Nazi Germany Quotes

Hadn't we better turn it lower?" Tony whispered.
"Eh, what? It's quiet enough, I think."
Tony flung a hunted glance at the window. "You have let me listen in to Germany. If the police find out, there will be great trouble -"
"There won't be any trouble at all," said Thomas. "You're in England, remember. You're free to tune in to any station you please. ~ Constance Savery

On Good Friday last year the SS found some pretext to punish 60 priests with an hour on "the tree." That is the mildest camp punishment. They tie a man's hands together behind his back, palms facing out and fingers pointing backward. Then they turn his hands inwards, tie a chain around his wrists and hoist him up by it. His own wight twists his joints and pulls them apart ... Several of the priest who were hung up last year never recovered and died. If you don't have a strong heart, you don't survive it. Many have a permanently crippled hand. ~ Jean Bernard

My father left Nazi Germany a year after Dr. Kissinger, and so in my household he was very much an icon. He was a kind of immigrant success story, a refugee success story. ~ Eugene Jarecki

I love this country. I loved it the first time I came here, back in 1963. I love it because it's free. My mother escaped from Nazi Germany; the rest of her family never made it. The first thing Hitler did was take over the press and make it subservient to the government. Lenin did the same." Jasper had drunk a few glasses of wine, and as a result he was a shade more candid. "America is free because it has disrespectful newspapers and television shows to expose and shame presidents who fuck the Constitution up the ass." He raised his glass. "Here's to the free press. Here's to disrespect. And God bless America. ~ Ken Follett

I am against the planned political assassinations by our intelligence and defense agents.The CIA-FBI-DIA and DISC (Defense Industry Security Command) were set up originally to protect citizens of the USA. They became their own judges and juries, private servants of corporations with investments at home and abroad. I am against the constant destruction of evidence in criminal matters and political assassinations. Prime witnesses are murdered before or after testifying. Diaries are forged and planted in obvious places. Doubles are created to confuse. The Police Departments manipulate facts in cooperation with conspirators. I am outraged that our judicial system since 1947 has been patterned after Nazi Germany. Patsies are dead or locked away. The assassins walk the streets or leave the country - "home free". I am against using the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren, to cover up the assassination of President Kennedy. When the highest court is corrupt, there is no hope at local levels. ~ Mae Brussell

You see, people may tell you that Nazi Germany was built on anti-Semitism, a somewhat overzealous leader and a nation of hate-fed bigots, but it would have all come to nothing had the Germans not loved one particular activity - to burn.
The Germans loved to burn things. Shops, synagogues, Reichstags, houses, personal items, slain people and, of course, books. ~ Markus Zusak

Whether we consider Nazi Germany or Abu Ghraib prison, there were many people who observed what was happening and said nothing. At Abu Ghraib, one photo shows two soldiers smiling before a pyramid of naked prisoners while a dozen other soldiers stand around watching passively. If you observe such abuses and don't say, "This is wrong! Stop it!" you give tacit approval to continue. You are part of the silent majority that makes evil deeds more acceptable. ~ Philip Zimbardo

If you take Darwinian theory, make a 'scientific' principle out of it, put it into political action, then you have something like Nazi Germany. ~ Bruce Lipton

Any alliance whose purpose is not the intention to wage war is senseless and useless. ~ Adolf Hitler

Parallel to the training of the body a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth. Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political and cultural idea. ~ Adolf Hitler

I'm saying that we (Americans) have sunk pretty low and I'm saying that you can look at the moral climate in Germany in 1933. We have to ask ourselves if we found ourselves in Nazi Germany, what would we do. Now I say, let the inspection process take its course. ~ David Clennon

But nothing surprises me now. I've grown used to living in a world that is out of joint, as if it has been struck by an enormous earthquake so that the roads are no longer flat, nor the building straight. ~ Philip Kerr

Under the section heading "Experiments with Human Subjects" – a heading that, were I a doctor previously employed by Nazi Germany, I might have rephrased – ~ Mary Roach

