Quotes about the origins of the Second World War

„Truth for Germany – The Question of Guilt of the Second World War“

Winston Churchill in 1936:

„We will force war on Hitler, whether he wants to or not.“
(Source: Das Neue Reich No. 15, 11.4.1959 p. 4 H. Grimm)


In June 1939, Marshal Rydz-Smigly declared to Polish officers:
„Poland wants war with Germany and Germany will not be able to avoid it, even if it wanted to.“

(Source: quoted in: Heinz Splittgerber: Unkenntnis oder Infamie? – Darstellungen und Fakten zum Kriegsausbruch 1939. Recklinghausen 1996, p. 7)

In 1936, the newspaper of Marshal Rydz-Smigly, the Warsaw Kurjer Porany, commented on this subject:
„It cannot be said that the Germans will succeed in stopping the progressive process of de-Germanization of the western parts of the country, but there is no doubt that they are about to put obstacles in the way of this process.“

„The Poles could therefore be sure that they would continue to come closer to their goal of displacing or absorbing the German ethnic group. What they only had to fear from the German national work was a slowdown in the pace.“

Through expropriation and land reform, Poland had appropriated three-quarters of a million hectares of private German land by 1939. But neither Britain nor the League of Nations opposed this policy, neither before 1933 nor after. On the contrary, they supported them by their attitude even at the time when Poland’s further territorial claims must have made clear the dangers to European peace in England as well!

Certainly, French and British politicians protested from time to time in Warsaw, but without emphasis and without effect.

The Manchester Guardian reported from Poland on December 14, 1931:

„The minorities in Poland should disappear. It is Polish politics that ensures that they do not just disappear on paper. This policy is being carried forward ruthlessly and without the slightest attention to world public opinion, to international treaties or to the League of Nations. Ukraine has become hell under Polish rule. The same can be said of Belarus with even greater justification. The goal of Polish policy is the disappearance of national minorities, on paper and in reality.“

The same British weekly newspaper a year earlier, on October 17, 1930:

„Polish terror in Ukraine today is worse than anything else in Europe. Ukraine has become a country of despair and destruction, which is all the more provocative because the rights of the Ukrainians are guaranteed under international law, while the League of Nations is deaf to all appeals and explanations and the rest of the world knows nothing about it or does not care about it.“

U.S. General Robert E. Wood told a Senate panel that W. Churchill had told him in November 1936:

„Germany is becoming too strong, we have to destroy it.“

(Quelle: J. F. C. Fuller ,,Decisive Battles of the Western World“ Seite 306 und

  1. Hughes ,Winston Churchill – his career War and Peace“ S. 145 und ,,Hearings on Lerid and Lease“ Febr. 1941 Seite 275)

A high-ranking Polish general staff officer, H. Baginski, in a book awarded by the Polish Commission for International Intellectual Cooperation, published in Warsaw in 1927, defined the main goals of Polish foreign policy: the annexation of Danzig, East Prussia and most of Silesia.

„As long as peace will not reign in Europe until the Polish lands have been completely returned to Poland, as long as the name of Prussia, which is the name of a people that no longer exists, has not been erased from the map of Europe, and as long as the Germans do not move their capital from Berlin further west, to the former capital Magdeburg on the Elbe or Merseburg on the Saale, as long as they do not return to the old name of the German Reich and as long as they do not stop dreaming of the rectification of the borders in the east.“

(Source: Chr. Höltje, The Weimar Republic and the East Locarno Problem 1919-1934 – pp. 137 and 141.

The magazine, which is also censored by the state and close to Pilsudski,

„Mocarstwowiec“ – „The League of Great Powers“ – wrote in 1930:

„We are aware that war between Poland and Germany cannot be avoided. We must prepare systematically and energetically for this war. Today’s generation will see that a new victory at Grunwald (allusion to the Battle of Tannenberg in 1410) will be inscribed in the pages of history. But we will beat this Grunwald in the suburbs of Berlin. Our ideal is to round off Poland with borders on the Oder in the west and the Neisse in Lusatia and to incorporate Prussia from the Pregel to the Spree. In this war, no prisoners will be taken, there will be no room for humanitarian feelings. We will surprise the whole world with our war against Germany.“

(Quelle: B. de Colonna ,Poland from the Inside“ Seite 90 )

On August 15, 1939, the Polish ambassador in Paris, Lukasiewicz, declared to the French Foreign Minister, Bonnet:

„It will be the Polish army that will invade Germany on the first day of the war.“

(Source: M. Freund, „World History of the Present in Documents“ Vol. III, p. 90 and G. Bonnet, „Before the Catastrophe“, page 252)

On August 26, 1939, the U.S. Ambassador in Moscow, E. Davies:

„One of the highest officials under Beck said to me, and very definitely, that his government would never allow Poland and Germany to come together to settle their difficulties over the Polish corridor and Danzig. He expressed indignation at what he called the usual exaggeration of German military power. His government, he said, would show the world. Three weeks after the outbreak of war, Polish troops would be in Berlin. The „Westwall“ or the Siegfried Line are nothing but a cotton thread. Poland does not need Russian help. They could deal with the Germans on their own.“

Below are quotes from the book

„The Germany Protocol“ by Ralf Uwe Hill

 which you will most likely find on the Internet as a free PDF file.

