33 Nazi Quotes

It doesn't matter whether I'm judged criminal. I have a great feeling of guilt - I have a feeling that I ran after Hitler like a wildfire without reason. If I can sacrifice my life to make something good, I'd gladly do it.

Not only did waging war against Hitler fail to save the Jews, it may be that the war itself brought on the Final Solution of genocide. This is not to remove the responsibility from Hitler and the Nazis, but there is much evidence that Germany's anti-Semitic actions, cruel as they were, would not have turned to mass murder were it not for the psychic distortions of war, acting on already distorted minds. Hitler's early aim was forced emigration, not extermination, but the frenzy of it created an atmosphere in which the policy turned to genocide.

The Jew always lives from the blood of other peoples, he needs such murders and such sacrifices. The victory will be only entirely and finally achieved when the whole world is free of Jews.

Developments since the rise of National Socialism make it probable that the continent will be freed from its Jewish destroyers of people and exploiters forever, and the German example after the German victory in World War II will also serve to bring about the destruction of the Jewish world tormentors on other continents.

If I think of all those homosexuals in Germany today, I think I'd hand my German passport back, if I had one.

Those Russians. They did worse things when they entered Pomerania than we ever did in Russia.

He who serves our Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, serves Germany, and he who serves Germany, serves God.

You see, its been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been more compatible to us than Christianity. why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness? (Quoted by Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, pg. 115)

Springtime for Hitler and Germany Deutschland is happy and gay! We're marching to a faster pace Look out, here comes the master race!

It is precisely the immediate and thorough eradication of the Jews in Italy which is the special interest of the present internal political situation and the general security in Italy.

Few of those who stood on the defendants' dock at the trial of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945 to 1946 inspired more revulsion than Ernst Kaltenbrunner. ...This tall, hulking, scarfaced lawyer joined the National Socialist German Worker's Party (NSDAP) in 1930 and the elite Schutzstaffel, in 1931. ...Author Evelyn Waugh noted in his diary that 'only Kaltenbrunner looked an obvious criminal.'

Can he safely be categorized either as an 'unhealthy' and 'abnormal' individual or as the characteristic product of German society, a phenomenon so distant from the 'solid American citizen' that he need be of no concern except as a historical or medical curiosity? Or must one go to the other extreme and search for 'banal evil-doers' under every bed? I hope that a 'humanization' of this callous creature of the Nazi system will, if not provide answers, at least provoke more thought on these questions.

In his memoirs, Albert Speer told how, as he was about to turn in to the Bendlerstrasse, he was ordered to stop at the curb. Almost unrecognizable in the darkness were Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Gestapo chief, and Otto Skorzeny, surrounded by numerous subordinates. Speer expected the two to denounce the army, which they had always regarded as their rival, or at any rate to gloat over its defeat. But both replied in fairly indifferent tone that whatever happened was the army's business. 'We don't want to get involved,' they had said.

In some ways, Ernst Kaltenbrunner was the worst of the lot. He was a hulking ox of a man, tall and thin, with a thick neck and a scar running from the left side of his mouth to his nose. His long arms and oversized hands dangling from an elongated body gave him a kind of simian appearance. Even his Nazi colleagues took pleasure in referring to him as the 'Gorilla.' But many gorillas have the quality, at least, of being gentle animals. There was nothing soft about this ruthless killer.

Yes. Especially during the last phase of the war. Kaltenbrunner had more influence with Hitler - in practice, Kaltenbrunner was worse than Himmler.

We must not be squeamish when we learn that a total of 17,000 have been shot. We are now duty bound to hold together we, who are gathered together here figure on Mr. Roosevelt's list of war criminals. I have the honour of being Number One.

The fanatical Frank, who solidified Nazi control by establishing the new order of authority without law, so that the will of the party was the only test of legality, proceeded to export his lawlessness to Poland, which he governed with the lash of Caesar and whose population he reduced to sorrowing remnants.

When in the summer of 1941 he (Hitler) gave me the order to prepare installations at Auschwitz where mass exterminations could take place, and personally to carry out these exterminations, I did not have the slightest idea of their scale or consequences. It was certainly an extraordinary and monstrous order. Nevertheless the reasons behind the extermination programme seemed to me right. I did not reflect on it at the time: I had been given an order, and I had to carry it out. Whether this mass extermination of the Jews was necessary or not was something on which I could not allow myself to form an opinion, for I lacked the necessary breadth of view.

At that time I believed in the Fuhrer principle because to me it meant that the best one should be the leader. If the leader is good and responsible, then the government is good.

I am guilty of one thing - that I should have cleared out and not had anything to do with these criminals in the first place. Later it was too late. I was in up to my neck. But as for the atrocities, I had not a thing to do with them, did not know about them. And as for conspiring against peace, that is false, too. And that is my plain line of defense.

