Volker Ullrich > Quotes

“Hitler was “someone seduced by himself,” someone who was so inseparable from his words “that a measure of authenticity flowed over the audience even when he was telling obvious lies.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent: 1889-1939

“If there is one thing we admire about National Socialism it’s the fact that it has succeeded, for the first time in German politics, in the complete mobilisation of human stupidity.”30”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent: 1889-1939

“Who cares whether they laugh at us or insult us, treating us as fools or criminals?” Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf. “The point is that they talk about us and constantly think about us.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent: 1889-1939

“In his book Defying Hitler, written in British exile in 1939, Sebastian Haffner recalled the “icy fright” that had been his first reaction to the news that Hitler had been named chancellor: “For a moment I almost physically sensed the odour of blood and filth surrounding this man Hitler. It was a bit like being approached by a threatening and disgusting predator—it felt like a dirty paw with sharp claws in my face.” But”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent: 1889-1939

“Kershaw did not minimise the historical role played by his insane, ideological fixations, but he did illustrate that without the readiness of many people to work for the man in charge, there would have been no way he could have achieved his murderous aims.”
― Volker Ullrich, Adolf Hitler: Die Jahre des Aufstiegs 1889 - 1939 Biographie

“Thea Sternheim, who learned of Hitler’s appointment while in Paris, wrote in her diary: “Hitler as chancellor. On top of everything else, now this intellectual humiliation. The last straw. I’m going home. To vomit.”133 Klaus Mann noted: “News that Hitler has become Reich chancellor. Horror. Never thought it possible. (The land of unlimited possibilities…)”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent: 1889-1939

“Hitler's unusually improvisational and personal style of leadership, which created constant responsibility conflicts and an anarchic tangle of offices and portfolios, was anything but an expression of political incompetence. On the contrary, it served to make Hitler's own supremacy essentially unassailable.”
― Volker Ullrich, Adolf Hitler: Die Jahre des Aufstiegs 1889 - 1939 Biographie

“Count Harry Kessler noted laconically: “It’s a sad New Year, the end of a catastrophic year and the beginning of what looks to be an even more catastrophic one.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent: 1889-1939

“The best thing is to let Christianity gradually fade out,” he said in October of that year. “A long phase-out has something conciliatory. The dogma of Christianity will collapse in the face of science.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent: 1889-1939

“He wasn’t even honest towards his most intimate confidants,” Krosigk recalled. “In my opinion, he was so thoroughly untruthful that he could no longer recognise the difference between lies and truth.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent: 1889-1939

“But he also wrote in that same letter that he believed Hitler was a man of his word—a grievous error, as he would soon discover.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent: 1889-1939

“Victor Klemperer, who had escaped the February inferno in Dresden with his wife by fleeing to Bavaria, noted: “Now everyone here was always an enemy of the party. If only they really had always been that…The Third Reich has been practically forgotten.”16 Twelve years previously, the opposite had been the case, as Friedrich Kellner recalled all too well. When Hitler had come to power in early 1933, he wrote, many Germans had tried to prove “with the most threadbare arguments” that they had “always been National Socialists.”17”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“Richard Walther Darré made in his testimony at Nuremberg about the general law that governed the development of National Socialism: “When one looks at the basics of things, the force driving this rotating stage is always Hitler himself. He causes…the motion that is transferred to figures whose dynamics release other dynamics, but the central figure Hitler with his surprising impetuses always remains the actual motor of the rotating stage.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“One of Hitler’s most prominent traits had been his constant mistrust of others. Towards the end of the war it turned into paranoia, especially in his relationships with his military commanders.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“After 1945, the myth of the Führer as saviour flipped into its absolute negative. Hitler was declared a monster, a demon in human guise whose infernal powers of seduction the German people had been helpless to resist.23 It was a convenient way of evading accountability or having to take stock of one’s own complicity in National Socialism.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“This is the best day of my life…I will go down in history as the greatest German ever.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent: 1889-1939

“Hitler was confident that the US would no longer supply Britain with as much wartime materiel as previously since it would now be needed for America’s own war against Japan.148 In a small circle on 8 December, the beaming dictator proclaimed that Germany could no longer lose the war: “We now have an ally that has not been defeated in 3,000 years.”149”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz, el cronista de Dachau, logró sobrevivir. En la última anotación de su diario, fechada el 2 de mayo de 1945, escribió:
«Ahora tengo que salir obligatoriamente de la enfermería y ver cómo está el campo. [...] Pero sobre todo conviene sacar de su escondite los manuscritos, el diario, el libro sobre Dachau y los demás escritos, en presencia de los estadounidenses, para que luego nadie pueda decir que aquí no se escribió nada».”
― Volker Ullrich, Eight Days in May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich

