Quote of the day III

"I assumed that some of the gold bars I received were melted gold teeth."

Oswald Pohl in 1946
Head of the Economic and Administrative Main Office, SS
SS-Obergruppenführer and general of the Waffen-SS

 

“ I don’t care how many tanks you British have so long as you keep splitting them up the way you do . I shall continue to destroy them piecemeal”.

Rommel to a British Brigadier during battles in Africa

 

"I will provide a propagandistic casus belli. Its credibility doesn't matter. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth."

Adolf Hitler to his generals on 22nd August 1939 on attacking Poland

 

“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”

Josef Göbbels

 

"If ever that silly old man comes interfering here again with his umbrella, I'll kick him downstairs and jump on his stomach in front of the photographers."

Adolf Hitler after the Munich Agreement on Neville Chamberlain

 

"It's all an enormous bluff..."

RFSS Himmler

to Heer General Guderian, late fall 1944, on the possibility of a Soviet winter offensive. On Jan 12, 1945, the Soviet Union mounted a 3-million man offensive, smashing their way onto German soil.

 

To sum it all up, I must say that I regret nothing.

Adolf Eichmann

 

"I was one of the many horses pulling the wagon and couldn't escape left or right because of the will of the driver. "

Adolf Eichmann

 

If our most highly qualified General Staff officers had been told to work out the most nonsensical high level organization for war which they could think of, they could not have produced anything more stupid that that which we have at present.

Claus von Stauffenberg

 

"You cannot expect people who have broken their spine once or twice to stand up straight when a new decision has to be made."

Claus von Stauffenberg

 

" No enemy in front and no supplies in the rear..."

Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist, German Field Marshal, autumn 1942, Eastern front

 

"That's the sort of bloody silly name they would choose!"

Aircraft designer R.J. Mitchell, when told the RAF had chosen 'Spitfire' as the name of his latest design.

 

"The dominant feeling of the battlefield is loneliness"

- Field Marshal William Joseph "Bill" Slim of Burma, June 1941.

 

The decision, therefore, lies here in the East; here must the Russian enemy, this people numbering two hundred million Russians, be destroyed on the battle field and person by person, and made to bleed to death .

Heinrich Himmler

 

" Nice chap, no general."

Monty´s first impression on Ike

 

"A highly intelligent man should take a primitive and stipid woman." -Adolph Hitler

 

"A German Field Marshal does not commit suicide with a pair of scissors."

After their surrender in Stalingrad, when their baggage was searched for sharp metal objects, chief of staff Schmidt, referring to Paulus, snapped at the Soviet officers...

 

" You must attack them with my two Fallschirmjäger divisions. Then you can chase the entire Russian Army to the devil!"

Göring to Himmler March 1945 on 5th and 9th Fallschirmjäger divisions...

 

On 8 January 1943 Ciano lunched with Bottai and Farinacci ( members of the Grand Council of Fascism ). Bottai, speaking of the loss of Libya, said, " At bottom we have achieved another aim: in 1911 Mussolini declared "Let us get out of Libya." he has kept his word-thirty years too late."

From " The Brutal Friendship: Mussolini,Hitler and the fall of Italian Fascism " by F.W.Deakin

 

" If they come to North Africa with four divisions, I´ll fire on them.If they come with twenty divisions, I´ll welcome them."

Weygand on the possible "invasion" of British troops to North Africa late summer 1940