Germany

Germans have a far greater and more urgent duty towards civilization to perform. ~ Friedrich von Bernhardi

Satan is a German invention. ~ Friedrich Schlegel

Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland), is a country in the western-central European Union. It includes 16 constituent states, which retain some sovereignty, and covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres (137,847 sq mi) with a largely temperate seasonal climate. It is bordered by Poland and the Czech Republic to the east, Austria and Switzerland to the south, France, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands to the west, and Denmark, the North Sea and the Baltic Sea to the north. Its capital and largest city is Berlin. With 80.7 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state in the European Union. In the 21st century, Germany is considered a great power and has the world's fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a NATO member state and a global leader in several industrial and technological sectors, it is both the world's third-largest exporter and importer of goods. It is a developed country with a very high standard of living, maintaining a comprehensive social security and a universal health care system. It is currently ruled by the Social Democratic Party, its current head of state is President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and its current head of government is Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

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Quotes

Germany, Germany! Above everything, above everything in the world! ~ August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben

Though remarkable for patient and laborious thought, the true German is a joyous child of freedom, fond of manly sports, a lover of music, and a happy man generally. ~ Frederick Douglass

Unity and justice and freedom are the pledge of happiness. Bloom in the glow of happiness! Bloom, German fatherland! ~ August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben

Though remarkable for patient and laborious thought, the true German is a joyous child of freedom, fond of manly sports, a lover of music, and a happy man generally. ~ Frederick Douglass

To no class of our population are we more indebted for valuable qualities of head, heart, and hand, than to the German. Say what we will of their lager, their smoke, and their metaphysics, they have brought to us a fresh, vigorous and child-like nature; a boundless facility in the acquisition of knowledge; a subtle and far-reaching intellect, and a fearless love of truth. ~ Frederick Douglass

Justice and freedom for the German fatherland! Let us all strive for this purpose, brotherly with heart and hand! ~ August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben

Football is a simple game. 22 men chase a ball for ninety minutes and at the end, the Germans win. ~ Gary Lineker

I worked at a factory owned by Germans, at coal pits owned by Frenchmen, and at a chemical plant owned by Belgians. There I discovered something about capitalists. They are all alike. ~ Nikita Khrushchev

What have we now in Germany? A land of bankers and car-makers. ~ Hanna Reitsch

Our great army has gone soft. Soldiers wear beards and question orders. ~ Hanna Reitsch

The true German seeks God for all of his life. ~ Joseph Goebbels

Germany as a country has only been in existence for just over a hundred years. But in that time they've started two world wars, they've had two military coups, they've been brought on the brink of starvation two times, and they've invaded almost all of their neighbors. ~ Jeremy Clarkson

Thinking of Germany in the night robs me of my sleep. ~ Heinrich Heine

The post-Nazi German experience, frequently cited and mistakenly seen as normal, is actually a massive exception to the general rule. The Germans are indeed all but unified in their disgust for the Nazi past, but we should not forget that de-Nazification was first forced upon the Germans by the victorious Allies under an occupation regime and then strengthened by the objective circumstances of the post-war European political and social environment. ~ Andrei N. Lankov

What would have been the consequences of an Allied failure on D-Day? There can be no doubt whatsoever that Germany would still have lost the Second World War. ~ Jeffrey Evan Brooks

The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference. ~ Ian Kershaw

For the first time, I am ashamed to be a German. ~ Wilhelm II

We have 500,000 reservists in America who would rise in arms against your government if you dare to make a move against Germany. ~ Zimmermann

Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people. ~ Ayn Rand

A

• A reformation of relations between the Soviet people and the German people is not possible along the lines pursued by the authorities of the Soviet zone of Germany. The Germans in that zone have come to hate and despise those who violate them in so inhuman a manner. And they must be having similar feelings towards those who support that system. The closing of the border is an unprecedented admission of bankruptcy. It shows that the people who are compelled to live in that part of Germany can be prevented only by the use of physical force from leaving that paradise of workers and farmers. There is but one possibility of placing relations between the Soviet and German peoples on a new foundation: the German people must be given back the right, denied to no people on earth, to form, through a free and uninfluenced expression of their will, a government which would then be truly entitled to speak, act and decide on behalf of the whole German nation.
  • Konrad Adenauer, Statement to the Bundestag on the building of the Berlin Wall (18 August 1961)

• The French fear of German resurgence which caused France to press for a policy of dismemberment of Germany seemed to be altogether exaggerated. After 1945 Germany lay prostrate - militarily, economically and politically - and in my opinion this condition was a sufficient guarantee that Germany could not again threaten France. In the future United States of Europe I saw great hope for Europe and thus for Germany. We had to try to remind France, Holland, Belgium, and the other European countries that they were - as we were - situated in Western Europe, that they are and will forever remain our neighbours, that any violence they do to us must in the end lead to trouble, and that no lasting peace can be established in Europe if it is founded on force alone.
  • Konrad Adenauer, Memoirs 1945-1953 (1966)

• After twelve years of National Socialism there simply were no perfect solutions for Germany and certainly none for a divided Germany. There was very often only the policy of the lesser evil. We were a small and very exposed country. By our own strength we could achieve nothing. We must not be a no-man's land between East and West for then we would have friends nowhere and a dangerous neighbour in the East.
  • Konrad Adenauer, Memoirs 1945-1953 (1966)

• An unsteady nation has no friends. The German people seriously worry me. The only thing I can say for them is that they have lived through too much. They have not found peace of mind and stability since the war of 1914-18.
  • Konrad Adenauer, as quoted in "Adenauer 1876-1967" (28 April 1967) by James Bell, Life, Vol. 62, No. 17

