Peter Padfield > Quotes

“Whether the idea was taken from the Spanish Inquisition whose methods it so resembled or from the example of the Russian secret police, whether it sprang from Himmler’s own zealotry, it was a deliberate policy designed to suppress by fear all actual or potential opposition or even criticism of the regime.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“Sadists had licence and delighted in their ability to cause suffering, especially if their victims pleaded for mercy.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“On their way to the first session of the new Parliament, a group of Nazi deputies uniformed in brown celebrated by smashing department-store windows down the Leipzigerstrasse; ‘by some odd chance,’ a Jewish journalist noted in her diary, ‘the casually aimed projectiles hit only non-Aryan targets.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“Hesse’s ultimate message about the unity of the cosmos and the importance of loving the world, not despising it, was censored out by his convictions in the other direction. Hermann Hesse’s books were banned after Hitler took power.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“a precept that it is a Divine Commandment to obey Germans”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“Especially striking was an upsurge of interest in astrology, fortune telling and all manner of numerical and alphabetical methods of divining the future.34”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“these books were flawed by biased editing and even falsification of facts, complete refusal to acknowledge even a particle of blame for the world catastrophe, refusal to learn anything and a vengeful spirit against the former allies, which could not have failed to reinforce Himmler’s hatred of the powers that had forced the Treaty of Versailles on his country and no doubt his convictions that Germany had been defeated not by arms but by the ‘hydra of the Black & Red International’.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“Rather than medical killing being subsumed to war, the war itself was subsumed to the vast biomedical vision of which “euthanasia” was a part.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“The attack of the Jews and all secret enemies occurs, as it has for centuries, via seeds of discord, via lies, calumny, via shameless intrigue.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“Great massacres may be commanded by tyrants but they are imposed by peoples. Without general social support, the organs of isolation and expulsion cannot even be created.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“from 4,000 yards.4 He exceeded”
― Peter Padfield, War Beneath The Sea

“propagating the demonology of the Jew – and, if Himmler is any guide, with dreadful sincerity.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“Munich was the final turning point for Hitler. He had met the leaders of the western democracies and made monkeys of them. He had proved that tactics of deception, threat and histrionics worked at the highest levels of European diplomacy. His will had broken the bonds of reality; everything was possible.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“Hitler’s power came from his ability to sense the fears and hopes of his audiences and give them back in heightened form.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“Lies had always been an integral part of Nazi propaganda. Whether he was convinced that lies were justified by the greater ends they served or whether he had become incapable through his years of power and his closeness to Hitler of separating wish from sober calculation, falsehood is surely indivisible.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“Through Haushofer, Hess was able to help Hitler put an academic gloss on the political arguments of Mein Kampf.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“Höss found himself going hot and cold and trembling as he was forced to watch from the front rank; it affected him far more than the first execution he witnessed.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“Thus the legend of the ‘stab in the back’ and the undefeated German Army had become historical truth”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“after watching Hitler return from Munich in the evening of 30 June: ‘Depend on it, it is precisely this Hitler going on his way over heaps of bodies, whom they [the generals] have yearned for in their deepest heart of hearts.’83”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“Himmler, as indeed Hitler, was more victim than creator of the natural disaster that engulfed Germany and the world.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“a groundswell of financial support built largely of frustration was about to lift the Hitler movement on a dizzy ride to power.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“whoever today still doubts the real existence of demonic powers has widely misunderstood the metaphysical background to this war.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“It is a race now whether the Bolsheviks double-cross the Americans, or the Americans the English – because they are certainly not very united – or whether the English double-cross both the others”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“naval power, with her long, graceful lines and nicely proportioned turret and superstructure arrangement—the epitome of the balanced capital ship. That she should be annihilated within seven minutes was far more shocking than the defeat of the new Prince of Wales. Admiral Holland, who went down with his ship, has been criticized since on several counts, mainly for his close 'line' tactics controlled from the flagship; these were appropriate for the great battle squadrons of the First War and the tactical games during the interwar years, indeed they were necessary to prevent confusion and the masking of friendly fire, but they were quite unnecessary for a squadron of only two vessels. In this case they were actually harmful for they forced both British ships to enter the action with rear turrets out of bearing, thus reducing an initial superiority in heavy guns to equality with the Bismarck; when the Hood mistook her target this equality became an actual inferiority so far as that ship was concerned.”
― Peter Padfield, Battleship

“the deepest impulses behind the war had to do with the sequence of sterilisation, direct medical killing and genocide.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“On moral and international legal grounds it would be difficult to differentiate these discussions about annihilating shipwrecked survivors from those mentioned earlier between Churchill, his advisers and the Air Staff on area-bombing to kill, de-house and break the morale of the German working-class population – except perhaps that the British offensive was likely to affect women and children more directly, and was in the event carried out.”
― Peter Padfield, War Beneath The Sea

“Himmler was, as he had always been, merely the most extreme, emotionally committed exponent of the orthodoxy of the master race.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“the homeland differed from its counterpart in 1918 as it had been cleansed of Jews and all criminal riff-raff.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“What Höss rationalised as hate for the enemies of the state might be better described as a sense of power and contempt for the inmates fostered in the guards by the camp system.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler

“The trial has at any rate proved’, The Times correspondent continued, ‘that to plot against the constitution of the Reich is not considered a serious crime in Bavaria.”
― Peter Padfield, Himmler