Otto Skorzeny Quotes

Although care must be taken not to kill or injure anyone while these persons are being taken into custody, resistance must be broken!

The prison at Nuremberg was a large building shaped like a five-pointed star. We were guarded by large numbers of black soldiers; our jailer, Colonel Andrus, thought to degrade us in this way. But I always got along well with the blacks, who proved to be much more humane than the whites.

I would never have surrendered, because of my pledge as a German officer. But when Hitler died, that pledge ended. By killing himself, Hitler saved thousands of lives. They relieved us of our oaths as soldiers.

"Hitler looked at me with gleaming, feverish eyes:

"Do you know, Skorzeny, if the energy and radioactivity released through nuclear fission were used as a weapon, that would mean the end of our planet?"

"The effects would be frightful..."

"Naturally! Even if the radioactivity were controlled and then nuclear fission used as a weapon, the effects would still he horrible! When Dr. Todt was with me, I read that such a device with controlled radioactivity would release energy that would leave behind devastation which could only be compared with the meteors that fell in Arizona and near Lake Baykal in Siberia. That means that every form of life, not only human, but animal and plant life as well, would be totally extinguished for hundreds of years within a fadius of forty kilometers. That would be the apocalypse. And how could one keep such a secret? Impossible! No! No country, no group of civilized men can consciously accept such a responsibility. From strike to counterstrike humanity would inevitably exterminate itself. Only tribes in the Amazon district and in the jungles of Sumatra would have a certain chance of surviving."

These marginal notes by Hitler lasted scarcely more than a few minutes, but I remember those minutes precisely. At the beginning of my time as a prisoner of war, in August 1945, I heard that two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Unnecessary bombs, by the way, for the Japanese emperor had already asked the Americans for their peace terms.
While a prisoner American officers constantly asked me the same question, "How did you bring Hitler out of Berlin at the end of April 1945 and where have you hidden him?"

I can still see the consternated expressions of the American officer before me, when, disgusted with the question, I answered: "Adolf Hitler is dead, but he was right when he said that you and I would be the survivors of the Amazon.

Hitler decided that Mussolini must be freed from the Italian Partisans because Benito was his friend and had acted in good faith.

"Es posible que nos separemos dentro de poco, que no volvamos a vernos en
mucho tiempo. Pero si un día volvemos a reunimos, y recordamos esta noche y las horas que hemos
pasado juntos, no habremos perdido "aquello" que nos ha unido. Estaremos más maduros frente a la
vida, y podremos volver a unir los hilos que se han roto."

My knowledge of pain, learned with the sabre, taught me not to be afraid. And just as in dueling when you must concentrate on your enemy's cheek, so, too, in war. You cannot waste time on feinting and sidestepping. You must decide on your target and go in.

War is inevitable, and this time, it will be truly world wide. It will unravel everywhere and there will be no limit to its battlefields. The condemnations of Nuremberg will be one of the main reasons, which will cause this war to be a conflict whose horror will be unparalleled. These condemnations gave birth, in fact, to a new conception which makes the victor a hero and the vanquished an odious criminal. By this fact, each leader will wage war like a demon in order not to be the loser and become, consequently, a criminal. All the atrocities that can be imagined by man, will be committed during this next war, in order to prevent the enemy from acquiring victory. What I have just said, I have repeated to the American representatives and I have warned them that all of the mothers of the entire world will one day curse America.

Duce, the Führer has sent me to set you free!