If our democracy worked as it should, we would elect wise women and men who made laws for the good of the people and enforced those laws.
That, though, is not the way things work. Greedy, power–mad billionaires spend money so that politicians such as George W. Bush can buy elections. Corrupt corporations such as Enron defraud old ladies and commit crimes. And they get away with it. They get away with it because most of us are so afraid of losing the security of our nice, normal lives that we are not willing to risk anything about those lives. We are either afraid to fight or we don't know how. Or we believe that bad things won't happen to us.
And so, in the end, too many people lose their lives anyway. In Nazi Germany, millions of men who acquiesced to Hitler's murderous rise to power wound up marching into Russia's icy wasteland - into the Soviet Army's machine guns and cannon - to themselves be murdered. In America after 9–11, trusting teenagers who had joined the National Guard found themselves sent to Iraq on extended and additional tours. Our enemy killed many of them because we, citizens of the richest country in the world, did not provide them with body armor.
Grieving mothers protested the wasting of their sons' lives. Nadia McCaffrey defied Bush's shameful ban on the filming of U.S. soldiers' coffins returning home from Iraq. She knew, as we all did, that this tyrannical dictum of Bush dishonored our soldiers' sacrifice. And so she invited the press to ~ David Zindell

We have only one task, to stand firm and carry on the racial struggle without mercy. ~ Heinrich Himmler

If you're fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939 and you're a Jew, you don't think so much about relationships. People didn't have a lot of divorces during the Holocaust, for instance. ~ Mike Nichols

The thing about World War II is that everyone knows about the concentration camps in Europe - in Nazi Germany and Poland and Auschwitz and the other camps - but, no one really talks about the camps that were here in the United States. ~ Lea Salonga

Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. So if it is correct to say that humor was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something much deeper and more important. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Even now, I have to smile when I think of this. I tell you, of all the things about Werner Vetter that appealed to me, this most of all warmed my heart: He had no respect for the truth in Nazi Germany. ~ Edith Hahn Beer

Suppressed I Rise is for anyone interested in a very personal, human view of the history of World War II. A mother's attempt to protect and raise her two young daughters in hostile NAZI Germany challenges her sensibilities and resourcefulness. ~ Hank Bracker

The America in which we grew up is vastly different from the America the secular-socialist Left want to create. And that's why saving America is the fundamental challenge of our time. The secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did. ~ Newt Gingrich

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, A History of Nazi Germany, by William L. Shirer, Simon and Schuster, 1960, New York; Hitler, a Study in Tyranny, by Alan Bullock, Harper, 1953, New York; ~ Philip K. Dick

The Holocaust is an extremely important historical event humanity must learn
from if it is to survive let alone achieve world peace. It's not just a Jewish issue – it's a human one. If more recent genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia are any guide, the lessons of Nazi Germany have not yet been learnt. ~ James Morcan

First they came for the hackers. But I never did anything illegal with my computer, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the pornographers. But I thought there was too much smut on the Internet anyway, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the anonymous remailers. But a lot of nasty stuff gets sent from anon.penet.fi, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the encryption users. But I could never figure out how to work PGP anyway, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for me. And by that time there was no one left to speak up. WIDELY COPIED INTERNET APHORISM, A PARAPHRASE OF PROTESTANT MINISTER MARTIN NIEMOLLER'S STATEMENT ABOUT LIFE IN NAZI GERMANY ~ David Brin

But there's one word. You look at any other term of political discourse, and you're going to find the same thing: the terms of political discourse are designed so as to prevent thought. One of the main ones is this notion of "defense." So look at the diplomatic record of any country you want-Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Libya, pick your favorite horror-story-you'll find that everything they ever did was "defensive"; I'm sure if we had records from Genghis Khan we would find that what he was doing was "defensive" too. And here in the United States you cannot challenge that-no matter how absurd it gets. ~ Noam Chomsky

Highly esteemed dear Professor Franck,
In these days in which by your magnanimous decision you show the world where the insane oppression of the Jews leads to, I as one of your students would not like to be missing among those who declare their sincere thanks and unlimited veneration to you, and who especially now are filled with the highest admiration by your present step and the reason given by you, and who at the same time are filled with horror that such a thing is necessary.
I am at a loss for words to express what both my wife and I always and especially now feel for you. Please remember us to your wife and chidlren and accept our sincere greetings. ~ Gerhard Herzberg