„We made a monster out of Hitler, a devil. That’s why we couldn’t move away from it after the war. After all, we had mobilized the masses against the devil personally. So after the war we were forced to play along in this devil’s scenario. We could not possibly have made it clear to our people that the war was only an economic preventive measure.“

U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III in Der Spiegel, ed. 13 from 1992

 

  

„The unforgivable crime of Germany before the Second World War was the attempt to detach its economic power from the world trade system and to create its own exchange system, in which world finance could no longer earn money.“

Winston Chruchill in his memoirs (Der Schlesier, 05.06.1992)

 

  

„The statesmen will invent cheap lies and blame the nation that is being attacked, and everyone will be pleased with such conscience-soothing falsifications, and he will learn them eagerly and refuse to examine any counterarguments.“

Mark Twain

 

  

„Which Federal President was not a Nazi? It is known that the ex-Federal President Scheel had previously become Foreign Minister as a Nazi.

That’s why Werner Nachmann, the director of the Board of Trustees of Jews in Germany, could dictate the correspondence in the Foreign Ministry, not the Foreign Minister. How could he dictate, how could he know everything? Please, that’s a fact. Then Scheel became president of the Federal Republic. Why? Normally, you remain president of the Swiss Confederation for two legislative periods. With Scheel (FDP) an exception was made. The CDU wanted to take revenge because the FDP had separated from it and formed an SPD/FDP government. So Carstens (CDU) was to become Federal President. The other side immediately let it be known that Carstens was an official Nazi. The CDU replied according to the motto  „Do you house my Jew, I hit your Jew and revealed that Scheel was also a Nazi.“

The Jewish publicist J. G. Burg in „Jewish-German Dialogue“

  

 

„Above all, it is true that we Englishmen have always waged war against our competitors in trade and commerce. And our main competitor in trade and transport today is not France, but Germany. In a war with Germany, we would be in a position to gain a lot and lose nothing…“

The English weekly magazine „Saturday Review“, on 24.08.1895

  

 

„It was not Hitler’s political teachings that plunged us into war.

The reason for this was the success of its growth to build up a new economy. The roots of the war were envy, greed and fear.“

The historian and major general J. F. C. Fuller in

The Second World War, 1950

„Now it is clear that we must warn against the whole (Wehrmacht) exhibition. Why has no German historian uncovered the many errors and deceptions? History professors only give the answer when one of us promises not to give his name: Every historian has immediately seen how sloppy and suggestive the exhibition was set up, but who wants to be beaten up in public? The persecutors of dissenters have come a long way.“

Editor-in-chief Helmut Markwort in his weekly

„FOCUS-Tagebuch“ 43/1999

 

  

„We did not go to war in 1939 to save Germany from Hitler, the continent from fascism. As in 1914, we entered the war for the no less noble reason that we could not accept German domination in Europe.“

„Frankfurter Allgemeine“ from 18.09.1989

 

  

„The first victim of war is the truth.“

Senator Hiram Johnson, 1917

 

  

„Now we have forced Hitler to go to war, so that he can no longer peacefully repeal one piece of the Treaty of Versailles after another.“

Lord Halifax, British Ambassador in Washington,

1939 and member of the Committee of 300

  

 

„I will crush Germany.“

Frank Roosevelt, 1932 from: „Wider Arbitkür und Machtrausch“, p. 241

  

 

„We will force war on Hitler, whether he wants to or not.“

Winston Churchill in 1936, when he saw the economic successes after Hitler broke away from the interest slavery of the international banks and introduced the working currency, which made the German Reich self-sufficient and brought unprecedented economic prosperity to the Reich.

„Poland must insist that it cannot exist without Königsberg, without the whole of East Prussia. We must now demand in Locarno that the whole of East Prussia be liquidated. It can obtain autonomy under Polish sovereignty. Then there will be no corridor (via the free city of Danzig – author’s note) To give. If this does not happen peacefully, then there will be a second Tannenberg.“

The Polish newspaper „Gazeta Gdanska“, on 09.10.1925

„Poland wants war with Germany and Germany will not be able to avoid it, even if it wanted to…“

Marshall and Inspector General Rydz-Smnigly, in 1939 in a public lecture to Polish military officers.

