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2a7f9e6
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Marvin found that German clergymen had taken to wearing clerical collars made of paper. They cost eight cents, can be worn inside out the second day, and are then thrown away....
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William L. Shirer |
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e2989e0
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Locarno
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William L. Shirer |
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7967ac8
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Have we not reached a stage in history where no small nation is safe any longer, where they all must live on sufferance from the dictators? Gone are those pleasant nineteenth-century days when a country could remain neutral and at peace just by saying it wanted to.
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William L. Shirer |
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686c7f2
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The Germans heard vaguely in their censored press and broadcasts of the revulsion abroad but they noticed that it did not prevent foreigners from flocking to the Third Reich and seemingly enjoying its hospitality.
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William L. Shirer |
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21a8d9b
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And many returned who if they were not converted were at least rendered tolerant of the "new Germany" and believed that they had seen, as they said, "positive achievements."
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William L. Shirer |
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c1571a0
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The Olympic games held in Berlin in August 1936 afforded the Nazis a golden opportunity to impress the world with the achievements of the Third Reich, and they made the most of it.
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William L. Shirer |
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9a0e28a
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On May 17, 1933, before the Reichstag, Hitler delivered his "Peace Speech," one of the greatest of his career, a masterpiece of deceptive propaganda that deeply moved the German people and unified them behind him and which made a profound and favorable impression on the outside world."
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William L. Shirer |
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536a475
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The goose-step has always seemed to me to be an outlandish exhibition of the human being in his most undignified and stupid state.
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William L. Shirer |
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fc6014a
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Soviet foreign policy turns out to be as "imperialist" as that of the czars. The Kremlin has betrayed the revolution."
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William L. Shirer |
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b31a07d
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particularly on the bourgeoisie, which is
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William L. Shirer |
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c47a100
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He was now convinced that Hitler had brought the movement to a dead end. The more radical followers were going over to the Communists.
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William L. Shirer |
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eede5c2
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Thus in Prussia the Hohenzollern King was the head of the Church. In no country with the exception of Czarist Russia did the clergy become by tradition so completely servile to the political authority of the State.
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William L. Shirer |
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eb60e5b
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A people who had so lightly given up their political and cultural and economic freedoms were not, except for a relatively few, going to die or even risk imprisonment to preserve freedom of worship.
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William L. Shirer |
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0566c61
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Hitler had never made any secret of, was that if the party ever took over Germany it would stamp out a German's personal freedom, including that of Dr. Schacht and his business friends.
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William L. Shirer |
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f6586fe
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As the year of 1931 ran its uneasy course, with five million wage earners out of work, the middle classes facing ruin, the farmers unable to meet their mortgage payments, the Parliament paralyzed, the government floundering, the eighty-four-year-old President fast sinking into the befuddlement of senility, a confidence mounted in the breasts of the Nazi
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William L. Shirer |
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d02d249
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majority in the Reichstag for any policy--of the Left, the Center or the Right--and that merely to carry on the business of government and do something about the economic paralysis he had to resort to Article 48 of the constitution, which permitted him in an emergency, if the President approved, to govern by decree.
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William L. Shirer |
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72307af
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All this was made clear enough to the assembled industrialists and they responded with enthusiasm to the promise of the end of the infernal elections, of democracy and disarmament.
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William L. Shirer |
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8f396e1
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consternated.
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William L. Shirer |
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febbe21
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This paralysis of the mind and will of grown-up men, raised as Christians, supposedly disciplined in the old virtues, boasting of their code of honor, courageous in the face of death on the battlefield, is astonishing, though perhaps it can be grasped if one remembers the course of German history, outlined in an earlier chapter, which made blind obedience to temporal rulers the highest virtue of Germanic man and put a premium on servility.
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William L. Shirer |
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3b6c6d4
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The revolt of July 20, 1944, had failed not only because of the inexplicable ineptness of some of the ablest men in the Army and in civilian life, because of the fatal weakness of character of Fromm and Kluge and because misfortune plagued the plotters at every turn. It had flickered out because almost all the men who kept this great country running, generals and civilians, and the mass of the German people, in uniform and out, were not rea..
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William L. Shirer |
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e22e2f8
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In Nazi parlance, "educated" meant "intimidated"--to a point where all would accept docilely the Nazi dictatorship and its barbarism."
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William L. Shirer |
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99ac24b
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On the contrary, they supported it with genuine enthusiasm. Somehow it imbued them with a new hope and a new confidence and an astonishing faith in the future of their country.
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William L. Shirer |
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598b77f
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As an escape, I suppose, I read some Goethe letters this afternoon. It was reassuring to be reminded of the devastation of Germany that Napoleon wrought. Apparently Jena, near Goethe's Weimar, was pretty roughly handled by the French troops. But through it all the great poet never loses hope. He keeps saying that the Human Spirit will triumph, the European spirit. But today, where is the European spirit in Germany? Dead.... Dead...
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William L. Shirer |
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22ad42a
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Surely the Germans must be the ugliest-looking people in Europe, individually. Not a decent-looking woman in the whole Linden. Their awful clothes probably contribute to one's impression.
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William L. Shirer |
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511f430
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After further conferences that late spring the following plan was drawn up. Speidel, almost alone among the Army conspirators in the West, survived to describe it: An immediate armistice with the Western Allies but not unconditional surrender. German withdrawal in the West to Germany. Immediate suspension of the Allied bombing of Germany. Arrest of Hitler for trial before a German court. Overthrow of Nazi rule. Temporary assumption of execu..
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William L. Shirer |
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999d241
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And now, as the fateful summer of 1944 approached, they realized that with the Red armies nearing the frontier of the Reich, the British and American armies poised for a large-scale invasion across the Channel, and the German resistance to Alexander's Allied forces in Italy crumbling, they must quickly get rid of Hitler and the Nazi regime if any kind of peace at all was to be had that would spare Germany from being overrun and annihilated.
