Kakistocracy​ (kækɪsˈtɑkɹəsi) is a term meaning a state or country run by

the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens...

“When someone is honestly 55% right, that’s very good and there’s no use wrangling. And if
someone is 60% right, it's wonderful, it's great luck, and let him thank God. But what’s to be said
about 75% right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Well, and what about 100% right? Whoever
says he’s 100% right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal.” An Old Jew Of Galicia

"The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut
and just listen for awhile, I want you to quote this, The media here is the
opposition party. They don't understand this country. They still do not
understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States."
Steve Bannon 2017

“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or
wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones and unite the civilized world against
radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate from the face of the Earth,” promised
Donald Trump in his inauguration speech. This may turn out to be the most significant
line in his speech, signifying the entry of the Trump-led United States into an
anti-Islamic international alliance based in white Christian identity.  
 
Here are some notes and quotes from my immersion in fascism, from the few months.  
 
‘At the Prophet's’ Thomas Mann​ - “Strange regions there are, strange minds… At the 
edge of large cities, where streetlamps are scarce… are houses where you can mount 
no further up into attics under the roof, where pale young geniuses, criminals of the 
dream, sit with folded arms and brood… Here reign defiance...the ego supreme, here 
freedom...madness and death hold sway.”  
 
I Will Bear Witness - A Diary of the Nazi Years 1942-1945 Victor Klemperer 1999 
“I will go on writing. That is my heroism. I will bear witness, precise witness.” 5/27/42 
 
...But I want to tell that he was a hero. He could not say three sentences without talking 
about his fear, but I want to tell of his courage. Jurek Beker Jakob the Liar  
 
Preface - On New Years Eve 1941 Victor Klemperer gave a little speech to the 
remaining occupants of the Jews House at 15b Caspar David Friedrich Strasse in 
Dresden. It had been , he said, “our most dreadful year, dreadful because of our own 
real experience, more dreadful because of the constant state of threat, most dreadful 
of all because of what we saw others suffering (deportation/murder) but he concluded, 
there were grounds for optimism. The regime, he implied was close to collapse, the 
guilty would receive just punishment.. As we know now , and the diarist Victor Klemperer 
was soon to discover, the worst was very far from over!  
 
...At the end of 1941, Klempereer was still unaware of the massacres taking place 
behind the German front. “Even more shocking reports about deportation of Jews to 
Poland. They have to leave almost literally naked and penniless. Thousands from Berlin 
to Lodz.”  
 
The Jews left in Dresden are uncertain of the fate of those deported to the East...the 
arrest and murder of individuals, however, are a token of the deportees likely fate… The 
general mood among Jews is that they do not fear evacuation quite as much as 
before and now even regard Therinstat as a relatively humane place…..The Planned 
deliberate extermination of millions of Jews was still unimaginable to Klemperrer and 
others. The realization that “deportation” was in Nazi terms, equivalent to extermination 
only gradually established itself in his mind, for a long time, he retained quiet hope that 
there would be news. On September 21, 1942 after visiting friends about to be deported 
he writes, They were really going into a beyond, from which as yet there had been no 
reliable news.  
 
Since the beginning of the deportations, 2,000 Jews in Berlin had taken their own lives p 
97  
 
Yesterday’s drudgery passed a tiny bit more quickly but the feeling of being dead, of 
an irretrievable loss of one’s life, continues to weigh heavily. At four we sit down for 
coffee, the foreman appeared, you better put the coffee away, the inspection. P 225  
 
The Revolution Of Nihilism - Warning to the West Hermann Rauschning 1939  
 
“ I have proved by my life, that I am more competent than the dwarfs, my 
predecessors, who brought this country to destruction.” Adolf Hitler 1938  
 
“Hitler put up with the dissatisfaction and disgust of his elite, and allowed them to abuse 
him for his inadequacy as an advocate, and for his supposed idea that he could attain 
power by means of speeches and parades, threats and extortion, and secret deals with 
bankers, soldiers, industrialists, and agrarians. “ p 25  
 
“Hitler is deliberately and unceasingly held up to the masses as a deity. One of the 
principal devices for securing Nationalist Socialist dominance is this deification of the 
man, his raising to the altitude of the sole savior of the nation.” p 35  
 
“Up to now the attention of the elite has mainly been paid to the fact that the masses 
are strongly influenced by the continual repetition of things that have been made 
familiar to them. That is true. But it is a mistake to suppose that they can be influenced 
for years on end by the same sort of suggestive propaganda...Propaganda to be 
effective, must continually be heightened. Hence the search for effective slogans, and 
to ensure that they shall be effective, the investigation of the desires of the masses. In 
the course of time the leaders become more and more dependent on the masses, at 
least in a negative sense, throwing aside slogans which are found to have lost their 
attraction.” p 82  
 
“The propagandist influencing the masses is only too likely to produce a growing mass 
extremism, the tension of which can only be relaxed through the ecstasy of war or a 
socialist revolution or a civil war. “ p 83  
 
“Whatever is cannot dominate, it must destroy, whatever it cannot absorb and master 
must go. Such is the truly barbaric maxim of National Socialism. It is the process of an 
enemy occupation of all the vital elements in the nation, ending in their destruction. This 
destruction is not brought to a halt before things of the mind” p 88 
 
“The fight against the intellectuals and against the freedom of science is not in the 
slightest degree the outcome of any inferiority complex, it arises from the clear 
recognition that in the field of the intellect the indissoluble unity of Western Civilization 
remains active. In this field independence of thought and resistance to the revolution 
are bound to show themselves sooner or later.”  
P. 89 
 
“Behind all its “creative achievements” which are essentially nothing more than a 
squandering of existing reserves and a parasitic consumption of the organized 
resources and achievements of generations of labour, was a stupendous wave of wild 
emotion -- envy, hatred, vengefulness, and the hot rivalry of small men in pursuits of 
power and success. All this only became clear to the middle classes and even to 
sections of the organized workers when the process was virtually complete. The 
absence of resistance to it shows its true nation was not realized, or else that the middle 
classes no longer had the strength to resist. But it must be said in defense of the middle 
classes, and of all of us, that few were aware of the cynicism with which the 
demagogic means of swindling the nation were being brought to bear. Hitler, in a 
sentence which has been deleted from later editions of Mein Kampf, wrote this, “The 
German has not the faintest notion of the way the nation has to be swindled in one 
wants mass support.” p 89 
 
“The nihilist revolution evades every spiritual impulse, and sees in reason and the things 
of the spirit its mortal enemies. It robs science of the freedom and compels it to serve 
the process of the revolution. The purpose of the National Socialist fight against 
Christianity is the same; to total destruction of the last and most deep rooted support of 
the forces of conservation. The destruction of the spirit of Christianity in Germany is 
certainly far more reaching than it appears on the surface. The churches are still open. 
Men still have God’s name in their mouth. But this Christianity is losing more and more of 
its past character. Such vestiges of any living Christianity as remain are steadily 
degenerating in the direction of a superficial and unthinking deism, and are thus 
becoming more and more fitted for the co-option of articles of faith drawn from 
‘racialist’ sources and the like.” p 91  
 
“Five years of the present course have so entirely and so universally depreciated every 
standard, have so destroyed the authority of every political principle, that nothing 
remains with which to build up any better system...The principles of nationalism, 
patriotism, social duty, justice and equity, fraternity and liberty, have not only been 
deposed in practice, but have been so undermined by false use and demagogic 
lip-service that they have been robbed of all effective appeal. If things are allowed to 
take their course, there will remain nothing but an utterly wearied, skeptical, atomized 
nation incapable for many years to come of any United effort.” p 94 
 
“It must be recalled that the world of ideas of the nationalist , conservative, the liberal 
middle class, and aristocracy, and of the intellectuals had long been invaded by 
scepticism. The whole of these ruling classes, no less than the mass of the proletariat of 
the great towns had been moving towards nihilism...Faith in traditions had been fading 
faith in machinery and devices and materialism had been growing among the 
traditional ruling classes.” p 100  
 
The degeneration of conservatism - “A conservative leadership of really outstanding 
quality, not merely one of tactical shrewdness, might have discovered the lines of a 
bold constructive polity. Men capable of such leadership were available, but they were 
viciously attacked and driven off as idealists and dreamers by the old crib biters of the 
party. From the earliest days of the Weimar Republic to the actual leadership of the 
German National Party had abandoned true constructive conservatism for a 
reactionary determination to carry out a coup d’etat as the only radically effective 
resource. The conservative leaders lacked the one thing that should characterize 
conservative policy, patience.” p 108 
 
“All the old revolutionary old fire had died down amid the desire of the Democrats in 
power for peace and comfort. In proportion as the phalanx of the pseudo revolutionary 
working class showed itself to be the best of buttresses of law and order within the 
capitalist system, the will to revolt against the revolution of 1918 grew among the parties 
of the right...All these factors contributed to divert the conservative elements in the 
direction of reactionism. The great industrial and agrarian organizations were already 
working in the same direction. From their justifiable self defense against destructive 
economic experiments and political tendencies, these associations soon went over to 
aggressiveness, advocating the reversal of the policy of social reforms.” p 109 
 
“In our day there is a sort of international understanding between reactionaries. All are 
proceeding along the same fatal course of self destruction. By their abandonment of 
the principles on which their whole existence depends, they are destroying the basis of 
their existence more thoroughly and more rapidly than the extremist of their political 
opponents could have done...The great financiers, in their support of political dynamism 
overlook the fact that they can continue to live at the expense of that movement only 
so long as there still remain free democracies to be reduced to dictatorships, and that 
they are assisting the very authorities that are restricting the field of independent 
enterprise. And in the same way all the groups that profess Conservatism are training 
and nurturing the very element that intends to overthrow them” p 110  
 
The renewal of conservatism - “ No political leader appeared with the energy and 
constructive ability to gather and lead these (disparate) elements to the defense of 
conservative principles against a pseudo-conservative power policy. The result as the 
crisis grew more acute some of these elements remained in the twilight and political 
dogmatism, other isolated themselves from politics in military brotherhoods, and the 
politically active section went over to National Socialism, imagining it to be an 
intellectually unformed movement which they could shape in accordance with their 
own ideas.” p 112  
 
“Many conservatives who had become spiritually homeless found their way into the 
ranks of National Socialism, from the very best of motives and in perfect good faith. 
They certainly did not do so for the sake of its program, which was all too plainly a 
mixture of inconsistencies and simple nonsense. They joined it for its resoluteness and its 
moral energy.” p 112 
 
“How can a conservative philosophy be possible in a period in which the traditional 
institutions of law and order, with all the virtues which have become an organic part of 
them, and especially with the whole Christian teaching, have been destroyed from 
within? The catastrophe which has fallen upon us has shown that the past conceptions 
of conservatism were too narrow and backward looking, and lacked fresh innovation 
from the tasks of the future.” p 113  
 
“The easy victories of National Socialism, which has never had to face any powerful 
opposition, have not only given it a feeling of irresistible strength, but prevented its 
strength from being effectively tested. The weakness of the whole German system, 
which no one capable of judgement can deny, render the future entirely uncertain. 
The nation itself bears the plainest marks of its injuries. This nation, driven, hunted, 
hopeless, obeying only impulses from without, continually shaken out of its composure, 
robbed of its self reliance, in constant anxiety, losing spirit, losing elasticity, but excited 
into hysterical outbreaks, has become a sick nation, mentally unbalanced and 
neurotic. Such a nation is not in a condition to face a new war. Its features betray panic 
and a dangerous readiness for hatred. Propaganda has aroused and excited its 
destructive natural forces. : p 117  
 
