Top 15 Dietrich von Choltitz Quotes

The worst job I ever carried out - which however I carried out with great consistency - was the liquidation of the Jews. I carried out this thoroughly and entirely.

We all share the guilt. We went along with everything, and we half-took the Nazis seriously instead of saying "to hell with you and your stupid nonsense". I misled my soldiers into believing this rubbish. I feel utterly ashamed of myself. Perhaps we bear even more guilt than these uneducated animals.

They were just a gang of riffraff. Everybody talks all the time of the "Resistance" or the "Forces Françaises de l'intérieur" as if they were organized and disciplined troops, as if they had any real authority. But they are nothing but freeshooters firing on my men. If it continues I promise you I will take tough action. I will order that Paris be defended and will destroy the city before evacuating it.

Since Sevastopol, it has been my fate to cover the retreat of our armies and destroy the cities behind them.

French officer: Do you speak German?
Choltitz: Probably better than you.

Paris is like a pretty woman; when she gives you a smack, you don't smack back.

Oh, Field Marshal, so far it would have been a funeral without military honors, maybe now it can become one with military honors.

No doubt: I was in front of a madman. The awareness that the existence of our people was in the hands of an insane person, unable to dominate the situation [...] weighed on me with all its strength.

If for the first time I had disobeyed, it was because I knew that Hitler was insane.

I was at Stalingrad, you know... And from that time onwards I have done nothing but manoeuvre to escape encirclement by the enemy: retreat on retreat, defeat upon defeat. And here I am in marvellous Paris. What do you think is going to happen now?

I stood in front of him and I saw an old, stooped, bloated man with gray, slick hair, barely standing on his legs.

Ich habe den Feldmarschall von Manstein gefragt, ob er an der Aktion gegen Hitler teilnehmen würde. Manstein sitzt in einem Sessel und liest in der Bibel. Schnell, fast verlegen, legt er sie zur Seite und deckt sie mit Papieren zu.

I asked the Field Marshal von Manstein if he would take part in the actions against Hitler. Manstein was sitting in a chair and reading the Bible. Quick, almost embarrassed, he put it aside and covered it with some papers.

I am a soldier. I get orders. I execute them.

He was trembling all over and the desk on which he was leaning shook. He was bathed in perspiration and became more agitated.