• Richard Dressler: Most people believe the twentieth century was defined by the death struggle of communism versus capitalism, and that fascism was but a hiccup. Today we know better. Communism was a fool's errand, the followers of Marx gone from this Earth; but the followers of Hitler abound and thrive. Hitler, however, had one great disadvantage. He lived in a time when fascism, like a virus, like the AIDS virus, required a strong host in order to spread. Germany was that host, but strong as it was, Germany couldn't prevail. The world was too big. Fortunately, the world has changed. Global communication, cable TV, the internet. Today the world is smaller, and the virus no longer needs a strong host in order to spread. This virus is airborne... One more thing; let no man call us crazy. They called Hitler crazy, but Hitler wasn't crazy. He was stupid. You don't fight Russia and America. You get Russia and America to fight each other, and destroy each other.
  • The Sum of All Fears (31 May 2002), written by Paul Attanasio and Daniel Pyne, California: Paramount Pictures Corporation

• The Germans, both because of their intense democracy and also because they were as a rule people of limited capital and dependent on their own labor and skill for a livelihood, were not favorable to the institution of slavery.
  • A Twentieth Century History of Southwest Texas: Illustrated (1907), "Germans and Slavery", Volume 1, New York: The Lewis Publishing Company, p. 193

• Don Collier: I started this war killing Germans in Africa. Then France. Then Belgium. Now I'm killing Germans in Germany. It will end, soon. But before it does, a lot more people gotta die.
  • Fury (2014), written by David Ayer

B

• We Germans have a far greater and more urgent duty towards civilization to perform than the Great Asiatic Power. We, like the Japanese, can only fulfil it by the sword.
  • Friedrich von Bernhardi, Germany and the next War (1911), Chapter XIII

• I never doubted that the victory over France must precede the restoration of the German kingdom, and if we did not succeed in bringing it this time to a perfect conclusion, further wars without the preliminary security of our perfect unification were full in view.
  • Otto von Bismarck, Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman, Being the Reflections and Reminiscences of Otto Prince von Bismarck, Written and Dictated by Himself After His Retirement from Office (1898)

• I totally regret as a German what happened at this point of history. But when people ask me are you, as a German, feel responsible for the Holocaust? No, because I'm born 1965 and it would be completely un-logical to say I'm responsible, but as a country we are responsible.
  • Uwe Boll, interview (2010), Lopta Film, Lopta and Moist.

• Perhaps they know that they are in danger as much as anybody. They simply would rather see American men and women, rather than French and German men and women, dying to preserve their safety. Far better, from this cynical perspective, to signal that you will not take on the terrorists, so as to earn their good will amidst the uncertain times ahead.
  • David Brooks, "French Kiss Off" (6 February 2003), The Weekly Standard.

• When I came to Germany in 1990, I thought our relations would be more difficult. During the Cold War years, we were taught that this country was an enemy and that our job was to fight the enemy. I came here still holding this cold-war mentality. I think I made a great mistake, and that all Soviet citizens were wrong as far as Germany is concerned. The Germans made the same mistake about the Soviets. I think both sides now realize this. Our relations are really quite cordial.
  • Matvei Burlakov, as quoted in "Bitter Goodbye: Russians Leave Germany" (1994), The New York Times

• On behalf of the American people, I thank the world for its outpouring of support. America will never forget the sounds of our National Anthem playing at Buckingham Palace, on the streets of Paris, and at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate. We will not forget South Korean children gathering to pray outside our embassy in Seoul, or the prayers of sympathy offered at a mosque in Cairo. We will not forget moments of silence and days of mourning in Australia and Africa...
  • George W. Bush, Freedom and Fear Are at War (20 September 2001)

• You have given [the Austrians] carte blanche – do you realize what you have done? If the late Prince Bismarck could appear here before you, his first words would be: "How could you do such a thing, how could you transform a Germany that was the rider into a Germany that is now being ridden by Austria?"
  • Bernhard von Bülow, in remarks to Theodor Wolff, explaining what he would have said in July 1914 if he had been summoned to the Wilhelmstrasse (c. 1916), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, 'Germany', in Keith Wilson (ed.), Decisions for War 1914 (1995), p. 29

C

• If we can succeed in inventing means of changing their attitudes and beliefs, we shall find ourselves in possession of measures which, if wisely used, may be employed in freeing ourselves from their attitudes and beliefs in other fields which have greatly contributed to the instability of our period by their propensity for holding up progress.
  • Donald Ewen Cameron on the Germans, in Life is For Living in Father, Son and CIA, by Harvey Weinstein p. 100

• The imperialist ideology of force, from whatever side it comes, must be shattered for all time. A one sided Prussian militarism must never again be allowed to assume power. Only in large-scale cooperation among the nations of Europe can the ground be prepared for reconstruction. Centralized hegemony, such as the Prussian state has tried to exercise in Germany and in Europe, must be cut down at its inception. The Germany of the future must be a federal state.
  • White Rose Resistance Group, Fifth Leaflet, circa 1942

• And now it's time for me to meet Europe's "cuddly teddybears"... the Germans. Germany as a country has only been in existence for just over a hundred years. But in that time they've started two world wars, they've had two military coups, they've been brought on the brink of starvation two times, and they've invaded almost all of their neighbours.
  • Jeremy Clarkson, Top Gear: Jeremy Meets the Neighbours

• Death is a Master from Germany.
  • Original (German): Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland.
  • Paul Celan, Todesfuge (1948).

D

• Germany, once NATO’s front line against the Soviets, is the most glaring example. Over the last 25 years, the Germans have chosen to become militarily impotent. On average, just 39 of Germany’s 128 Eurofighter Typhoons, the Luftwaffe’s best fighter plane, were available for service in 2017. Barely a quarter of its older Tornados are serviceable. Maybe this horrible maintenance record is a secondary concern, though: Der Spiegel reported that Germany only had enough missiles for four of the Typhoons to engage in combat... The German military is currently short a staggering 21,000 officers and noncommissioned officers. Even Germany’s elite KSK special operations troops have earned more of a reputation for their beer than their battles.
  • Macedonia is set to join NATO — an alliance that can’t fight, Defense News, February 13, 2019

• Germany lied to Russia when it promised that NATO would not move one inch eastwards if Russia supported the reunification with East Germany.
  Germany lied to Russia again when Ukraine and Germany had no intention to honor the Minsk agreements.
  I'm German. This is not honorable.
  • Kim Dotcom, from a tweet, 10 December 2022.

