"The spirit of the great men of our history must hearten us all. Fate demands from us no more than from the great men of German history. As long as I live I shall think only of the victory of my people. I shall shrink from nothing and shall annihilate everyone who is opposed to me... I want to annihilate the enemy!"
- Adolf Hitler, Nazi Dictator
"Where Napoleon failed, I shall succeed. I shall land on the shores of Britain".
- Adolf Hitler, Nazi Dictator
"Night gangsters! For this crime I will exact a thousand fold revenge!"
- Adolf Hitler, Nazi Dictator (after the RAF's first attack on Nazi shipyard at Bremen)
"Democracy has no convictions for which people would be willing to stake their lives."
- Dr. Ernst Hanftstaengl
"Mr. Churchill tells his people that England will win, but I tell you that victory will beling to Germany."
- Adolf Hitler, Nazi Dictator (after the first initial battles in the Battle of England)
"The issue in the east has already been settled. Smolensk is the last halt on the road to Moscow."
- German High Command
"I declare today, and I declare it without any reservation that the enemy in the East has been struck down and will never rise again... Behind our troops there already lies a territory twice the size of the German Reich when I came to power in 1933."
- Adolf Hitler, Nazi Dictator (a speech about the current condition of the Soviet Union on October 3, 1941)
"The Soviet Government would not fight against us... the Soviets would not repeat the Czar's mistake and bleed to death for Britain. They would, however, try to enrich themselves, possibly at the expense of the Baltic States or Poland, without engaging in military action themselves."
- Adolf Hitler, Nazi Dictator (1939)
"England, unlike in 1914, will not allow herself to blunder into a war lasting for years.... Such is the fate of rich countries.. .Not even England has the money nowadays to fight a world war. What should England fight for? You don't get yourself killed over an ally."
- Adolf Hitler, Nazi Dictator (1939)
"England should do well to realize that as a front-line soldier [I] knew what war was and would utilize every means available. It was surely quite clear to everyone that the World War [i.e., 1914-1918] would not have been lost if [I] had been Chancellor at the time."
- Adolf Hitler, Nazi Dictator (1939)
"If England wants to fight for a year, I shall fight for a year; if England wants to fight for two years, I shall fight two years... And if necessary, I will fight for ten years!"
- Adolf Hitler, Nazi Dictator (1939)
"My decision is unchangeable. I shall attack France and England at the most favorable and earliest moment. Breach of the neutrality of Belgium and Holland is of no importance. No one will question that when we have won. We shall not justify the breach of neutrality as idiotically as in 1914."
- Adolf Hitler, Nazi Dictator
"When Barbarossa commences, the world will hold its breath and make no comments!"
- Adolf Hitler, Nazi Dictator (1941) [NOTE: Barbarossa is the name of the operation for the invasion of the USSR]
"The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness."
- Adolf Hitler, Nazi Dictator (1941)
"The infantryman slithers in the mud, while many teams of horses are needed to drag each gun forward. All wheeled vehicles sink up to their axles in the slime. Even tractors can only move with great difficulty. A large portion of our heavy artillery was soon stuck fast... The strain tht all this caused our already exhausted troops can perhaps be imagined."
- General Blumentritt, chief of staff of the Fourth Army (about the situation in Russia at the winter of 1941)
"Ice was causing a lot of trouble since the calks for the tank tracks had not yet arrived. The cold made the telescopic sights useless. In order to start the engines of the tanks fires had to be lit beneath them. Fuel was freezing on occasions and the oil became viscous... Each regiment [of the 112th Infantry Division] had already lost some 500 men from frostbite. As a result of the cold the machine guns were no longer able to fire and our 37-mm. antitank guns had proved ineffective against the [Russian] T-34 tank."
- General Heinz Guderian (about the situation in Russia at the winter of 1941)
"With amazement and disappointment, we discovered in late October and early November that the beaten Russians seemed quite unaware that as a military force they had almost ceased to exist."
- General Blumentritt
"President Roosevelt has ordered his ships to shoot the moment they sight German ships. I have ordered German ships not to shoot when they sight American vessels, but to defend themselves when attacked. I will have any German officer court-martialed who fails to defend himself."
