Key Quotations

”Fourteen years since the war! Did you mark the date? What a long way we have traveled, as peoples, from that bitterness!”

”Who is this Adolf Hitler who seems rising toward power in Germany?”

'A liberal is a man who does not believe in doing anything. He is a talker about the rights of man, but just a talker. He likes to make a big noise about freedom of speech, and what is freedom of speech? Just the chance to sit firmly on the backside and say that whatever is being done is wrong! What is so futile as the liberal?'

'These are the only important men; the doers. And here in Germany, a doer has arisen. A vital man is changing things.'

'I do not question the ends of our action. It is not necessary. I know it is good because it is so vital. Men are not drawn into bad things with so much joy and eagerness.'

"I have never hated the individual Jew . . . I have loved you, not because of your race but in spite of it"

…it has been returned to me, the envelope unopened, marked only address unknown, (Adressant Unbekannt). What a darkness those words carry! How can she be unknown? It is surely a message she has come to harm.

If I could show you, if I could make you see — the rebirth of this new Germany under our Gentle Leader! Not for always can the world grind a great people down in subjugation. In defeat for fourteen years we bowed our heads. We ate the bitter bread of shame and drank the thin gruel of poverty. But now we are free men. We rise in our might and hold our heads up before the nations. We purge our bloodstream of its baser elements.