“Today, in the midst of a revolution that has wrecked the social order, overthrown every 
standard, and rejected every ideology, deliverance lies in the forces of true 
conservatism and in the healing restoration of the spiritual and social forces of our 
historic past.” p 120  
 
“National Socialism (Nazism) worked on the well tried practical principle that only 
violence impresses the people; it scorned logic and intelligence; and it was a master of 
the effective device of eternal repetition. P 131  
 
“The atmosphere of fanatical nationalism, in which all risks are ignored and prudence 
figures as unpatriotic cravenness, inevitably destroys even in the more responsible minds 
the clear distinction between the desired and the possible. The sound military principle 
of always assuming that the opponent will take the most logical course is no longer 
adhered to.,,No one protests, to do so would to risk the charge of unpatriotic behavior 
and civilian timorousness. No wonder in this atmosphere, amid universal spying and 
purging, nobody ventures to take national problems seriously, no matter how great their 
importance.” p 143 
 
“It is impossible to understand the true situation in Germany without a knowledge of 
these things. It is deeply distressing to a German to witness this unexampled moral and 
intellectual collapse. Only desperadoes could pursue such a policy…” p 144 
 
“What Germany is aiming for in not REVANCHE, not the restoration of the frontiers of 
2014, but a total revision, a completely different order, a rerum innovatio, a new 
rejuvenation of the world.” p 182 
 
“Hitler’s realism deceives the onlooker. This man, who can calculate with such icy 
clarity, who can await the right moment, who feels his way forward, one might say, with 
mastery, who is constantly testing and trying the weak spots, a man who so realistically 
examines everything surely cannot at the same time be a fantasist simply out to 
overturn everything. And yet this duality is in fact the essential characteristic of these 
great destroyers. Men of this type are inventive in destruction, they have a flair for the 
weak points, the points at which they can apply pressure in order to bring down the old 
order. And it is their destiny to do this until a really creative will opposes them or until 
their environment is exhausted. These are the men of great tactical gifts. They are also 
the men possessed of demons, of second sight, dreamers urged on by visions, who 
regard themselves as men like unto Gods, and who live in an unreal world in spite of all 
the realism they can assume on occasion. “ p 183 
 
“Behind the make believe of its nationalist and socialist doctrines, National Socialism 
unquestionably sets out to be a new ruling element…” p 206 
 
“Among the S.S. and the leaders of the S.A., anti semitism is deliberately regarded as 
school of rulership. The Jews is the colored man, the declase of Europe, the politically 
disenfranchised subhuman.For this reason, insensitiveness and absolute cruelty are 
deliberately practiced. Soft heartedness has to be driven out and brutality provided, so 
to speak with a good conscience.  
 
“Someone said that in every state discord should be stirred up to such an extent that 
the state could easily brought down. Objections were raised, but it was contended that 
it was all a question of money and organization...There were no convictions in 
democracies, real convictions for which men would stake their existence…” 
 
“Democracies, it was pointed out, were helpless against this sort of attack; it was in the 
nature of things that they should be, for the only way to prevent it was to become 
authoritarian. Dictatorships were largely protected against these weapons.” p 249  
 
 
 
Was Hitler Ill - A Final Diagnosis - Hans-Joachim Neumann and Henrik Eberle 2013 
 
Psychohistorical Aberrations: Anti-Semitism as ‘Madness’  
Numerous attempts have been made to attribute the crimes committed in Nazi 
Germany to mental illness on the part of dictator Adolf Hitler...Hitler’s anti-Semitism does 
appear to have been ‘irrational’. P 7  
 
Like every form of Xenophobia, anti Semitism is basically irrational, but the way in which 
various authors have described Hitler as ‘Mentally Ill’ or ‘Mad’ deserves closer analysis. P 
7  
 
“Former comrades - in - arms, for example, stylized Adolf Hitler as a pervert who could 
obtain sexual satisfaction, only if a woman urinated on him. Others indirectly accused 
him of being a paedophile.” Page 8 
 
“They ultimately diagnosed a schizophrenic madness that coupled with narcissistic 
fixation on his public self led to a paranoid extermination programme. P 8  
 
“Hitler stated quite frankly what he thought of the Jews. They were a cancerous growth 
consuming our national German organism. Obviously the best thing would be to 
exterminate the Jews, he continued, but that would not be possible. All that remained 
was the solution chosen by Spain of ‘expulsion, mass expulsion.” p 12 
 
“The chaotic terror of the first days of the war was gradually replaced by systematic 
terror.... The next phase in this terror, was the systematic evacuation, i.e. deportation, of 
more than 600,000 Jews, and “dangerous” Poles. P 14 
 
“Another possibility to be considered is that Hitler had sexual relations with his closest 
associates, which would explain the extreme loyalty that was shown to him.” p 34  
 
 
 
HItler’s Charisma - Leading Millions Into The Abyss Laurence Rees 2012 
“My whole life can be summed up as this ceaseless effort of mine to persuade other 
people.” Adolf Hitler 
 
“That such a man could go so far toward realizing his ambitions and -- above all -- 
could find millions of willing tools and helpers; that is a phenomenon the world will 
ponder for centuries to come.” Konrad Heiden  
 
Introduction - Adolf Hitler was, at first sight, the most unlikely leader of a sophisticated 
state at the heart of Europe. He was incapable of normal human friendships, unable to 
debate intellectually, filled with hatred and prejudice, bereft of any real capacity to 
love, and “lonely”... When pressed on the reason why some found such a strange figure 
so persuasive they pointed to a myriad of factors, like the circumstances of the time, 
their fears, their hopes and so on. But many also described simply the powerful sense of 
attraction they felt for Hitler - something that a number of people ascribed to his 
‘Charisma’.  
 
I’ve also learned a great deal from studying reel upon reel of archive footage from the 
period -- particularly footage of Hitler’s speeches. I had thought, when I started my work 
on Nazism twenty years ago, that the “charisma” of Hitler might somehow be visible in 
the footage. However it soon became clear - at least for me - that Hitler is decidedly 
uncharismatic on film today. But of course that is precisely the point. I felt nothing, 
because I am not a person of that time. I was not hungry, humiliated after the loss of a 
war, unemployed, frightened of widespread violence on the streets, feeling betrayed 
by the broken promises of the democratic system that I lived in, terrified of my bank 
savings vanishing in a bank crash, and wanting to be told, that all this mess was the 
fault of someone else….It's also important to state emphatically that people who 
accept the “charisma” of a leader are most definitely not hypnotised. They know 
exactly what is going on, and remain completely responsible for their actions. The fact 
that someone chooses to follow a charismatic leader cannot subsequently be used as 
an alibi or an excuse. P 5   
 
“Threatening and beseeching with pleading hands and flaming, steel-blue eyes, he 
had the look of a fanatic,” wrote Kurt Ludecke, who heard Hitler speak in 1922. “His 
words were like a scourge. When he spoke of Germany’s disgrace I felt ready to spring 
on an enemy. His appeal to German manhood was like a call to arms, the gospel he 
preached, a sacred truth. He seemed another Lucifer. I forgot everything but the man. 
Glancing around, I saw that his magnetism was holding these thousands as one.” In the 
years just after the first World War there were many small extremist political groups in 
Munich, but none possessed a speaker who could inspire an audience like this. P 21 
 
“Germans were experiencing a crisis that was not just economic but also political and 
in many cases spiritual. In such circumstances, it's easy to understand why Germans 
asked themselves, who was to blame for this horror? Why were they forced to suffer so 
much? And these were questions that Adolf Hitler said that he alone could answer, 
telling his growing audience how they should feel about the life they were experiencing 
and what they could do, to make things better.” p 22 
 
“Hitler structured his early speeches not only to control the mood of the audience but -- 
most importantly-- to provoke an emotional response. He would often begin, as he did 
in his speech on April 12, 1922, by outlining the terrible situation in which Germany found 
herself.” p 22 
 
“He would then ask who was responsible for this nightmare -- and here, for the 
audience, there would be good news. Because as it turned out, as Hitler saw it, that the 
bulk of the German population were not to blame for this misfortune. It was all, he 
claimed, the fault of the Jews; they had been responsible for the outbreak of WW1 for 
the abuses of capitalism and the new revolutionary creed of Communism...The Jews, 
Hitler argued, owed no allegiance to any nation state, but only an allegiance to other 
Jews across national boundaries. He created a fantasy world in which Jews even 
pretended to be on both sides of an industrial dispute in order to disrupt society -- the 
side of the workers and the side of the employer's.” p 23 
 
“HItler was also conscious that he was speaking to an audience in the heart of Catholic 
Bavaria and so was even prepared, in the context of the fight against the Jews, to 
compare the nascent Nazi movement to Jesus and his disciples.” p 23 
 
“My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter,” Hitler said in 
April 1922. “It points me to the man who, once in loneliness, surrounded by a few 
followers, recognised these Jews for what they were, and summoned men to fight 
against them and who -- God’s truth- was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter.” p 
23 
 
“It is extremely unlikely that Hitler was, even at this stage, a Christian as he claimed. But 
large numbers of his audience certainly were.” p 23 
 
“Hitler was doing nothing out of the ordinary in attempting to paint the Jews as 
responsible for Germany’s misfortune. At the time, they were a convenient and popular 
scapegoat for many on the Extreme Right. P 23 
 
“So no warning signals go up and no alarm bells go off when HItler becomes obsessed 
with the Jews, because he’s making in an extreme form arguments that are, one might 
say, already in a kind of form. So Hitler’s certainly appealing to Germans to end 
economic distress, to end political gridlock, to make Germany strong and proud 
internationally and to end the disintegration of German culture, and for him this is all 
tied together with anti semitism.” p 24 
 
“Hitler from the very beginning , was also very contemptuous of democracy, ridiculing 
the notion that “the people governs”. What was needed, he said, was not democracy, 
but one determined individual who would arise and restore strong leadership to 
Germany. And he was explicit about the central political idea that this strong leader 
ought to pursue in order to rescue Germany -- a national renewal based on 
classlessness and rave. Hitler demanded that all but the Aryan’s be excluded from 
German citizenship.” p 24 
 
“This call for “all true Germans” to work together to make a new Germany was 
particularly attractive to young Bavarians...It was self evident that there wasn’t a 
working class here and a middle class there. And linked to this idea was the notion that 
“International High Finance”, the financial power of the Jewry had to be eliminated.” p 
24 #DrainTheSwamp  
 
“Hitler has often been accused of being an actor, but a vital part of his early appeal 
was that his supporters in beer halls, like Emil Klein, thought he was genuine through and 
through. “ p 25 
 
“This tendency to set ludicrous goals and then dismiss the consequent suffering when 
they were not fulfilled was most apparent in the context of Nazi policy toward Jews.” p 
220  
 
“In seeking to DEPORT the Jews from Vienna, Adolf Eichmann was also trying to solve a 
“problem” that the Nazis had created for themselves in the wake of the Anscluss and 
the vast Aryanisation programme that they had imposed before the War. By shutting 
down or appropriating Jewish businesses, the Nazis had made it impossible for many 
Jews to earn a living. If the Jews were not able to emigrate, they would then become a 
burden on the Nazi state. Even before the war, one Nazi planner had proposed that the 
Jews who remained should be forced into camps, where they would be made to work 
on construction projects...However not surprisingly, Eichmann’s plan collapsed into 
chaos, creating appalling suffering once the Jews arrived in the town of Nisko in the 
Lublin region of Poland.” p 221  
 
