Nazism Quotes

“The first thing totalitarian leaders do is make sure their voices are the only ones left.”
― Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism

“Is a people that elects as its president an icon that has never read a book all that far away from burning books itself?”
― Joseph Roth, What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920-1933

“We demand for every working man work and bread!
For the people, a place to live. No democrat has the right
to deny these. We want action!
We demand war against the profiteers, peace with the workers!
We demand a solution to the Jewish question. We
Want all foreign races out of German life,
We demand an end to the German parliament. We want a leader above the mob.
We demand death sentences for crimes against the people! To the gallows with the profiteers and money-lenders!”
― Joseph Goebbels

“Time, that is intolerant
Of the brave and innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,

Worships language, and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives;
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honours at his feet.

Time, that with this strange excuse,
Pardons Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.”
― W.H. Auden

“Nazism and communism were the same thing; every man on the street knew it. The difference between them was a semantical matter for the fancier poli-sci professors at Fordham.”
― Thomas Mallon, Fellow Travelers

“During the war, the lie most effective with the whole of the German people was the slogan of “the battle of destiny for the German people” [der Schicksalskampf des deutschen Volkes], coined either by Hitler or by Goebbels, which made self-deception easier on three counts: it suggested, first, that the war was no war; second, that it was started by destiny and not by Germany; and, third, that it was a matter of life and death for the Germans, who must annihilate their enemies or be annihilated.”
― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

“It is interesting that even in their beginnings the Nazis were prudent enough never to use slogans which, like democracy, republic, dictatorship, or monarchy, indicated a specific form of government. It is as though, in this one matter, they had always known that they would be entirely original. Every discussion about the actual form of their future government could be dismissed as empty talk about mere formalities—the state, according to Hitler, being only a “means” for the conservation of the race, as the state, according to Bolshevik propaganda, is only an instrument in the struggle of classes.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“The artificial creation of civil-war conditions by which the Nazis blackmailed their way into power has more than the obvious advantage of stirring up trouble. For the movement, organized violence is the most efficient of the many protective walls which surround its fictitious world, whose “reality” is proved when a member fears leaving the movement more than he fears the consequences of his complicity in illegal actions, and feels more secure as a member than as an opponent. This feeling of security, resulting from the organized violence with which the elite formations protect the party members from the outside world, is as important to the integrity of the fictitious world of the organization as the fear of its terror.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“God help our darkened and desecrated country and teach it to make its peace with the world and with itself!”
― Thomas Mann

“Better a day too early than a day too late”
― Anne Frank, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

“With its sign system, totalitarianism tries to imprint its logic on reality, to permanently link it to the real world. Importantly, the assignment of signs and stigmas is usually the first step in the process of destruction.”
― Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism

“Today it is quite clear that Nazi anti-Semitism had nothing to do with the virtues or vices of the Jews. [ ] It is something new in the history of the world: an attempt to deny humans the solidarity of every species that enables it to survive; to turn human predatory instincts, that are normally directed against other animals, against members of their own species, and to make a whole nation into a pack of hunting hounds. Once the violence and readiness to kill that lies beneath the surface of human nature has been awakened and turned against other humans, and even made into a duty, it is a simpler matter to change the target. That can be clearly seen today; instead of "Jews", one can just say as easily say "Czechs" or "Poles" or anyone else.”
― Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler

“It is indeed not enough to say that Nazi ideology was a 'caricature' of Nietzsche, since the essence of a caricature is that it helps us to recognize the original.”
― Leszek Kołakowski, Main Currents Of Marxism: The Founders, The Golden Age, The Breakdown

“Unicamente un huracan de pasiones ardientes puede cambiar el destino de los pueblos, mas despertar pasion es solo atributo de quien en si mismo siente el fuego pasional. Que cada escritor quede junto a su tintero ocupado de teorias, si su saber y su talento le bastan para eso, que para Fuhrer no nacio, ni fue elegido.”
― Adolf Hitler, Mi Lucha

“BSI’s London office lay equidistant from the Bank of England and St Paul’s, bang in the centre of the City of London, the aorta of the global financial system. The unremarkable building stood on Cheapside, the City thoroughfare laid down by the Romans, where medieval merchants sold sheep’s feet and eels. The Stocks Market at its east end became known for the appalling stench of rotting fare. Around the corner was the Lord Mayor’s residence, the Mansion House. There Tony Blair had leavened a speech about unjust global trade with a reaffirmation that the City ‘creates much of the wealth on which this British nation depends’.