“Lo que a continuación se produjo fue una cantidad ingente de suicidios, como no se dieron en ninguna otra ciudad alemana en la fase final de la guerra; no, al menos, en esa medida. Parece que se apoderó de la población una especie de pánico colectivo, una histeria de masas.
Familias enteras se quitaron la vida en grupos. Escuchemos una vez más al documentalista Florian Huber: «Entre los muertos había criaturas de pecho, niños pequeños, escolares y adolescentes, hombres y mujeres jóvenes, matrimonios maduros, personas en la flor de la edad, jubilados y ancianos. Los orígenes de todas esas personas, sus profesiones, su estatus social no siguen ningún patrón. Entre ellas había cientos de refugiados de Pomerania, de Prusia oriental y occidental y de otros lugares, pero también cientos de ciudadanos de Demmin y de sus alrededores. Perecieron obreros y empleados, funcionarios y artesanos, médicos y farmacéuticos, amas de casa, simples viudas y viudas de guerra, comerciantes y agentes de policía, directores y contables, jubilados y maestros. [...] Los suicidios de Demmin supusieron una significativa muestra y un fiel reflejo de la sociedad de una pequeña ciudad alemana».[ 121] El que pudo ingirió un veneno o se pegó un tiro en la cabeza. Otros se cortaron las venas o se ahorcaron. Pero la mayoría murieron ahogados. Las mujeres llenaron de piedras sus mochilas, ataron con cuerdas las muñecas a sus hijos y así se metieron en el agua, amarrados unos a otros. Todavía al cabo de las semanas había numerosos cadáveres flotando en el Peene y en sus afluentes. Los datos acerca del número de suicidios son muy variados. En un obituario improvisado, que comenzó la hija del jardinero del cementerio el 6 de mayo, se incluyeron los nombres de seiscientas doce personas, de las cuales más de cuatrocientas habían decidido suicidarse. El informe del ayuntamiento de la circunscripción de Demmin correspondiente a noviembre de 1945 recogía la cifra de setecientos suicidios en total, y los testigos de la época hablan incluso de más de mil. Haciendo un cálculo prudente habría que suponer un número de entre quinientos y mil”
― Volker Ullrich, Eight Days in May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich

“Muchos individuos de la época vivieron los días comprendidos entre la muerte de Hitler el 30 de abril y la capitulación incondicional de Alemania el 7/ 8 de mayo de 1945 como una profunda cesura biográfica, como la «Hora cero» de la que tanto se ha hablado.”
― Volker Ullrich, Eight Days in May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich

“people. If Hindenburg ascends the throne, it won’t be as a philosopher, just as a representative symbol, a question mark, a zero. You could say: ‘Better a zero than a Nero.”
― Volker Ullrich, Fateful Hours: The Collapse of the Weimar Republic

“2 de mayo de 1945. La periodista Margret Boveri, que, a diferencia de su colega Ursula von Kardorff no había podido huir al sur de Alemania, sino que había permanecido en su domicilio de la Wundstrasse, en el barrio de Charlottenburg, oyó el 2 de mayo por la mañana que se repartía carne de caballo. «Salí corriendo I...] y me encontré con medio caballo, todavía caliente, en plena acera y, a su alrededor, hombres y mujeres provistos de cuchillos y hachas que iban cortándose buenos trozos de carne. De modo que yo también saqué mi navaja, logré hacerme sitio y me corté un buen trozo de carne. No fue fácil. Conseguí un cuarto de pulmón y un pedazo de pata, que llevaba pegada todavía la piel del animal, y me marché llena de salpicaduras de sangre”
― Volker Ullrich, Eight Days in May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich

“The failure of the Weimar Republic remains a lesson of how fragile democracy is and how quickly freedom can be squandered, if democratic institutions cease to function and civil society is too weak to keep the anti-democratic wolves from the door.”
― Volker Ullrich, Fateful Hours: The Collapse of the Weimar Republic

