nazis Quotes

“The other nine, decent, hard-working, ordinarily intelligent and honest men, did not know before 1933 that Nazism was evil. They did not know between 1933 and 1945 that it was evil. And they do not know it now. None of them ever knew, or now knows, Nazism as we knew and know it; and they lived under it, served it, and, indeed, made it.”

“As the Nazi emphasis on nonintellectual virtues (patriotism, loyalty, duty, purity, labor, simplicity, ‘blood,’ ‘folk-ishness’) seeped through Germany, elevating the self-esteem of the ‘little man,’ the academic profession was pushed from the very center to the very periphery of society. Germany was preparing to cut its own head off. By 1933 at least five of my ten friends (and I think six or seven) looked upon ‘intellectuals’ as unreliable and, among these unreliables, upon the academics as the most insidiously situated.”

“Worse, certainly, than Communism; for it is not the performance of political systems which justifies or condemns them, but their principles. Communism, in principle, supposes itself to represent the wretched of the earth and bars no man by nature from Communist redemption; the Nazis, in categorical contrast, took themselves to be the elite of the earth and consigned whole categories of men to perdition by their nature. The distinctions between these two totalitarianisms may not command much interest in the present temper of the Western Christian; they are still distinctions.”

“‘I think,’ says Professor Carl Hermann, who never left his homeland, ‘that even now the outside world does not realize how surprised we non-Nazis were in 1933. When mass dictatorship occurred in Russia, then in Italy, we said to one another, ‘That is what happens in backward countries. We are fortunate, for all our troubles, that it cannot happen here.’ But it did, worse even than elsewhere, and I think that all the explanations leave some mystery. When I think of it at all, I still say, with unbelief, ‘Germany—no, not Germany.‘”

“Nobody has proved to my friends that the Nazis were wrong about the Jews. Nobody can. The truth or falsity of what the Nazis said, and of what my extremist friends believed, was immaterial, marvelously so. There simply was no way to reach it, no way, at least, that employed the procedures of logic and evidence. The bill-collector told me that Jews were filthy, that the home of a Jewish woman in his boyhood town was a pigsty; and the baker told me that the Jews’ fanaticism about cleanliness was a standing affront to the “Germans,” who were clean enough. What difference did the truth, if there were truth, make?”

“It was not anti-Semitism or socialism or the New Order that first animated the Nazis; their first slogan was, ‘Break the chains of Versailles.‘”

“Looking handsome in your fine uniforms. Dressing up and doing the terrible, terrible things you do. Its makes me ashamed.”

“We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, “to be free from freedom.”

“The Nazis couldn’t stop the wind and the snow. The Russians couldn’t take the sun or the stars.”

″‘Those poor people,’ Father echoed. But to my surprise I saw that he was looking at the soldiers now forming into ranks to march away. ‘I pity the poor Germans, Corrie. They have touched the apple of God’s eye.‘”

“Up to a point he finds the agony delightful.

“It might almost—if one were paranoid enough—seem to be a collaboration here, between both sides of the Wall, matter and spirit.”

“He will immediately assume you are gay, and there is no force on earth greater than the fear jocks have of homosexuals. None. It’s like the Jewish fear of Nazis, except the complete opposite with regard to who is beating the crap out of whom. So I guess it’s more like the Nazi fear of Jews.”

“There is no force on earth greater than the fear jocks have of homosexuals. None. It’s like the Jewish fear of Nazis, except the complete opposite with regard to who is beating the crap out of whom. So I guess it’s more like the Nazi fear of Jews.”

“It all came flooding back to him now—swaying and humming along with the prayers, craning his neck to see the Torah when it was taken out of the ark and hoping to get a chance to touch it and then kiss his fingers as the scroll came around in a procession. Josef felt his skin tingle. The Nazis had taken all this from them, from him, and now he and the passengers on the ship were taking it back.”

“What is he thinking? Josef wondered. What happened to him at Dachau that he’s now a ghost of the man he once was? ‘At least he didn’t have to be buried in the hell of the Third Reich,’ his father said.”