“However short lived as the Nisko scheme was, it is nonetheless revealing of the nature 
of Nazi system of leadership -- particularly as it related to the Jewish question. Hitler was 
scarcely involved, yet his own imprimatur was crucial. Such was the nature of his 
leadership that a mere indication that he favored a particular course of action -- 
regardless of the practical difficulties of implementation - was enough to provoke one 
of his underlings to act, even one as junior as Adolf Eichmann… Hitler had created an 
atmosphere in which, as Himmler said in his speech in February 1940, the Nazis could be 
“liberated” from inhibitions and restraints.” p 222 
 
“The forthcoming war with the Soviet Union also offered the Nazis other possible 
“solutions” to their self created Jewish problem...Other related documents around this 
period make it clear that the Jews were to be sent into conquered Soviet territory once 
the war against Stalin, (which Hitler thought would only last a few weeks- was won. The 
Nisko plan (Mass Deportation) had failed, the Madagascar plan (Mass Deportation) 
had failed, but now the prospect of controlling the wastelands of the Soviet Union 
offered a way for the Nazis to remove the Jews from the Reich.” p 230  
 
“Such a deportation would -- like the other wartime plans that preceded it -- almost 
certainly have genocidal consequences. Not only had the Nazis already planned for 30 
million Soviet citizens to starve of hunger in the territory in which they intended to send 
the Jews, but HItler said on March 3, 1941, “The Jewish-Bolshevik, intelligentsia, hitherto 
the oppressor of the people, must be eliminated.” p 230  
 
Memories of the Holocaust (1938 - 1945) Sam Bankhalter, Fred Baron, Reider Dittmann  
Deportation - I was marched with the local Jewish population - men, women, and 
children - eight or ten hours, to a small railroad station. Nobody told us where we were 
going. We were forced into railroad cars, 100 - 120 in one car, like sardines, without 
food, without water, without any sanitary facility. The cars were sealed and we stood 
there for maybe half a day before even moving. Finally we began to slow trip to 
nowhere. There were children in our car, and old people. People got sick and died, 
and some went insane. It was an absolute, indescribable hell. I really don’t know how 
many days and nights we were in that living hell on wheels.  
 
Year Zero - A History of 1945 - Ian Burma 2013 
 
I was standing aghast in the midst of all this filth trying to get used to the smell which 
was a mixture of post-mortem room, a sewer, sweat, foul pus, when I heard a 
scrambling on the floor. I looked down in the half light and saw a woman crouching at 
my feet. She had black matted hair, well populated, and her ribs stood out as though 
there were nothing between them. She was defecating, but she was so weak she could 
not lift her buttocks from the floor, and as she had diarrhoea, the liquid yellow stools 
bubbled over her thighs. P. 31 
 
The doctors and medical volunteers were desperate for more food, drugs, and medical 
equipment...One day in late April a mysterious consignment arrived containing large 
quantities of lipstick. It turned out to be a godsend. THe commanding officer of a British 
ambulance unit Lt. Cl. Gonin remembers, I believe nothing did more for those internees 
than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet lips. 
You saw them wandering with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with 
scarlet lips. AT last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they 
were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. At last they could 
take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their 
humanity. P. 30  
 
The Third Reich in Power -Richard J. Evans 2005  
 
The Third Reich came to power in the first half of 1933 on the ruins of Germany’s first 
attempt at democracy, the ill fated Weimar Republic. By July, the Nazis had created 
virtually all the fundamental features of the regime that was to govern Germany until its 
collapse almost twelve years later, in 1945. They had eliminated the opposition at every 
level, created a one party state, and co-ordinated all the major institutions of German 
society with the exceptions of the army and the churches. Many people have tried to 
explain how they managed to achieve such a position of total dominance in German 
politics and society with such speed. One tradition of explanation points to long term 
weaknesses in the German national character that made it hostile to democracy, 
inclined to follow ruthless leaders and susceptible to the appeal of militarists and 
demagogues. Prologue p 2  
 
POLICE STATE  
 
“The continued disturbances and radical rhetoric were enough to worry not just the 
army leaders, but also some of Hitler’s conservative colleagues in the cabinet. Up to the 
passage of the Enabling Act, the cabinet had continued to meet regularly in order to 
pass draft decrees for forwarding to the President. From the end of March, however it 
started to be mypassed by the Reich Chancellery and the individual ministries. Hitler did 
not like the extensive and sometimes critical discussions that a cabinet meeting 
involved. He preferred decrees to be worked out as fully as possible before they came 
to the full meeting of ministers. Increasingly, therefore, the cabinet met only to rubber 
stamp previously decided legislation…” p 27  
 
“Nazi meetings were poorly attended. Hitler was still widely admired, but people were 
even beginning to direct criticisms in this quarter too. May of the Nazis’ promises had 
not been kept, and fears of a new inflation or a sudden war were leading to panic 
buying and hoarding in some places. The educated classes feared that the disorder 
caused by the storm troopers might spill over into chaos, or worse, Bolshevism. P 29  
 
“Nowhere was the personal nature of Hitler’s authority clearer than in the rise to 
prominence and power of the SS. Originating as Hitler’s private bodyguard and 
Protection Squad Shutzstaffel, hence the abbreviation SS it owed allegiance solely to 
him, and obeyed no laws apart from its own.” p 50  
 
The Third Reich’s elaborate apparatus of policing and repression was directed in the first 
place at hunting down and apprehending Nazism’s enemies within Germany. 
Organized opposition to Nazism was offered only by the Communists and Social 
Democrats in the early years of the dictatorship. The left-wing parties had won 13.1 
million votes in Germany’s last fully free elections, in November 1932 to the Nazi’s 11.7 
million. They represented a huge chunk of the German electorate. Yet they had no 
effective means of standing up to Nazi violence. P 55 
 
A small number took the view that the main prerequisite for a successful workers’ 
resistance was the reunification of the German labour movement, whose bitter division 
between social Democrats and Communists, they thought had opened the rise to 
fascism. P 59 #FeelTheBern  
 
Posters and magazine illustrations, newsreels, and films proclaimed Hitler as the man 
from the trenches, with the common touch, not only a many sided genius with a sense 
of destiny, but also a humble, even simple human being who had few needs, spurned 
wealth and display, and was kind to children and animals, and dealt compassionately 
with old comrades fallen on hard times. Many ordinary Germans were overwhelmed by 
the scale and intensity of the propaganda. P 123  
 
Anyone not wishing to come under suspicion of behaving in a consciously negative 
fashion will therefore render the Hitler Greeting the decree proclaimed #HeilHitler p 123  
 
Hitler - the man who saved Germany from disorder, yet again, crushed excessive 
ambition amongst the party big shots and restored decency and morality to the Nazi 
Movement. P 123  
 
Less politically active writers who stayed in Germany chose inner emigration, retreating 
from human subjects by writing about nature, replacing description of external events 
by introspection, or distancing themselves from the realities of the present by writing 
about far distant times or topics ties to no particular time at all. P 154  
 
 
More influential than such measures was perhaps the oft-expressed contempt of the 
Nazi leadership for the universities and those who taught and studied in them. In 
November 1938 Hitler launched a furious attack on intellectuals, amongst whom there 
was little doubt that he included university teachers and professors. He declared that 
intellectuals were fundamentally unreliable, useless, and even dangerous, and 
contrasted their irreducible individualism and their constant critical carping with the 
instinctive and unquestioning solidarity of the masses. “When I take a look at the 
intellectual classes we have, unfortunately, I suppose they are necessary, otherwise one 
could one day, I don’t know, exterminate them or something, but unfortunately they’re 
necessary.” p 298  
Prosperity and Plunder  
 
“We do not consider it correct for the woman to interfere in the world of the man, in his 
main sphere. We consider it natural if these two worlds remain distinct. To the one 
belongs the strength of feeling, the strength of the soul. To the other belongs the 
strength of vision, of toughness, of decision, and of the willingness to act.” Josef 
Goebbels had put it in more homely terms in 1929, “The Mission of the woman is to be 
beautiful and to bring children into the world. The female bird pretties herself for her 
mate and hatches the eggs for him. In exchange the mate takes care of gathering the 
food, and stands guard and wards off the enemy.”  
 
The German Resurrection, as a primer of Nazi ideology was a male event, a woman’s 
place is in the home. The Nazi’s War on Women working 
 
Aryanization was only one part of a vast and rapidly growing system of plunder, 
expropriation and embezzlement under the Third Reich. It started at the very top, with 
Hitler himself. To begin with, when Hindenburg died, Hitler was able to lay his hands on 
the President’s official funds. P 400 
 
For Friedrich Reck-Malleczwewen, the Third Reich represented the coming to power of 
the mob, and the overthrow of all social authority….From the comparative safety of his 
rural retreat he poured into his diary all the distaste he felt for the new order of things. I 
am the prisoner of a horde of vicious apes. Hitler was a piece of filth whom he should 
have shot when he had the opportunity. Rech’s overwhelming impression was one of 
the Leader’s “Basic Stupidity”. He looked like a Tram Conductor, his face waggled with 
unhealthy cushions of fat, it all hung, it was slack and without structure, spaggy, 
gelatinous, sick, and yet people worshipped this unclean...monstrosity, this power drunk 
schizophrenic. P 414  
 
At the beginning of the Third Reich, Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick announced that the 
new regime was going to concentrate public spending on racially sound and healthy 
people. It was not only going to reduce expenditure on inferior and asocial individuals, 
the sick, the mentally deficient, the insane, cripples, and criminals, it was going to 
subject them to a ruthless policy of eradication and selection.  
 
For the Nazis, the homosexuals were degenerate, effeminate, and perverted, they were 
undermining the strength of the Aryan race by refusing to have children, and were 
subverting the masculine idea which so much of Nazi politics propagated. P 529  
 
The Nuremberg Laws  
Discrimination against minorities such as homosexuals, gypsies, asocials, the mentally ill 
or handicapped or African Germans was designed in the first place to purify the 
German race and render it fit for a War of world conquest. German society was to be 
rid of in the long term of its social ballast, of categories of people who would not or 
could not play their part in working towards war, through joining the armed forces, 
toiling away in armaments factories, or toughening themselves up for the coming 
conflict. Seen in this light, they were a burden on Germany’s state and society, that 
they posed a long term threat to the future. P 536  
 
Hitler’s working habits were irregular. He had always been a stranger to routine. His 
bohemianism was still evident in his lifestyle after he came to power. He often stayed up 
well into the small hours watching movies in his private cinema. P 612  
 
After living for years in the frustration of illegality, Austria’s Nazis had accumulated a 
degree of pent up aggression that now outstripped anything seen so far in the old 
reich,.. Hard line Nazis were jubilant at what one called the liberation of Vienna and the 
East March from Alien Jewish rule, and proclaimed a general cleansing of Jewified 
austria. P 657 
 
When Goring, still trying to avoid a conflict with the British, suggested to Hitler on August 
29, 1939 that it was not necessary to gamble everything, Hitler replied, in My life, I’ve 
always put my whole stake at the table. Going for broke was not something that 
appealed immediately to the mass of German people. By August 29, they were 
becoming seriously alarmed. P 704 
 
It was the Nazi’s nationalism that won people’s support. However they were concerned 
at the threat of a general war, there was no mistaking the pride and satisfaction of the 
great majority of Germans, including many former Social Democrats, and in all 
likelihood not a few communists as well, as Hitler’s achievement in throwing off the 
universally hated yoke of Versailles. Resignation from the league of nations, the 
plebiscite in the Saar, the remilitarization of the Rhineland, the annexation of Austria, the 
incorporation of the SUdentatiland, the regaining of Memel, the takeover of Danzig, all 
this seems to Germans to be wiping out the shame of the 1919 Peace Settlement and 
restoring Germany to its rightful place in the world.  
 
