Emil Ludwig Quotes

All these blunders were, in war as in peace, the outcome of the deceptive selection and presentation of news.

Since the banks and the big industrialists wished to rid themselves of the Socialists, with their wage demands and strikes, they contributed generously to this popular party. ...Hitler's speeches constantly promised the masses a renewal of the soldier-spirit, a new army and new victories.

[H]e commanded over a hundred of his armed adherents to make an open attack on the armed police force. The latter met the rebel's attack... Shots were fired. Fourteen men lay dead on the Munich pavement. ...Hitler vanished ...The fourteen heroes of the Nazi movement were later eulogized... by the leader who had abandoned them in danger.

As a man without religion, without philosophy, without principles, he balked at nothing. ...[H]e concealed... his desire for self-aggrandizement, and... believes in his own idealism.

Hitler's technique of oratory is largely the result of... mass psychology... He declared to his small, new party that everything depended on fascinating the crowd. Above all... restore to the German people, deprived of an army, their flags, bands and songs. ...He invented every emblem himself, except the swastika, designed his own flag, and prescribed every collar and button for the slowly-growing party troops.

Only by the universal propaganda of lies were they ever goaded into hate—not for trade-rivalry nor race-antagonism, not material nor moral causes, made this Cabinet War a necessity in any one of the European States. The life-blood of ten millions of her sons was shed by Europe, not under any “tragic necessity,” nor through any “fatal concatenation” of circumstances; the sacrifice was extorted from her only by her wrangling statesman.

They did this on the contemptible pretext, pleaded by all unscrupulous and ambitious placemen, that the country stood in need of their services.

Behind their glittering phrases both monarchs were uneasy. At the Conference it was soon made manifest that genuine Pacifists there were none, except the United States. The time was not ripe. Europe, for her awakening, needed the stench of ten million corpses.

Wealth, as such, impressed him deeply; his unromantic spirit respected this modern form of power—riches, no matter how acquired, were a sufficient attraction.

[H]e works to create the single great impression that here is a prophet whose heart is bleeding for the fate of his people. ...[H]e is sly enough to use an arrangement on his speaker's desk through which, by pressing a button, the spotlights are switched on to him so that the ecstasies can be properly filmed for the news reels. A similar combination of ecstasy and artifice can be observed in other actors.

Hitler, who had made his way to power by his great gifts as a stage manager and speaker, introduced into the Reichschancellory all that browbeating noise which the Germans are so prone to take for greatness. ...Immediately after his appointment as chancellor, Hitler resolved to prove to the world that he had come, a new , to slay the dragon of communism. While the German Reichstag was burning, he accused the Communists of the guilt... This trial he lost... for its sole result was to expose the guilt of the Nazis.

A great and peaceable people, conscious of its subjection to a boastful little monarch, was obliged to pay for the claptrap of its vainglorious sovereign, who only degraded them with the title of Huns that he might ape an Attila.

He was living in the world of 120 years ago, more like a descendant of the Bourbons than the descendant of Voltaire’s friend; he regarded Jaurès in the Chamber of Deputies as Jaurès on the throne, and at the bottom of his heart considered all those people who desired to be something more than subjects as only fit to be shot down—except that hanging them would be more suitable.

His effect, in complete contrast to Mussolini's... he juggles with mystical notions such as Honor, Blood, and Soil, and thus wraps his audience in that cloud of mysticism which the Germans love far more than mere prosaic logic.

Intrigue is always at the bottom of all political activities.