Fritz Thyssen Quotes

National Socialism is not a political system. Rather, it is intended to be a philosophy and a system of morals — a Weltanschauung—as the Nazis pretentiously call it.

The Nazis, who have no understanding of religious zeal, saw in this restlessness of the Catholic population a display of political hostility. They said that the Catholic Centre party, although it had been officially dissolved, was renewing intrigues against the National Socialists through an underground movement. Goering launched his proclamation against political Christianity. It was not religion that was under discussion, he disclosed. National Socialism is based on positive Christianity… At the same time the Gestapo was instructed to proceed rigorously against the young Catholics.

All these questions are questions of the future; but they are of the greatest importance for German economy. For the extreme regimentation of German industry under the National Socialists has completely ruined its factories through excessive exploitation.

The Jewish bankers saved German economy after the war. It was thanks to these Jews that medium and small enterprises were able to obtain from the American banks the necessary credits for their re-equipment.

The National Socialists never had a real economic plan. Some of them were entirely reactionary; some of them advocated a corporative system; others represented the viewpoint of the extreme Left. In my opinion, Hitler failed because he thought it very clever to agree with everybody’s opinion… Hitler had an unprecedented opportunity, such as no man will ever again be offered so easily, to create something entirely new. However, besides the fact that he knows absolutely nothing about matters economic, he cannot even fully understand his economic advisers. . . His constant worry has ever been to keep himself in power. . . . He believes that he alone is a great man, and all others non-entities.

At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century the generally dominant idea, derived from Ricardo and Adam Smith, was that commerce must be entirely unfettered, and that free trade was fundamentally linked with economic life. But the Liberals have ‘emptied the baby with the bath,’ with the result that the state, in opposition to them, has assumed more and more control over the economic process and has even gone into business on its own account. In my opinion the results achieved by the state as business manager have, on the whole, been bad… The function of the state, however, is to administer; and administration is something wholly different from enterprise under business management.

The true Germany, with its western traditions, must be separated from Prussia, which belongs to the east.

Hitler also says, ‘Whoever is not with me is a traitor and shall be treated as such.’

On August 25th I was advised that I would have to go to Berlin for a meeting of the Reichstag. The suddenness of such convocations is symptomatic of the role to which that assembly has been reduced. In the earlier days, matters were given serious study, they were reported on by committees, and a working session of the Reichstag was then convened. To-day things are different. Members are summoned from one day to the next to hear a declaration by Hitler. That is what is called ‘good theatre,’ the sole purpose being propaganda. The members play the part of walkers-on in cheap drama.

National Socialism has attempted to falsify Nietzsche’s work and to represent this great German philosopher as a precursor of the Nazi racial doctrine and the ‘Blood and Soil’ theory. The truth is that Nietzsche found no greater object of scorn, in many of his works, than the inflated pan-Germanic mind.

Now you have compounded with Communism. Your propaganda ministry even dares to proclaim that the honest Germans, who voted for you as the opponent of Communism, are in essentials identical with the bloody revolutionaries who plunged Russian into misery and whom you yourself denounced as ‘vulgar blood-stained criminals.’

With Adolf Hitler everything is propaganda. National Socialist Germany has evolved entirely new methods of propaganda, and has used them with great effect and with a profound knowledge of mass psychology.

For my financial interest in the greatest metallurgical concern in Germany, the United Steel Works, instead of being transferred to the Reich, has been seized by Prussia. Goering may have certain ideas in this connection. Indeed, a large share ownership in these steel works might save the Hermann Goering Works from bankruptcy.

Goering is an army man. He imagines that it is enough to give orders for industry to carry them out. If the industrialists declare that it is impossible, they are accused of sabotage. Soon Germany will not be any different from Bolshevik Russia; the heads of enterprises who do not fulfill the conditions which the ‘Plan’ prescribes will be accused of treason against the German people, and shot.

And here we find a National Socialist pedagogue who has been entrusted with the training of a so-called elite, proposing to develop, not individuals with intelligence and a sense of responsibility, but machines. The followers of Karl Marx have never preached any such materialism. The Nazis have set out to destroy the soul. A dictatorship has no use for personality. A nation of robots is easier to govern.