• To no class of our population are we more indebted for valuable qualities of head, heart, and hand, than to the German. Say what we will of their lager, their smoke, and their metaphysics, they have brought to us a fresh, vigorous and child-like nature; a boundless facility in the acquisition of knowledge; a subtle and far-reaching intellect, and a fearless love of truth. Though remarkable for patient and laborious thought, the true German is a joyous child of freedom, fond of manly sports, a lover of music, and a happy man generally.
  • Frederick Douglass, Our Composite Nationality (7 December 1869), Boston, Massachusetts

F

• Germany, Germany above everything, above everything in the world! When, for protection and defense, it always stands brotherly together. From the Meuse to the Memel, from the Adige to the Belt, Germany. Germany, above everything, above everything in the world!
  • Original (German): Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, Über alles in der Welt!
  • August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Das Lied der Deutschen (1841)

• German women, German loyalty, German wine and German song, shall retain in the world, their old beautiful chime and inspire us to noble deeds, during all of our life. German women, German loyalty, German wine and German song! German women, German loyalty, German wine and German song!
  • Original (German): Deutsche Frauen, deutsche Treue, Deutscher Wein und deutscher Sang. Sollen in der Welt behalten. Ihren alten schönen Klang, Uns zu edler Tat begeistern. Unser ganzes Leben lang.
  • August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Das Lied der Deutschen (1841)

• Unity and justice and freedom for the German fatherland! Let us all strive for this purpose, brotherly with heart and hand! Unity and justice and freedom are the pledge of happiness. Bloom in the glow of happiness! Bloom, German fatherland!
  • August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Das Lied der Deutschen (1841)
• The creation of two German states, an event unforeseen at Tehran, Yalta, or even at Potsdam, was a signal Cold War phenomenon. Foreshadowed by the dual occupation of Korea, Germany’s partition in 1949 combined both real and symbolic elements as a means of stabilizing Central Europe as well as a punishment for the Nazis’ crimes. Four-power occupation had worked in Austria—thanks to the smaller strategic stakes, a moderate socialist government, and the Allies’ Tehran decision to treat this country gently as “Hitler’s first victim”—and the country remained intact. In the more populous, resource-rich Germany, which lacked a central government, the occupiers were able to dominate the revival of local politics. East Germany became the first “workers’ and peasants’ state on German soil,” and West Germany a liberal, robustly capitalist state. Both regimes represented not only a renunciation of the Nazi past but also the revitalization of two opposing political traditions—Marxism and liberalism—each claiming redemptive power over Germany and Europe’s future and each mirroring the Cold War itself.
  • Carole C. Fink, The Cold War: An International History (2017), p. 74

• By 2040, France and Germany are going to be has-beens, historically. Between population crises and the redefinition of the geopolitics of Europe, the French and Germans will be facing a decisive moment. If they do not assert themselves, their futures will be dictated by others and they will move from decadence to powerlessness. And with powerlessness would come a geopolitical spiral from which they would not recover.
  • George Friedman, The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), p. 151, Doubleday

G

• The union of the States of Germany into a form of government similar in many respects to that of the American Union is an event that can not fail to touch deeply the sympathies of the people of the United States. This union has been brought about by the long-continued, persistent efforts of the people, with the deliberate approval of the governments and people of twenty-four of the German States, through their regularly constituted representatives.
  • Ulysses S. Grant, message regarding the unification of Germany (7 February 1871)

• The true German seeks God for all of his life.
  • Joseph Goebbels, Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

• I find it difficult to say whether the leadership's 'second echelon' could have preserved the German Democratic Republic. Helmut Kohl later told me he had never believed that Egon Krenz was capable of getting the situation under control. I do not know - we are all wiser after the event, as the saying goes. For my part, I must admit I briefly had a faint hope that the new leaders would be able to change the course of events by establishing a new type of relations between the two German states - based on radical domestic reforms in East Germany.
  • Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (1995)

• A German-Russian partnership is a key element in any serious pan-European integration process. It is my ardent wish that Russia and Germany may manage to preserve all the positive achievements of the late 1980s and early 1990s in today's difficult times.
  • Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (1995)

H

• The state of Germany at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 is difficult to describe except in biblical terms. Syria today might give us some idea. At least a third of the entire population seems to have perished, more in some areas. In 1631, Magdeburg on the Elbe, Otto the Great’s most-favoured city, had over 20,000 inhabitants; by 1649, it was 450, the rest having been mostly slaughtered in the streets. Even today, when German children sing their version of ‘Ladybird, Ladybird, Fly Away Home’, it’s not a house that’s on fire, but Pomerania.
  • James Hawes, The Shortest History of Germany (2017)

• Anyone who thinks of the Germans as a naturally bellicose people should recall that Prussia-Germany was the only one of the continental powers in the run-up to 1914 whose elite seriously feared that if they had their war, their people might refuse to fight it.
  • James Hawes, The Shortest History of Germany (2017)

• Thinking of Germany in the night robs me of my sleep.
  • Original (German): Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht, dann bin ich um den Schlaf gebracht.
  • Heinrich Heine, Nachtgedanken (1843).

• Germany never defends herself, except by a few flaming protests on the part of our parliamentary elite, and the rest of the world has no reason for fighting in our defense.
  • Adolf Hitler, as quoted in My Struggle (1926), p. 622.

