Adolf Hitler quotes

Quotes by and about Adolf Hitler

(Continued from his main entry on the site.)

Hitler: "I believe that those who knew me [in my youth] took me for an eccentric."

Hitler: "I do not know what horrified me most [during the depression]: the economic misery of my companions [or] their moral and ethical coarseness."

Hitler: "I looked at [Goering eating sausage] and I knew that what they say was true: that pigs eat the flesh of their own."

Hitler: "Himmler wants to send an expedition to Tibet to look for ancient manuscripts on the Aryans. The man is like a little schoolgirl. What culture is there in an old jug, I ask you?"

[On visiting Florence before the war:]
Hitler: "This is the city of my dreams."

Hitler: "The smallest palazzo in Florence ... is worth more than all Windsor Castle. If the English destroy anything in Florence or Rome, it will be a crime. In Moscow, it wouldn't do any great harm; nor in Berlin, unfortunately."

Hitler: "It has been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. ... The religion of ... Muhammad would have been much more compatible with us [than] Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness."

Hitler: "[The moment in Paris where I saluted Napoleon's tomb] was one of the proudest of my life."

Carl Jung: "Hitler's [movement] is [near] to Mohammedanism."

Carl Jung: "The secret to Hitler's power is ... that his unconscious has exceptional access to his conscious and ... that he allows himself to be moved by it. [Others] have too much rationality, too much cerebrum to obey it [but] Hitler listens."

Joseph Goebbels: "[Hitler thought] that Mussolini was no figure of world history, like der Fuehrer or Stalin."

Hermann Goering: "In the beginning [Hitler] was genial and pleasant. He would have extraordinary willpower and unheard-of influence on people."

Hermann Goering: "Hitler used to come to my house once in a while for a cup of coffee, and because I led a normal life, he would leave at about 9 p.m. ... However, Hitler used to spend practically all of his nights, sometimes until four a.m., with Goebbels. ... God knows what evil influence Goebbels had on him during those long visits."

Rudolf Hess: "Hitler's strength as a leader is that he almost always works through the power of his persuasion; rarely does he command."

Rudolf Hess: "How often has Hitler said to me: 'I know that my decision or action is correct. I cannot explain at the moment why, but I feel that it is right and the future will prove it so.'"

Ernst Hanfstaengl: "With Hitler it was all floating, without roots, intangible and mediumistic."

Alfred Jodl: "Hitler [had an] excess of imagination, which very frequently foresaw what would happen but also very often went astray."

Erich von Manstein: "The [chief] characteristic of Hitler's leadership [was] his over-estimation of the power of the will. [To win the war] this will had only to be translated into faith down to the youngest private soldier."

Ernst Hanfstaengl: "It is probably not true to say that there was a physical homosexual relationship between [Rudolf Hess and Hitler] but the attraction was there."

Wilhelm Keitel: "No matter what Hitler said, he spoke with a fine feeling for the particular circle which he addressed. ... He was a great psychologist."

Wilhelm Keitel: "Hitler had charm, loved children, charmed women. But in political respects he would stop at nothing. In other respects he had soft and touching emotions. Just as he could be terribly brutal in following up political ideas, so he could be humanely sensitive for the feelings of individuals, for the individual human life."

Albert Speer: "Hitler had a great gift for adjusting - consciously or intuitively - to his surroundings. ... With enormous histrionic intuition he could shape his behavior to changing situations."

Erich von Manstein: "[Hitler overestimated] the importance of [technology]. As a result, he would count on a mere handful of assault-gun detachment or the new Tiger tanks to restore situations where only large bodies of troops could have any prospect of success."

Ernst Hanfstaengl: "Hitler's historical hero had always been Frederick the Great. [Later], under Goebbels' prompting ... Napoleon emerged ... as his model. .... Frederick the Great was a man who knew when to stop [and] Napoleon did not."

Ernst Hanfstaengl: "Schopenhauer had been Hitler's philosophical god in the [early] days. [In power] it was Nietzsche."

Ernst Hanfstaengl: "Hitler's mind was a deep-running river. You could never tell when something it had absorbed would bob to the surface again."

Ernst Hanfstaengl: "[Most of the people near Hitler were] mental breast-stroke swimmers."

Ernst Hanfstael: "[Hitler could quote Clausewitz] by the yard, and this was another source of his undoing. Neither he, nor any of his entourage ... [had] any conception of the strength of the salt-water powers. They thought on purely continental lines."

