Adolf Hitler Quotes: 265 Controversial Quotes From The Nazi Leader

“We can safely make one prophecy: whatever the outcome of this war, the British Empire is at an end. It has been mortally wounded. The future of the British people is to die of hunger and tuberculosis in their cursed island.”

Adolf Hitler

4 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

Hunger , War , People , Future

“There is, then, no danger in the circumstances that anti-semitism will disappear, for it is the Jews themselves who add fuel to its flames and see that it is kept well stoked. Before the opposition to it can disappear, the malady itself must disappear. And from that point of view, you can rely on the Jews: as long as they survive, anti-semitism will never fade.”

Adolf Hitler

13 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

“Providence shows no mercy to weak nations, but recognizes the right of existence-only of sound and strong nations…This Jewish bolshevist annihilation of nations and its western European and American procurers can be met only in one way: by using every ounce of strength with the extreme fanaticism and stubborn steadfastness that merciful God gives to men in hard times for the defense of their own lives…We have suffered so much that it only steels us to fanatical resolve to hate Our enemies a thousand times more and to regard them for what they are destroyers of an eternal culture and annihilators of humanity. Out of this hate a holy will is born to oppose these destroyers of our existence with all the strength that God has given us and to crush them in the end. During its 2,000-year history our people has survived so many terrible times that we have no doubt that we will also master our present plight.”

Adolf Hitler

Speech on the 25th Anniversary of the Announcement of the National Socialist Party's Program http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/adolf-hitler-speech-on-the-25th-anniversary-of-the-announcement-of-the-national-socialist-party-s-program-february-1945 (February 24, 1945)
1940s

Men , God , Hate , People

“Works of art which cannot be understood in themselves but need some pretentious instruction book to justify their existence will never again find their way to the German people.”

Adolf Hitler

Other remarks
Source: Adolf Hitler as in a speech the summer before the Degenerate Art Exhibition as quoted without citation in " Degenerate art: Why Hitler hated modernism http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24819441" by Lucy Burns, BBC.

People , Books , Art , Way

“We do not want any other god than Germany itself. It is essential to have fanatical faith and hope and love in and for Germany.”

Adolf Hitler

As quoted in A History of National Socialism, Konrad Heiden, A. A. Knopf (1935) p. 100
Other remarks

Love , God , Faith , Hope

“What the world did not deem possible the German people have achieved…. It is already war history how the German Armies defeated the legions of capitalism and plutocracy. After forty-five days this campaign in the West was equally and emphatically terminated.”

Adolf Hitler

“Adolf Hitler’s Order of the Day Calling for Invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece,” Berlin, (April 6, 1941), New York Times, April 7, 1941
1940s

War , People , World , History

“After all, that’s exactly why we call ourselves National Socialists! We want to start by implementing socialism in our nation among our Volk! It is not until the individual nations are socialist that they can address themselves to international socialism.”

Adolf Hitler

Source: Disputed, Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant (1978), p. 288

“The party is all-embracing. It rules our lives in all their breadth and depth… There will be no license, no free space, in which the individual belongs to himself. This is Socialism… Let them then own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the party, is supreme over them, regardless whether they are owners or workers.”

Adolf Hitler

Source: Disputed, Hitler Speaks (1940), p. 191.

Decision

“There is a difference between the theoretical knowledge of socialism and the practical life of socialism. People are not born socialists, but must first be taught how to become them.”

Adolf Hitler

“German Volksgenossen!” Hitler’s opening speech at the new Winterhilfswerk, Deutschlandhalle, Berlin (October 5, 1937). Also quoted in The Third Reich: A New History by Michael Burleigh https://books.google.com/books?id=l5gcZpnL5QUC&pg=PA224
1930s

Life , People , Knowledge

“As for the ridiculous hundred million Slavs, we will mould the best of them as we see fit, and we will isolate the rest of them in their own pig-styes; and anyone who talks about cherishing the local inhabitants and civilising them, goes straight off into a concentration camp!”

Adolf Hitler

6 August 1942.
Disputed, (1941-1944) (published 1953)

“I have never liked France or the French, and I have never stopped saying so.”

Adolf Hitler

15 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

“I only acknowledge one nobility—that of labour.”