• If the Providence has so willed that the German people cannot be spared this fight, then I can only be grateful that it entrusted me with the leadership in this historic struggle which, for the next 500 or 1,000 years, will be described as decisive, not only for the history of Germany, but for the whole of Europe and indeed the whole world. The German people and their soldiers are working and fighting today, not only for the present, but for the coming, nay the most distant, generations. A historical revision on a unique scale has been imposed on us by the Creator... The next incursion against this homestead of European culture was carried out from the distant East. A terrible stream of barbarous, uncultured hordes sallied forth from the interior of Asia deep into the hearts of the European Continent, burning, looting, murdering—a true scourge of the Lord... From the time when the Movement I consisted of seven men, until we took over power in January 1933, the path was so miraculous that only Providence itself with its blessing could have made this possible...

  Our enemies must not deceive themselves—in the 2,000 years of German history known to us, our people have never been more united than today. The Lord of the Universe has treated us so well in the past years that we bow in gratitude to a providence which has allowed us to be members of such a great nation. We thank Him that we also can be entered with honor into the ever-lasting book of German history!

  • Adolf Hitler, speech before the Reichstag (11 December 1941)

• You see, it's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?
  • Adolf Hitler, as quoted in Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs by Albert Speer, p. 115.

• If the war is lost, the nation will also perish. This fate is inevitable. There is no necessity to take into consideration the basis which the people will need to continue even a most primitive existence. On the contrary, it will be better to destroy these things ourselves, because this nation will have proved to be the weaker one and the future will belong solely to the stronger eastern nation. Besides, those who will remain after the battle are only the inferior ones, for the good ones have all been killed.
  • Adolf Hitler, to Albert Speer (1945), as quoted in "Defeat of Hitler: Enter the Bunker" (2010), The History Place.

• Not so long ago we Germans thirsted after blood. We had half the world in trenches crawling through the mud. Victory was in our reach as we launched U-boat fleets. Back at home our women starved or else they worked the streets. From Attila on we've had a steady line of heroes. So how come we got stuck this time with a bunch of zeroes. Then a naval mutiny made it clear for all to see the status quo just had to go in Germany. Oh, how we wish that we were kids again. How pure we were back then when we were young. Back then we played at war on soft green grass. We fought with make-believe, not poison gas. And now that we have seen the face of war. We're not the same men that we were before, and we can say without hypocrisy, now we want the world to be safe for democracy.
  • Friedrich Hollaender, "Oh, How We Wish That We Were Kids Again"

• As President Biden explained, the current U.S.-orchestrated military escalation (“Prodding the Bear”) is not really about Ukraine. Biden promised at the outset that no U.S. troops would be involved. But he has been demanding for over a year that Germany prevent the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from supplying its industry and housing with low-priced gas and turn to the much higher-priced U.S. suppliers.... So the most pressing U.S. strategic aim of NATO confrontation with Russia is soaring oil and gas prices, above all to the detriment of Germany. In addition to creating profits and stock-market gains for U.S. oil companies, higher energy prices will take much of the steam out of the German economy. Thus looms the third time in a century that the United States will have defeated Germany – each time increasing its control over a German economy increasingly dependent on the United States for imports and policy leadership, with NATO being the effective check against any domestic nationalist resistance.
  • Michael Hudson, America Defeats Germany for the Third Time in a Century, (28 February 2022)

• The reaction to the sabotage of three of the four Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in four places on Monday, September 26,[2022] has focused on speculations about who did it and whether NATO will make a serious attempt to discover the answer. Yet instead of panic, there has been a great sigh of diplomatic relief, even calm.
  ... Disabling these pipelines ends the uncertainty and worries on the part of US/NATO diplomats that nearly reached a crisis proportion the previous week, when large demonstrations took place in Germany calling for the sanctions to end and to commission Nord Stream 2 to resolve the energy shortage...
  The German public was coming to understand what it will mean if their steel companies, fertilizer companies, glass companies and toilet-paper companies were shutting down. These companies were forecasting that they would have to go out of business entirely – or shift operations to the United States – if Germany did not withdraw from the trade and currency sanctions against Russia and permit Russian gas and oil imports to resume, and presumably to fall back from their astronomical eight to tenfold price increase... If policymakers were to put German business interests and living standards first, NATO’s common sanctions and New Cold War front would be broken. Italy and France might follow suit. That prospect made it urgent to take the anti-Russian sanctions out of the hands of democratic politics.
  • Michael Hudson, The Euro Without German Industry, October 4, 2022

• While I was in Germany, I met a student. He told me that I am a Muslim, that I am a terrorist. I told him that he is the German, that he burned people. I said "Why are you talking to me? I didn’t burn anybody." I told him also that I didn’t terrorize anybody, and that I was the first person to condemn what Osama bin Laden did to America on 9/11. I told him that we, the Shia people, in Iraq we were the first victims. Saddam killed civilian people, he cut off our heads, he blew up our houses. I told him that Hitler burned the Jews. Nobody in the world has done what he did. Then I told him we are the same. You are German, and you are not Hitler. I am a Muslim, but I am not Osama bin Laden.
  • Sayyed Mohammad Ali El Husseini, as quoted in "The Liberal Cleric of the Dahiyeh" (14 January 2007), by Michael J. Totten, World Affairs Journal

J

• I always feel quite American, I just grew up in Germany.
  • Fabian M. Johnson, as quoted in "USMNT's Fabian Johnson interview" (5 May 2015), by Jack Kerr, The Guardian, United Kingdom.

• Europe has been at peace since 1945. But it is a restless peace that's shadowed by the threat of violence. Europe is partitioned. An unnatural line runs through the heart of a very great and a very proud nation. History warns us that until this harsh division has been resolved, peace in Europe will never be secure. We must turn to one of the great unfinished tasks of our generation, and that unfinished task is making Europe whole again.
  • Lyndon B. Johnson, remarks before the National Conference of Editorial Writers, New York City (7 October 1966); in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966, book 2, p. 1126.

