38 quotes
A great and peaceable people, conscious of its subjection to a boastful little monarch, was obliged to pay for the claptrap of its vainglorious sovereign, who only degraded them with the title of Huns that he might ape an Attila.
Wilhelm Hohenzollern: The Last of the Kaisers (1926)
When so markedly egotistic a nature dominates a realm, the consequences can be nothing but catastrophic; and we are heading straight for a period which will decide whether the age or the Emperor is the stronger. I am afraid it will not be he.
Wilhelm Hohenzollern: The Last of the Kaisers (1926)
The Germans, who love order more than freedom, and whose ruling passion is obedience, rejoiced in their release from an uncomfortable equality into new ranks of superiors and inferiors. This is the second source of Hitler's success.
Three Portraits: Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin (1940)
As a man without religion, without philosophy, without principles, he balked at nothing. ...[H]e concealed... his desire for self-aggrandizement, and... believes in his own idealism.
Three Portraits: Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin (1940)
Hitler, who had made his way to power by his great gifts as a stage manager and speaker, introduced into the Reichschancellory all that browbeating noise which the Germans are so prone to take for greatness.
Three Portraits: Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin (1940)
The pyramid familiar to the Germans... in which each individual carries another on his back but makes up for it by standing on somebody else, was set up anew by Hitler.
Three Portraits: Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin (1940)
“Our policy”—so Brandenburg pronounces—“was a petty one, dictated partly by uneasiness, partly by greed and considerations of prestige. Once more, great perdurable things were forgotten in trivialities.”
Wilhelm Hohenzollern: The Last of the Kaisers (1926)
When Lyncker at about this time took over the Military Cabinet, the Emperor said to him in a pathetically pleading tone: “But, dear Lyncker, you won’t bring me nothing but musty papers, will you? Now and again some funny little story or another!” This is a shocking example of his aversion from anything practical, for the speaker was a man of fifty, who still was called the young Emperor.
Wilhelm Hohenzollern: The Last of the Kaisers (1926)
The Balkan War of October 1912 convulsed the European Powers. They all lied freely, differing only in the manner of it—which in Petersburg was brazen, in London cautious, in Vienna frivolous, in Berlin stupid.
Wilhelm Hohenzollern: The Last of the Kaisers (1926)
Behind their glittering phrases both monarchs were uneasy. At the Conference it was soon made manifest that genuine Pacifists there were none, except the United States. The time was not ripe. Europe, for her awakening, needed the stench of ten million corpses.
Wilhelm Hohenzollern: The Last of the Kaisers (1926)
“I know of only two political parties—that which is for me, and that which is against me!” The motto of an absolute ruler. These words, spoken at the age of thirty, at a time when good intentions were at their highest and infatuation was at its lowest, introduce the theme which for three decades he was to vary by alienation from all parties in turn.
Wilhelm Hohenzollern: The Last of the Kaisers (1926)
In this document all the elements of his being are fused into a unique amalgam which is the authentic William—the fervour of the Crusader, the lawlessness of the pirate, the rant of the star-actor in a Grand Historical Melodrama, the craving for hegemony, the infatuation of the deluded, while as a finishing-touch the Germans are twice likened to classic murderers.
Wilhelm Hohenzollern: The Last of the Kaisers (1926)
His effect, in complete contrast to Mussolini's... he juggles with mystical notions such as Honor, Blood, and Soil, and thus wraps his audience in that cloud of mysticism which the Germans love far more than mere prosaic logic.
Three Portraits: Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin (1940)
Hitler's technique of oratory is largely the result of... mass psychology... He declared to his small, new party that everything depended on fascinating the crowd. Above all... restore to the German people, deprived of an army, their flags, bands and songs.
Three Portraits: Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin (1940)
He was living in the world of 120 years ago, more like a descendant of the Bourbons than the descendant of Voltaire’s friend; he regarded Jaurès in the Chamber of Deputies as Jaurès on the throne, and at the bottom of his heart considered all those people who desired to be something more than subjects as only fit to be shot down—except that hanging them would be more suitable.
Wilhelm Hohenzollern: The Last of the Kaisers (1926)
He realized that he could rise only through the support of the discontented and utterly disillusioned middle class. All he did later was to subjugate it. Rauschning describes in detail Hitler's intense hatred of Germany's laboring masses.
Three Portraits: Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin (1940)
In the course of five years’ visits the Emperor had roused English feeling against Germany; by his conduct towards his uncle he had offended the Court, by that towards Salisbury the Cabinet; by his prattle he had annoyed society, by his menaces the Press, by his indiscretions the man in the street, who read of them in the papers.
Wilhelm Hohenzollern: The Last of the Kaisers (1926)
Debate is the death of conversation.
Misattributed