Adolf Hitler

Quoted in the Nazi Party official newspaper Völkischer Beobachter (November 21, 1936), Richard Grunberger, The 12-year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany 1933–1945 (1971) p. 47
1930s

“I have sympathy for Mr. Roosevelt, because he marches straight toward his objectives over Congress, lobbies and bureaucracy." Hitler went on to note that he was the sole leader in Europe who expressed "understanding of the methods and motives of President Roosevelt.”

Adolf Hitler

http://www.fff.org/freedom/0795a.asp New York Times 1934, as quoted from: Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography (1976) John Toland
1930s

Motivation , Understanding

“Because it seems inseparable from the social idea and we do not believe that there could ever exist a state with lasting inner health if it is not built on internal social justice, and so we have joined forces with this knowledge.”

Adolf Hitler

"Why We Are Anti-Semites," August 15, 1920 speech in Munich at the Hofbräuhaus. Translated from Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 16. Jahrg., 4. H. (Oct., 1968), pp. 390-420. Edited by Carolyn Yeager. https://carolynyeager.net/why-we-are-antisemites-text-adolf-hitlers-1920-speech-hofbr%C3%A4uhaus
1920s

Health , Justice , Idea , Knowledge

“There are no such things as classes: they cannot be. Class means caste and caste means race.”

Adolf Hitler

Munich - Speech of April 12, 1922 https://archive.org/stream/TheSpeechesOfAdolfHitler19211941/hitler-speeches-collection_djvu.txt
1920s

“I have not come into this world to make men better, but to make use of their weaknesses.”

Adolf Hitler

Disputed, (1941-1944) (published 1953)

Men , World

“A strong State will see that production is carried on in the national interests, and, if these interests are contravened, can proceed to expropriate the enterprise concerned and take over its administration.”

Adolf Hitler

As quoted in Hitler and I, Otto Strasser, Boston, MA, Houghton Mifflin Company (1940) pp. 113-114
Other remarks

Strong

“I'm sure that Nero didn't set fire to Rome. It was the Christian-Bolsheviks who did that, just as the Commune set fire to Paris in 1871 and the Communists set fire to the Reichstag in 1932.”

Adolf Hitler

25 October 1941.
Disputed, (1941-1944) (published 1953)

Communication

“When our party had only seven men, it already had two principles. First, it wanted to be a party with a true ideology. And second, it wanted to be the one and only power in Germany.”

Adolf Hitler

1930s, From the film Triumph of the Will (1935)

Men

“But first, there will have to be national socialism. Otherwise the people and their governments are not ready for the socialism of nations. It is not possible to be liberal to one’s own country and demand socialism among nations.”

Adolf Hitler

Source: Disputed, Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant (1978), p. 170

People , Country

“After mastering its internal divisions, National Socialist Germany has proceeded step by step to cast off its enslavement…. Nevertheless, the Jewish-internationalist capitalists in connection with socially reactionary classes in the Western States have successfully roused the world democracies against Germany.”

Adolf Hitler

As quoted in The Third Reich: A New History by Michael Burleigh, p.1909
1940s

World , Democracy

“The universalists, the idealists, the Utopians all aim too high. They give promises of an unattainable paradise, and by doing so they deceive mankind. Whatever label they wear, whether they call themselves Christians, Communists, humanitarians, whether they are merely sincere but stupid or wire-pullers and cynics, they are all makers of slaves. I myself have always kept my eye fixed on a paradise which, in the nature of things, lies well within our reach. I mean an improvement in the lot of the German people.”

Adolf Hitler

21 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

People , Stupidity , Nature , Sincerity

“The god of war has gone over to the other side.”

Adolf Hitler

Statement to Alfred Jodl, after losses in the Battle of Stalingrad, as quoted in The Second World War: An Illustrated History (1979) by A. J. P. Taylor
Other remarks

God , War

“This pride of race is a quality which the German, fundamentally, does not possess. The reason for this is that for these last three centuries the country has been torn by internal dissension and religious wars and has been subjected to a variety of foreign influences, to the influence, for example, of Christianity—for Christianity is not a natural religion for the Germans, but a religion that has been imported and which strikes no responsive chord in their hearts and is foreign to the inherent genius of the race.”

Adolf Hitler

13 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

War , Religion , Nature , Heart

“Politics is history in the making.”