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William L. Shirer |
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aff3408
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Only then, after all these things had been accomplished within the first couple of hours of the coup, could the messages, which had been drawn up and filed, be sent out by radio, telephone and telegraph to the commanders of the Home Army in other cities and to the top generals commanding the troops at the front and in the occupied zones, announcing that Hitler was dead and that a new anti-Nazi government had been formed in Berlin. The revol..
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William L. Shirer |
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5f530a1
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LATER.--I must go to Germany. At midnight Murrow phoned from London with the news. The British and French have decided they will not fight for Czechoslovakia and are asking Prague to surrender unconditionally to Hitler and turn over Sudetenland to Germany. I protested to Ed that the Czechs wouldn't accept it, that they'd fight alone.... "Maybe so. I hope you're right. But in the meantime Mr. Chamberlain is meeting Hitler at Godesberg on Wed..
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William L. Shirer |
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6567c7e
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He could bear even less the disaster which befell his beloved Fatherland in November 1918. To him, as to almost all Germans, it was "monstrous" and undeserved. The German Army had not been defeated in the field. It had been stabbed in the back by the traitors at home. Thus emerged for Hitler, as for so many Germans, a fanatical belief in the legend of the "stab in the back" which, more than anything else, was to undermine the Weimar Republi..
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William L. Shirer |
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cacb9be
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It was at this time that he published an open letter to a Communist leader assuring him that Nazism and Communism were really the same thing.
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William L. Shirer |
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f31fa1d
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When an opponent declares, 'I will not come over to your side,'" he said in a speech on November 6, 1933, "I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already... What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community."
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William L. Shirer |
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dfdb8f3
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All prisoners with tattooing on them were ordered to report to the dispensary... After the prisoners had been examined the ones with the best and most artistic specimens were killed by injections. The corpses were then turned over to the pathological department where the desired pieces of tattooed skin were detached from the bodies and treated further. The finished products were turned over to Koch's wife, who had them fashioned into lamp s..
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William L. Shirer |
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b721c78
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Nietzsche, like Goethe, held no high opinion of the German people,* and in other ways, too, the outpourings of this megalomaniacal genius differ from those of the chauvinistic German thinkers of the nineteenth century. Indeed, he regarded most German philosophers, including Fichte and Hegel, as "unconscious swindlers." He poked fun at the "Tartuffery of old Kant." The Germans, he wrote in Ecce Homo, "have no conception how vile they are," a..
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William L. Shirer |
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d3aead3
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Contrary to the general opinion, he liked the company of women, especially if they were beautiful.
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William L. Shirer |
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7c94895
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PARIS, February 15 The fighting in Vienna ended today, the dispatches say. Dollfuss finished off the last workers with artillery and then went off to pray. Well, at least the Austrian Social Democrats fought, which is more than their comrades in Germany did. Apparently Otto Bauer and Julius Deutsch got safely over the Czech frontier. A good thing, or Dollfuss would have hanged them.
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William L. Shirer |
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9f7610d
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PARIS, August 3 Hitler did what no one expected. He made himself both President and Chancellor. Any doubts about the loyalty of the army were done away with before the old field-marshal's body was hardly cold. Hitler had the army swear an oath of unconditional obedience to him personally. The man is resourceful.
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William L. Shirer |
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967f530
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Our introduction to Hitler's Third Reich this evening was probably typical. Taking the day train from Paris so as to see a little of the country, we arrived at the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof at about ten this evening. The first persons to greet us on the platform were two agents of the secret police. I had expected to meet the secret police sooner or later, but not quite so soon. Two plain-clothes men grabbed me as I stepped off the train, le..
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William L. Shirer |
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863ec03
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The Fuhrer is always right. Obey the Fuhrer. The mother is the highest expression of womanhood. The soldier is the highest expression of manhood. God is not punishing us by this war, he is giving us the opportunity to prove whether we are worthy of our freedom.
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William L. Shirer |
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7ece575
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There are dark hints too that she was repelled by the masochistic inclinations of her lover, that this brutal tyrant in politics yearned to be enslaved by the woman he loved--a not uncommon urge in such men, according to the sexologists.
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William L. Shirer |
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9f40f42
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GENEVA, July 5 Avenol, Secretary-General of the League, apparently thinks he'll have a job in Hitler's United States of Europe. Yesterday he fired all the British secretaries and packed them off on a bus to France, where they'll probably be arrested by the Germans or the French. Tonight in the sunset the great white marble of the League building showed through the trees. It had a noble look, and the League has stood in the minds of many as ..
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William L. Shirer |
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d751319
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Among those elected that fall of 1946 was a little-known local judge, Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, to the Senate, and an even lesser known local politician in California, Richard M. Nixon, to the House. Both had accused their opponents of sympathy with Communism and of having "Communist" support. The voters had fallen for it, as they usually do in this country."
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William L. Shirer |
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a929704
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This morning I noticed something very interesting. I was having breakfast in the garden of the Dreesen Hotel, where Hitler is stopping, when the great man suddenly appeared, strode past me, and went down to the edge of the Rhine to inspect his river yacht. X, one of Germany's leading editors, who secretly despises the regime, nudged me: "Look at his walk!" On inspection it was a very curious walk indeed. In the first place, it was very lady..
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William L. Shirer |
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346ca06
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A gigantic crowd of one million persons was gathered on the Maifeld to hear the two fascist dictators speak their pieces. Mussolini, orating in German, was carried away by the deafening applause--and by Hitler's flattering words.
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William L. Shirer |
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c02da67
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The Germans, if one may risk a generalization, have a weakness for blaming foreigners for their failures.
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William L. Shirer |