Hermann Rauschning Quotes

Goebbels belongs to a widespread type of revolutionary; he is the intellectual revolutionary, mentally alert, inventive in destructive ideas, and a master of inflammatory speech.

The revolutionary elements within the middle class came together in the youth movement and its Bünde, and began to destroy the middle class from within… It is doubtful whether the anti-capitalist youth of the middle class origin could have entered into a fruitful association with the proletarian youth.

Did [Franz von] Papen really see nothing in National Socialism but its nationalism, could he have overlooked its revolutionary ‘dynamism,’ its restless and boundless revolutionary energy? That is exactly what happened… the monarchist elements imagine that they would easily put those attractive young men in their place. But there was another motive, the fear of the masses and of a revolution of the Left, the fear that the National Socialist masses might go over to the extreme Left.

Koch was one of the sincere Socialists in the movement. He was a follower of Gregor Strasser, like most of the North German bosses. ‘Of course the world will become socialistic,’ he said to me once when I went to see him at Konigsberg. ‘Capitalism has done for itself. Do you suppose that Hitler can stop at this reactionary beginning? My dear man, many things have to happen yet. Your Junker cousins, we shall kill the lot of them,’ he added, laughing. ‘We shall sweep them all away. Peasants must take over; we are settling them on the land. The things the slack Sozis (Socialists) never carried out, we shall put through. Away with the Junkers and the captains of industry! Do you suppose we were just talking through our hats about nationalizing the banks and abolishing the stock exchange and all that?... And if that whimpering instrument Hitler doesn't squeak out our tune, we shall get another fiddle to play on.’

When the enemy is demoralized from within… A single blow must destroy him. Aerial attacks, stupendous in their mass effect, surprise, terror, sabotage, assassinations from within, the murder of leading men… that is the war of the future.

When [Nazi] power had been attained there was not only no unity in regard to future policy but no united group of leaders. The party included a sort of sample collection of all political outlooks in Germany, from crass reactionaries to doctrinaire pacifists and the extremist Left-wing Socialists.

Yes, man has to be passed and surpassed. Nietzsche did, it is true, realized something of this, in his way. He went so far as to recognize the superman as a new biological variety. But he was not too sure of it. Man is becoming God—that is the simple fact. Man is God in the making.

The radical dynamism into which National Socialism has developed is a dangerous, destructive fever, which spreads at an uncanny rate.

The idea of free and unfettered science, unfettered by hypotheses, could only occur in the age of Liberalism. It is absurd.

Today, after six years, there are… still many respectable people associated with German ‘dynamism’ who have not yet realized that their imagined national and racial rebirth amounts to nothing more than the adoption of the revolutionary system of ‘direct action’ as the fundamental principle of the carrying of the ‘mass revolt’ to completion. Direct action is defined as ‘direct integration by means of corporativism, militarism and myth;’ this is to replace democracy and parliamentarism.

The nihilist foreign policy of the National Socialism of today uses ideas as a mask, and has no philosophical basis.

At that time the issue was between the groups loyal to Hitler and those who regarded Gregor Strasser as the coming man. The opposing groups were fighting so furiously that they were continually on the verge of blood-shed. Similar violent hostilities were frequent between Nazi magnates. The tension was not as extreme as in 1934 when Hitler resolved to have several thousand party comrades shot.

Long before the party's arrival in power Goebbels had written the famous article in which he pointed out the kinship between National Socialism and Bolshevism. At times he spoke enthusiastically in favor of a peaceful permeation of Bolshevism by Nazism and a German-Russian symbiosis. But to his confidants he always showed how clearly he realized that Communism is at all times simply a path leading to a new system of private property and private capital, and that the classless society is bound to lead to a new class formation with a new grading of incomes.

The peasant will be told what the Church has destroyed for them: the whole of the secret knowledge of nature, of the divine, the shapeless, the daemonic. The peasant will learn to hate the Church on that basis… We shall wash off the Christian veneer and bring out a religion particular to our race.

Hitler went on to say that there must, of course, come a time where there would be nothing left to take from the Jews. But then he would still hold their lives in the palm of his hand: their precious Jewish lives. The company burst out laughing again. ‘Streicher,’ Hitler continued, laughing himself, ‘has suggested that in the next war they should be driven ahead of our attacking defense line. They would be the best protection for our soldiers. I shall consider that suggestion.’