Adolf Hitler

1920s, Zweites Buch (1928)

History

“In general, the primary aim of this cleansing process is only to restore a certain sound and natural balance, and, secondly, to remove from official positions of national significance those elements to which one cannot entrust Germany’s survival or destruction. For it will not be possible to avoid, in the next few years, [the need] to make sure that certain processes which must not be communicated to the rest of the world for reasons of the highest national interest, will indeed remain secret. This can only be guaranteed by the inner homogeneity of the administrative bodies concerned.”

Adolf Hitler

Letter to President Hindenberg http://alphahistory.com/nazigermany/hindenburg-and-hitler-on-jewish-war-veterans/, (April 5th 1933)
1930s

Secret , World , Communication , Nature

“I have been Europe's last hope. She proved incapable of refashioning herself by means of voluntary reform. She showed herself impervious to charm and persuasion. To take her I had to use violence.”

Adolf Hitler

26 February.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

Hope

“In our movement the two extremes come together: the Communists from the Left and the officers and students from the Right. These two have always been the most active elements, and it was the greatest crime that they used to oppose each other in street fights… Our party has already succeeded in uniting these two utter extremes within the ranks of our storm troops. They will form the core of the great German liberation movement, in which all without distinction will stand together when the day comes to say: ‘The Nation arises, the storm is breaking!”

Adolf Hitler

As quoted in Der Fuehrer: Hitler’s Rise to Power, Konrad Heiden, Boston, MA, Beacon Press, 1969, p. 147, first published 1944. Part of Hitler’s quote also cited in Totalitarianism: Part Three of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, A Harvest Book, 1985, footnote, p. 7
1920s

Fight

“Is there a nobler or more excellent kind of Socialism and is there a truer form of Democracy than this National Socialism which is so organized that through it each one among the millions of German boys is given the possibility of finding his way to the highest office in the nation, should it please Providence to come to his aid.”

Adolf Hitler

Speech by Adolf Hitler, On National Socialism and World Relations http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/hitler1.htm, delivered in the German Reichstag (January 30, 1937). German translation published by H. Müller & Sohn in Berlin.
1930s

Way , Democracy , Boy

“We are going to destroy the Jews. They are not going to get away with what they did on 9 November 1918. The day of reckoning has come.”

Adolf Hitler

To the Czechoslovakian foreign minister (January 21, 1939) quoted in Sarah Ann Gordon, Hitler, Germans, and the "Jewish Question" pg. 130 https://books.google.com/books?id=K2pVlpLqmPAC&pg=PA130&lpg=PA130&dq=We+are+going+to+destroy+the+Jews.+They+are+not+going+to+get+away+with+what+they+did+on+9+November+1918.&source=bl&ots=z9H6ZVZY0C&sig=iG-hsqk8dUMTrdadIxa3m5cOYsY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjBpar5nZbXAhVH7CYKHVq_DOwQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=We%20are%20going%20to%20destroy%20the%20Jews.%20They%20are%20not%20going%20to%20get%20away%20with%20what%20they%20did%20on%209%20November%201918.&f=false
1930s

“The development of relations between State and Church affords a very instructive example of how the carelessness of a single statesman can have after-effects which last for centuries. When Charlemagne was kneeling at prayer in St. Peter's, Rome, at Christmas in the year 800, the Pope, giving him no time to work out the possible effects of so symbolic an action, suddenly bent down and presto! popped a golden crown on his head! By permitting it, the Emperor delivered himself and his successors into the hands of a power which subjected the German Government and the German people to five hundred years of martyrdom.”

Adolf Hitler

4 July 1942.
Disputed, (1941-1944) (published 1953)

People , Time , Christmas

“What Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism failed to accomplish, we shall be in a position to achieve.”

Adolf Hitler

Source: Disputed, Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant (1978), p. 149

“The streets of our country are in turmoil. The universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country. Russia is threatening us with her might and the Republic is in danger. Yes, danger from within and from without. We need law and order. Yes, without law and order our nation cannot survive. Elect us and we shall restore law and order.”

Adolf Hitler

Reported as refuted in the Congressional Record: Lou Hiner, Jr., "Hitler's Phony Quotation on Law and Order", May 21, 1970, vol. 116, pp. 1676–77, reprinted from the Indianapolis News; and M. Stanton Evans, "The Hitler Quote", August 11, 1970, vol. 116, p. 28349, reprinted from the National Review Bulletin (August 18, 1970).
Misattributed

Law , Universe , Country

“I, on the other hand, have tried for two decades to build a new socialist order in Germany, with a minimum of interference and without harming our productive capacity.”