„Before the Nuremberg Tribunal, I condemned Nazi aggression and terror – together with my Russian colleagues. Today I believe that Hitler and the German people did not want war, but that we – Great Britain – declared war on Germany with the intention of destroying it in accordance with our doctrine of the balance of power. And we were encouraged by those Americans who surrounded Roosevelt. We ignored Hitler’s appeals not to start a war.

Today we have to admit to ourselves that Hitler was right. He offered us cooperation with Germany. Instead, since 1945 we have been facing the enormous power of the Soviet Empire. I feel shame and humiliation when I see that the goals for which we accused Hitler are being pursued relentlessly today – only under a different name.“

Sir Hartle Shawcross, Chief Prosecutor of the Nuremberg „War Crimes Tribunal“ in his speech at Stourbridge on March 16, 1984

 

 

 „The point here is that Hitler – unlike Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin – did not want a general outbreak of war in 1939.“

„Blasting of the historical Blackout“, 1962

 

 

 „As Christians, we must ask ourselves before God and man:

What was the real cause that led us to war through Roosevelt? One thing is already certain: it was not an ideological war to destroy National Socialism, since we were allied with the even more dangerous Bolshevism. The only true answer must be:

The old cardinal sins of humanity – selfishness, greed and greed – led our nation to war. Under the Roosevelt administration we did not want to allow the course of history to be reversed, that we  should become the have-nots and other nations the have-nots. We wanted to continue to live in abundance and leave the others in want forever, we wanted to continue to be the rich and keep the others in poverty, we wanted to enjoy undisturbed what we had gathered together in earthly goods through conquest, extermination and slavery. We continued to wish to live on the sunny side of existence and to know that the others were in the shadows, to be always on top and to keep the others on the ground. We wanted to stay on our American way of life with the highest standard of living, while the others starved. Above all, we wanted to get rid of our biggest and most successful rival on the global market.“

„America’s Responsibility for the Crime against the German People“ by the German-born Reverend Ludwig A. Fritsch from 1947. On the basis of this writing, US President Truman allowed „love gift packages“ to be sent to Germany in order to spare the starving millions an agonizing death. Until then, foreign aid for the German people was prohibited by the USA.

„Roosevelt knew exactly what he meant when he  demanded unconditional surrender. According to its barbaric interpretation, this concept included the right to dispose of everything, people and material, property and intellectual goods. The patents and manufacturing secrets that our troops have stolen and brought here alone outweigh the billions we spent on warfare. Even the kidnapping and forcible confinement of German scientists and experts to East and West is taken for granted.

In the face of God, I ask our nation, I ask you, servants

of the Gospel: Have the Germans ever done us such injustice in our entire history as we inflicted and still inflict on them in the two world wars? What have the Germans done to us Americans that we punished them twice in one generation in the most cruel and inhumane way that history has never known before? Is this American gratitude for all the hard work and loyalty with which German people here built our country and won our victories?“

„America’s Responsibility for the Crime against the German People“ by the German-born Reverend Ludwig A. Fritsch from 1947.

 

 

 „What we in the German resistance did not really want to understand during the war, we learned completely afterwards: that the war was ultimately not waged against Hitler, but against Germany.“

Eugen Gerstenmaier, from 1954 President of the Bundestag in the „Resistance“

 

  

„We won the war with atrocity propaganda (…) And now let’s really get started. We will continue this atrocity propaganda, we will increase it until no one will accept a good word from the Germans, what sympathy they still had in other countries and they themselves will have become so confused that they no longer know what they are doing. 

When this is achieved, when they begin to soil their own nest, and not grudgingly, but in hasty readiness to please the victors, only then is the victory complete.

It is never final. Re-education requires careful, constant care, like English lawns. Just a moment of negligence and the weeds break through – that ineradicable weed of historical truth.“

The former British chief propagandist Sefton Delmer on the German international law expert Prof. Grimm after the military capitulation in 1945

 

 

 „For the purposes of the Nuremberg Trials, it was sufficient to insinuate that the war with all its consequences was due to Hitler’s aggression. But this explanation is too simplistic. It also does not correspond to the facts, because Hitler wanted anything but a world war.“

The British military writer and historian Hart on 03.09.1949 in the London „Picture Post“

 

 

 „The German consciousness of war guilt represents a case of almost incomprehensible self-incrimination without equal in the history of mankind. In any case, I know of no other example in history of a people showing this almost insane addiction to taking upon themselves the dark shadows of guilt for a political crime that they did not commit, except for the crime of burdening themselves with the guilt of the Second World War…“

The US historian and philosopher of history Barnes in 1951

„It is still necessary to complain that the final article of the old Basic Law, Article 146, which mandatorily stipulated that a new constitution be submitted to the German people in the event of German unification, has not been observed. I am sure that we will all experience enormous and almost incompensable damage if we continue to live with this breach of the constitution. The fathers and mothers of the Basic Law of the old Federal Republic understood the constitution of the Federal Republic as a provisional solution with a view to a possible unity at a later date. The preamble was formulated accordingly and the final article accordingly. We have to stick to that.“

Günter Grass in his book „Questions on German Unity“

 

  

„You can say what you want about it today: Germany was a flourishing, happy country in 1936. On his face lay the radiance of a woman in love. And the Germans were in love – in love with Hitler … And they had every reason to be grateful: Hitler had conquered unemployment and brought them a new economic boom.

He had given the Germans a new awareness of their national strength and their national task.“

The British chief propagandist Sefton Delmer in:

„The Germans and I“.

 

 

„I have just returned from a visit to Germany. I have now seen Germany’s famous leader, also the great changes he has caused. Whatever one thinks of his methods – and these are certainly not those of a parliamentary country – there can be no doubt that he has brought about a wonderful change in the minds of the people, in their behaviour towards each other, in their social and economic self-presentation. It is not the Germany of the first decade after the World War, which lived broken, depressed, depressed, with a feeling of impotence and timidity. It is now full of hope and trust and a renewed sense of purpose to direct its own life without any influence of any forces outside its limits. For the first time in Germany after the World War, a sense of security has generally moved in among the people. It is a happy Germany. I saw and got to know it everywhere.“

Lloyd Georges in the „Daily Express“ of 17.09.1936

after his visit to Berchtesgaden with Adolf Hitler

 

 

 „I asked Joe Kennedy (U.S. Ambassador in London) about his conversations with Roosevelt and N. Chamberlain in 1938. He said that Chamberlain’s conviction in 1939 was that Britain had nothing in its hands to fight and that therefore it could not dare to go to war against Hitler. Neither the French nor the English would have made Poland a reason for war if they had not been incessantly incited by Washington. America and world Jewry would have driven England into war.“

US Secretary of Defense J. Forrestal on 27.12.1945 in his

Tagebuch „The Forrestal Diaries“, New York, S. 121 ff

 

 

 „We Germans should learn to endure the truth even when it is favorable to us“

Heinrich von Brentano

 

 

 „President Roosevelt and the Jews all over the world put pressure on me to refrain from any communication with Hitler.“

Neville Chamberlain on January 15, 1952 in the „New Chronicle“

 

 

 „The Poles have lost the last sense of measure and size. Every foreigner who looks at the new maps in Poland, whereupon a large part of Germany, as far as Berlin, Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia and a huge part of Russia have already been annexed in the exceedingly rich imagination of the Poles, must think that Poland has become a huge lunatic asylum.“

The Flemish writer Ward on 03.08.1939;

see: „Never again Munich“, page 207

 

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And now again two quotes from the book „Truth for Germany“ by Udo Walendy

 

Winston Churchill im November 1935:

„While all these terrible changes were taking place in Europe, Private Hitler was fighting his long, tiring battle for the German heart. The history of this struggle cannot be read without admiration for the courage, sincerity and strength of personality that enabled him to challenge, defy, overwhelm or reconcile – at least to prevail against all authorities and resisted those who blocked his way. He and the ever-growing multitudes of those who joined him showed in their patriotic fervor and patriotism that there was nothing they were not willing to do or dare, no sacrifice of life, health, liberty that they would not make themselves or impose on their opponents.“

(Source: W. Churchill, „The truth about Hitler“ in Strand Magazine, November 1935, quoted in: Sündermann, „Old enemy, what now?“

page 70 )

In Churchill’s view, the Allies, Great Britain and France, were responsible for Hitler’s success, and the execution of how the tables were turned against the complacent, incompetent and half-blind victors deserves to be regarded as a miracle in the history of the world and a miracle inseparable from the personal efforts and dedication of life of one man. Those who met Hitler face to face in public, on business, or on social issues met a very competent, cool, well-informed functionary with a pleasant manner, a noticeable smile, and few remained untouched by his fine personal magnetism.

This impression is by no means due to the brilliance, the blinding of power. He worked in this way on his associates at every stage of his struggle, even when his happiness had sunk to the deepest depths. One may disapprove of Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. Should our country ever be defeated, I should hope to find such an admirable fighter who will restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.“

( Source: E. Hughes „Winston Churchill – his career in War and Peace“ page 144 and L. P. Lohner „The Powerful and the Tyrant“ page 214 )