Quotes about Adolf Hitler

433 Sourced Quotes

All these things are still apparent today. You Americans can see for yourselves how impossible it is to feed the German people from the German soil itself. From the viewpoint of a historian, one can say that Hitler never would have arisen if the Allies had not treated Germany so poorly. Justice Jackson said so himself. Today things are more impossible than ever. The East has been taken away from Germany - in other words, hunger created Hitler, and paradoxically, Hitler created still greater hunger.

This is not comparing these people to the people in Germany, but this is exactly what happened to the lead-up with Hitler. Hitler opened up the door and said, "Hey, companies, I can help you." They all ran through the door. And then in the end, they all saw, "Uh-oh. I'm in bed with the devil." They started to take their foot out, and Hitler said, "Absolutely not. Sorry, gang. This is good for the country. We've gotta do these things." And it was too late.

It seemed to me singularly ill-contrived for the British government to be going to war with Hitler when Hitler might have been about to attack the Russians, and even more ill-contrived that, when Hitler did attack the Russians, he had already defeated the French army. What I'm saying is that the war shouldn't have been started in September 1939... from the point of view of Britain, the war was really not a good thing and I would regard it as, in effect, a defeat.

Maurice Cowling

In the first place, there is the Hitler group, among whom are the most guilty of the defendants and about whom very little, if any, good can be spoken. By the Hitler group I include Göring, Ribbentrop, Kaltenbrunner, Keitel, Rosenberg, Frank, and Streicher. Then there is the group which one might call idealistic. Unfortunately, too many of us were indifferent. Not many belonged to the idealistic group, and I don't care to name them because I think I would be stretching a point to call any of the defendants idealists. I feel that perhaps of all the defendants I was the only idealist, although I suffered from blindness and indifference myself. In this respect, I am not like Speer, Schirach, and Funk. Schacht I consider an opportunist.

I loathe the urchin's cruelty to the cat, but I will not loathe the urchin. I loathe Hitler's mass-torturing, but not Hitler; and the money-man's heartlessness, but not the man. I love the swallow's flight, and I love the swallow; the urchin's gleam of tenderness, and the urchin.

Remember this moment. If we don't convince the field marshal (Fedor von Bock) to fly to Hitler at once and have these orders (Commissar Order) canceled, the German people will be burdened with a guilt the world will not forget in a hundred years. This guilt will fall not only on Hitler, Himmler, Göring, and their comrades but on you and me, your wife and mine, your children and mine, that woman crossing the street, and those children over there playing ball.

Henning von Tresckow

Though anti-Semitism had been only one of several sources of Nazi voting strength, after 1933 Hitler placed anti-Semitic ideologues, the most important of whom were Joseph Goebbels, Otto Dietrich and Alfred Rosenberg, at the top of the key opinion-shaping institutions. In a dictatorship resting on the 'leadership principle', Hitler's anti-Semitic convictions defined policy.

Hitler made a film about "Hitler gives a camp to the Jews". And they look all shiny. And they're drawing. And they're playing volleyball. And people are dancing. And people are having a wonderful time. And everybody fell for it.

I tried at that time to relieve the Sixth Army, of which I was supreme commander, above Paulus, by counterattacks - but it was not possible. I gave the order finally for the Sixth Army to break out, but then Paulus said it was too late and not possible. Hitler did not want the Sixth Army to break out at any time, but to fight to the last man. I believe that Hitler said if the Sixth Army tried to break out, it would be their death.

Erich von Manstein

Hitler is still such a popular man; we are afraid of the Hitler myth. We want to give to the German people and to the world the final proof by means of the Supreme Court-Martial and its verdict.

Walther von Brauchitsch

Sabotage became more frequent. On December 18, I went on a furlough and was supposed to return on January 5. When I arrived home I got a wire to be back in Copenhagen on December 29. It came from Pancke through his deputy. I later learned the reason through the deputy. Best, Pancke, Hannekan, and Kaltenbrunner were all called to Hitler's headquarters on December 30 for lunch. I went to Berlin, reported to Mueller on December 28 and 29, and told him that because I didn't execute countersabotage orders these people were to be scolded by Hitler. Mueller said: 'Comrade Mildner, watch yourself. Himmler is angry with you.'

When Hitler declared war on the United States, he was betting that German soldiers, raised up in the Hitler Youth, would always out fight American soldiers, brought up in the Boy Scouts. He lost that bet. The Boy Scouts had been taught how to figure their way out of their own problems.