Nowadays words like "Liberal" and "Muslim" are used by right-wing extremists in the same way as the word "Jew" was used by the right-wing extremists of Nazi Germany. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy

The repeated claim before the 'seizure of power' - that the NSDAP, as a national social-revolutionary movement, and not simply another political party ... would create new bonds of unity through its elimination and transcending of the party system, was highly attractive and conveyed much of Nazism's dynamic appeal. ~ Ian Kershaw

Posing as someone, or something, else is the story of many women and men who have experienced repression and made a bid for freedom. It is the story of a gay U.S. Marine who had to pretend he was straight. It is the story of a Jewish family in Nazi Germany posing as Protestants. It is the story of a black South African who tried to make his skin lighter under apartheid. ~ Jenny Nordberg

Just because something is normal, does not make it morally justified. Case in point: Antisemitism in Nazi Germany. ~ BatWhaleDragon

I thought those were others. Soon, I was to learn that they were us. ~ Ralph Webster

The destructive impact of psychiatry upon our civilization has been given far too little attention, and the role of psychiatry in Nazi Germany almost no attention. It is entirely possible that without psychiatry the holocaust could never have taken place. ~ Peter Breggin

They weren't just for entertainment and diversion. Books also served as the premier weapon in fighting Adolf Hitler's "war of ideas." Nazi Germany sought control over people's beliefs, not just their bodies and territory. From the 1933 state-sanctioned book burnings in Germany to the purging of libraries across Europe as nations were conquered by the Nazis, "un-German" reading material was threatened with extinction. The scale of destruction was impressive. By V-E Day, it is estimated that Germany had destroyed over 100 million books in Europe. ~ Molly Guptill Manning

With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people. ~ Adolf Hitler

To some Germans and, no doubt, to most foreigners it appeared that a charlatan had come to power in Berlin. To the majority of Germans Hitler had - or would shortly assume - the aura of a truly charismatic leader. They were to follow him blindly, as if he possessed a divine judgment, for the next twelve tempestuous years. ~ William L. Shirer

Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state, for every form of power politics and any dictatorship-run state has its roots in the street. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Whenever doubts become a crime ... whenever parents become afraid their children might turn them in; a country where the power of the government is mired inextricably with the jurisdiction and the executive, where you have three secret polices spying on the population and people disappear without a word, that is not my country ... My country and Nazi Germany, those are two very different places. And I dearly hope I'll live to see the day when the latter one falls. ~ Osiris Brackhaus

Politics is corrupting the American judicial system in much the same way the judicial system was corrupted in Nazi Germany. ~ Benjamin Carson

The fundamental reason for the superiority of totalitarian propaganda over the propaganda of other parties and movements is that its content, for the members of the movement at any rate, is no longer an objective issue about which people may have opinions, but has become as real and untouchable an element in their lives as the rules of arithmetic. The organization of the entire texture of life according to an ideology can be fully carried out only under a totalitarian regime. In Nazi Germany, questioning the validity of racism and antisemitism when nothing mattered but race origin, when a career depended upon an "Aryan" physiognomy (Himmler used to select the applicants for the SS from photographs) and the amount of food upon the number of one's Jewish grandparents, was like questioning the existence of the world. ~ Hannah Arendt

As I was growing up, you know, I'm a white Jewish American born to Holocaust parents. My father fled Nazi Germany in 1939 and my mother's family had fled the czars of Russia before that. ~ Eugene Jarecki

The beast in man had lifted its mask and the time of euphemistic niceties and rationalizations was over. ~ Annette Dumbach

I said to myself, where are we living? In the United States of America where you're innocent until proven guilty, or Nazi Germany with the Gestapo calling? ~ Tommy Bond

The goose-step has always seemed to me to be an outlandish exhibition of the human being in his most undignified and stupid state. ~ William L. Shirer

the portrayal of reality in the state-controlled press and popular entertainment is harmonious and pleasant. Justice, in the narratives approved for public consumption, is always served. Goodness always triumphs. Goals are always attained. This dichotomy, although not on the level of Stalin's Soviet Union or Hitler's Nazi Germany, is nevertheless present in American culture and getting worse. The gap between who we are and who we think we are is steadily expanding. ~ Chris Hedges

