“Though Hitler was indeed racist and anti-Semitic to the core, a man who without compunction could commit murder and genocide, he was also an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier in the Great War, a political organizer of the first rank, a leader steeped in the history of Europe, who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him… Hitler's success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path.”

— Patrick Buchanan

Column discussing John Toland's biography of Hitler http://www.realchange.org/hitler.htm (1977).
1970s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Patrick Buchanan 111

American politician and commentator 1938

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“I read the first edition of 'Mein Kampf' when it came out in 1923 and even then I knew Hitler meant what he said. I knew the history of anti-Semitism going back for centuries, and I knew all about pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. When I grew up and whent to school in Moscow, I experienced anti-Semitism and the restrictions on where Jews could live and work. Hitler systemized anti-Semitism. Pogroms are my business… Oh yes, I could be a professor of anti-Semitism.”

Roman Vishniac (1897–1990) American photographer

Testament to a Lost People

“His strength was as a thinker and a writer, a man of honour, with great moral courage. He had a way with people, enormous charm, integrity and character. He was self-possessed, had a good strong voice, and won the confidence of those who dealt with him.”

Sinnathamby Rajaratnam (1915–2006) Early life

Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, on 25 February 2006, in his eulogy to Rajaratnam.

“Not only did waging war against Hitler fail to save the Jews, it may be that the war itself brought on the Final Solution of genocide. This is not to remove the responsibility from Hitler and the Nazis, but there is much evidence that Germany's anti-Semitic actions, cruel as they were, would not have turned to mass murder were it not for the psychic distortions of war, acting on already distorted minds. Hitler's early aim was forced emigration, not extermination, but the frenzy of it created an atmosphere in which the policy turned to genocide.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

Howard Zinn on War (2000), Ch. 21: Just and Unjust War

“He was confused. He was in love with a woman he did not know, except he knew her loyalty was to the enemy. Yet Denmark did not feel like an enemy, though it was. And he was a Soldier still, and Soldiers, he reckoned, fought for those who could not fight for themselves, and that meant he should be fighting for Astrid's folk and not his own. But that was too great a wrench to contemplate.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Lieutenant Richard Sharpe, p. 136
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Prey (2001)

“Himmler hated the church. He and Bormann were the two people who influenced Hitler most. When I spoke to Hitler in the beginning he agreed with me and said that no state could be governed without religion. In Mein Kampf he said that a man was a fool if he destroyed the religion of the people. Hitler also made the statement that the political reform should not be a religious reform.”

Franz von Papen (1879–1969) German chancellor

To Leon Goldensohn (30 March 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.
1940s

“To me there are two Hitlers: one who existed until the end of the French war; the other begins with the Russian campaign. In the beginning he was genial and pleasant. He would have extraordinary willpower and unheard-of influence on people. The important thing to remember is that the first Hitler, the man who I knew until the end of the French war, had much charm and goodwill. He was always frank. The second Hitler, who existed from the beginning of the Russian campaign until his suicide, was always suspicious, easily upset, and tense. He was distrustful to an extreme degree.”

Hermann Göring (1893–1946) German politician and military leader

To Leon Goldensohn (24 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)

“The twenty-six-year-old Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitler youth, who could boast of standing close to Hitler, declared bluntly in those revolutionary June weeks: ‘A socialist and anti-capitalist attitude is the most salient characteristic of the Young National Socialist Germany.”

Konrad Heiden (1901–1966) German journalist and historian

Source: Der Fuehrer, Hitler’s Rise to Power (1944), p. 501

“He [Hitler] is a very great man. "Fuhrer" is the proper name for him, for he is a born leader, yes, and statesman.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Quoted in A. J. Sylvester's diary entry (4 September 1936), Colin Cross (ed.), Life with Lloyd George. The Diary of A. J. Sylvester 1931-45 (London: Macmillan, 1975), p. 148
Later life

“A reflective reading of history will show that no man ever rose to military greatness who could not convince his troops that he put them first, above all else.”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

“To history, until yesterday, Halifax was the arch-appeaser. This, it is now recognised, was a mistake. His rôle, however, was complicated. In these pages he is not the man who stopped the rot, but the embodiment of Conservative wisdom who decided that Hitler must be obstructed because Labour could not otherwise be resisted.”

Maurice Cowling (1926–2005) historian

The Impact of Hitler. British Politics and British Policy, 1933-1940 (University of Chicago, 1977), p. 9.

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