After the declaration of war several people, who took no trouble to conceal their lack of enthusiasm for the regime, came to see me in Switzerland. T… - Friedrich Thyssen

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.

Hitler achieved power by engineering a political combination. The National Socialist government owes its being to no revolutionary event comparable to Mussolini’s march on Rome. Hitler swore before Field Marshal von Hindenburg a solemn oath to respect a constitution which guaranteed the rights of man and political freedom in Germany. The burning of the Reichstag is the criminal act by which he perjured himself and usurped the power to rule.

In my opinion it would be possible to agree upon a kind of truce in order to gain time for negotiation. I am against war. A war will make Germany dependent on Russia for raw materials and Germany will thus forego her position as a world power.