The captain was amusing. He said that he himself couldn't draw and proved his words by drawing his own house for his prisoner to see. It was just such a house as the babies drew in the kindergarten: a square box with four square windows, a door and two chimneys, each with a neat curl of smoke. "That's best I can do," said the Captain, laughing.
Max laughed with him for politeness' sake, though inwardly he was shocked that an important man like the Captain made a fool of himself. "Vater does not draw," he said kindly, "nor does Mutti; but they are both very keen on photography. Perhaps you are good at that?"
"Not brilliant," said the Captain. ~ Constance Savery

And I know you're not supposed to say 'Nazi Germany,' but I don't care about political correctness. You know, you had a government using its tools to intimidate the population. We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe. ~ Benjamin Carson

WAR CHILD is the true story of Magdalena (Leni) Janic whose name appears on The Welcome Wall at Sydney's Darling Harbour. The story spans 100 years starting in pre WWII Nazi Germany and ends in the suburbs of Adelaide. It's a window into what life was like for a young illegitimate German girl growing up in poverty, coping with ostracism, bullying, abuse and dispossession as society was falling down around her and she becomes a refugee. But it's also a story of a woman's unconditional love for her family, the sacrifices she made and secrets she kept to protect them. Her ultimate secret was only revealed in a bizarre twist after her death and much to her daughter's (and author) surprise involved her. A memorable tear-jerker! A sad cruel story told with so much love. ~ Annette Janic

History always has a way of repeating itself and like in Nazi Germany 1930's ... those who have been given the divine privilege to protect humanity can never afford to turn blind to the evil in our world that destroys its children (Young or old). ~ Timothy Pina

Of all the writers I have read, Vladimir Nabokov has made the biggest impression on me because he, despite living through the 1917 February Revolution, forced exile amidst the anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, the two World Wars and quite a lot of controversy, was an author who never gave up. ~ Ashwin Sanghi

I can be either a good friend or a good Nazi, Emil thought. He knew now that he couldn't be both. ~ Lee Strauss

Let me explain how such a thing might occasionally happen,' Goebbels said. 'All during the twelve years of the Weimar Republic our people were virtually in jail. Now our party is in charge and they are free again. When a man has been in jail for twelve years and he is suddenly freed, in his joy he may do something irrational, perhaps even brutal. Is that not a possibility in your country also?'
Ebbutt, his voice even, noted a fundamental difference in how England might approach such a scenario. 'If it should happen,' he said, 'we would throw the man right back in jail. ~ Erik Larson

The road to the Olympics, leads to no city, no country. It goes far beyond New York or Moscow, ancient Greece or Nazi Germany. The road to the Olympics leads - in the end - to the best within us. ~ Jesse Owens

Who are the moneylenders? They are those who were driven out of the Temple by Christ Himself 2000 years ago. They are those who never work but live on fraud. ~ Julius Streicher

Never let us confuse what is legal with what is right. Everything Hitler did in Nazi Germany was legal, but it was not right. ~ Marian Wright Edelman

Although eugenics flourished in Nazi Germany, the ideal of a blond-haired, blue-eyed master race wasn't Adolf Hitler's. It may surprise many to know that, in Mein Kampf, Hitler credited America with helping formulate his ideas on eugenics, and he admitted he'd studied the laws of US states to familiarize himself with selective reproduction and other eugenics issues. ~ James Morcan

If the enemies of the SA are hoping that the SA will not return from leave, we are ready to let them enjoy the hope for a short time. ~ Ernst Rohm

You might one day be offered the opportunity to display symbols of loyalty. Make sure that such symbols include your fellow citizens rather than exclude them. Even the history of lapel pins is far from innocent. In Nazi Germany in 1933, people wore lapel pins that said "Yes" during the elections and referendum that confirmed the one-party state. In Austria in 1938, people who had not previously been Nazis began to wear swastika pins. What might seem like a gesture of pride can be a source of exclusion. In the Europe of the 1930s and '40s, some people chose to wear swastikas, and then others had to wear yellow stars. ~ Timothy Snyder

If the day should ever come when we must go, if some day we are compelled to leave the scene of history, we will slam the door so hard that the universe will shake and mankind will stand back in stupefaction.. ~ Joseph Goebbels

