5 Hjalmar Schacht Quotes on History

Hjalmar Schacht quotes on history

1. My so-called foreign friends do neither me nor the situation nor themselves any good when they try to bring me into opposition to the allegedly impossible National Socialist economic theories and declare me to some extent the protector of economic reason. I can assure you that everything I say and do has the complete approval of the Fuhrer and that I would not say or do anything that does not have his approval.

5. Colonies are necessary to Germany. We shall get them through negotiation if possible; but if not, we shall take them.

10. Schacht is a disappointment because of another thing. If I would have had the terrible secrets of crimes committed by the Nazis in my hands, which Schacht said he possessed, then I would not have participated for ten years in a conspiracy. And I wouldn't participate in an Attentat solely in 1944, which incidentally was to be committed not by Schacht but by others - a cowardly Attentat at that, which meant placing a bomb under Hitler's table and then running off. If Schacht felt as nauseated by the Nazis as he now claims, he would have had to draw a pistol himself and shoot the man responsible for these dastardly actions, I mean Hitler himself. Anything else is unthinkable, with the knowledge that Schacht had.

13. It was Schacht, the facade of starched respectability, who in the early days provided the window dressing, the bait for the hesitant, and whose wizardry later made it possible for Hitler to finance the colossal rearmament program and to do it secretly.

14. But Schacht was infinitely more reasonable than the Nazis. He was fundamentally a dynamic, changeable person. In the beginning, therefore, it was quite logical that he should be attracted by the dynamic, dramatic, short-term ideas of the Nazis. As I said, Schacht has intelligence, but is not particularly a man of principle, although I think he believes he is. But it is reasonable to assume that later on he differed with the Nazis. He was too intelligent to go along to the extremes, which they pursued in their folly.