Ernst Hanfstaengl: "Hitler wanted to hear all about the [American] skyscrapers ... but failed utterly to draw logical conclusions from the information. .... [He was] passionately interested in the Ku Klux Klan. ... He seemed to think it was a political movement similar to his own."

Ernst Hanfstaengl: "The guillotine twist which Robespierre had given to ... Rousseau was repeated by Goebbels [and] Hitler ... in their political simplification of ... Nietzsche."

Richard Overy: "Hitler could not tolerate too much social contact."

John Keegan: "Hitler ... lacked the [inclination] for anything more than the occasional sensational display of emotion, in particular the great set-piece speech which mesmerized the mob and left him drained of ... energy."

Carl Jung: "[Hitler is a] shy and friendly man with artistic tastes and gifts." [Upon seeing Hitler in 1942.]

Nicholas Lewin: "The artistic aspect of Hitler's personality even affected his leadership style and, according to Speer, led him to shun systematic work patterns."

Nicholas Lewin: "[Hitler's personality was] sensitive and, in a way, feminine. ... [But his] brutal ideas and brutal expressions were very opposite."

Winston Churchill: "I hate nobody except for Hitler - and that is professional."

Carl Jung: "[I view] him as sexless and inhuman, with a singleness of purpose: to establish the Third Reich, a mystical, all-powerful German nation, which would overcome all of Hitler’s own psychological weaknesses."

Carl Jung: "We do not know whether Hitler is going to found a new Islam. He is already on the way; he is like Muhammad."

Carl Jung: "[Hitler is a] medicine man [type of] leader."

Carl Jung: "Hitler's unconscious seems to be female."

Carl Jung: "When Mussolini first met Hitler, he thought: 'Poor beggar; there is nothing to him - just a Signorino.'"

Mahatma Gandhi: "The Jews should [not have resisted Hitler]. ... [They should] have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs."

Hitler: "The President of the United States has a much wider power than the [German] Kaiser had, for he depended on parliament."

Hitler: "[Goering's] confidence [behind the wheel of a car] was unfailing, but it was of a somewhat mystic nature to me."

Hitler: "[In a war] the last thing the English know is how to practice fair play."

John Toland: "By his own admission, Hitler was a recluse in his youth, and had little need of society."

Raleigh Drohan: "Hitler never trusted anyone other than a tiny group of intimate confidantes. This is typical of an introverted type."

Ian Kershaw: "[Hitler was] unapproachable and impenetrable even for those in his close company."

Winston Churchill: "[Hitler is] a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."

Ian Kershaw: "Hitler was highly secretive - not least about his personal life, his background, and his family."

Raleigh Drohan: "In [Hitler's] years of war service, he was known amongst his colleagues for keeping to himself and for spending time reading."

Traudl Junge: "[Hitler] spoke in a quiet, soft voice."

Ian Kershaw: "[Hitler] frequently demonstrated diffidence and unease in dealings with individuals which contrasted diametrically with his self-confident mastery in exploiting the emotions of his listeners in the theatrical setting of a major speech."

Joseph Goebbels: "It takes a bomb under his arse to make Hitler see logic."

Thomas Weber: "[During WW1, Hitler's comrades in arms] saw him as a bookworm who was not ... very practical."

Timothy Ryback: "'No, I can't really do much with Nietzsche,' Leni Riefenstahl recalls Hitler telling her. 'He is more an artist than a philosopher; he doesn't have the crystal-clear understanding of Schopenhauer. Of course. I value Nietzsche as a genius. He writes possibly the most beautiful language that German literature has to offer us today. But he is not my guide.'"

Journal of Individual Differences Research: "Hitler was socially awkward and often unable to converse with others, but rather preferred to talk at them."

Michael Zalampas: "Reinhold Hainish [who was a personal friend of Hitler in Vienna in 1909-1912] depicted Hitler as a lonely, moody, introverted individual who would, at unexpected moments, break into loud, extended monologues."

Reinhold Hainish [personal friend of Hitler 1909-1912:] "Hitler had a marked disinclination to work."

David Bowie: "Hitler was the first superstar."

Journal of Individual Differences Research: "Five academic Hitler historians [were asked to rate Hitler and] all five raters saw him as a strong introvert."