If I entered a tropical beach, would I end up in Nazi Germany with my highly inconvenient black hair? ~ Karen Marie Moning

American political discourse had framed the Jewish problem as an immigration problem. Germany's persecution of Jews raised the specter of a vast influx of Jewish refugees at a time when America was reeling from the Depression. ~ Erik Larson

Rather than suffering from any individual mental pathology, Goebbels held to a view of the world that he shared with much of the population. In the economic chaos after the humiliating Versailles treaty that concluded the First World War, there were millions like him in Germany. He welcomed the Nazi regime not only because it offered material benefits of various kinds but because it validated impulses that were curbed in the civilisation the Nazis set out to overthrow and destroy. The joy of a type of communal solidarity that was based on hatred of minorities; the pleasure of having these minorities in one's power and subjecting them to persecution; the delirious sense of release that comes from surrendering personal judgement and serving an autocratic leader – these were satisfactions that Nazism, at its peak, provided not only for Goebbels but for a majority of Germans. ~ John N. Gray

She was a girl. In Nazi Germany. How fitting that she was discovering the power of words ~ Markus Zusak

The world had seen the same thing happen many times before. After it happened in Nazi Germany, all the big, powerful countries swore, "Never again!" But here we were, six harmless females huddled in darkness, marked for execution because we were born Tutsi. How had history managed to repeat itself? How had this evil managed to surface once again? Why had the devil been allowed to walk among us unchallenged, poisoning hearts and minds until it was too late? ~ Immaculee Ilibagiza

There was nothing conservative about Adolf Hitler. Hitler was an artist and a revolutionary at heart. He wanted to completely upend and remake German society. ~ A.E. Samaan

Third Reich was a term that was never used by Adolf Hitler. The term 'Third Reich' is used by so-called scholars and news journalists (and Wikipedia posters) to hide the fact that Hitler called his regime 'Socialism.' Scholars, journalists (and wakipedia) cite no example of Hitler ever using the term 'Third Reich.' Other writers use the terms 'Nazi' and 'Fascist' and 'Third Reich' as if Hitler tossed them around all the time. Those terms were not used as self-identifiers by the self-avowed socialist Hitler. ~ Rex Curry

Most Germans, so far as I could see, did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away, that so much of their splendid culture was being destroyed and replaced with a mindless barbarism, or that their life and work were being regimented to a degree never before experienced even by a people accustomed for generations to a great deal of regimentation ... On the whole, people did not seem to feel that they were being cowed and held down by an unscrupulous tyranny. On the contrary, they appeared to support it with genuine enthusiasm ~ William L. Shirer

There is no such thing as "the right to enslave".A nation can do it , just as a man can become a criminal - but neither can do it by right.
It doesn't matter in this context, whether a nation was enslaved by force (like soviet Russia), or by vote (like Nazi Germany). ~ Ayn Rand

Who's to say what's right or wrong? The courts and the society can be totally wrong. Nazi Germany, what did they say was the right thing to do? To destroy and burn Jews. ~ Frederick Lenz

We can no longer believe that after death, if we have sinned, we shall enter hell. Hell has been acted out here on Earth in the time of Nazi Germany, when even the innocent went in their millions to a hell that beggars the imagination. A profound change in attitude has come about as a result. ~ Brian W. Aldiss

It's in the history books, the Holocaust. It's just a phrase. And the truth is it happened yesterday. It happened to my mother. I never met my grandmothers or my grandfathers. They were all wiped up in the gas chambers of Nazi Germany. ~ Gene Simmons

Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen. ~ Ayn Rand

The "herrenvolk" [master race] are all around you, threading their way on their bicycles between the piles of rubble or rushing off with jugs and buckets to meet the water cart. It is queer to think that these are the people who once ruled Europe, from the Channel to the Caspian Sea and might have conquered our own island, if they had known how weak we were. ~ George Orwell

Think of the press as a great keyboard
on which the government can play. ~ Joseph Goebbels

All the good things on this earth are trophy cups. The strong win them. The weak lose them.
from a speech by the Nazi Minister of Education ~ William L. Shirer

Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history. ~ Pat Robertson

And, with much of Europe occupied by Nazi Germany, and Mussolini's armies in Albania, on the Greek frontier, one wasn't sure what came next. So, don't trust the telephone. Or the newspapers. Or the radio. Or tomorrow. ~ Alan Furst

Why did she want to stay in England? Because the history she was interested in had happened here, and buried deep beneath her analytical mind was a tumbled heap of Englishness in all its glory, or kings and queens, of Runnymede and Shakespeare's London, of hansom cabs and Sherlock Holmes and Watson rattling off into the fog with cries of 'The game's afoot,' of civil wars bestrewing the green land with blood, of spinning jennies and spotted pigs and Churchill and his country standing small and alone against the might of Nazi Germany. It was a mystery to her how this benighted land had produced so many great men and women, and ruled a quarter of the world and spread its language and law and democracy across the planet. ~ Elizabeth Aston

Have you swallowed all that war stuff?"
"No, of course I--" I was so committed to refuting him that I had half-denied the charge before I understood it; now my eyes swung back to his face. "All what war stuff?"
"All that stuff about there being a war."
"I don't think I get what you mean."
"Do you really think that the United States of America is in a state of war with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan?"
"Do I really think..." My voice trailed off.
He stood up, his weight on the good leg, the other resting lightly on the floor in front of him. "Don't be a sap," he gazed with cool self-possession at me, "there isn't any war."
"I know why you're talking like this," I said, struggling to keep up with him. "Now I understand. You're still under the influence of some medicinal drug."
"No, you are. Everybody is." He pivoted so that he was facing directly at me. "That's what this whole war story is. A medicinal drug. Listen, did you ever hear of the 'Roaring Twenties'?" I nodded very slowly and cautiously. "When they all drank bathtub gin and everybody who was young did just was they wanted?"
"Yes."
"Well, what happened was that they didn't like that, the preachers and the old ladies and all the stuffed shirts. So then they tried Prohibition and everybody just got drunker, so then they really got desperate and arranged the Depression. That kept the people who were young in the thirties in their places. But they couldn't use that trick fo ~ John Knowles

Two world wars, three monstrous dictatorships-in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, Red China-plus every lesser variant of devastating socialist experimentation in a global spread of brutality and despair, have not prompted modern intellectuals to question or revise their dogma. They still think that it is daring, idealistic and unconventional to denounce the rich. They still believe that money is the root of all evil-except government money, which is the solution to all problems. ~ Ayn Rand

One of the most intensely unlikeable figures of the twentieth century, fanatical anti-Semite, enemy of labour unions and proud recipient of medals from Nazi Germany, where Hitler held him in veneration, Henry Ford was also an employer who paid his workers more than his competitors, an innovator who pioneered the assembly line and a visionary whose part in the creation of the twentieth century was so great that Aldous Huxley, in his Brave New World, prefigured a society whose calendar was divided into BF and AF-Before Ford and After Ford. ~ Stephen Fry

What is most original in a man's nature is often that which is most desperate. thus new systems are forced on the world by men who simply cannot bear the pain of living with what is. creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique. if Hitler had been born in Nazi Germany he wouldn't have been content to enjoy the atmosphere. ~ Leonard Cohen

Antanas eased up on the accelerator and pulled the truck onto the shoulder. The sound of the soldiers' footsteps crunching in the snow made Maria sit up straight. The truck had driven about thirty metres past the patrol, but none of the soldiers had fired upon them. Antanas hoped fervently that the transport documents that Peter had furnished him would pass inspection. Maria reached down and touched a metal pipe concealed beneath her seat. She was prepared to use it.

Jadwyga continued to pray quietly. "Mother Mary, spare me, Maria, and the other women from rape, and Antanas from death."

As a sergeant approached the truck, Jadwyga's stomach cramped, sweat broke out on her forehead, and her arms began to shake. Then she fainted. Maria propped Jadwyga up to make it look as though she was sleeping, and then smiled at the sergeant who was rapping on the glass.