- Adolf Hitler, Nazi Dictator (1941)
"With the Ariete we have lost our oldest Italian comrades to whom, we must admit, we always asked more than they, considering their modest armament, could actually give us."
- Field Marshall Erwin Rommel
"I am asking of no German man more than I myself was ready throughout four years to do... I am from now on just the first soldier of the German Reich. I have once more put on that coat that was most sacred and dear to me. I will not take it off again until victory is secured, or I will not survive the outcome."
- Adolf Hitler, Nazi Dictator (1939)
"As far as the Navy is concerned, obviously it is in no way very adequately equipped for the great struggle with Great Britain... the submarine arm is still much too weak to have any decisive effect on the war. The surface forces, moreover, are so inferior in number and strength to those of the British Fleet that, even at full strength, they can do no more than show that they know how to die gallantly..."
- Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, Commander in Chief of the German Navy (1939)
"United within the country, economically prepared and militarily armed to the highest degree, we enter this most decisive year in German history... May the year 1940 bring the decision. It will be, whatever happens, our victor."
- Adolf Hitler, Nazi Dictator (Christmas, 1939)
"Under the deeply moving impression of the capitulation of France I congratulate you and the whole German Wehrmacht on the mighty victory granted by God, in the words of Emperor Wilhelm the Great in 1870: 'What a turn of events brought about by divine dispensation.' In all German hearts there echoes the Leuthen chorale sung by the victor of Leuthen, the soldiers of the Great King: 'Now thank we all our God!'"
- Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1940 (on a letter to Hitler after the conquest of France)
"Troops without ammunition or food… Effective command no longer possible… 18,000 wounded without any supplies or dressings or drugs… Further defense senseless. Collapse inevitable. Army requests immediate permission to surrender in order to save lives of remaining troops."
- Field Marshall Paulus, Commander of the 6th Army (a message to Hitler about the situation at Stalingrad)
"Surrender is forbidden. Sixth Army will hold their positions to the last man and the last round and by their heroic endurance will make an unforgettable contribution toward the establishment of a defensive front and the salvation of the Western world."
- Adolf Hitler, Nazi Dictator (replying to Paulus' request for surrender at Stalingrad)
"A thousand years hence Germans will speak of this battle [of Stalingrad] with reverence and awe, and will remember that in spite of everything Germany's ultimate victory was decided there… In years to come it will be said of the heroic battle on the Volga: When you come to Germany, say that you have seen us lying at Stalingrad, as our honor and our leaders ordained that we should, for the greater glory of Germany."
- Reich Marshall Hermann Göring, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe (1942)
"They have surrendered there [Stalingrad] there - formally and absolutely. Otherwise they would have closed ranks, formed a hedgehog, and shot themselves with their last bullet… The man [Paulus] should have shot himself just as the old commanders who threw themselves on their swords when they saw that the cause was lost… Even Varus gave his slave the order: 'Now kill me!'"
- Adolf Hitler, Nazi Dictator (1942)
"The enemy holds every trump card, covering all areas with long-range air patrols and using location methods against which we still have no warning... The enemy knows all our secrets and we know none of his."
- Grand Admiral Doenitz, Commander in Chief of the German Navy (1943)
"The work of a thousand years is nothing but rubble."
- Dr. Carl Goerdeler (1943)
"I beg you to accept my sincerest congratulations on your 60th birthday, I enclose with them my best wishes for your personal welfare as well as for a happy future for the peoples of the friendly Soviet Union."
- Adolf Hitler, Nazi Dictator (birthday greeting to Josef Stalin in 1939)
"We are fighting for our most valuable possession: our freedom. We are fighting for our land and our skies. We are fighting so
that our children will not be slaves of foreign rulers. That is in no way an exaggeration or empty phrases."
- Dr. F (Die Wehrmacht 1939)
"England and France began the war in 1939 because they feared that in two or three years Germany would be militarily stronger and harder to defeat. The deepest roots of this war are in England's old claim to rule the world, and Europe in particular."
- Dr. F (Die Wehrmacht 1939)
". . . the basic principles of the military services are unchangeable. Courage and candor, obedience and comradeship,
love of fatherland and loyalty to the State: these are ever the distinguishing characteristics of the soldier and sailor.
Building character through intelligent training and education is always the first and greatest goal."
- Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, Commander in Chief of the German Navy