“The course of the Second World War directly reflected the man who started it. Hitler’s hostile personality and conviction that Germany needed additional “living space” made war inevitable, and at the start of the conflict, his tendency to go for broke and act in surprising and outrageous ways worked astonishingly well on the battlefield. Those same qualities, however, also proved his undoing because they led him to overstretch himself—there is no way to understand the key moments in the conflict, Operation Barbarossa and declaring war on the United States, except as consequences of Hitler’s personality. Meanwhile, his role as field commander gradually overwhelmed him so that he could no longer call upon useful traits such as strategic flexibility or ruthless realism. And once things began going wrong, they rapidly spiralled out of control, as Hitler’s alternately hot-headed and intransigent responses—constantly dismissing his military professionals, ruling out tactical retreats—only made the situation worse. By the conclusion of the war, the catastrophe he wreaked on Germany, with the support of the German people, was mirrored by the physical and psychological catastrophe he wreaked on himself. Germany ended up in ruins, just as its Führer ended his life as a complete wreck.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“El 8 de mayo de 1945 cerca del mediodía el comandante Ralph E.
Pearson, al mando de un regimiento de la 80. a División de Infantería estadounidense, abandonó la pequeña ciudad de Schwanenstadt, en Alta Austria, junto con dos jeeps y un camión, en el que iba un destacamento de soldados de infantería. Su objetivo era la localidad de Altaussee, en el Salzkammergut. El día antes había llegado a sus manos el informe de un oficial austriaco, cuyo nombre no se citaba, en el que se le comunicaba una extraordinaria noticia: en la mina de sal de ese pueblo habían sido almacenados unos tesoros artísticos de incalculable valor. Al cabo de casi cuatro horas de viaje, hacia las 15.30, Pearson y sus hombres llegaron a Altaussee. El pueblecito era todavía un hervidero de soldados alemanes, pero nadie pensaba ya en oponer resistencia. Como primera providencia, Pearson mandó destituir al antiguo alcalde y poner uno nuevo. A continuación, se trasladó a la mina de sal. Allí lo aguardaba ya el especialista en mineralogía Hermann Michel, que condujo al oficial estadounidense a las entradas clausuradas de las galerías y le explicó que allí detrás se encontraba una gran parte de los tesoros artísticos de toda Europa robados por orden de Hitler. Antes de marcharse, Pearson mandó asegurar las entradas y ordenó a Michel poner a su disposición todos los documentos y expedientes que hubieran podido llegar a sus manos.”
― Volker Ullrich, Eight Days in May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich

“In 1939 “removal” still meant social exclusion and displacement, not physical annihilation. Only after Germany’s occupation of Poland and its invasion of the Soviet Union did genocide become an option. The search for a written command by Hitler ordering the Holocaust is a pointless exercise. As we have seen, it was his style of leadership to express decisions of fundamental scope in terms of general wishes, which were then to be translated into concrete instructions by the executors of his policies. We should not forget that this abominable crime against humanity could not have been carried out without the participation of hundreds of thousands of ready helpers.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“cryptorchidism,”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“But not everyone was taken in by Hitler’s act. In Germany, too, there were warning voices. To many people’s surprise, on 17 October, Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann issued an impassioned “Appeal to Reason” in Berlin’s Beethoven-Saal auditorium. The call was combined with a complex analysis of the intellectual and social preconditions for National Socialism. The Hitler movement would never have reached such a level of “mass emotional conviction,” Mann asserted, if it had not been preceded by “the sense of the beginning of a new epoch and…a new spiritual situation for humanity.” People had turned away from the fundamental principles of a civil society—“liberty, equality, education, optimism and belief in progress”—and faith in reason to embrace “the forces of the unconscious, of unthinking dynamism and of pernicious creativity,” which rejected everything intellectual. Fed by those tendencies and carried by a “gigantic wave of eccentric barbarism and primitive, populist fairground barking,” National Socialism pursued “a politics of the grotesque…replete with Salvation Army allures, reflexive mass paroxysms, amusement-park chiming, cries of hallelujah and mantra-like repetition of monotonous slogans until everyone foamed at the mouth.”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent: 1889-1939

“One participant at situation meetings described the atmosphere as a “miasma of servility, nervousness and dishonesty” that occasionally made him even “feel physically unwell.” The officer continued: “There was nothing there but fear: fear in all of its shades, from the anxiety of attracting the Führer’s displeasure or angering him with some ill-considered remark to the naked terror about how to survive the imminent end of the drama.”31”
― Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945

“The unjust allocation of food, more than shortages per se, raised ire and left people embittered, and as of 1916 they began venting their pent-up frustration in strikes and protests.”
― Volker Ullrich, Fateful Hours: The Collapse of the Weimar Republic