Bockelsen - History of Mass Hysteria (Berlin, 1937) 
The Great Tyrant and the Law - Court / The Temptation Bergenguren 1939  
On the Marble Cliffs - Ernst Junger  
 
 
 
 
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich - A History of Nazi Germany by William Shirer 1960  
 
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it. - SANTAYANA  
“I have often felt a bitter sorrow at the thought of the German people, which is so 
estimable in the individual and so wretched in the generality. GOETHE  
 
The Third Reich which was born on January 30, 1933, Hitler boasted would endure for a 
Thousand Years, and in Nazi parlance it was often referred to as the Thousand Year 
Reich. It lasted twelve years and four months, but in that flicker of time, as history goes, it 
caused an eruption on this earth more violent and shattering than any previously 
experienced, raising the German people to heights of power they had not known in 
more than a millennium, making them the masters of Europe from the Atlantic to the 
Volga, from the North Cape, to the Mediterranean, and then plunging them to the 
depths of destruction and desolation at the end of a world war which their nation had 
cold bloodedly provoked and during which it instituted a reign of terror over the 
conquered peoples which, in its calculated butchery of human life and the human 
spirit, outdid all the savage oppressions of the previous ages. P 5 
 
Mein Kampf - The power which has always started the greatest religions and political 
avalanches in history rolling has from time immemorial has been the magic power of 
the spoken word and that alone. The broad masses of the people can be moved only 
by the power of speech. All great movements are popular movements, volcanic 
eruptions of human passions and emotional sentiments, stirred either by the cruel 
Goddess of Distress or by the firebrand of the word hurled among the masses, they are 
not the lemonade like outpourings of the literary aesthetes and drawing room heros. P 
25  
 
And was not the Democratic Republic, which had surrendered to the enemy and 
accepted the burden of reparations, to blame for the disaster? Unfortunately for its 
survival, the Republic did bear a responsibility. The inflation could have been halted by 
merely balancing the budget - a difficult but not impossible feat. Adequate taxation 
might have achieved this, but the new government did not date to tax adequately. P 
62  
 
On the nature of the future Nazi state, Hitler’s ideas in Mein Kampf are less concise. He 
made it clear enough that there would be no “democratic nonsense” and that the 
third reich would be ruled by the Fuehrerprinzip - the leadership principle, that it would 
be a dictatorship. There is almost nothing about economics in the book. THe subject 
bored HItler and he never bothered to try and learn something about it… p 84 
 
Considerable editorial advice and even pruning on the part of at least three helpers 
could not prevent Hitler from meandering from one subject to another in Mein Kampf. P 
85 
 
Nevertheless, most of the meanderings remained. Hitler insisted on airing his thoughts at 
random on almost every conceivable subject, including culture, education, the 
theater, the movies, the comics, art, literature, history, sex, marriage, prostitution, and 
syphilis. Indeed, on the subject of syphilis, Hitler devotes ten turgid pages, declaring it is 
the task of the nation, not just one more task, to eradicate it. TO combat the dread 
disease, Hitler demands that all the propaganda resources of the nation be mobilized. 
Everything, he says depends on the solution of this question. P 86 
 
The Peace of Westphalia was almost as disastrous to the future of Germany as the war 
had been...The surge of reform and enlightenment which had swept Germany at the 
end of the Fifteenth/Sixteenth Century was smothered. In that period the great free 
cities had enjoyed virtual independence, feudalism was gone in them, the arts and 
commerce thrived. Even in the countryside the German peasant had secured liberties 
far greater than those enjoyed in England and France. Indeed at the beginning of the 
sixteenth century Germany could be said to be one of the fountains of European 
civilization… Now after the Peace of Westphalia is was reduced to the barbarism of 
Muscovy. Serfdom was reimposed. The towns lost their self government. The peasants, 
the laborers, the middle class were exploited to the limit. The pursuit of learning and the 
arts all but ceased. The greedy rulers had no feeling for German nationalism and 
patriotism and stamped out all manifestations of them in their subjects. Civilization 
came to a standstill…. Germany never recovered from this setback. Acceptance of 
autocracy, of blind obedience to the petty Tyrants who ruled as princes, became 
ingrained in the German mind. The idea of democracy, of rule by parliament, which 
made such rapid headway in England in the 17th/18th centuries, and which exploded 
in France in 178, did not sprout in Germany. This political backwardness of the Germans 
divided as they were into so many petty states and isolated , set Germany apart and 
behind. In the end, the German nation was forged by naked force, and held together 
by naked aggression. P 92 
 
The Germans have no conception how vile they are. Nietzsche Ecce Homo  
 
This was at a time when Adolf Hitler, with his Charlie Chaplin mustache, his rowdy 
manners, and his violent, outlandish extremism was still considered a joke by most 
Germans. He had few followers then… P 109 
 
Donald Trump, like Alexander the Great, Augustus Caesar, and Napoleon 
 
 
As to women and marriage, there was also some truth in what Hitler related that 
evening of 1942. Contrary to the general opinion, he liked the company of women, 
especially if they were beautiful. P 131  
 
Its probable that Hitler intended to marry his niece. P 131  
 
The hard pressed people were demanding a way out of their sorry predicament. The 
millions of unemployed wanted jobs. The shopkeepers wanted help. Some four million 
youth who had come of voting age since the last election wanted some prospect of a 
future that would at least give them a living. To all the millions of discontented, Hitler in a 
whirlwind campaign offered what seemed to them, in their misery, some measure of 
hope. He would make Germany strong again, refuse to pay reparations, repudiate the 
Versailles treaty, stamp out corruption, bring the money barons to heal, especially if 
they were Jews, and see to it that every German had a job and bread. To hopeless 
hungry men seeking not only relief but new faith and new gods, the appeal was not 
without effect...Though his hopes were high, Hitler was surprised on the night of 
September 14, 1930 when the election results came in. p 138  
 
No one can say that Hitler did not give warning of what he would do if he came to 
power… p 141  
 
Hitler had now, by the start of 1931,gathered around him in the party the little band of 
fanatical, ruthless men who would help him in his final drive to power and who with one 
exception would be at his side to sustain that power during the years of Third Reich. P 
146  
 
The Last Days of The Republic 1931 - 1933 
 
Parliamentary government had become a matter of what the Germans called 
Kuhhandel - cattle trading with the parties bargaining for special advantages for the 
groups which elected them, and the national interests be damned… It became 
impossible to achieve a majority in the Reichstag for any policy, left, center or right… p 
151  
 
It was a bitter and confusing campaign. In the Reichstag Goebbels branded 
Hindenburg as the candidate of the party of deserters and was expelled from the 
chamber for insulting the President...All the traditional loyalties of classes and parties 
were upset in the confusion and heat of the electoral battle… p 157  
 
Hitler threw himself into the campaign with furious energy, crisscrossing the country, 
addressing large crowds of mass meetings and whipping them up into a state of 
frenzy...They directed a propaganda campaign such as Germany had never seen. 
They plastered the walls of cities and towns with a million screeching colored posters, 
distributed 8 million pamphlets, and twelve million extra copies of their newspapers, 
staged three thousand meetings a day and for the first time in a German election, 
made good use of films and gramophone records, the latter sprouting forth on trucks. P 
158  
 
Hindenberg only spoke ONCE on March 10 - Election of a party man, representing one 
sided extremist views, who would consequently have the majority of people against 
him, would expose the Fatherland to serious disturbances whose income would be 
incalculable. Duty commands me to prevent this. If I am defeated, I shall at least not 
incurred the reproach that of my own accord I deserted my post in an hour of crisis. I 
ask for no votes from those who do not wish to vote for me.  
 
Hindenberg 18,651,497 49.6% 
Hitler 11, 339,446 30.1 % 
Thalmann 13.2 % 
Dusterberg 6% 
 
The figures were a disappointment to both sides. The old President had led the Nazi 
demagogue by over seven million votes, but had just failed to win the majority. P 159  
 
Second vote   
Hidenberg 19,359,983 53%  
Hitler 13,418,547 36.8% 
Thaelmann 10% 
 
No class or group or party in Germany could escape its share of responsibility for the 
abandonment of the Democratic Republic and the advent of Adolf Hitler. The cardinal 
error of the Germans who opposed Nazism was their failure to unite against it. 
#FeelTheBern The communists, at the behest of Moscow were committed to destroying 
the social democrats the socialist trade unions and what middle class democratic 
forces there were, on the dubious theory that alough this would lead to a Nazi regime, it 
would only be temporary and inevitably bring a collapse of capitalism, after which the 
communists would take over and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. Fascism in 
the Bolshevik Marxist view represented the last stage of dying capitalism, after that, the 
Communist deluge. P 185  
 
Between the left and right, Germany lacked a politically powerful middle class, which in 
other countries, in France, In England, in the USA, had proved to be the backbone of 
Democracy...If the German Republic was bereft of a middle of the road political class, 
it also lacked the stability provided in many other countries by a truly conservative 
party….But then, as at almost all times during the Weimar regime, they (the 
Conservatives) refused to take a responsible position either in the Government or the 
opposition. P 186  
 
The one party totalitarian state had been achieved with scarcely a ripple of opposition 
or defiance, and within four months after the Reichstag had abdicated its democratic 
responsibility. P 201 
 
 
WIthin three weeks the hollowness of another Nazi promise was exposed when Hitler 
decreed a law bringing an end to collective bargaining… p 20 3 
 
THe Nazis had destroyed the left, but the right remained, big business and finance, the 
aristocracy, the junker landlords, and the Prussian generals, who kept tight reign over 
the army. P 205  
 
Hitler had contrary thoughts. For him, the Nazi socialist slogans had been merely 
propaganda, means of winning over the masses on is way to power. Now that he had 
power, he was uninterested in them. He needed time to consolidate his position and 
that of the country. For the moment, at least the right, business, the army, the President, 
must be appeased. He did not intend to bankrupt Germany and thus risk the very 
existence of his regime. There must be no second revolution. P 205 
 
Things are going badly Papen, see what you can do to make them right.HINDENBERG 
 
It was a courageous utterance, eloquent in style and dignified in tone, It called for an 
end of the revolution, for a termination of the Nazi Terror, for the restoration of normal 
decencies, and the return of some measure of freedom, especially freedom of press. 
Addressing Dr. Goebbels, the Propaganda Minister, Papen said,  
 
Open manly discussions would be of more service to the German people than for 
instance, the present state of the German press. The Government must be mindful of 
the old maxim, only weaklings suffer no criticism. Great men are not created by 
propaganda… If one desires close contact and unity with the people one must not 
underestimate their understand. One must not everlastingly keep on leading strings. No 
organization no propaganda however excellent can alone maintain confidence in the 
long run. It is not by incitement. And not by threats against the helpless part of the 
nation but only by talking things over with people that confidence and devotion can 
be maintained. People treated as morons however have no confidence to give away. 
It is time to join together in a fraternal friendship and respect for all our fellow 
countrymen to avoid disturbing the labors of serious men and to silence fanatics. P 218  
 