Antanas rolled down his window. ~ Mark Creedon

I'd prefer people read about Churchill and how he wasn't overwhelmed by Nazi Germany. Amazing; that the morale of a country rested on one person's shoulders. Extraordinary people carried that country through its darkest hours; truly inspirational. I suppose that's my theme. Whether it's a biography or a movie; whether it's fictional or true, I'm inspired by people doing great things. ~ Larry Ellison

[...]if Nazi Germany had not invaded other countries but had simply sought to eliminate the entire Jewish population within its own territorial borders, this would not have constituted a violation of international law, as incredible as this now seems. ~ Mark Gibney

Hitler is all the war-lords and witch-doctors in history rolled into one. Therefore, argues Wells, he is an absurdity, a ghost from the past, a creature doomed to disappear almost immediately. But unfortunately the equation of science with common sense does not really hold good. The aeroplane, which was looked forward to as a civilising influence but in practice has hardly been used except for dropping bombs, is the symbol of that fact. Modern Germany is far more scientific than England, and far more barbarous. Much of what Wells has imagined and worked for is physically there in Nazi Germany. The order, the planning, the State encouragement of science, the steel, the concrete, the aeroplanes, are all there, but all in the service of ideas appropriate to the Stone Age. ~ George Orwell

The power in any society is with those who get to impose the fantasy. It is no longer, as it was for centuries throughout Europe, the church that imposes its fantasy on the populace, nor is it the totalitarian superstate that imposes the fantasy, as it did for 12 years in Nazi Germany and for 69 years in the Soviet Union. Now the fantasy that prevails is the all-consuming, voraciously consumed popular culture, seemingly spawned by, of all things, freedom. The young especially live according to the beliefs that are thought up for them by the society's most unthinking people and by businesses least impeded by innocent ends. Ingeniously as their parents and teachers may attempt to protect the young from being drawn, to their detriment, into the moronic amusement park that is now universal, the preponderance of the power is not with them. ~ Philip Roth

I can tell you that events were incremental, that the unbelievable became the believable and, ultimately, the normal. ~ Ralph Webster

If the Deseret News is careful not to offend [Nazi] Germany, and I gather that it is falling backwards on the attempt, it is my guess that first of all the Church is afraid of complete banishment. ~ Fawn M. Brodie

Sitting at the table were three Russian prisoners of war that had been assigned to work on her husband's farm. Hesitantly, we sat down with these men. I couldn't understand a word they said and I couldn't know the awful circumstances under which I would see them again. We stayed at the farm that entire day and she let us sleep in a nice large bed, tucked under the eaves of the attic. It would have been perfect except that we didn't have any pillows or blankets but at least there wasn't a corpse in bed with us! The nights were getting cold this time of year, besides the Russians had made me feel considerably uncomfortable. When I asked her about her neighbors she avoided the question and so I thought it best to continue our search, in hopes of a better place to stay. ~ Hank Bracker

Adeline is Battered & Threatened

Not knowing the title of this bureaucrat, I addressed him incorrectly as Meine Herrschaften. With this silly fabricated title, I simply tried to explain to him that the corporal was a brave Frontsoldat. My efforts were in vain since he was intent on finding out the corporal's name, and my stalling only made matters worse. "What's his name?" he shouted again and again, this time hitting my breasts and punching me in the stomach, which caused me to vomit all over the floor. It didn't matter to him that my husband was a German soldier fighting for das Vaterland. He continued to beat me and threatened to put me into the terrible prison camp at Schirmeck. Having passed by there recently, the crying and moaning sounds from inside the gates of this prison were still very vivid in my mind. He reached for his telephone and said, "With one call you'll be there if you don't answer me!" "Please, I won't be able to live with myself if I'm the cause of an innocent person's death," I sobbed. I remember him saying, "I remember you! You're the woman from Bischoffsheim who helped with the kindergarten class and did the art work there. You have two little girls, don't you?" How could this man know so much about me? He continued his threats by saying that he would beat my little girls at 3 o'clock every afternoon in the Village center, until I gave him the names he wanted. I formed a mental image of this cruel act, however in spite of this, I firm ~ Hank Bracker

The world, however, is indebted to Germany in a terrifying way, because she demonstrated to everyone what the ultimate conclusions of negative and destructive ideas really are. Ideas which in London or New York are repeated as seemingly harmless abstractions have been shown up by the Germans in all their blood-chilling finality. In this sense Nazi Germany has become the Gorgonian Mirror in which a decadent West could study its own features. ~ Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