In world history we have other examples of frightful destruction. There was Alexander the Great and all of the destruction he caused. Napoleon, too, would have destroyed all of Europe. But unfortunately, the Nazi government, the government of which I unfortunately partook, had no Talleyrand, but we had a Ribbentrop. Through Talleyrand's policy France was saved from a catastrophe that Ribbentrop would have brought about.

Funk succeeded me and he could not act individually as I could and did. The Reichsbank could give or deny credit under the rules at its own discretion while I was president of it. The very day I left the Reichsbank, Hitler issued a law which obliged the Reichsbank to give any credit he would ask for. It was under that law that Funk took office. Perhaps in that sense Funk was not responsible, but in another sense, of course, he was responsible because he was a willing tool. If he went so far as to take the post, he was willing to obey.

As Minister of Economics, Funk accelerated the pace of rearmament and as Reichsbank president banked for the SS the gold teeth fillings of concentration camp victims, probably the most ghoulish collateral in banking history.

Hitler is a monster of wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder. Not content with having all Europe under his heel, or else terrorised into various forms of abject submission, he must now carry his work of butchery and desolation among the vast multitudes of Russia and of Asia. The terrible military machine - which we and the rest of the civilised world so foolishly, so supinely, so insensately allowed the Nazi gangsters to build up year by year from almost nothing - cannot stand idle lest it rust or fall to pieces. ... So now this bloodthirsty guttersnipe must launch his mechanized armies upon new fields of slaughter, pillage and devastation.

I know only that in my belief in Adolf Hitler I put all my strength at the disposal of my people. As a German soldier I could only put myself at the service of the defense against those destructive forces which had once brought Germany close to the abyss, and which today, after the collapse of the Reich, are still threatening the world. If I have made mistakes in my work through a false conception of obedience, if I carried out orders, all of which, insofar as they are alleged to be cardinal orders, were issued before my time of office, then they are part of a fate which is stronger than myself and which is carrying me along with it. I am accused here because substitutes are needed for the missing Himmler and other elements which were completely contrary to me. Whether my point of view and explanation are accepted or rejected, I ask you not to connect the fate and honor of hundreds of thousands of the living and dead of the General SS, of the Waffen-SS, and of the civil servants who, believing in their ideal, bravely defended, their Reich to the last, with your just curse against Himmler. Like myself, they believed that they were acting according to law.

Himmler regarded the accused Ernst Kaltenbrunner as the most suitable successor of the deceased Heydrich, who was executed by Czech Patriots. On January 30, 1943, he was appointed the boss of the Central Reich Security Office and the SD. By numerous documentary vouchers, in particular by the instructions to the Massendeportierung (Mass Deporting) of humans in concentration camps, and by the statements of the former boss of the principal message office (office VI), Walter Schellenberg, and the boss of the internal secret service (office III or SD), Otto Ohlendorf, Kaltenbrunner was transferred into its realm. Statements were signed by Kaltenbrunner, under which, in its entirety, propagated the heaviest crimes. In the negotiation from April 12, 1946 with Kaltenbrunner, the statement of the earlier Mauthausen prisoner Johann Kandutor was read out loud. In its statement Kandutor tells how Kaltenbrunner at the time drove him out during its camp attendance. Kaltenbrunner entered laughing during the gas chamber exercises, then people from the barracks were brought in for the execution, and all three kinds of the executions were demonstrated - hanging, shooting and gassing!

I am certain, however, that those responsible for the murder of millions of Germans will never be brought to justice.

And Bormann, who has not accepted our invitation to this reunion, sat at the throttle of the vast and powerful engine of the party, guiding it in the ruthless execution of Nazi policies, from the scourging of the Christian church to the lynching of captive Allied airmen. . . .

Yes, he was a sinister-looking fellow. I believe he was the evil spirit behind the scenes, but I have no personal knowledge of his activities. Bormann was Hess's successor. He was really the deputy leader, though he was not called that. He was the head of the party secretariat. Bormann was the first man in the party after Hitler.

Himmler chose certain camps and, together with Kaltenbrunner and Mueller, ordered the commandants of these camps to carry out the extermination program. This was done in the chain of command as I have just told you. I emphasize that it was Himmler to Kaltenbrunner to Mueller to Gluecks, who was also one of my subordinate generals, to the individual concentration camp commandants, who had been selected by Himmler to perform the exterminations. Otherwise, Himmler would have had to give the orders to me because I was technically in charge of the concentration camps. What I am trying to bring out is that although I am responsible for the camps, and the extermination program took place within these camps, I am not responsible for the extermination program itself, because these orders did not go through me, but went through the chain of individuals I have just mentioned.

You take an oath to a man whom you know follows the laws of providence, which he obeys independently of the influence of earthly powers, who leads the German people rightly, and who will guide Germany's fate. Through your oath you bind yourselves to a man who - that is our faith - was sent to us by higher powers. Do not seek Adolf Hitler with your mind. You will find him through the strength of your hearts!