From the start, the Swiss financiers who created Banco della Svizzera Italiana, or Swiss-Italian Bank, saw their task as helping money cross national borders. Construction of what was then the world’s longest tunnel, through the St Gotthard massif in the Alps, was under way. It would carry a railway to connect northern and southern Europe. When the work was completed, the Swiss president declared that ‘the world market is open’. The Italian-speaking Swiss city of Lugano lay on the new railway’s route. It was there that BSI’s founders opened a bank in 1873, to capitalise on the new trade route. They did well, expanding in Switzerland and sending bankers abroad. The bank came through one world war. In the second, BSI’s bankers did what many Swiss bankers did: they collaborated with the Nazis. At the same time, they did what they would start to do for their rich clients: they spun a story that reversed the truth. As Swiss bankers and their apologists told the tale, the reason that Switzerland made it a crime to violate bank secrecy was to help persecuted Jews protect their savings. In fact, the law was first drafted in 1932, the year before Hitler came to power. The impetus came not from altruism but self-interest. It was the Great Depression. Governments badly needed to collect taxes.”
― Tom Burgis, Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World

“Nobody except a demented prophet of doom could have foreseen their (Jews) terrible fate. The half million Jews of Germany, less than one percent of our population, knew they faced difficult times with Hitler's ascendance to power, but they were hardly prepared for the onslaught of repressive measures against them. ...many believed he would moderate once he legitimately headed the government. They reasoned since he had gained power by making them the scapegoats, his fury was largely a political pretense to gather votes and would abate under his new respectability. They were dead wrong.”
― Alfons Heck, A Child of Hitler: Germany in the Days When God Wore a Swastika

“Experimentation on humans is the prototypical activity of totalitarianism. It is the ultimate submission of reality to the pseudoscientific ideological fiction.”
― Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism

“Raus did not look up at the faces. An officer learned not to look at the faces. It was easier if you thought of them as bodies, as tools, means to an end. But just what the end was Raus could no longer say.”
― Miles Watson, Nosferatu

“Il faut découvrir le visage de cette bourgeoisie française dont Le Jour et Gringoire ont été, pendant la crise, les porte-paroles. Il ne s'agit plus, avec elle, de soumission inconsciente. Très lucidement, bien qu'ils se couvrent encore de formes bienséantes, ils admirent. Bourgeois, ils admirent la puissance et le succès. Décadents, ils frémissent sous les manières brutales. Petits-bourgeois par le coeur, ils s'extasient sur les alignements, la pompe, la parade, sur ce comédien mystique qui devant cent mille hommes, quand les dieux le saisissent, pousse un bouton pour faire converger sur lui une batterie de propriétaires en alarmes, ils voient dans ces masses compactes, dans cette police insinuée jusqu'aux ramures de la vie privée, dans cet ordre de fer, la garde prétorienne qu'ils n'osent demander aux démocraties contre les menaces "du communisme". Toute leur pensée internationale s'est épuisée à creuser une ligne Maginot en marge des dynamismes européens. Toute leur pensée politique se réduit à préparer, avec un béton humain, une ligne Maginot inviolable contre les dynamismes révolutionnaires. Ils se trompent sans doute radicalement sur le sens des fascismes, qui n'utilisent la force bourgeoise que comme une plaque tournante. Mais ils pensent avec celui d'entre eux qui disait il y a 50 ans se sentir plus près d'un hobereau prussien que d'un ouvrier français. On ne comprendra rien au comportement de cette fraction de la bourgeoisie française si on ne l'entend murmurer à mi-voix : «
Plutôt Hitler que Blum ».
Une bourgeoisie aux abois ; une politique sans foi ni loi ; un peuple usé de déceptions et de divertissements, voilà les responsables de la démission de la France. Puisque ce n'est pas la première fois que nous prenons position sur le problème qui lui a offert l'occasion, il nous faut maintenant montrer où elle a pu s'inscrire.”
― Emmanuel Mounier

“Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations,” Marx claimed, “the relations within which these individuals stand.” Yet Marx interpreted these relationships as economic relationships. Hitler, when observing the same phenomenon, generally interpreted these relations as kinship or racial relations.”
― Mitchell Heisman, Suicide Note

“America is the land of liberty for white people, but for the people of color it's Nazi Germany.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Generation Corazon: Nationalism is Terrorism

“Hitler was a high school bully compared to the animals of the british empire.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“It was constantly impressed upon me in forceful terms that I must obey promptly the wishes and commands of my parents, teachers, and priests, and indeed of all grown-up people, including servants, and that nothing must distract me from this duty. Whatever they said was always right. These basic principles by which I was brought up became second nature to me."
-- Rudolf Höss, Commandant at Auschwitz”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“Hitler's holocaust took over 6 million lives, hence he is rightly deemed a monster, but the british empire uprooted 15 million people from their homes, massacred millions and starved four million people to death. What about that?”
― Abhijit Naskar, Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race

“Thank You Hitler (The Sonnet)

Thank you Hitler for showing the worst of humanity,
I am sorry that we couldn't place you on a pedestal.
Things would've been different if you were not a nobody,
Particularly if you had a background royally honorable.
Apparently if you have an empire to your name,
You can get away with the most heinous of atrocities.
If you have that blue blood running through your veins,
Tyranny, oppression, are deemed as acts of great dignity.
The common notion is, everything nazi is sick and sinister,
At the same time, everything british is great and glorious,
Despite the fact that it was the british empire that was,
An international force of evil unlike the nazi bastards.
Nazism is an enemy of humanity, there is no doubt.
Only if we felt so for the empire as we do for the krauts!”
― Abhijit Naskar, Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race

“Similarities between Nazis and cockroaches: if they're appearing in broad daylight, it's because the sewer is already full of them”
― William Frezze

“My picture of the transition to war grows in part out of the sense that, on the Nazi side, the war itself was to a high degree a war of plunder and destruction; a war, that is, in which the means (military conquest) and the ends ("living space") became totally muddled up with each other on account of the Third Reich's need to live from hand to mouth in its social and economic policies after 1939. Ends became frantically telescoped into means in a manner which could only be self-destructive of the system as a whole, and which marked the actual lived experience of the vast majority of the populations subjected to Nazi rule.

There was a straight line from the so-called "temporary shortage of farmhands" to the enslavement and killing of millions of foreign labourers and prisoners of war after 1939 a straight line from the bottle-necks of 1938/9 to the crude plunder of the occupied territories; a straight line from the "guns-and-butter" policies of the 1930s to the only partial mobilization of German resources for war before 1944 and to the export of the worst sacrifices on to the backs of conquered peoples.”
― Timothy W. Mason

“The radical nature of the primacy of politics under National Socialism, however, was rooted in the specific historical disintegration of bourgeois German society (1929-33), of German capitalism (1936-8), and of international politics in the 1930s. The immense political scope of the National Socialist government was not based on the confidence of a politically and economically homogeneous society; on the contrary, it was a result precisely of the disintegration of society. The coincidence of this with the collapse of the international order in the 1930s enabled the National Socialist state to achieve a degree of independence of society which is unparalleled in history.”
― Timothy W. Mason, Nazism, Fascism and the Working Class

“Sitting in the garden of Hitler’s former classmates in Leonding, she visualized the beloved features of her Fuhrer suddenly merging into the impersonal Essence of
the many-featured One, who spoke Krishna’s words to Arjuna. She was certain that she had sought him for centuries, in life after life, until
she realized that the founder of the Third Reich was indeed he— the one who comes back, whenever he should ‘‘to establish the reign of Righteousness.”
― Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Hitler's Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth, and Neo-Nazism

“A world of meaning is lost when these views of racial ideology, the brutalization of war and the state-run process of extermination dominate our understanding of the Holocaust because the question "Why did the Nazis and other Germans burn the Hebrew Bible?" demands a historical imagination that captures Germans' culture, sensibilities, and historical memories.”
― Alon Confino, A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide