Gustav Stresemann Quotes

I am delighted to inform you that in yesterday's sitting of the Cabinet it was unanimously agreed that your application of last August for authority to return to Germany should be sanctioned in principle.... While acquainting Your Imperial Highness of the Cabinet's decision, I cannot forbear expressing my own personal pleasure that this decision was given by the Cabinet on my proposal, and, as I may permit myself to add, as reached unanimously and without objection or criticism, after my statement had been heard.

I am gladly willing to use my connections to the party and the government to assure for your Imperial Highness the permission to return to Germany.

It is absolutely necessary to strengthen the Government. We must have a Government that in case of necessity will shoot. Germany cannot stand Bolshevism fomenting mischief. There must be shooting. Perhaps we shall bring Noske back—he was a good man, and shot in case of necessity. Even the Majority Socialists agree that order has go to be maintained with vigour.... The truth is the German people cannot stand a President in a high hat. They think he looks peculiar at a review. They must have a military uniform with plenty of orders.

There are few families in the history of nations which have... produced as many outstanding personalities as the House of Hohenzollern.... And though the last bearer of the crown is gauged by doubtful and contradictory party judgments, there is one factor which will always speak in his favor: there can't be any doubt about his honest desire to serve only the fatherland.

If the monarchy should return, and we hope it will, then it must be called by the will of the people.

It was with deep emotion that we read the announcement issued by the Council of Flanders at its plenary meeting of June 20, 1918, because it give expression to the fact that considerable and important sections of the Belgian people are advocating Germany's right to figure in the Belgian question, and that the voice of agitation over that which they have suffered is overtopped by the voice of consanguinity with the Teutonic race.

We very deeply deplore that sentence should have been pronounced that allows of the interpretation as though our military successes were not of a kind which alone present the possibility of attained peace.... What was it that brought peace in the East? Not the talk of statesmen, not diplomatic negotiations, not diplomatic notes, not Reichstag resolutions, but "Ludendorff's Hammer," as Lloyd George has called it. The force of our army, the force of our power.

I must say a few words here concerning the solution of the Polish problem.... Groeber has posed the question: Do I not overestimate the value of the military guarantees? Are not political guarantees in connection with good relations between Poland and Germany far better and more durable than it is possible fo military guarantees to be?... The past conduct of the Polish fraction in the Reichstag and the House of Deputies, and the attempts to have the German Ostmark question discussed as a question of international importance at world peace congresses, do not give my political friends a sufficient guarantee to think that future relations between Poland and Germany can be based solely on a formal paper friendship.

We welcome the peace with the militarily and politically entirely collapsed Rumania as a world judgment in world history.... Is there anyone to-day who, after the overthrow of the whole of the East, would still doubt a German victory?... Anyone who visualises the collapse of Rumania, this military collapse in three months, this complete political crash of the State that saw itself compelled to sue for peace, must feel that something like a world judgment in world history is taking place.... Then there is the question of the war indemnity. In the debate on the Treaty of Brest Litovsk I said that, surely it could not be contradicted from any part of this House that a war indemnity must be demanded from Rumania If Germany receives an indemnity, then it is a matter of indifference to me what it is called, either in the case of the present Treaty or any further ones.

The more clearly we express it that the whole weight of our future victories will lie on our enemies, the more, in my opinion, will it tend to shorten the war. We have covered a considerable distance towards peace. The Entente no longer has any possibility of beating us economically. Do they think they can beat us militarily, now that our position in the West has become better that it ever was? If the statesmen of the Entente wanted understanding, they ought to have taken advantage of the situation now, when the Reich Chancellor has offered them the hand of understanding. They are playing a wanton game with their misguided peoples. Let the example of Russia be a warning to them. Russia, which offered us the hand of understanding, could have obtained a good peace of understanding if she had not risked this peace through the arrogance of Trotsky. May this struggle bring us victory, but may it also bring the benefits of this victory for Germany's future.

The renunciation of war indemnities, which has been greatly lauded in some quarters here, does not appear to me only in the shining light of the conciliation it will lead to, but, as a citizen, I also see it in the light of the colossal burdens to which Germany will be exposed if this struggle ends without war indemnities.

We agree to recognise Lithuanian independence on condition that the desire of the Lithuanians for a military convention and a customs, monetary and postal union with Germany, communicated to us some time ago by a Lithuanian delegation, still remains. For to be candid, the idea of full independence for these peripheral countries seems to me to be purely theoretical and impracticable.... The whole development of world politics shows that we have not only great and powerful individual countries like Germany on the one hand and Britain and France on the other, but associations of States fighting against each other.... I do not believe in Wilson's universal League of Nations, I think that after the peace it will burst like a soap bubble. Great and powerful complexes of nations with hundreds of millions of inhabitants, armies of millions of men and exports amounting to thousands of millions, will be confronting each other. In the circumstances such small fractional nationalities will not be able to exist in complete independence, without seeking to lean on one side or the other. Just as there is no independent Belgium in the sense that it gravitates towards one side or the other, so it is not possible to conceive of a completely independent Lithuania, Balticum or Poland without that provisio.

Our whole policy since August 1, 1914, has been directed with a view to sparing the neutrals during the world war.... I cannot yet put it down as a fact or as a result of this world war that our policy of sparing neutrals has extended the circle of our friends. Nor is it right to present it as a dogma that annexation or the detachment of territories creates hostility and hatred, while understanding and solicitude results in friendship.

The Government must not insist too much on the fact that Germany will integrally fulfil the conditions of the peace treaty. For all parties have been unanimous in considering that the treaty is unfulfillable.

For the old great, mighty Germany, which was the epitome of the yearning of our ancestors and our pride when one could still hold one's head high at being a German, is going under. One cannot say: it is long gone because it is not long at all but already it sounds to our ears like a fairy tale from a distant time.