Wages were set by so-called labor trustees, appointed by the Labor Front. In practice 
they set the rates according to the wishes of the employer, there was no provision for 
the workers to even be consulted in such matters - though after 1936, when help 
became scarce in the armament industries, some employers attempted to raise wages 
in order to attract men, wage scales were held down by the state. Hitler was quite frank 
about keeping wages low, It has been the iron principle of the National Socialist 
leadership he declared early in the regime, not to permit any rise in the hourly wage, 
but to raise income solely by an increase in performance. IN a country where most 
wages were based at least partly on piecework this meant that a worker could hope to 
earn more, only by a speed up and longer hours. P 263  
 
It was rarely easy, as readers who have got this far in this book, are aware, to penetrate 
the strange and fantastic workings of Hitler’s fevered mind. P 549  
 
It seems difficult to imagine that anyone who heard (Hitler) could have had any further 
doubts that the man who now held the fate of Germany, and the world, in his hands, 
had become beyond a question, a dangerous megalomaniac. “I had a clear 
recognition of the probable course of historical events, he said in discussing his early 
struggles, and the firm will to make brutal decisions… as the last factor I must name my 
own person in all modesty, irreplaceable, neither a military man nor a civilian could 
replace me, assassination attachments may be repeated, I am convinced of the 
powers of my intellect and of decision, no one has ever achieved what I have 
achieved, I have led the German people to a great height, even if the world does hate 
us now, the fate of the Reich depends only on me. I shall act accordingly. Hitler p 656 
 
The trouble with German leaders of the past, Hitler said, including Bismakr and Molke 
was insufficient hardness. P 657  
 
Himmler and Heydrich were assigned by Hitler to liquidate the Jews. Frank’s job besides 
squeezing food and supplies and forced labor out of Poland was to liquidate the 
intelligentsia. The Nazis had a beautiful code name for this operation, EXTRAORDINARY 
PACIFICATION ACTION / Ausserordenliche Befriedigungaktion or AB Action p 662 
 
About two thousand men and several hundred women he said, had been 
apprehended “at the beginning of the Extraordinary Pacification Action.” Most of them 
had already been “summarily sentenced” - a Nazi euphemism for liquidation. A second 
batch of intellectuals was now being rounded up for summary sentence. P 663 
 
My dear comrades, I could not eliminate all lice and Jews in only one year, (Public 
Amused - he notes at that point) but in the course of time, if you help me, this end will 
be attained….As far as the Jews are concerned I want to tell you quite frankly, that 
they must be done away with in one way or another...Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid 
yourself of all feeling of pity, We must annihilate the Jews. p 663 
 
Like almost all of Hitler’s promises, this one too would be broken… p 745  
 
Reidrich Barbarosa  
Barbarossa - The Turn of Russia   
 
Chapter 25 - The Turn of the United States  
 
There was a basic contradiction from the beginning in Hitler’s policy toward America. 
Though he only had contempt for her military prowess, he endeavored during the first 
two years of the conflict to keep her out of the war. This as we have seen was the main 
task of the German Embassy in Washington, which went to great lengths, including the 
bribing of Congressmen, attempting to subsidize writers, and aiding the AMERICA FIRST 
COMMITTEE, to support the American isolationists, and thus keep America from joining 
Germany’s enemies in the war. P 871  
 
Hitler’s Address on December 11 to the robots of the Reichstag in defense of his 
declaration of War on the United States was devoted mainly to hurling personal insults 
at Franklin D, Roosevelt, to charging that the President had provoked WAR in order to 
cover up for the failures of the New Deal and to thundering that this man alone, 
backed by the millionaires and the Jews, was responsible for the Second WOrld War. P 
897 
 
In the massive deportations of slave labor to the Reich, wives were torn away from 
husbands, and children from their parents, and assigned to widely separated parts of 
Germany. The young, if they were old enough to work at all, were not spared. Even top 
generals of the Army cooperated in the kidnapping of children, who were carted off to 
the homeland to perform slave labor. A memorandum from Rosenberg’s files of June 
12, 1944 reveals this practice in occupied Russia. Army Group Center intends to 
apprehends forty to fifty thousand youths from the age of 10 - 14… and transport them 
to the Reich. Increasing terrorization was used to round up the victims, at first 
comparatively mild methods were used. Persons coming out of church or the movies 
were nabbed. In the West, especially S.S. units blocked off a section of town, and seized 
all able bodied men and women. In the East, when there was resistance to forced 
labor, villages were simply burned down and their inhabitants cated off.  
 
Benito Mussolini, tired and senile, though he was only going on sixty, he who had 
strutted so arrogantly across Europe’s stage for two decades, was at the end of his 
rope… So fell ignominiously, the modern Caesar, a bellicose sounding man of the 
twentieth century who had known how to profit from its confusions and despair, but 
who underneath the gaudy facade was made largely of sawdust. As a person he was 
not unintelligent. But as a dictator, he had made the fatal mistake of trying to make a 
martial, imperial great power of a country, which lacked the industrial resources to 
become one, and whose people, unlike the Germans, were too civilized, too 
sophisticated, to down to earth to be attracted by such false ambitions. THe Italian 
people, at heart, had never like the Germans embraced Fascism. They had merely 
suffered it, knowing that it was a passing phase, p 997  
 
Already in February, the Fuehrer, in a fit of rage, had considered denouncing the 
Geneva Conventions in order, he said at a conference on the nineteenth, “To make 
the enemy realize that we are determined to fight for our existence with all the means 
at our disposal.” He had been urged to take this step by Dr. Goebbels, the blood thirsty 
non combatant. P 1100  
 
Hitler’s Last Will and Testament  
 
Indeed in the last hours of his life, he reverted to the young man he had been in the 
gutter days in Vienna, and in the early rowdy beer hall period in Munich, cursing the 
Jews for all the ills of the world, spinning his half baked theories about the universe, and 
whining that fate once more had cheated Germany of victory and conquest. In this 
valedictory to the German nation and to the world, which was also meant to be a last 
conclusive appeal to history, Adolf Hitler dredged up all the empty claptrap of Mein 
Kemf and added his final falsehoods. It was a fitting epitaph of a power drunk tyrant 
whom absolute power had corrupted absolutely and destroyed. P 1124  
 
Adolf Eichmann Interrogated - Transcripts from the archives of the Israeli Police 1983  
 
Eichmann was responsible for the so called solution of the Jewish question in 
Germany...Up to the 1940’s the bureau’s general guidelines provided for dealing with 
the Jewish question by systematic emigration. The second phase which began at that 
point provided for the concentration of all Jews in Poland and the German occupied 
territories and this in the form of ghettos. The third phase was the Final Solution. P. 94 
 
“Undesirable as it is that Jews who are deportable in the light of existing regulations 
should acquire the nationality of a neutral country whose subjects cannot be deported, 
deportation in these cases must be waived for diplomatic reasons… p 105 
 
The Red Count - The Life and Times of Harry Kessler - Laird Easton 2002 
 
Weimar and Nazi Germany - Continuities and Discontinuities Panikos Panayi 2001 
Nazism - This regime, especially between 1929 and 1945, eliminated millions of its ethnic, 
social, and political enemies through a combination of deportation, collectivization, 
industrialization, and purging. P 11  
 
The ideal German woman would not work, but would instead produce as many 
children as possible, necessary for the German reich to expand into Eastern Europe. 
Women obtained medals for having large numbers of children, and the Nazis tightened 
up abortion legislation. The liberation that women had enjoyed during the 1920’s was 
reversed so that they disappeared from politics, except in Nazi women’s organizations, 
and from many professions… despite the rhetoric , the position of women can hardly be 
regarded as unique in Nazi Germany when compared with the situation in other parts 
of Europe whether fascist, liberal democratic or communist, in which patriarch 
remained in control. P 14 
 
One of the explanations for the scale of the Hitler cult may lie in Nazi propaganda. But it 
would be naive to suggest that the Nazis had a more sophisticated publicity machine 
than either the Federal Republic or the GDR. However the Nazis had an extraordinary 
tight control over information and also made use for the first time new methods of mass 
media, especially radio and film to indoctrinate the population. P 15 
 
Certainly there have been no serious indications that the ghosts of the Nazi past are 
about to return to steer a different course for German diplomacy… p 21  
 
Why Hitler, the leader of a mass populist movement with an unsophisticated grasp of 
economic policy should have succeeded where Bruning failed is a complex ? p 43 
 
The structure of German wages over the period did not entirely reflect either the 
productivity performance of German industry or the prevailing labour market 
conditions. P 59  
 
The Nazi Party claimed to be a revolutionary movement … their various statements and 
proclamations were highly contradictory and in most cases did not conform to the 
policies implemented… Hitler’s political manifesto Mein Kampf essentially amounts to an 
evil concoction of resentment. The self appointed Fuehrer despised the Habsburg and 
Hohenzollern monarchies, the aristocracy, and the bourgeoisie, intellectuals and 
capitalists, the working classes, and the petite bourgeoisie, state officials, and 
bureaucrats, and most of all the Jews and Slavs. Hatred was the key to his conception 
of the world, and destruction was his ultimate goal. P 74  
 
On the other hand, Hitler indulged in megalomaniacal visions of modernity such as 
gigantic railways and motorway systems as well as monumental public buildings and 
colossal cities. He admired the USA for its technological and industrial potential just as 
much as he detested it for its economic order, social structure, and most of all, its multi 
racial population. P 74  
 
The peasantry - Characterized by overproduction, shrinking incomes, labour shortage, 
indebtedness, compulsory auctions and foreclosures. These problems were aggravated 
by Protectionist politics that artificially slowed down inevitable structural change, the 
transfer of capital and people from agriculture into the industrial and service sectors. P 
77  
 
Professionalization is essential to modernization. It increases the division of labour and 
the overall level of productivity. Highly qualified, full time, experts replace the amatuer 
generalist and secure a market monopoly by excluding non professionals from their 
respective occupations. They form professional standards and codes of honor as well as 
over the training and admission of junior members. Based on their specific competence 
they claim a high degree of autonomy… p 86 
 
Did the Nazi regime support the rise of professionalism or did it prevent the proliferation 
of professional principles? In many fields a clear tendency toward de - 
professionalization. P 86 
 
The regime tampered continuously with the bureaucratic infrastructure and in the end 
caused administrative chaos. By splitting existing, and setting up new and competing, 
authorities with overlapping areas of responsibility , the traditional bureaucratic order 
disintegrated, even if the facade remained intact. P 97  
 
The Nazi party did not have any rational or at least reliable rule for elite recruitment or 
even for the selection of minor functionaries. Instead a maze of personal connections, a 
mess of strings to be pulled as well as political loyalty and racial criteria replaced 
‘normal’ selection procedures. The ‘Third Reich’ developed the traits of quasi feudal 
structures, replacing official channels by personal allegiance. Not surprisingly it was not 
the modern criteria of talent or merit, but rather ideological and personal loyalties, and 
above all opportunism. It fostered conformity and corruption, qualities diametrically 
opposed to rationality and modernity. THE SAME APPLIES TO THE PERSECUTION, 
EXPULSION, AND EXTERMINATION OF CERTAIN GROUPS FOR ALLEGED RACIAL DEFECTS p 
98 
 
An alliance between many of the elites in German society Army, Bureaucracy, Business, 
- was replaced by the charismatic leadership of the dictator as the main factor of 
control and integration. The trajectory of the Third Reich can also be examined in terms 
of a drift from a state governed by the rule of law, to one subject to a perpetual state 
of emergency.  
 