K

• Americans reflexively believe that 'Had Germany occupied the United States, nearly all of us would have joined an armed resistance to the Nazis. That's what I thought, too, when I was 16. But that reflects a hopelessly naive view, both of what the world looked like to most people after the Nazis had conquered Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway and France, and of what it actually meant to take up arms against an occupying power'.
  • Charles Kaiser, "What Americans forget about French resistance" (7 May 2015), Cable News Network, Atlanta, Georgia.

• There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin.
  • John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Speech in Berlin; see also the Ich bin ein Berliner Speech at Wikisource.

• [Southern U.S.] laws defining race are not to be compared with those once enforced by Nazi Germany, the latter being relatively more liberal. In the view of the Nazis, persons having less than one fourth Jewish blood could qualify as Aryans, whereas many of the American laws specify that persons having one-eighth, one-sixteenth, or "any ascertainable" Negro blood are Negroes in the eyes of the law and subject to all restrictions governing the conduct of Negroes.
  • Stetson Kennedy, Jim Crow Guide: The Way it Was (1955), Ch.4, "Who is Colored Where"

• It's common in Germany, and elsewhere in continental Europe, for football to be just one of many sports a club fields teams in. Bayern, for instance, even have a chess team.
  • Jack Kerr, as quoted in "USMNT's Fabian Johnson interview" (5 May 2015), by J. Kerr, The Guardian, United Kingdom.

• The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with [German] indifference.
  • Ian Kershaw, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 1933-45 (1983), p. 277

• I worked at a factory owned by Germans, at coal pits owned by Frenchmen, and at a chemical plant owned by Belgians. There I discovered something about capitalists. They are all alike, whatever the nationality. All they wanted from me was the most work for the least money that kept me alive. So I became a communist.
  • Nikita Khrushchev, quoted in Edward Crankshaw, Khrushchev: A Career (1966), p. 12.

• It's wrong to hate. It always has been wrong and it always will be wrong. It's wrong in America, it's wrong in Germany, it's wrong in Russia, it's wrong in China. It was wrong in 2000 B.C., and it's wrong in 1954 A.D. It always has been wrong, and it always will be wrong. It's wrong to throw our lives away in riotous living. No matter if everybody in Detroit is doing it, it's wrong. It always will be wrong, and it always has been wrong. It's wrong in every age and it's wrong in every nation. Some things are right and some things are wrong, no matter if everybody is doing the contrary. Some things in this universe are absolute. The God of the universe has made it so. And so long as we adopt this relative attitude toward right and wrong, we're revolting against the very laws of God himself.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr., Rediscovering Lost Values, Sermon delivered at Detroit's Second Baptist Church (28 February 1954)

• As long as there is a wall, barbed wire and orders to shoot, there can be no talk of normality in Germany.
  • Helmut Kohl, as quoted in "East, West Mark Berlin Wall in Conflicting Ways" (14 August 1986), The Washington Post

• We Germans have learned from history. We are a peace-loving, freedom-loving people. For us, love of our native country, love of freedom, and the spirit of being a good neighbor always belong together.
  • Helmut Kohl, as quoted in "Kohl: German chancellor, European statesman" (1 October 2012), Deutsche Welle

L

• The post-Nazi German experience, frequently cited and mistakenly seen as normal, is actually a massive exception to the general rule. The Germans are indeed all but unified in their disgust for the Nazi past, but we should not forget that de-Nazification was first forced upon the Germans by the victorious Allies under an occupation regime and then strengthened by the objective circumstances of the post-war European political and social environment... One should be reminded about the East German post-unification experience. According to a 2009 poll, cited by Spiegel, 57 percent of ex-East Germans were positive about East Germany. In a poll, 49 percent agreed with the following statement: "The GDR had more good sides than bad sides. There were some problems, but life was good there', while 8 percent went even further and agreed with the statement: 'The GDR had, for the most part, good sides. Life there was happier and better than in reunified Germany."
  • Andrei N. Lankov, "Get ready for selective amnesia: Expect northern Koreans to take a Russian or Japanese – not a German – attitude toward the past" (16 November 2015), Post-unification Korea, NK News

• In regard to Germans and foreigners, I esteem foreigners no better than other people, nor any worse. They are all of the great family of men, and if there is one shackle upon any of them, it would be far better to lift the load from them than to pile additional loads upon them.
  • Abraham Lincoln, Speech to Germans at Cincinnati, Ohio (12 February 1861)

• Football is a simple game. 22 men chase a ball for ninety minutes and at the end, the Germans win.
  • Gary Lineker, after losing the 1990 FIFA World Cup semifinal to Germany by penalty shootout.
  • As quoted in Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France, by Laurent DuBois, p. 79.

• When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled "made in Germany"...
  • Halford E. Luccock in "Keeping Life Out of Confusion" (11 September 1938), as quoted in "Disguised Fascism Seen As A Menace" in The New York Times (12 September 1938), p. 15; also in "Fascism comes wrapped in the flag" (with online facsimile of article).

M

• The European Union and many of its countries, which used to take initiatives in the United Nations for peaceful settlements of conflict, are now one of the most important war assets of the U.S./NATO front. Many countries have also been drawn into complicity in breaking international law through U.S./U.K./NATO wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and so on.
  • Mairead Maguire in The Disturbing Expansion of the Military-Industrial Complex, Common Dreams, (14 October 2014)