Adolf Hitler

Hitler's “Barbarossa” Proclamation, (June 22, 1941) http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/hitler4.htm
1940s

“Thus it must be admitted that in the economic sphere, from the start, in all branches men are not of equal value or of equal importance. And once this is admitted it is madness to say: in the economic sphere there are undoubtedly differences in value, but that is not true in the political sphere. It is absurd to build up economic life on the conceptions of achievement, of the value of personality, and therefore in practice the authority of personality, but in the political sphere to deny the authority of personality and to thrust into this place the law of the greater number — democracy.”

Adolf Hitler

Speech to the Industry Club (21 January 1932) as quoted in The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922 – August 1939 (1994) by Norman Hepburn Baynes, Oxford University Press, p.787
1930s

Life , Men , Law , Democracy

“I have learned a great deal from Marxism as I do not hesitate to admit… The difference between them and myself is that I have really put into practice what these peddlers and pen pushers have timidly begun. The whole of National Socialism is based on it… National Socialism is what Marxism might have been if it could have broken its absurd and artificial ties with a democratic order.”

Adolf Hitler

Source: Disputed, Hitler Speaks (1940), p. 186

Learning

“If the National Socialist Movement should fail to understand the fundamental importance of this essential principle [race], if it should merely varnish the external appearance of the present State and adopt the majority principle, it would really do nothing more than compete with Marxism on its own ground.”

Adolf Hitler book Mein Kampf

Mein Kampf, Volume 2, Chapter IV, “Personality and the Ideal of the People’s State,” Trans. Marco Roberto, MVR, 2015, p. 33, first published 1926
1920s

Understanding , Appearance

“It is not the State that orders us; but it is we who order the State!”

Adolf Hitler

1930s, From the film Triumph of the Will (1935)

“Not long ago, an American magazine wrote that what was worst about National Socialism was its women. They said that National Socialism did more for women than any other nation. It improved their social position. It began to bring them together in tremendous organizations. It sent the women of the educated classes into the factories so that female workers could go on vacation, and so on. The paper concluded that the democracies could not imitate this.”

Adolf Hitler

As quoted in The Third Reich: A New History by Michael Burleigh, p. 2842
Other remarks

Women , Education , Democracy

“This German Volksgemeinschaft is truly practical socialism and therefore National Socialism in the best sense of the word. Here everyone is obligated to carry his load.”

Adolf Hitler

As quoted in Stagnation and Renewal in Social Policy: The Rise and Fall of Policy Regimes, editors: Martin Rein, Gøsta Esping-Andersen, and Lee Rainwater (1987) p. 63
Other remarks

Sense

“There is only one duty: to Germanise this country [the East] by the immigration of Germans, and to look upon the natives as Redskins.”

Adolf Hitler

Secret conversation October 17, 1941 quoted in World History, Volume 1 pg. 703 https://books.google.com/books?id=J1g7pxIrctQC&pg=PA703&lpg=PA703&dq='There+is+only+one+duty:+to+Germanize+%5B%E2%80%9Cthe+East%E2%80%9D%5D+by+the+immigration+of+Germans,+and+to+look+upon+the+natives+as+Redskins&source=bl&ots=ivCFt6jbTz&sig=NNM68pyr1zvuOQHh98r1XK0XlL0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwillfzazpTXAhXFyyYKHblIApYQ6AEIMjAC#v=onepage&q='There%20is%20only%20one%20duty%3A%20to%20Germanize%20%5B%E2%80%9Cthe%20East%E2%80%9D%5D%20by%20the%20immigration%20of%20Germans%2C%20and%20to%20look%20upon%20the%20natives%20as%20Redskins&f=false and The Holocaust Encyclopedia https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10008219
1940s

Country

“We are obligated to depopulate as part of our mission of preserving the German population. We shall have to develop a technique of depopulation. If you ask me what I mean by depopulation, I mean the removal of entire racial units. And that is what I intend to carry out… Nature is cruel, therefore we, too, may be cruel…. I have the right to remove millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin!”

Adolf Hitler

Source: Disputed, Hitler Speaks (1940), p. 89.