Hitler was a past master at telling his audiences what they wanted to hear. P 113 
 
Stages in the transition from Democracy to Dictatorship - The military side of Hitler’s initial 
takeover is therefore paradigmatic for the interplay between continuity and radical 
change that marked the transition from Weimar to Nazi Dictatorship and the 
subsequent evolution of the Third Reich. It also shows how the close location of 
conservative-nationalist ideologies to National Socialism with its deliberate vagueness, 
eased the path of many into the Third Reich. P 113 
 
One of the first laws passed under the Enabling Act of March 1933 was the Law for the 
Restoration of a Professional Civil Service. The title itself was a typically Nazi perversion of 
language. It was in fact a law for purging the civil service of politically and racially 
unreliable elements, but its name perpetuated the myth that it was now necessary to 
restore its non political status. P117 
 
The uncoordinated, chaotic situation which, under the umbrella of his charismatic 
leadership, he had, by calculation and even more by instinct, allowed to arise, ensured 
that matters had to move forward, if they were not to slip back into crisis. Yet there was 
a sense almost of panic around the dictator and his inner circle that the forces of 
continuity and inertia might after all reassert themselves. Hitler would then figure in 
History not as the greatest revolutionary of all time, but merely as the figurehead of a 
traditional, authoritarian,, conservative - nationalist regime. P 127  
 
The pronatalist imperatives of the Nazi regime could not be met with the prevailing 
climate in German society of relatively easy access to birth control advice and 
contraceptives, and with the effects of the relaxation of the abortion laws during the 
Weimar era. The birth control centers, marriage and counseling centers set up during 
the Weimar Republic, were shut down by the new Nazi Government or absorbed into 
the public health offices. This suited the political aims as well as the pronatalist ambitions 
of the Nazi regime. P 208 
 
On February 28 1933 the Nazi regime banned birth control organizations on the grounds 
that they were Marxist. In January 1941 the Nazi’s categorically banned the production 
and distribution of contraceptives, but did not ensure total success.. P 208  
 
Abortion legislation in Germany had been incorporated into the Penal Code on january 
1 1872 in the form that a pregnant woman who purposely caused herself to abort was 
subject to imprisonment for up to five years, unless there were mitigating circumstances, 
in which the sentence could be reduced to a minimum six months. The same 
punishment was applicable to any person who helped in the procurement of an 
abortion. P 208  
 
Social agitation for a liberalization of these abortion laws had been initiated before 
1900 but without success. P 208 
 
Under Nazi Nationalism Socialism family rights were suppressed as the regime aimed to 
control , define, and categorize both sexuality and the family. This was a clear contrast 
to the liberal conception of the family as the last place of refuge for the individual 
against the encroachment of state intervention….The third reich imposed an 
unprecedented supervision and control of births, marriages, and sexuality. 
 
Nazi claims to restore traditional family values and the family per se were not upheld 
and remained just rhetoric. Ultimately both Nazi policy and the impact of World War 
Two meant that it was only in the 1950s that everyday life began to regain any true 
sense of unity and concord…. By the 1950[s the family had regenerated, stabilized, and 
strengthened itself. Once again, it became a source of emotional support to its 
members, something it had not been permitted to be under the Nazi dictatorship. P 213 
 
The peacetime racial measures of the Nazis simply prepared the way for the genocidal 
state that would surface following the outbreak of war… p 230  
 
 
The Nazis essentially began the descent into barbarism as early as their seizure of power 
in 1933 and the instant attacks upon Jews. As a revolutionary racist party they displayed 
no concern for the rule of domestic or international liberal democracy. P 237  
 
The Extreme Right  
 
The label of right wing extremism is applied to the numerous volkish organizations that 
emerged after 1918. Although the term extremism was rarely evoked in the interwar 
period, it is applied in contemporary terminology to those movements and parties that 
express anti pluralist, anti parliamentarian, authoritarian, racist, and anti communist 
views in addition to espousing nationalist, military, and ethno centrist ambitions. P 249  
 
Striving for a totalitarian or at least an authoritarian state. They reject the representative 
parliamentary democracy. Their motivating forces are a nationalism that severely 
restricts individual civil liberties and is directed against all international understanding, as 
well as racism. P 249  
 
In terms of commonality, the conservative forces and the small volkish groups of the 
radical right shared common tenets of belief, they were highly nationalistic, displayed 
strong anti semitic (Muslims are semitic!) and anti marxist tendencies, and were 
collectively united by their desire to destroy the democratic republic, and restore 
German pride. #MakeGermanyGreatAgain p 249  
 
They focused on simple slogans, made use of friend/foe dichotomies, and stirred up 
anger and resentment among their target audiences, usually in beer cellars. Their 
message was essentially a rather crude and bastardized amalgamation of ideas and 
issues that had been in circulation for some time. In other words, from an ideological 
standpoint the extreme right had little to offer. What distinguished them was their 
propensity for agitation, their ability to incite their audiences, and on occasion to 
inaugurate the use of violence. P 250  
 
Possessing political genius and belief in himself and his abilities, Hitler almost single 
handedly, through his speeches, his style of rhetoric and the popularity of his slogans 
enabled his fledgling party to distinguish itself from all its rivals. P 251  
 
Hitler conceived the idea of using propaganda as a means to lambast the Republic 
and the Marxists, to foster resentment especially among the middle classes and to 
promote extremely vague notions of future actions. In retrospect, that this formula 
worked is illustrated by the party’s surprise electoral breakthrough in 1930 and in its 
spectacular results in June 1932.  
 
 
Weimar and the Rise of Hitler - Fourth Edition AJ Nicholls 2000 
 
“The whole affair was damaging to German social democracy because it deepened 
the split in the Berlin working class movement, and strengthened the enemies of 
moderation on both the right and the left.” p. 21 
 
The (Nazi) party’s new programme was a mixture of pan-German nationalism, racial 
exclusiveness, and a resentful hostility to big business. It demanded a ‘Greater’ German 
Reich, and more land upon which to settle the country’s surplus population. Citizenship 
should be restricted to people of German origin, aliens could not enjoy such rights, and 
Jews could never be citizens. The immigration of aliens into Germany should be 
stopped and those who had come into the country since August 1914 should be 
required to leave. P. 91  
 
Hitler and Republican Instability - In all retrospect, Hitler’s contribution was vital. It was he 
who moved large audiences with his oratory, he who charmed bourgeois families 
...Hitler also organized his own strong arm squads which by 1923 had developed into a 
paramilitary force of considerable size. This SA staged provocative demonstrations and 
sometimes was involved in street fights with opponents. Its chief function however was 
to prevent Nazi speakers from being embarrassed by interruptions. Hitler never relished 
discussion; his forte was the monologue rather than the debate. In some ways this 
made his party more attractive to audiences, for it stressed the contrast between the 
Nazi ruthlessness and power, and the apparent feebleness of their Democratic 
opponents. Hitler himself grew in confidence.., p. 96  
 
The extreme nationalists on the right and the Communists on the left, did not give up 
their hostility to the Government in Berlin simply because it was involved in a major crisis. 
Perhaps the most consistent opponent of the Republic was Adolf Hitler. He argued 
Germany could never be strong while the Weimar Republic was allowed to continue. 
Hitler liked to call the politicians in Berlin ‘November Criminals’...according to Hitler, such 
people should be eliminated. “So long as a nation does not do away with the assassins 
within its borders, no external successes can be possible. While written and spoken 
protests are directed against France, the real deadly enemy of the German people 
lurks within the walls of the nation… P103 
 
In Germany’s universities many of the students and their professors regarded the 
Weimar system with contempt. As the twenties wore on, so projects for the reform of the 
state to give it a more authoritarian form of government began to be heard. There was 
a general call for STRONG leadership and this affected many political groups. One right 
wing journal Tat, summed up a widely held attitude when it wrote, These times long for 
authority, they are tired of liberal ideas. P. 131 
 
Mein Kampf was a long rampling and badly written book, which demonstrated that 
Hitler’s gifts as an orator could not easily be turned to literary purposes...Generally 
speaking the book mirrored HItler’s character and fundamental attitudes faithfully 
enough. His belief in the right of the strong to dominate the weak, his violent racialism, 
his fascination with the techniques of mass manipulation and his contempt for the 
masses themselves, all found lengthy if unconvincing expression. P 145 
 
The Germans faced a serious economic crisis in the years 1929 - 1933, and no 
government could have avoided that...Instead of trying to ameliorate the crisis to save 
the Republican system, many officials, businessmen, and politicians were only too 
happy to exploit the crisis to change that system. Most of them did not intend to help 
Hitler into power. By their actions, however they undoubtedly did so.  
 
The Stolen Republic - Selected Writings of Carl von Ossietzky (1971) 
 
Defeated Germany - Later generations will not consider the period of the World War as 
a heroic period in European history, but as the time of the deepest degradation. The 
whipping up of nationalism, the unchaining and utilisation of all instincts which are 
otherwise referred to as noble, have produced moral epidemics which for a long time 
to come will make international politics both difficult and dangerous problems.” 1918 
P51 
 
All those good people who have selected sheer hopelessness as the modish stand in 
view of the decay of the times, should, if they are teachable, study urgently the periods 
which follow the great crises. It cannot be repeated enough that humanity, after 
passing through years of the deepest horror, cannot simply return untouched to its old 
work, even if this consists only of living on dividends. Some people are tired, the so 
called “better ego” has gone to sleep, and what you see roaming about is little more 
than a bundle of agitated nerves. Others dull of instinct, feel for the first time their 
consciousness, and for them the new period is a time of desire. Let us not ignore the 
facts: all of us today either such sleepers, or such awakened ones. We have been 
driving through hell, and now people show surprise that the last poor fragments of our 
religious upbringing have been completely blotted out. 1920 P45  
 
...Only one thing worked really well - the war propaganda. It was so intensive that its 
effects are appallingly apparent today and many of our compatriots are still in a state 
of mind exactly equivalent to that of 1915...The forcible propaganda not only muddied 
political judgement during the war, and prevented a moderate ending… 1920 P53 
 
I naturally do not deny the right of a publicist to take to flight to escape arrest by the 
ruling order. This is the right of everyone innocently condemned if the normal road to 
rehabilitation is barred, or if he has lost his trust in the objectivity of the judges...Treason 
and betrayal of military secrets - these are very defamatory labels, difficult to live with. If 
I should flee abroad, then the whole of the right wing press would shout with glee: Flown 
to the enemy! And some of the waverers would shrug their shoulders and say that 
where there was smoke there was fire… He who wishes to fight effectively against the 
poisoned spirit of a country, must share that country’s general fate. P89n 1932 
 
An authoritarian democracy, dominated by a Catholic/Conservative Block...His 
attempts to smash the Hugenberg Party have not led to the creation of a new 
parliamentary right. Instead of a German Tory Party, reactionary but with good 
manners, fascism has arrived, demanding not simply a share, but everything, and 
cocking its revolver in its pocket even when it appears as a partner. P109 
 
A shameless reversal of the simplest definitions of decency and legality is eating deeper 
and deeper into the German brain. The simple Storm Trooper, who shoots down like a 
wild animal the citizen with other colors on his coat, regards his opponents as political 
criminals whom the sloppy Republic has failed to punish. That is what he hears from his 
leaders. The cynical and lying formula “We remain legal” no longer means “We shall 
not go outside existing laws,” but, “We shall not let ourselves get caught, and shall deny 
everything.” The state has merrily watched while the street clashes and shootings 
develop slowly into civil war-like conditions, and now rubs its eyes in surprise when a 
new phase opens, the phase of open assassination of specific persons. P123 
 
Politics is a game of question and answer. Where the right to ask questions is rejected a 
grossly improper, this may be the beginning of a sphere finer and better than the 
sphere of politics: but as stated above, politics have there come to a stop. P137 
 
The genie of civil war is no longer on the loose: he has been captured and confined in 
a scantily sealed bottle. But will the seal hold? Or will a hand guided by a fanatic brain 
smash the bottle to the ground? Then the genie will emerge and grow great and 
terrible; and the danger will not be any the less because so many people believe today 
that the trouble is all over and that things are half way back to normal.  
 