Stephen E. Ambrose

He (Hitler) is thinking about the peasant girls. When they stand in the fields and bend down at their work so that you can see their behinds, that's what he likes, especially when they've got big round ones. That's Hitler's sex life. What a man.

I think of these things frequently, because I know the German people. Among them might arise the legend of Hitler, because Hitler was not heard from in this trial. Time always has some reconciling effect. On every ruin there eventually grows grass, and then some shrubbery, and finally, before you realize it, what is really an old hideous ruin becomes a romantic sight and legend.

I read the first edition of 'Mein Kampf' when it came out in 1923 and even then I knew Hitler meant what he said. I knew the history of anti-Semitism going back for centuries, and I knew all about pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. When I grew up and whent to school in Moscow, I experienced anti-Semitism and the restrictions on where Jews could live and work. Hitler systemized anti-Semitism. Pogroms are my business... Oh yes, I could be a professor of anti-Semitism.

Chamberlain's stubborn, fanatical insistence on giving Hitler what he wanted, his trips to Berchtesgaden and Godesberg and finally the fateful journey to Munich rescued Hitler from his limb and strengthened his position in Europe, in Germany, in the Army, beyond anything that could have been imagined a few weeks before. It also added immeasurably to the power of the Third Reich.

William L. Shirer

I know for a fact that this idea of the Jews causing the war and the Jews being so all important is nonsense. But that was Hitler's idea, and... was pure fantasy. As I say, Hitler is a riddle to me and will always remain so.

Joachim von Ribbentrop

We live so much of our lives in chaos. Human history can be viewed as an endless search for greater order: everything from language to religion to law to science tries to impose a framework on chaotic existence. The existentialists, sometimes wrongly described as disbelieving in an underlying order, saw the risks and the foolishness of the obsession with creating one. Hitler showed the risk, as did any number of populist tyrants before him. I teach my students that law, too, shows the risk, when we try to regulate a phenomenon—human behavior—that we do not even understand. I am not arguing against law... but against the Panglossian assumption that we can ever do law particularly well. The darkness in which we live dooms us to do it badly.

Stephen L. Carter

Looking and sounding not unlike Hitler, but without the charm.

On William F. Buckley Jr.

I thought that you had stood up for the free will & rights of humans in this town. Depends on the human, Claire said. As far as I know, Hitler had a heartbeat, and I wouldn't vote him to be in charge.

State propaganda, when supported by the educated classes and when no deviation is permitted from it, can have a big effect. It was a lesson learned by Hitler and many others, and it has been pursued to this day.

Liquefied coal, gosh. Hitler during the Second World War — I guess because he was concerned about losing his oil — liquefied coal. That technology is still there.

Bob: Adolph Hitler was never excommunicated as a Catholic for his crimes against the Jews. Instead, the Vatican considered him to be a hero.

One of the great but less famous heroes of World War Two was Andre Trocme, the Protestant pastor of the village of Le Chambon sur Lignon in France, which sheltered and saved the lives of five thousand Jews under the noses of the Gestapo. Forty years later Pierre Sauvage, one of the Jews who was saved, recorded the story of the village in a magnificent documentary film with the title, "Weapons of the Spirit". The villagers proved that civil disobedience and passive resistance could be effective weapons, even against Hitler. Their religion gave them the courage and the discipline to stand firm. Progress in religion means that, as time goes on, religion more and more takes the side of the victims against the oppressors.

Some of the people of the year include Gandhi, Stalin, Churchill, Nixon, Putin, Obama, and Hitler. So Trump is definitely fitting in there — you decide where he fits in for yourself.

He became a willing tool in Hitler's hands for every one of his decisions.

Werner von Blomberg

I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed... I'm telling you there is a reason these dictatorial people take the guns first.

I'm finding this — this is the hardest part to connect to. Because this is — I mean, look, you know, David, what you just said is, you said, "I'm not comparing" — but you are. I mean, this is what Hitler did with the SS. He had his own people. He had the brownshirts and then the SS. This is what Saddam Hussein — so — but you are comparing that. And I — I mean, I think America would have a really hard time getting their arms around that.

No sane man can afford to dispense with debilitating pleasures; no ascetic can be considered reliably sane. Hitler was the archetype of the abstemious man.

Hitler gave us orders - and we believed in him. Then he commits suicide and leaves us to bear the guilt. He should have remained alive to bear his share.