• The United States is not an island but for much of its history it was protected on either side by two great oceans and had as neighbours the much weaker Canada and Mexico. As a result detachment, even isolation, from the rest of the world and limited land forces made sense. German military planning in the twentieth century, by contrast, was fixated on the possibility of a two-front war opened up by having a hostile France in the west and Russia, later the Soviet Union, in the east. Israel too for much of its short history has lived with the fear of being surrounded by enemies. In the lead-up to the Second World War Britain could invest heavily in long-range bombers to be launched against Germany’s infrastructure and cities from the relative safety of its islands, but the Germans had to think of how to support their ground troops against their opponents. As a result Germany favoured short-range planes capable of bombing and strafing the enemy forces rather than longer-range ones, something that stood it in good stead in the rapid, blitzkrieg opening stages of the Second World War.
  • Margaret MacMillan, War: How Conflict Shaped Us (2020)
• Remember that Moses led his people through the desert for forty years, and that after twenty years people began to complain... they told Moses that life in the desert was too difficult, and that at least while they were slaves they had had food and water and places to sleep. Moses's friends asked him how long he thought people would be complaining like this, and he replied, "Until the last person born under slavery has died". Our situation is very similar. The psychological gap between eastern and western Germany will last for at least a generation, or perhaps until the last person born under Communism has passed away.
  • Lothar de Maizière, as quoted in "A Wall of Resentment Now Divides Germany" (14 October 1994), by Stephen Kinzer, New York Times, New York

• We do not fear that the operations of time may never bring a united Europe, with a reunited Germany at its centre. We do not know how it will happen, how this unnaturally divided Germany is to become once again. It is obscure to us, and we must take refuge in the belief that history will find ways and means of overcoming the unnatural and restoring the natural: a Germany as a consciously serving member of a Europe united in self-awareness – not as its lord and master...

  Let us not delude ourselves over the fact that among the difficulties delaying the unification of Europe is a mistrust of the purity of German intentions, a fear by other peoples of Germany and of hegemonic plans that its vital energy may install into it, which in their view it does not conceal very well….It is for the rising German generation, for German youth, to dispel the mistrust, this fear, by rejecting what has long been rejected and clearly and unanimously announcing their desire: not for a German Europe, but for a European Germany."

  • Thomas Mann, in a lecture at the University of Hamburg (1953)

• Now, this (2022 Nord Stream pipeline sabotage) was an act of war, pure and simple... against Germany. And...President Joseph Biden, at a press conference in the presence of the chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, said this is going to happen if Russia invaded Ukraine. And, of course, he was asked, well, how do you do this? I mean, how can you how can you be so confident that Nordstrom will be killed and Biden said, well, just, you know, trust me, it’s going to happen.
  And so she, bilingual, the Reuters reporter, turned to Scholz – and this is not widely available now for obvious reasons – and she said, well, I mean, do you agree with that? I mean, hello, how do you feel about this? And this hack, this political hack said: we do everything together. We do everything together. We will be together on this now. So... that interview is available in Germany....
  I describe Olaf Scholz as kind of the epitome of the abused spouse. Stands there and is abused not only by his master, Joe Biden, but also by this hack that he has as foreign minister. Her name is Baerbock. She is the the most vociferous of all the people saying that we are...at war with Russia.... Here it is exactly to the month, 90 years later.
  Will the German people acquiesce in their industry, and then their bodies being frozen out this winter? Or will they rise up and say: “Look, Mr Scholz, you don’t know what the hell you’re doing, and neither does Baerbock. Get out of here!”, and replace that government?
  • Ray McGovern, Transcription of Ray’s Feb 11 Comments on Sy Hersh, on Blowing Up Nord Stream Interviewed by Garland Nixon , February 12, 2023

• In Germany, it's, let's say it's 5:59 and you're heading for the bakery or whatever and it's due to close at 6. The German will walk right up to that door and close it right in your face, they will lock it on the other side of that glass door with a shrug, like 'sorry'.
  • Brian Reynolds Myers, interview (2015)

O

• Germany was the most dangerous component of the Axis, though German forces, unlike Japanese and Italian, did not fire a shot in anger until the invasion of Poland in September 1939 which launched world war. The source of the German threat was Hitler. Other German nationalists wanted Germany to reassert herself as a major state in the 1930s following years of enforced subservience to the victor states of 1918. Few Germans of any political shade had accepted the Allied demands for reparations and German disarmament, or been reconciled to the loss of territory to Poland and France. But very few Germans wanted to run the risk of war again. Hitler's outlook was quite different. Any account of the origins and course of the Second World War must give Hitler the leading part. Without him a major war in the early 1940s between all the world's great powers was unthinkable.
  • Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won (1995), p. 11

P

• The events of the past one and one-half years have gripped the whole German people and affected them deeply. It seems almost like a dream that out of the valley of misery, hopelessness, hate, and fragmentation we have found our way back to a German national community. The horrendous tensions in which we have lived since the August days of 1914 have dissolved, and out of this discord, the German soul has emerged once again, before which the glorious and yet so painful history of our people pass in review, from the sagas of the German heroes to the trenches of Verdun, and even to the street fights of our time.
  • Franz von Papen, Marburg speech (June 1934).

• Far from being the Great Satan, I would say that we are the Great Protector. We have sent men and women from the armed forces of the United States to other parts of the world throughout the past century to put down oppression. We defeated fascism. We defeated communism. We saved Europe in World War I and World War II. We were willing to do it, glad to do it. We went to Korea. We went to Vietnam. All in the interest of preserving the rights of people. And when all those conflicts were over, what did we do? Did we stay and conquer? Did we say, 'Okay, we defeated Germany. Now Germany belongs to us? We defeated Japan, so Japan belongs to us'? No. What did we do? We built them up. We gave them democratic systems which they have embraced totally to their soul. And did we ask for any land? No. The only land we ever asked for was enough land to bury our dead, and that is the kind of nation we are.
  • Colin L. Powell, as quoted in MTV Global Discussion (14 February 2002).

R

• Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people.
  • Ayn Rand, as quoted in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966).

