18 Ernst Kaltenbrunner Quotes on Leadership

Ernst Kaltenbrunner quotes on leadership

1. I have loved my German people and my fatherland with a warm heart. I have done my duty by the laws of my people and I am sorry this time my people were led by men who were not soldiers and that crimes were committed of which I had no knowledge. Germany, good luck.

16. I was appointed by Hitler to succeed Canaris because it was well known and proven that my abilities were greater than those of Canaris.

27. I was thus appointed in the year 1943, two years before the conclusion of the war, into office. I would like to explain however that from the beginning, I happened to gain the responsibility for everything that was committed since my appointment as the boss of the Central Reich Security Office in the context of this office, when it came to injustice and so on, it fell under my actual line of duty, thus I knew from the procedures or had to know, the responsibility that I took over.

30. I know exactly what you've come here to say, Kaltenbrunner. But believe me, if I were not convinced that I'll build up Linz again with your help, as you see it in this model here, I would blow my brains out this very day. You must have faith. I still have ways and means of bringing the war to a victorious conclusion.

34. Kaltenbrunner's predecessor, Taus, did not exert enough authority over the Austrian SS. Kaltenbrunner, in addition to showing a fanatical loyalty to Himmler, apparently got the job done.

36. No doubt Himmler brought in the scar-faced giant Kaltenbrunner because he was relatively unknown and outside the established circle of the Heydrichian chiefs.

43. Martin Bormann looked for an ally inside the SS aparatus and found him in the preposterous figure of Ernst Kaltenbrunner.

46. I've seldom had such a tough, callous ox to examine as this fellow Kaltenbrunner. A block of wood would be more sensitive. He's coarse, hard-bitten, probably only capable of thinking when he's drunk. Naturally, he'll be the right man for Hitler. I gave Himmler a report on all this, but he still seems to think he's the right man.

51. I know of no limitation placed on Kaltenbrunner's authority as Chief of the Security Police and SD (RSHA). He promptly entered upon the duties of the office and assumed direct charge of the office and control over the Amts. He made it very clear in his official relations with all of us who were his Amt Chiefs that he was the head of the office exercising full executive powers and deciding all matters of policy. He permitted us to issue directives within the organization in our own names pursuant to fixed policies established by him, but all important matters had to be submitted to him whether he signed them or we signed them. He was constantly informed of all matters of importance which went on in the entire organization.

54. Himmler was such a coward, he refused or was afraid to act because of Kaltenbrunner and Hitler.

56. Himmler should not have left Kaltenbrunner and others to be responsible for his misdeeds.

57. I knew Seyss-Inquart, and it was clear to me from the very beginning that he should get the Chancellorship. Then I named Kaltenbrunner for Security. I did not know Kaltenbrunner, and that is one of the two instances where the Fuehrer himself lended a hand by giving me a few names.

58. I have no knowledge of Kaltenbrunner's becoming particularly prominent in the public eye. I heard the name Kaltenbrunner for the first time when he appeared as successor to General Canaris.

61. As far as I remember, he was there two, three, or four times. At any rate, during the last months of the war I saw him two, three, or four times. Kaltenbrunner never said a word there. As far as I remember, he just listened and stood about.

62. Kaltenbrunner said that the western Nazis were less radical, but my opinion is that the Nazis of Austria were more radical. I always had to meet criticism from below in Austria, charges that I was not being active enough and not putting through National Socialist ideas.

69. As early as January 1934, Dr. Kaltenbrunner was jailed by the Dollfuss Government on account of his Nazi views and sent with other leading National Socialists into the concentration camp Kaisersteinbruch. He caused and led a hunger strike and forced the government to dismiss 490 National Socialist prisoners. In the following year he was jailed again, because of suspicion of high treason, and committed to the court martial of Wels (Upper Danube). After an investigation of many months, the accusation of high treason collapsed; but he was sentenced to 6 months' imprisonment for subversive activities. After the spring of 1935, Dr. Kaltenbrunner was the leader of the Austrian SS, the right to practice his profession having been suspended because of his National Socialist views. It rebounds to his credit that in this important position he succeeded through energetic leadership in maintaining the unity of the Austrian SS, which he had built up, in spite of all persecution, and succeeded in committing it successfully at the right moment.

72. Who would Hitler say deceived him about conditions in concentration camps if not Kaltenbrunner, even as he would deceive us?

75. Hitler remained in his closely-guarded suite. It was long after midnight when he left the Imperial Hotel in the company of Heinrich Himmler to make the long-awaited visit to the Weltliche Schatzkammer to claim the Spear of Destiny as his own personal possession. Awaiting him at the Hofburg were Wolfram von Sievers, head of the Nazi Occult Bureau, Major Walter Buch, Nazi legal expert and chief of the USCHLA, and Ernst Kaltenbrunner, SS Obergruppenfuhrer, Austria. All three, along with Reinhard Heydrich's Sicherheitspolizei, had played a separate role in helping to secure the Spear for him.