″‘Don’t be so quick to grow up boy,’ the Brownshirt told Josef. ‘We’ll come for you soon enough.‘”

“I don’t remember much about him, but I do remember he always wanted to be a grown-up. ‘I don’t have time for games,’ he would tell me. ‘I’m a man now.’ And when those soldiers said one of us could go free and the other would be taken to a concentration camp, Josef said, ‘Take me.’ My brother, just a boy, becoming a man at last.”

″‘Don’t you see?’ Lito said. ‘The Jewish people on the ship were seeking asylum, just like us. They needed a place to hide from Hitler. From the Nazis. Mañana, we told them. We’ll let you in mañana. But we never did.’ Lito was crying now, distraught. ‘We sent them back to Europe and Hitler and the Holocaust. Back to their deaths. How many of them died because we turned them away? Because I was just doing my job?‘”

“He clutched the harmonica to his chest and cried into his pillow. He could have sworn he heard music...the Brahms...first as a child’s lullaby, then a mournful lament, and finally, a staccato march, accompanied by the ominous sound of jackboots.”

″‘I intend to concentrate all of my efforts on the League,’ she said. ‘They appreciate me. For my knowledge as a nurse, for my moral character and exemplary behavior. I’m...I’m somebody to them.‘”

“I don’t think you understand, Friedrich. We must not only leave Trossingen. We must leave Germany.”

“From Father, and you. And even from Elisabeth. if she can jeopardize everything important in her life to save Father, shouldn’t I?”

″‘And as for running - where would we run to? God is everywhere. There will always be Nazis among us. No, my child, do not tremble before mere men. It is God before whom we must tremble. Only God. We will go ahead, just as we have planned. After all, this is our shtetl, not theirs, and there is still a wedding to be made.”

“I will be brave. I am the only one who knows about the ovens, but I will be brave. I will not take away their hope, which is all they have. I will not tell them that the Nazis often lied and said people were going to take showers when they took them to be killed.”

“Overhead the swallows dipped down to catch bugs rising from the ground. Then they soared back up beyond the barracks. Hannah watched them for a moment, scarcely breathing. It was as if all nature ignored what went on in the camp. There were brilliant sunsets and soft breezes. Around the commandant’s house, bright flowers were teased by the wind. Once she’d seen a fox cross the meadow to disappear into the forest.“

“People talked about plenty of other stuff they weren’t supposed to, but only after a quick glance over their shoulder to make sure no one else was listening. Everybody did it so much there was even a special word for it: Deutscherblick. The ‘German Look.’ You did the German Look right before you said Germany might be losing the war, or complained about the food rations, or told a joke about Hitler. Because someone was always listening, always waiting to turn you in to the Nazi secret police. Always ready to rat you out to prove how loyal they were, even if they had said the very same thing yesterday.”

“I hated pretending to like these people, hated pretending to agree with their awful hatred of the Jews, hated pretending I wanted them to win the war and conquer the world. But I smiled because I had to.”

“I tossed one book onto the fire at a time, slowly, so Horst wouldn’t see me standing around doing nothing. My skin crawled, as if I was consigning little bits of my soul to the fire with each book I threw in. But like smiling at a Nazi dinner party or memorizing facts about the Nazis for tests in school, it was all about the bigger mission. It was all part of the game. If it meant them letting me stick around to steal their secrets so the Allies could win the war, I’d burn every last book in Berlin.”

“Everywhere I’d looked I’d seen faces full of smiles and laughter. But then, overnight, the party had ended. Not the Nazi Party. They had only gotten stronger. The other party- the feeling of unbounded German cheerfulness- was gone.”

“It’s hard to smile when you’re having dinner with Nazis.”

″‘There are Jews scattered all over the world,’ he said, ‘and the Nazis are telling terrible lies about them. So it’s very important for people like us to prove them wrong.’ ‘How can we?’ asked Max. ‘By being better than other people,’ said Papa. For instance, the Nazis say that Jews are dishonest. So it’s not enough for us to be as honest as anyone else. We have to be more honest.‘”