In many ways Nazism was antithetical to what the great mass of Germans said they admired - and certainly to what they paid homage. It was noisy, undisciplined, vainglorious; its leader was a half-educated posturing foreigner. For a decade the National Socialists were regarded as hoodlums, as part of the breakdown of what had been, if anything, an excessively ordered society before. ~ Eugene Davidson

The worst criminals of our time are the US and UK governments. Both are devoid of all integrity, all honor, all mercy, all humanity. Many members of both governments would have made perfect functionaries in Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany. ~ Paul Craig Roberts

The media and intelligentsia were partly complicit in Trump's depiction of the world as a dystopia headed for even greater disaster. 'Charge the cockpit or you die!' cried the pro-Trump intellectual right. 'I'd rather see the empire burn to the ground under Trump, opening up at least the possibility of radical change, than cruise on autopilot under Clinton,' said the pro-Trump left. When people believe that the world is heading off a cliff, they are receptive to the perennial appeal of demagogues: 'What do you have to lose?'

But if the media and intellectuals put events into statistical and historical context, rather than constantly crying 'crisis,' they would make it clearer what the answer to that question is. Revolutionary regimes from Nazi Germany and Maoist China to contemporary Venezuela show that people have a tremendous amount to lose when a charismatic leader forces a radical personal vision on a society. A modern liberal democracy is a precious achievement. Until the messiah comes, it will always have problems, but it's better to solve problems than to start a conflagration and hope for the best. ~ Steven Pinker

Even the poorest pit houses usually possess a state-sponsored Volkempfanger VE301, a mass-produced radio stamped with an eagle and a swastika, incapable of shortwave, marked only for German frequencies.
Radio: it ties a million ears to a single mouth. Out of loudspeakers all around Zollverein, the staccato voice of the Reich grows like some imperturbable tree; its subjects lean toward its branches as if toward the lips of God. ~ Anthony Doerr

To test. Would weightlessness put them off their game? It did. The turtles moved "slowly and insecurely" and did not attack a piece of bait placed directly in front of them. Then again, the water in which they swam was repeatedly floating up out of the jar and forming an "ovoid cupola." Who could eat? Von Beckh quickly moved on from turtles to Argentinean pilots. Under the section heading "Experiments with Human Subjects" - a heading that, were I a doctor previously employed by Nazi Germany, I might have rephrased - von Beckh reports on the efforts of the pilots to mark X's inside small boxes during regular and weightless flight. During weightlessness, many of the letters strayed from the boxes, indicating that pilots might experience difficulties maneuvering their planes and doing crossword puzzles during air battles. The following year, von Beckh was recruited by the Aeromedical Research Laboratory at Holloman Air Force ~ Mary Roach

If there had been a strong democratic sentiment in Germany, Hitler would never have come to power . [Germans] deserved what they got when they went round crying for a hero. ~ A.J.P. Taylor

It is thus necessary that the individual should finally come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of the nation, that the position of the individual is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole. ~ Adolf Hitler

The 20th century merits the name "The Century of Murder." 1915 Turks slaughtered 2 million Armenians. 1933 to 1954 the Soviet government encompassed the death of 20 to 65 million citizens. 1933 to 1945 Nazi Germany murdered more than 25 million people. 1948 Hindus and Muslims engaged in racial and religious strife that claimed more lives than could be reported. 1970 3 million Bangladesh were killed. 1971 Uganda managed the death of 300,000 people. 1975 Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and murdered up to 3 million people. In recent times more than half a million of Rwanda's 6 million people have been murdered. At present times genocidal strife is underway in Bosnia, Somalia, Burundi and elsewhere.
The people of the world have demonstrated themselves to be so capable of forgetting the murderous frenzies in which their fellows have participated that it is essential that one, at least, be remembered and the world be regularly reminded of it. _Consequences of the Holocaust ~ Raul Hilberg

If we go to the 1940s, Nazi Germany - look, we saw it in Britain. Neville Chamberlain told the British people: Accept the Nazis. Yes, they will dominate the continent of Europe, but that is not our problem. Let's appease them. Why? Because it can't be done. We cannot possibly stand against them. ~ Ted Cruz