Hitler should not be judged by where he has got, but by what he has accomplished. 
...Germany accepts dictatorship as a matter of course, democratic principles no longer 
count for anything, and every party has allowed itself to be infected by National 
Socialism. Basically the Nazi Party could leave the scene today with a clear 
conscience; in a short period it has accomplished more than its employers could have 
awaited! It has not created a fascist form of government, but it has certainly injected 
the German bloodstream with fascism. P147 
 
In Germany there is no feeling for civil liberties or for constitutional guarantees. There is 
above all no habeas corpus feeling. 1929 P 194 
 
The present blossoming of National Socialism in Germany may not have raised the 
general intellectual level, but it has certainly perfected the technique of slander. This is 
an art which makes much of nothing; it prospers best when there is no material at all, 
where the charges - let alone the proofs - remain unclear, but where the person 
slandered has to go around bearing the brand, incapable of defending himself. One 
can defend oneself against physical attack, but not against a bad name, against a 
shrug of the shoulders, against the knowledgeable whisper, “Everybody knows of 
course.” For years this sort of energetic propaganda has been been circulated against 
Erich Maria Remarque.” #LockHerUp P214 1932 
 
Every phrase of social development has its particular catchwords. At a time of rapid 
change, when the human brain grasps that the anonymous social forces cannot be 
halted, then the sensitive people retreat into organised mysticism, while the cruder souls 
start looking for scapegoats who can be identified as responsible for the disgusting and 
disconcerting developments. In medieval times, when there were frightful outbreaks of 
female hysteria, we had witchcraft. Since it was impossible to detect the reasons, 
revenge was taken upon the victims of the sickness.  
 
And in the crises of today the hunt is one for the scapegoat who can be held 
responsible. WIth the help of a new catchword the attempt is made to brand and 
identify the enemy who is guilty of everything. Whole groups are outlawed. We have 
experienced these bragging ephemeral slogans, the length of existence of which is so 
closely linked with particular conditions.  
 
“To live in the present, and to look its problems firmly in the eyes, that is the only virtue, 
the only revolutionary virtue, which we need… That is the man of our times, the man 
who will build the house in which the next generations shall live. This man has already 
been exaggerated. The heels of the revolutionary are dogged by the 
revolution-hysteric. We know him. He is always stuck in empty theory; he is never deep 
but superficial; he is drunk with eloquence. HIs beat is the street; he needs to crowds 
and publicity; he swims in sensation; he must display himself. From his soap box he 
harangues a few passers-by hurrying along with other things to think about; but he is 
confident he is making history at this moment since he thinks in terms of eternity. Despite 
this he is often an honorable man who would be shocked if he could see the instincts 
which he awakens.  
 
‘Hitler’s Stormtroopers and the Attack on the German Republic 1919 - 1933’  
Otis Mitchell - 2008 
 
Hitler became editor of a newspaper titled the Racist Observer. Despite calls for 
the “Eastern Jew” be deported, there were additional persecutions in Eastern 
Europe and refugees continued to flow into Munich. Along with them came  
 
The period of revolutionary chaos had led to community life featuring a kind of 
electric tension. There was bitterness, apprehension, and a widespread 
expectation of more upheaval. The population was in full reaction to the Soviet 
regimes, and appeared ready to listen to reactionary views from nearly any 
source on the right. P44 
 
The Revolutionary Ascetic - Such zealots once they have seen the light, are 
galvanized into a kind of continuous action typified by intense charisma. The 
masses are soon converted to the ideology professed. In everyday life, the 
revolutionary ascetic appears to be immune to the usual human problems. 
Leaders of this kind are sometimes perceived as somewhat godlike within their 
movements.  
P48 
 
The very public trial and death sentence helped heighten animosity toward the 
left, with a linking of these views, illogically to anti semitism, there were calls for 
the immediate deportation of all Eastern Jews.” p 48  
 
Hitler saw the intruding Ostjuden as competitors… To Hitler and others of his ilk, 
Jews could never be German because they were racially different. These aliens 
were so different they needed to be removed from German society p 33  
 
“Hitler had become the propaganda chief of the party. It fell to him to 
determine the editorial policy of its newspaper. Despite the earlier mentioned 
demand from some quarters that the Easter Jew be deported, there were 
additional persecutions in Eastern Europe, and refugees continued to flow into 
Munich. ALong with them came East European Christians. These immigrants 
were lumped together in the popular mind despite their religious differences. 
Such refugees automatically sunk to the lowest social levels.  
 
As a result of popular attitudes, there were attacks on the Easterners in the press. 
Often these were anti semitic in character. To some extent, the more 
respectable press criticized the bizarre stories appearing in the racist media. 
 
All this was not lost on the various racist, nationalist groups in Germany. The early 
Nazis quickly became aware that such gutter level messages satisfied some. The 
tendency to aope such material appeared in Hitler’s speeches during the 1920’s 
Hitler, like other rabble rousers of the right, used them to stir paranoia. He 
presented lists of those plotting to sabotage the German nation. Among these 
were capitalists, Bolsheviks, black marketeers, profiteers, and unspecified 
anti-German conspirators. Hitler’s displayed racism was extended beyond Jews, 
to include Africans. P 49  
 
Speakers at Nazi meetings, particularly Hitler, created extreme sentiments in 
audiences. On August 31, 1920 for example Hitler told the audience, One should 
hate the Jew simply because of his race.” It was natural that these assertions 
would produce extreme responses. His Nazi listeners responded with shouts of 
Hang Them / Kill Them. As early as September 1920 it became necessary to 
throw people out of meetings who responded negatively and physically to such 
vitriolic statements. These people were ejected by so called monitor troops. P 52 
 
“Two plus three makes naught, the barbarian replies smashing his head in.”  
 
“...And it was agreed among these powers that this terrible thing called 
Bolshevism might well sweep over the continent. Populations responded with an 
excess of irrational hatreds. In this sort of atmosphere someone in Weimar 
Germany who did not choose super patriotism might well be denounced as a 
Bolshevik.” p 79  
 
Every destructive tendency seen in society was therefore the work of the 
scheming Jew, whether he be the moneylender, leftist, parliamentary 
democratic, pacifist, or a Bolshevik. P 81  
 
The State should be organized from top to bottom like a military command, with 
a person at the apex of the pyramid who decided everything for everyone. 
What was offered was dictatorship… In this new polity the leader was to be 
freely chosen by the people to exercise absolute power. P 81  
 
The Nazis were thus able.. To propose a restoration of order and conservative 
values...simultaneously they proclaimed a readiness to challenge the left on the 
streets. P 104  
 
SA propaganda followed this theme throughout the early depression years 
insisting that workers of the fist, had merged in Nazism with the workers of the 
mind. P 127  
 
There were those in the middle class who believed themselves in danger of 
losing privilege. Heightened anxieties and resentments were seen in nonunion 
craftsmen and elitist capitalism and on the other organized labor. Their support 
for Nazism compared to support of the peasantry. This was another group 
believing itself threatened by unwelcome change. In this group one can 
observe another element. These were the civil servants who worked in rural 
areas, school teachers, forestry officials, also believing themselves threatened. P 
147 
 
The more traditionally conservative person who looked at a culture of 
lawlessness and was frightened, went to the polls to find control of random 
violence. Many others who selected Nazism were first time voters. P 148  
 
Given this polarization of German politics, the large Nazi vote becomes most 
impressive. The Weimar Republic lacked the committed Republicans necessary 
to save it. By 1932 a widespread discontent among the people made many 
believe that somewhere there had to be a rapid solution to their problems. THe 
authoritarian answer for all problems appealed unprecedentedly. Perhaps a 
number of people held a non monarchical version of authoritarianism was now 
needed. For only in an autocratic system has Germany ever known security. P 
153 
 
‘The Rise and Fall of the German Democratic Republic’ Feiwel Kupferberg 
 
“There had long existed a deep and popular strain of anti-intellectualism in Germany. 
This strain was not an absolute rejection of all products of the mind but rather 
constituted opposition to and contempt for the Enlightenment belief that man could 
use rational processes to comprehend nature.” Introduction Page 15 Alan Beyerchen at 
a symposium on German intellectuals / Muses  
 
“From an ethical point of view, the shameful behavior of educated Germans in Nazi 
Germany cannot be reduced to a question of collective guilt - only individuals can be 
convicted of criminal behavior. This absence of collective guilt does not, however, 
absolve the educated classes of Germany from the collective shame of having 
tolerated the crimes that were taking place in their midst.” p41 
 
“In their classic analysis of the German psyche after the Nazi defeat, ​Die Unfahigkeit zu 
trauern ​emphasizes the important role played by the cult of the Fuhrer in Nazi Germany. 
This cult and the belief in Hitler’s infallibility, functioned as a protective shield against 
reality...Hitler “really showed them” that Germany was important again, a force to be 
reckoned with.” p45 
 
“As the war progressed, the main issue became how the German nation could avoid 
being “punished” for the deeds of the Nazis. Bertolt Brecht during his Hollywood exile 
had heated arguments with Thomas Mann about the plans of the Americans for post 
war Germany. In his diary Brecht wrote, “one has to make a distinction between Hitler 
and Germany.” p53 
 
On xenophobia and Right-Wing Extremism - “One approach, which is associated with 
the work of Theodor Adorno emphasizes the personality of supporters of the extreme 
right: in particular intolerance, rigid thinking, authoritarianism.” (Minkenberg, 1994: 172)  
 
“The potential for right-wing movements exists in all industrialized societies and should 
be understood as a ‘normal’ pathological condition. In all fast-growing modernizing 
countries there will be some people or whole social groups that cannot cope with 
economic and cultural development in their society and that react to pressures of 
readjustment with rigidity or close mindedness.” (Minkenberg, 1994, 172)  
 
#MakeGermanyGreatAgain  
 
From the January 4, 1934 issue of the ​Green Bay Press-Gazette​ (emphasis mine): 
In 1923 Hitler gathered a few men together to “march on Berlin.” The attempt 
was a failure. Hitler was sentenced to prison for five years, but he was allowed to 
go free long before his term was up.​ People laughed at him, and thought he was 
of little importance. ​Those who laughed were wrong. The “little corporal” may 
have been of small measure as a person; but there was power in the forces 
which it was possible for him to muster. Adolf Hitler, out of prison, took 
advantage of the groans. ​He told people that he would make Germany “great” 
again. He blamed Jews, Socialists, Communists, and others for the troubles of the 
land.​ His blazing speeches gained followers for his “cause.” 
 