• The decay of the Soviet experiment should come as no surprise to us. Wherever the comparisons have been made between free and closed societies -- West Germany and East Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, Malaysia and Vietnam -- it is the democratic countries what are prosperous and responsive to the needs of their people. And one of the simple but overwhelming facts of our time is this: Of all the millions of refugees we've seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward the Communist world. Today on the NATO line, our military forces face east to prevent a possible invasion. On the other side of the line, the Soviet forces also face east to prevent their people from leaving.
  • Ronald Reagan, Address to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, 8 June 1982

• 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.
  • Hanna Reitsch, as quoted in "The first astronaut: tiny, daring Hanna", by Ron Laytner, The Deseret News (19 February 1981), pp. C1+, p. 12C

• Many Germans feel guilty about the war. But they don't explain the real guilt we share; that we lost.
  • Hanna Reitsch, as quoted in "The first astronaut: tiny, daring Hanna", by Ron Laytner, The Deseret News (19 February 1981), pp. C1+, p. 12C

• The fall of the Berlin Wall symbolizes an epochal change in the way people live. More important, it liberates the way people think. We see with new clarity that centralized government bureaucracies created in this century are not the wave of the future. Never again will people trust planners and paper shufflers more than they trust themselves.
  • Republican Party Platform of 1992 (17 August 1992), Republican National Convention.

• Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz. That is their sickness and they desperately want a cure.
  • Zvi Rex, as quoted in "European Anti-Americanism (and Anti-Semitism): Ever Present Though Always Denied" (August 2005), Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism: Web Publications by Andrei S. Markovits

S

• The Satan of the Italian and English poets may be more poetic; but the German Satan is more satanic; and in this respect one could say, the Satan is a German invention.
  • Original (German): Der Satan der italienischen und englischen Dichter mag poetischer sein; aber der deutsche Satan ist satanischer; und insofern könnte man sagen, der Satan sei eine deutsche Erfindung.
  • Friedrich Schlegel, Athenäumsfragmente 379.

• America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany.
  • George Soros, Davos conference (2007)

• The odd thing about modern Europe is that, if you look at the borders, you might think that Germany had won the First World War... The European Union and the old Soviet states are associated with a Europe that feels as if it is run from Berlin. From Scandinavia to Turkey, lorries trundle back and forth with German industrial goods; the euro is mainly German, the Deutsche Bank dominates the eurozone.
  • Norman Stone, "Germany today is what we fought the Great War to create" (1 August, 2014), Evening Standard

• Thus we see that India's influence was widespread throughout Europe, but it was the greatest in Germany. In fact, Germany was called "the India of the Occident". Hugo said that "Germany is to the West what India is to the East, a sort of great forbear. Let us venerate her".
  • Ram Swarup (2000). On Hinduism: Reviews and reflections. Ch. 4.

• [I]n Germany we are giving work to two million people from Turkey.
  • Uli Stielike, as quoted in Hamburger Abendblatt 20 November 2003
  • Original German: [I]n Deutschland zwei Millionen Menschen aus der Türkei Arbeit geben.

T

• At the beginning of the twentieth century, few people would have suspected that a nation considered by many to be the most cultured, advanced and civilized would elect to power a homicidal maniac and allow him to seize total control of every institution in the country and every facet of the community. A man who maltreated, gassed and otherwise murdered millions of people based on their racial and ethnic background.
  • Stefan Tahmassebi, "Gun Control and Racism" (1991), George Mason University Civil Rights Law Journal , p. 67.

• Germany, it should be said, was also a typical Western consumer society in many, often quite disarming, ways. However, with the active encouragement of the Nazi governing apparatus, the country was also a pressure cooker of passions. A regime such as Hitler’s, which follows a major peaceful diplomatic victory (the Munich Agreement) in short order with a state-sponsored savage and murderous attack on a law-abiding section of its own population (the Kristallnacht outrages against Germany’s Jews), is not one whose leader’s actions on the international stage can be viewed in a value-free way as ‘pragmatic’. There is, it seems to me, something much more powerful and compulsive at work here in the German national psyche at that time – turmoil within, that eventually became reflected in turmoil without. Piecing together a mosaic of public and private feeling, and judging its often hidden power, seems to me a way of redressing the imbalances of a ‘top-down’ view that can end up looking at major political actors’ machinations in a kind of arid, almost laboratory isolation. Perhaps some similar history will be written years from now about present-day Britain and America – especially the latter – in this fascinating and unnerving context.
  • Frederick Taylor, 1939: A People's History (2020)
• We came here not because we wanted to attack Germany, but because Germany attacked us and invaded our territory all the way to Moscow. Later on, two worlds based on two different ideologies developed. Maybe one proved better and more successful. But we feel that we fulfilled our role here.
  • Dmitri Timashkov, as quoted in "Bitter Goodbye: Russians Leave Germany" (1994), The New York Times
• The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.
  • Article 231, Treaty of Versailles; [1]

• Have fired 500 rounds at the Germans, at my command, been shelled, didn't run away thank the Lord and never lost a man.
  • Harry S. Truman, letter to Bess Wallace (1 September 1918)

• I sincerely wish that every member of Congress could visit the displaced person's camp in Germany and Austria and see just what is happening to 500,000 human beings through no fault of their own.
  • Harry S. Truman, letter to Walter F. George (October 1946); as quoted in Great Jewish Quotations (1996) by Alfred J. Kolatch, p. 463

• The Russians are like us... They are fine people. They got along with our soldiers in Berlin very well.
  • Harry S. Truman, statement to a group of four congress freshmen (2 July 1947), as quoted in The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, p. 44.

• Germany is an anatomical oddity: it writes with its left hand and acts with its right.
  • Original (German): Deutschland ist eine anatomische Merkwürdigkeit: Es schreibt mit der Linken und tut mit der Rechten.
  • Kurt Tucholsky, Schnipsel, in Die Weltbühne, 3 February 1931, p. 185.

• Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
  • Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), Ch. 22.

