“In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler believed that his great-power rivals would be easy to exploit and isolate because each had little interest in fighting Germany and instead was determined to get someone else to assume the burden. He guessed right.”

— John Mearsheimer , book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 2, Anarchy and the Struggle for Power, p. 38

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

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler believed that his great-power rivals would be easy to exploit and isolate because each had l…" by John Mearsheimer?

John Mearsheimer 32

American political scientist 1947

Related quotes

“The backers of Hitler in Germany made the same mistake about the Nazi party that the workers and soldiers in Petrograd made about the Bolshevik party. Each group believed that this new brutal, rabid, monolithic fighting gang, on achieving power, would promote, as had been promised, its enlightened interests.”

Max Eastman (1883–1969) American activist

Source: Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (1955), p. 110

“We believe on this earth in Adolf Hitler alone! We believe in National Socialism as the creed which is the sole source of grace! We believe that Almighty God has sent us Adolf Hitler so that he may rid Germany of the hypocrites and Pharisees.”

Robert Ley (1890–1945) Nazi politician

Quoted in "Thus Spake Germany" - Page 30 - by W. W. Coole, Władysław Wszebór Kulski, M. F. Potter - 1941

“Although some people felt Adolf Hitler was bad, he was a great man and a real conqueror whose name would never be forgotten.”

Idi Amin (1925–2003) third president of Uganda

Quoted in The Evil 100 (2004) by Martin Gilman Wolcott, p. 78.
Attributed

“Hitler had the willpower of a demon and he needed it. If he didn't have such a strong willpower he couldn't have achieved anything. Don't forget, if Hitler had not lost the war, if he did not have to fight against the combination of big powers like England, America, and Russia — each one he could have conquered individually — these defendants and these generals would now be saying, 'Heil Hitler,' and would not be so damn critical.”

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

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

“Hitler, in one of his recent discourses, declared that the fight was between those who have been through the Adolf Hitler Schools and those who have been at Eton. Hitler has forgotten Harrow.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Speech to Harrow School (18 December 1940), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 949
The Second World War (1939–1945)

“It may well be said that Hitler's final crime was against the land he had ruled. He was a mad messiah who started the war without cause and prolonged it without reason. If he could not rule he cared not what happened to Germany. As Fritzsche has told us from the stand, Hitler tried to use the defeat of Germany for the self-destruction of the German people. He continued to fight when he knew it could not be won, and continuance meant only ruin… Hitler ordered everyone else to fight to the last and then retreated into death by his own hand. But he left life as he lived it, a deceiver; he left the official report that he had died in battle. This was the man whom these defendants exalted to a Fuhrer. It was they who conspired to get him absolute authority over all of Germany. And in the end he and the system they created for him brought the ruin of them all.”

Robert H. Jackson (1892–1954) American judge

Summation for the Prosecution, July 26, 1946
Quotes from the Nuremberg Trials (1945-1946)

“Hitler did not have Mussolini's revolutionary socialist background… Nevertheless, he shared the socialist hatred and contempt for the 'bourgeoisie' and 'capitalism' and exploited for his purposes the powerful socialist traditions of Germany. The adjectives 'socialist' and 'worker' in the official name of Hitler's party ('The Nationalist-Socialist German Workers' Party') had not merely propagandistic value… On one occasion, in the midst of World War II, Hitler even declared that 'basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Property and Freedom (1999), p. 220

“And what have we now in Germany? A land of bankers and car-makers. Even our great army has gone soft. Soldiers wear beards and question orders. I am not ashamed to say I believed in National Socialism. I still wear the Iron Cross with diamonds Hitler gave me. But today in all Germany you can't find a single person who voted Adolf Hitler into power. Many Germans feel guilty about the war. But they don't explain the real guilt we share — That we lost.”

Hanna Reitsch (1912–1979) German aviator

As quoted in "The first astronaut: tiny, daring Hanna", by Ron Laytner in The Deseret News (19 February 1981), pp. C1+, p. 12C http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=kz8jAAAAIBAJ&sjid=TYMDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5612,5305691&dq=i-still-wear-the-iron-cross-with-diamonds-hitler-gave-me-but-today-in-all-germany-you-can-t-find-a-single-person-who-voted-adolf-hitler-into-power&hl=en

“The sacrifices which were made on both sides after January 1945 were without sense. The dead of this period will be the accusers of the man responsible for the continuation of that fight, Adolf Hitler, just as much as the destroyed cities, destroyed in that last phase, who had lost tremendous cultural values and tremendous numbers of dwellings…. The German people” he said” remained faithful to Adolf Hitler until the end. He has betrayed them knowingly. He has tried to throw them into the abyss…”

Albert Speer (1905–1981) German architect, Minister of Armaments and War Production for Nazi Germany

As quoted by chief prosecutor Robert H. Jackson in the closing summation of the prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials on July 26, 1946

“In order to comprehend Hitler’s reasoning, one must go back to evolution to understand why he did the things that he did, and thought the way he thought. Hitler slaughtered the Jews and hated the blacks because he was an evolutionist. He thought it was his duty to aid evolution in improving the human race. He taught and believed that each of the different races in the world were actually different species of man, and that it was the job of the superior species (Germany) to annihilate the inferior species.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)

“In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler believed that his great-power rivals would be easy to exploit and isolate because each had little interest in fighting Germany and instead was determined to get someone else to assume the burden. He guessed right.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

John Mearsheimer 32

Related quotes

Related topics