“The Austrians have completed the feat of turning Beethoven into an Austrian, and Hitler into a German.”

— Billy Wilder

Die Österreicher haben das Kunststück fertiggebracht, aus Beethoven einen Österreicher und aus Hitler einen Deutschen zu machen. As quoted in DER SPIEGEL (16 May 1994) http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-9281967.html?name=Sp%26auml%3Bte+Heimkehr)

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Billy Wilder23

American filmmaker 1906–2002

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“Except for Marxian theories, nearly all modern theories of the business cycle have essential elements that trace back to Knut Wicksell's turn-of-the-century writings on interest and prices. Austrians, New Classicists, Monetarists, and even Keynesians can legitimately claim a kinship on this basis. Accordingly, the recognition, that both the Austrians and the New Classicists have a Swedish ancestry does not translate into a meaningful claim that the two schools are essentially similar. To the contrary, identifying their particular relationships to Wicksellian ideas, like comparing the two formally similar business-cycle theories themselves, reveals more differences than similarities. … [T]o establish the essential difference between the Austrians and the New Classicists, it needs to be added that the focus of the Austrian theory is on the actual market process that translates the monetary cause into the real phenomena and hence on the institutional setting in which this process plays itself out.The New Classicists deliberately abstract from institutional considerations and specifically deny, on the basis of empirical evidence, that the interest rate plays a significant role in cyclical fluctuations (Lucas 1981, p. 237 151–1). Thus, Wicksell's Interest and Prices is at best only half relevant to EBCT. … Taking the Wicksellian metaphor as their cue, the New Classicists are led away from the pre-eminent Austrian concern about the actual market process that transforms cause into effect and towards the belief that a full specification of the economy's structure, which is possible only in the context of an artificial economy, can shed light on an effect whose nature is fundamentally independent of the cause.”

Roger Garrison (1944) American economist

Pages 98–99.
"New Classical and Old Austrian Economics", 1991

“The biggest mistake of Hitler, I have to say the main fault, was that under his government these terrific exterminations of men happened, which went on behind the backs of the German nation, which would never have tolerated them, but the government kept these crimes completely secret from the German people.”

Karl Dönitz (1891–1980) President of Germany; admiral in command of German submarine forces during World War II

The World at War: the Landmark Oral History from the Classic TV Series (2007) by Richard Holmes, Page 316.

“That man always made it a point to speak German, although he spoke English well enough. That was because he imitated Hitler to the last degree. He would say that his reason for speaking German instead of English during conferences with English-speaking representatives was that he wanted to concentrate on the subject in hand, and not on the language. Ribbentrop was a complete imitator of Hitler - even to the design of his cap. Originally he had a nice cap, but then he imitated the stationmaster type of cap preferred by Hitler.”

Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946) German general

Paul O. Schmidt to Leon Goldensohn, March 13, 1946.

“The hangover theory, then, turns out to be intellectually incoherent; nobody has managed to explain why bad investments in the past require the unemployment of good workers in the present. Yet the theory has powerful emotional appeal. Usually that appeal is strongest for conservatives, who can't stand the thought that positive action by governments (let alone—horrors!—printing money) can ever be a good idea. Some libertarians extol the Austrian theory, not because they have really thought that theory through, but because they feel the need for some prestigious alternative to the perceived statist implications of Keynesianism. And some people probably are attracted to Austrianism because they imagine that it devalues the intellectual pretensions of economics professors. But moderates and liberals are not immune to the theory's seductive charms—especially when it gives them a chance to lecture others on their failings.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"The Hangover Theory", Slate (Dec. 4, 1998)

“It appears that Hitler’s involvement with the communist-run Bavarian Soviet Republic (Bayerische Räterepublik in German) demonstrates some type of commitment to communism. After all, Hitler held an elected position during the red Räterepublik government that was under the complete control of the Communist Party of Germany. He did not flee or resign his position.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum and the Battle between the ‘Free Left’ and the ‘Statist Left', (2019), p. 333

“Translated After Hitler, our turn.”

Ernst Thälmann (1886–1944) leader of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during much of the Weimar Republic

Nach Hitler kommen Wir. Ernst Thälmann (1931), cited in: Michelle Goldberg. " After Trump, Our Turn! http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/03/29/susan_sarandon_is_perfect_spokeswoman_for_neverhillary.html" at slate.com, March 29, 2016. Quote is about Thälmann's refusal to oppose the Nazis in the 1932 German election helped bring them to power. It was quoted by Goldberg (2016) as historical precedent for leftists refusing to oppose Donald Trump as US President. The English quote is mentioned in over 30 publications, mostly as a communist slogan around 1930, yet only 4 publications actually attributed the quote to Ernst Thälmann. The original quote is mentioned in numerous publications. Disputed

“Röhm deceived himself when he thought that his closeness to Hitler would allow him to survive while other German homosexual men were being persecuted. Röhm was not murdered because he was homosexual, but the fact that he was so gave his enemies a means of turning Hitler against him and securing his destruction.”

Ernst Röhm (1887–1934) German Nazi and military officer

Robert Aldrich, "Who's who in Gay and Lesbian History from Antiquity to World War II", London and New York, Routledge, 2001, p. 377.

“I had entered the communist children's movement, an organisation called the Young Pioneers of America, in 1930 in New York City; I was only nine years of age. And I'd gone through the entire '30s as a—Stalinist—initially, and then increasingly as someone who was more and more sympathetic to Trotskyism. And by 1939, after having seen Hitler rise to power, the Austrian workers revolt of 1934 (an almost completely forgotten episode in labour history), the Spanish revolution by which I mean the so-called Spanish civil war—I finally became utterly disillusioned with Stalinism, and drifted increasingly toward Trotskyism. And by 1945, I, finally, also became disillusioned with Trotskyism; and I would say, now, increasingly with Marxism and Leninism.”

Murray Bookchin (1921–2006) American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher

Anarchism in America http://alexpeak.com/art/films/aia/ (15 January 1983)

“To turn the Communion into a cheap replica of Orthodoxy – were such a feat even possible – would be to sell the very soul of Anglicanism.”

Martyn Percy (1962) British Anglican priest and theologian

Source: Sex, Sense and Non-Sense for Anglicans http://modernchurch.org.uk/downloads/finish/818-articles/756-sex-sense-and-non-sense-for-anglicans (2015), p. 11 Context: To turn the Communion into a cheap replica of Orthodoxy – were such a feat even possible – would be to sell the very soul of Anglicanism. We need wisdom from the Archbishop that will help Anglicans find new unity; not more space to express greater individualisms.

“Obviously the government of [Mussolini's] time, out of fear that German power might lead to complete victory, preferred to ally itself with Hitler's Germany rather than opposing it … The racial laws were the worst fault of Mussolini as a leader, who in so many other ways did well.”

Silvio Berlusconi (1936) Italian politician

In a speech in Milan, while heading a coallition which includes parties with fascist roots, as quoted in "Berlusconi praises Mussolini on Holocaust Memorial Day" at BBC News (27 January 2013) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21222341 2013

“The Austrians have completed the feat of turning Beethoven into an Austrian, and Hitler into a German.”

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