Nature , Parting

“In those countries, it is actually capital that rules; that is, nothing more than a clique of a few hundred men who possess untold wealth and, as a consequence of the peculiar structure of their national life, are more or less independent and free. They say: 'Here we have liberty.' By this they mean, above all, an uncontrolled economy, and by an uncontrolled economy, the freedom not only to acquire capital but to make absolutely free use of it. That means freedom from national control or control by the people both in the acquisition of capital and in its employment. This is really what they mean when they speak of liberty. These capitalists create their own press and then speak of the 'freedom of the press.' In reality, every one of the newspapers has a master, and in every case this master is the capitalist, the owner. This master, not the editor, is the one who directs the policy of the paper. If the editor tries to write other than what suits the master, he is ousted the next day. This press, which is the absolutely submissive and characterless slave of the owners, molds public opinion.
..
Yes, certainly, we jeopardize the liberty to profiteer at the expense of the community, and, if necessary, we even abolish it.
..
All my life I have been a 'have-not.' At home I was a 'have-not.”

Adolf Hitler

I regard myself as belonging to them and have always fought exclusively for them. I defended them and, therefore, I stand before the world as their representative.
Speech to the Workers of Berlin (10 December 1940) (Wikisource)
1940s

Life , Men , People , Reality

“Over the last forty years the German bourgeoisie has been a lamentable failure; it has not given the German people a single leader; it will have to bow without gainsaying to the totality of my ideology… The bourgeoisie rules by intrigue, but it can have no foothold in my movement because we accept no Jews or Jewish accomplices into our Party.”

Adolf Hitler

Hitler's interview with Richard Breiting, 1931, published in Edouard Calic, ed., “First Interview with Hitler, 4 May 1931,” Secret Conversations with Hitler: The Two Newly-Discovered 1931 Interviews, New York: John Day Co., 1971, p. 22. Also published under the title Unmasked: Two Confidential Interviews with Hitler in 1931, published by Chatto & Windus in 1971
1930s

People , Failure

“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. All officers will have to rid themselves of obsolete ideologies. I know that the necessity for such means of waging war is beyond the comprehension of you generals but... I insist absolutely that my orders be executed without contradiction.”

Adolf Hitler

Speaking about the invasion of Russia http://mentalfloss.com/article/28033/operation-barbarossa-biggest-military-adventure-history.
1940s

War , Fashion

“Stalin is one of the most extraordinary figures in world history. He began as a small clerk, and he has never stopped being a clerk. Stalin owes nothing to rhetoric. He governs from his office, thanks to a bureaucracy that obeys his every nod and gesture. It's striking that Russian propaganda, in the criticisms it makes of us, always holds itself within certain limits. Stalin, that cunning Caucasian, is apparently quite ready to abandon European Russia, if he thinks that a failure to solve her problems would cause him to lose everything. Let nobody think Stalin might reconquer Europe from the Urals! It is as if I were installed in Slovakia, and could set out from there to reconquer the Reich. This is the catastrophe that will cause the loss of the Soviet Empire.”

Adolf Hitler

night of 18-19 July 1941.
Disputed, (1941-1944) (published 1953)

World , History , Failure , Problem

“I want war. To me all means will be right. My motto is not "Don't, whatever you do, annoy the enemy." My motto is "Destroy him by all and any means." I am the one who will wage the war!”

Adolf Hitler

As quoted in Hitler and Nazism (1961) by Louis Leo Snyder, p. 66
Other remarks

War

“Our party remains as firm as this rock and will not be divided by any force in Germany.”

Adolf Hitler

1930s, From the film Triumph of the Will (1935)

“We shall banish want; we shall banish fear. The essence of National Socialism is human welfare…. National Socialism is the revolution of the common man. Rooted in a fuller life for every German from childhood to old age, National Socialism means a new day of abundance at home and a better world order abroad.”

Adolf Hitler

As quoted in Men in Motion, Henry J. Taylor, Doubleday, Doran & Co., New York: NY, (1944) p. 59. Also quoted in As We Go Marching, John T. Flynn, New York: NY, Free Life Edition (1973) p. 154, first published 1944 https://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/As%20We%20Go%20Marching_2.pdf
Other remarks

Childhood , Life , World , Home

“I am quite sure that very few of the so-called Reds in Spain were really Communists. We were badly deceived, for, had I known the real state of affairs, I would never have allowed our aircraft to bombard and destroy a starving population and at the same time re-establish the Spanish clergy in all their horrible privileges.”

Adolf Hitler

10 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

Time