This past week I collected a number of quotations attributed to Adolph Hitler and sent them along to some friends for comment. I had expected a responses that would go something like this: These quotations tell us of the mind of a man who had no values other than the single value of “the judgment of power.” That is to say, I expected all to agree that what was truly wrong about Hitler, that what the evil was at the core of his being was that everything is permitted to the one who has power. His entire reason for being was the judgment of power.
Here are some of his thoughts:
What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.
If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.
Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.
Mankind has grown strong in eternal struggles and it will only perish through eternal peace.
Sooner will a camel pass through a needle’s eye than a great man be “discovered” by an election.
Strength lies not in defence but in attack.
Struggle is the father of all things. It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself above the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle.
The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.
The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.
The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to one category.
The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence.
The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.
Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.
Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.
How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think.
Humanitarianism is the expression of stupidity and cowardice.
I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.
One correspondent thought Hitler was a “pretty smart guy.” Another said there was no difference between what Hitler did and what America did in its Westward Expansion and in the treatment of the Native Peoples. Others were silent.
What was it, is it, that caused the silence? Are the thoughts of Adolph Hitler, the essential thought that all things are judged by the power that has brought them about, that might makes right, is still very much a part of our moral fabric. Indeed, would anyone even give thought to the idea that there might be something frightfully wrong in an ethic which says that might is right.