U

• With the creation of a separate West German state, with the conclusion of the Paris Agreements and with the inclusion of West Germany in NATO, the Western powers finally unilaterally broke the Potsdam Agreement, this sole valid document in international law for Germany in the postwar period. It is not coincidental that in connection with this a special occupation status of the three powers was established in West Berlin. By this three-sided occupation status, the Western powers themselves confirmed that they violated the international-legal basis of their occupation regime in West Berlin and that this regime was based only on undisguised military force.
  • Walter Ulbricht, "Speech at the Moscow Conference, 3-5 August 1961" (August 3, 1961)

V

• Germany would be a desert covered with the skeletons of Catholics, Evangelicals, Reformers and Anabaptists who had massacred each other if the peace of Westphalia had not eventually secured freedom of conscience for its inhabitants.
  • Voltaire (1763). Treatise on Toleration. Penguin Books Limited. pp. 50–. ISBN 978-0-241-23663-5. 

• Had all of us in France meekly, lawfully carried out the orders of the German master, no Frenchman could have ever looked another man in the face. Such submission would have saved the lives of many, some very dear to me. But, France would have lost its soul.
  • Commandant le Baron de Vomécourt, as quoted in "What Americans forget about French resistance" (7 May 2015), by Charles Kaiser, Cable News Network, Atlanta, Georgia.

W

• Germany became the first team to score five goals in the first 29 minutes of any World Cup game in history. It ended 7-1, but if we can summon just a touch more jingoistic national sentiment, we say fuck it, cheer for the Germans. They scrubbed America off the wrong side of the record book.
  • Kyle Wagner, as quoted in "Germany Smashed Brazil So Hard It's Good For America" (8 July 2014), Regressing.

• I am convinced that Germany has drawn conclusions and Europe has drawn conclusions as well. And I can say an unpopular thing. If once again Germany should risk destabilizing Europe, then there would be no division of Germany — it would simply be blown off the map of Europe. With the kind of technology that exists, with the kind of experiences we have had, there can be no other way — and the Germans know it.
  • Lech Wałęsa, as quoted in Lech Wałęsa: democrat or dictator? (1993), by Jarosław Kurski, Westview Press, pp. 59–166

• If once again Germany destabilizes Europe, then Germany will be not be divided again, but wiped off the map. East and West have the necessary technology in order to enforce this verdict. If Germany begins again, there is no other solution.
  • Lech Wałęsa, as quoted in the German magazine DER SPIEGEL 15/1990 about an interview of Wałęsa by Dutch weekly Elsevier of 7 April 1990, which was partially reprinted, with an additional Pancho caricature, by French Le Monde

• What else is this shameful country known for but the murder of millions and millions of people in World War II?
  • Westboro Baptist Church, "God Hates Germany" (2009), God Hates the World, Westboro Baptist Church

• The imperialist ideology of force, from whatever side it comes, must be shattered for all time. A one sided Prussian militarism must never again be allowed to assume power. Only in large-scale cooperation among the nations of Europe can the ground be prepared for reconstruction. Centralized hegemony, such as the Prussian state has tried to exercise in Germany and in Europe, must be cut down at its inception. The Germany of the future must be a federal state.
  • White Rose resistance group, fifth leaflet (circa 1942)

• The soldier and the army, not Parliamentary majorities and decisions, have welded the German Empire together.
  • Wilhelm II of Germany‎‎, speech (18 April 1891), quoted in Michael Balfour, The Kaiser and His Times (London: Penguin, 1975), p. 158

• I am not a man who believes that we Germans bled and conquered thirty years ago...in order to be pushed to one side when great international decisions call to be made. If that were to happen, the place of Germany as a world power would be gone for ever, and I am not prepared to let that happen. It is my duty and privilege to employ to this end without hesitation the most appropriate and, if need be, the sharper methods.
  • Wilhelm II of Germany‎‎, speech at the launching of the battleship Wittelsbach (3 July 1900), quoted in Michael Balfour, The Kaiser and His Times (London: Penguin, 1975), pp. 158-159

• In spite of the fact that we have no such fleet as we should have, we have conquered for ourselves a place in the sun. It will now be my task to see to it that this place in the sun shall remain our undisputed possession, in order that the sun's rays may fall fruitfully upon our activity and trade in foreign parts, that our industry and agriculture may develop within the state and our sailing sports upon the water, for our future lies upon the water.
  • Wilhelm II of Germany‎‎, speech in Hamburg (18 June 1901)
  • Variant: Germany must have her place in the sun. (Stated by Bernhard von Bülow)
    • As quoted in Germanism from Within (1916) by Alexander Duncan Mclaren

• For the first time, I am ashamed to be a German.
  • Wilhelm II of Germany‎‎, in regard to Nazi anti-Jewish campaigns, after Kristallnacht, however this statement seems to contradict his other statements regarding Jews. (November 1938); as quoted in Our German Cousins : Anglo-German Relations in the 19th and 20th Centuries (1974) by John Mander, p. 219

Z

• We have 500,000 reservists in America who would rise in arms against your government if you dare to make a move against Germany.
  • Zimmermann to Ambassador Gerard. James W. Gerard: "I told him that we had five hundred thousand and one lamp posts in America, and that was where the German reservists would find themselves if they tried any uprising." Ambassador Gerard's answer. James W. Gerard, My Four Years in Germany, p. 237.

• Germans circa 1941 were enthusiastic racists who endorsed Hitler’s program of conquest, subjugation, and colonization... Germans at the time held attitudes of casual racism at the very least and a strong sense of imperial entitlement over Jews, Slavs, and others deemed racially and culturally inferior. The series tries to draw a distinction between Nazis and everyday Germans that simply did not exist... Germans believed in the Nazi agenda.
  • Laurence Zuckerman, "Generation War Shows Nazi Mass Killers" (February 2014), TabletMag.

See also

• German Colonial Empire
• European Union
• German language

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Germany on Wikipedia
• The dictionary definition of germany on Wiktionary
• Wikijunior:Europe/Germany on Wikibooks
• Works related to Portal:Germany on Wikisource
• Media related to Germany on Wikimedia Commons
• Germany travel guide from Wikivoyage