that along the Rhine front the French broadcast some recordings which the Germans say constituted a personal insult to the Führer. "The French did not realize," says the DNB with that complete lack of humour which makes the Germans so funny