On the German Right

If the German Republic was bereft of a middle-of-the-road political class, it also lacked that stability provided in many other countries by a truly conservative party… . at almost all times during the Weimar regime, they refused to take responsible positions either in government or in opposition . . . What [they] wanted was an end to the Republic and a return to an imperialist Germany in which all of their old privileges would be restored.

On the danger of access to state power

For the first time–in the last relatively free election Germany was to have–the Nazi Party now could employ all the vast resources of the government to win votes. “Now it will be easy”, Goebbels wrote in his journal, “to carry on the fight, for we can call on all the resources of the State. Radio and press are at our disposal. We shall stage a masterpiece of propaganda.”

On life under an effective propaganda regime

Often in a German home or office, or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, a beer hall, a cafe, I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized how useless it was to even try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were.

On the appeal of facsism to a beleagured working class

Tied down by so many controls at wages little above the subsistence level, the German workers, like the Roman proletariat, were provided with circuses by their rulers to divert attention from their miserable state. “We had to divert the attention of the masses from material to moral values”, Dr. Ley once explained, “It is more important to feed the souls of men than their stomachs.”