“The German people themselves had to be aided, to be raised to become the 
guardians of their reich. The great war had proved Germany’s strength but we had to 
create a state of affairs under which we would be able to mobilize this strength. 
“Nationalism and Socialism had to be redefined and they had to be blended into one 
strong new idea to carry new strength which would make Germany Great Again.” 
Adolf Hitler  
 
Under the Iron Heel - Lars Moen 1941  
 
Life without light - “The only other source of information is, of course, the German 
controlled press...The content of these papers can easily be imagined by anyone 
familiar with the controlled German press - dispatches glorifying German feats of arms, 
and everything possible to vilify the British Government...Also parenthetically, when I left 
the papers were leaving no slightest doubt that Mr. Wendell Willkie was going to be 
elected President of the United States by an overwhelming majority. 
P60 
 
There is considerable doubt in my mind, however whether all this propaganda effort, 
and the policy of a state controlled press, really achieves the result which its sponsors 
fondly imagine. After all, news traveled around before newspapers existed, and since 
people cannot be prevented from talking the chief result of officially one sided 
newspapers is to attach an importance and credibility to rumors which they would 
never have gotten in a country with a nominally free press, or at any rate, one in which 
various shades of opinion have their organs of expression.  
 
The fallacy, I think in the idea of the muzzled press is a simple one: it is the assumption 
that you can keep news from circulating if you don’t print it… An entire book, and an 
interesting one at that could be written about the network of rumors, gossip, and 
supposition that makes up the background of life in Moscow, Berlin, or Rome. P 63 
 
The Red Count - The Life and Times of Harry Kessler - Laird Easton 2002  
 
Apocalyptic Times - “As in all periods of fermentation and upheaval, the evident birth 
pangs of something new and revolutionary subsisted with signs of decadence, 
confusion, and rot. Kessler may have recalled his studies of classical decadence back 
at the University when he looked round him in Zurich or Berlin. “Genius, intellect, power, 
money, science are all perverted from their original goals in the blood thirst. Want and 
insanity spread everywhere like a kind of mold on the surface.” p 271  
 
“Apocalyptic times, who pattern cannot be dispersed. What affinity recalls the last 
centuries of the Roman Empire and the advent of Christianity and all mysteries. 
Asexuality, world doom, mysticism unto madness, the sultriness of decay and growth. 
False prophets everywhere between the War profiteers, and the martyrs.  
 
Immeasurable love, burning desires.  
 
The Red Count - The Life and Times of Harry Kessler Laird Easton  
 
...​Kessler’s diary is one of the greatest personal documents of the twentieth century, an 
invaluable source book not only for scholars of art, literature, history, but also one that 
will be read for its own sake, for the vivid depiction of the political and intellectual 
upheaval of that century as seen by a man uniquely equipped to observe it. P 4 
 
Apocalyptic times - Some of the exiles, pacifists, war resisters, artists, and odds and ends 
who had gathered in Switzerland, to escape the war, to write, and produce free from 
censorship, to dream and plan of a different future, must have been intrigued by 
Kessler, this elegant representative of Imperial Germany, who nevertheless used his 
power to protect artists and writers from the German War Machine. IMMEASURABLE 
LOVE BURNING DESIRES - crazy great poet - but craziness is gradually emerging into the 
light everywhere…”voluntaristic-mystic, according to which each being, each thing, 
carries itself in a utopia, an unfulfilled perfection, which seeks to complete itself, which 
redeems it, and leads to perfection. Novalis, Schopenhauer, Chassidim, A Thousand 
and One Nights. P 271  
 
STUDENT AGAINST TYRANNY - The Resistance of the White Rose 1942 - 1943 Inge Scholl  
 
One morning I heard a girl tell another on the steps of the school, “Now Hitler has taken 
over the government “ The radio and newspapers, promised, Now there will be better 
times in Germany, Hitler is at the helm.” p 5  
 
Hitler - so we heard on both sides - Hitler would help this fatherland to achieve 
greatness, fortune, and prosperity. He would see to it that everyone had work and 
bread. He would not rest until every German was independent, free, and happy in his 
fatherland. P 6  
 
It was characteristic that hardly a word appeared in the public print about these 
important and stirring trials. A spare notice of about thirty lines in the Volkisher under the 
headline ‘Just Punishment For Traitors to the Nation At War’ was intended to minimize 
the affair. Nevertheless, the news about events in Munich spread like wildfire even as far 
as the russian front. It went like a wave of relief through the concentration camps, 
prisons, and ghettos. As last a few individuals had expressed the sentiments that 
weighed so heavily on the hearts of millions .p 66 
 
Equally secret were preparations for legislation regarding women and girls. It was 
planned that after the war women would be forced to make up for the frightful toll of 
lives by means of a systematic and shameless population policy. At a large student 
assembly Gauleiter Gissler had publicly announced to the women that it was better to 
present the Fuhrer with a child then to hang on at the University. P 31 
 
Bathing and rest has been recommended by Thomas Aquinas as cures for melancholy. 
Sleep. Yes she wanted sleep deep dreamless sleep . p 48 
 
The back pages of newspapers were filled with obituaries of fallen soldiers. WIth their 
peculiar iron crosses, these pages looked like cemeteries. Only the front page had a 
different aspect. This was due to the large, almost unbearably heavy headlines. Hate is 
our prayer, and victory is our reward - We will march on through everything, break into 
fragments. p45 
 
The papers were like mine fields. It was dangerous to go through them. The whole era, 
all Germany. Was like a minefield. Our poor benighted fatherland.  
 
 
The newspapers were laconic and noncommittal, and not only because of the paper 
shortage. It was their task to aid in the total quenching of the German intellect.  
 
 
Daily Life in Hitler’s GERMANY - Dr. Matthew Seligmann, Dr. John Davison, John 
McDonald 2003 
 
How Nazi Germany came into being -  
 
German politics underwent a transformation in the wake of the economic collapse that 
followed the Wall Street Crash of October 1929. As the German economy headed for 
disaster, millions of workers were pushed into unemployment and their families became 
destitute. The reputations of the mainstream political parties responsible for governing 
Germany went into a nosedive…. Voters who would never previously have supported 
extremist organizations decided to trust parties that held the view that desperate times 
require radical solutions. One such group was the Nazi Party, and the result was a 
massive increase in its vote. Introduction p 7  
 
Members of the Nazi paramilitary organization the SA numbered two million in 1933 
fought leftists and generally intimidated voters in national and local elections. P 9  
 
 
The Nazi Police State - In their quest to establish a “People’s Community” the Nazis used 
the law and the police to crush all forms of opposition. The result was a police state in 
which arbitrary arrest and state brutality ensured that the population remained 
subservient. P 10  
 
In this legitimized emergency the arbitrary arrests by police, the SA or emerging SS 
groups (Schutz, Staffel, or Protection Division) were less about maintaining law and 
order that dealing with political opposition, particularly the communists who were so 
hated by the Nazis. It was an opportunity for the new masters to settle scores and seek 
revenge against whomever they selected, venting their spite on Jehovah’s Witnesses, 
as well as socialists, Catholics, and communists. P 11 
 
Initially on coming to office, the Nazis did not envisage comprehensive law reform nor a 
legal code...Following Hitler’s principle that he should be able to fulfil his will, legal 
codes were deemed inappropriate; instead, existing laws were subverted and new 
decrees were issued to legitimize whatever actions were desired. P 12 
 
These aims were undeniably utopian, that is to create a perfect world. Therefore the 
idea that they should be prevented by the technicalities to outdated laws from 
realizing their goals was unthinkable. Hitler’s will, as it emerged in policies, had to 
prevail. There desire to achieve goals despite the law was revealed in many harsh and 
coercive decrees. P 12  
 
Between 1933 and 1939 offenses punishable by death increased from 3 crimes to 40  
Crimes which Hitler personally detested were quickly added to the list, child kidnapping 
for one… A 1933 Law against “Dangerous Habitual Criminals” 
 
One of the most remarkable aspects of the police state as it emerged is that the bulk of 
ordinary policemen kept their jobs and did not find it hard to adjust to the new regime 
and its law and order policies… One can only conclude that most policemen were 
content to participate in a regime that not only claimed to be fighting crime but 
seemed to be giving the police the scope to act as they saw fit. P 15 
 
RESISTANCE - During the years of the Nazi Regime, resistance was uncoordinated, 
allowing Hitler to consolidate his grip on German society.  
 
Of all the resistance groups within Nazi Germany, by far the most significant in practical 
terms were the conservative elite and the military officer class. There two groups were 
effectively one, and represented resistance at the very heart of German military and 
civil service institutions. Hitler’s Nazi Regime offended German’s traditional elites, here 
given the imperfect label ‘conservatives’. On many different levels. Nazi 
authoritarianism was not the essential problem - many German conservatives 
themselves approved of authoritarian dictatorships and had opposed the liberalism of 
the Weimar Republic. Yet much about Hitler’s ideology and administration attacked 
core conservative values… Hitler was fond of creating departments with overlapping 
responsibilities, in turn generating interdepartmental rivalries, while consolidating Hitler’s 
absolute authority. Many conservatives were not prepared to do the toadying required 
to get into Hitler’s favor. P 34 
 
Culture and Propaganda - Under the Nazis the arts were subverted to serve the interests 
of state ideology. The spectacular achievements of the Weimar Republic were undone 
as artists were either forced to flee Germany or produce works that had the Nazi seal of 
approval. P 44 
 
WHITE ROSE  
 
It is impossible to come to terms with National Socialism on an intellectual basis, 
because it simply put is not intellectual. You cannot speak of a National Socialist 
ideology . If such a thing existed, you would be forced to try to defend or engage it on 
an intellectual basis. Reality offers us a completely different image. When the 
movement was still in its embryonic form, it relied on deception of its fellow man. Even 
then, it was rotten to the core, and could preserve itself only on the basis of constant 
lies.  
 
WOMEN 
National socialism excluded women from politics, from the armed forces, and from the 
legal profession. The party saw a woman’s role as being a good mother, wife, and Nazi 
supporter, summed up in their phrase “Children, Church, and Kitchen.” p 74 
 
The Nazis tended to view the German woman, despite the concealing verbiage of 
“motherhood” essentially as a unit of reproduction. Consequently to prevent the 
obstacles that the Weimar Republic had allegedly placed in the way of conception 
and childbirth the Nazis enforced anti abortion legislation zealously. Between 1934 and 
1938 there was a 50 % increase in convictions. They also closed birth control clinics and 
placed every obstacle in the way of the propagation and distribution of contraceptive 
devices, practices, and knowledge. These policies were supported and endorsed by 
the Catholic Church in Germany.  
 
The battle for births had, like all Nazi campaigns, an ominously negative side. Only 
appropriate women, the truly Aryan (White) were encouraged and expected to have 
offspring prolifically. The fear was Jews, gypsies, the disabled, those suffering from 
hereditary illnesses, the presumed a-socials would breed and thus degrade the German 
bloodstock. P 78 
 
Prior to the rise of National Socialism, Germany had prided itself on a vibrant intellectual 
and liberal culture within its cities and towns. The Nazi regime was radically anti 
intellectual, and this had a purging effect on urban cultural institutions particularly 
libraries and universities….Later on the Nazi Party realized its anti intellectualism was self 
defeating. Deficient deductions limited the contributions young people could make to 
the state, especially in the military fields such as technology and engineering. P 95 
 
The Nazis achieved something of an economic miracle in Germany during the 1930’s 
almost eradicating unemployment and boosting industrial output. However this was 
achieved by abolishing unions, capping wages, and increasing work hours. P 124  
 
From January 1933 - September 1941 legal measures, enacted through decrees, were 
imposed progressively on Germany Jews.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
In January 1933 Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor 
In February 1933, the Reichstag Capital Building burnt down - ending most freedoms  
 
  
 
 
 
We’re off the map now - Here there be monsters! #BlessMyHomelandForever  
The end of the republic.Most people know it. They may not want to believe it yet. But it's
over.