Comments on: Normal Hitler Quotes?

Question: Normal Hitler Quotes?

Tlogmer — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 15:50:28 -0800

I'm looking for Hitler quotes that are perfectly normal. Stuff like "I'm going to have lunch now."

By: RokkitNite

RokkitNite — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 16:03:42 -0800

I'm pretty sure he must have said 'guten tag' a coupla times before the bunker.

By: danb

danb — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 16:12:20 -0800

You're going to make something like the Coulter/Hitler thing, but try to throw people off, aren't you?

By: Hildago

Hildago — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 16:19:58 -0800

I'm sure you could find at least a couple fairly mundane paragraphs in Mein Kampf. Tried that already?

Or are you literally talking about "I'm going to lunch" quotes? I'm not sure anybody would have written those down in newspapers or anything. I'd try to find some memoirs of people who worked with or knew Hitler and wrote down anecdotes about him.

By: jedrek

jedrek — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 16:25:44 -0800

Is this so you can use the construct: "And now, in the words of Adolf Hitler, I'm going to have lunch now?"

By: athenian

athenian — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 16:31:39 -0800

Read Hitler's Table Talk. I expect there are a few 'pass the mustards' in there.

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 16:40:41 -0800

"Gesundheit." - A Hitler.

By: moss

moss — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 16:47:15 -0800

Good Lord. I've just gone to scan Mein Kampf for possible quotes, and I'm honestly a bit surprised at how hard it is to find bits that don't sound fascistic and vaguely unhinged. Even on innocuous topics: "In this little town on the Inn, gilded by the rays of German martyrdom, Bavarian by blood, technically Austrian, lived my parents in the late eighties of the past century"

But, here goes:
"Since in my free time I received singing lessons in the cloister at Lambach, I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only natural the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal." [1]

"Instruction in world history in the so-called high schools is even today in a very sorry condition. Few teachers understand that the aim of studying history can never be to learn historical dates and events by heart and recite them by rote; that what matters is not whether the child knows exactly when this or that battle was fought, when a general was born, or even when a monarch (usually a very insignificant one) came into the crown of his forefathers. No, by the living God, this is very unimportant.
To 'learn' history means to seek and find the forces which are the causes leading to those effects which we subsequently perceive as historical events.
The art of reading as of learning is this: to retain the essential to forget the non-essential." [1] (this could be a particularly good one for some purposes)

Ooh, and even better, immediately following that last bit, his praise for one of his teachers: "Perhaps it affected my whole later life that good fortune sent me a history teacher who was one of the few to observe this principle in teaching and examining. Dr. Leopold Potsch, my professor at the Realschule in Linz, embodied this requirement to an ideal degree. This old gentleman's manner was as kind as it was determined, his dazzling eloquence not only held us spellbound but actually carried us away. Even today I think back with gentle emotion on this gray-haired man who, by the fire of his narratives, sometimes made us forget the present; who, as if by enchantment, carried us into past times and, out of the millennial veils of mist, molded dry historical memories into living reality. On such occasions we sat there, often aflame with enthusiasm, and sometimes even moved to tears."

"I was determined to overcome these obstacles, keeping before my eyes the image of my father, who had started out as the child of a village shoemaker, and risen by his own efforts to be a government official." [2]

"To me Vienna, the city which, to so many, is the epitome of innocent pleasure, a festive playground for merrymakers, represents, I am sorry to say, merely the living memory of the saddest period of my life." [2] (immediately after a remark on the twin menaces of Marxism and Jewry, no less)

"Undoubtedly the workers in the various trades benefited by the results of that campaign and, for honest men especially, conflicts of conscience must have arisen if they took the wages which had been assured through the struggle fought by the trades unions and if at the same time the men themselves withdrew from the fight." [3]

...is this the sort of thing you're looking for?

By: Robert Angelo

Robert Angelo — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 16:49:29 -0800

Google leads to It began at that hour!. I'm sure you can find more.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 16:57:11 -0800

Ich liebe Wikipedia!

By: peglam

peglam — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 16:59:31 -0800

I would like to think that the greatest thing that ever passed his evil and horrible lips was "I am about to die". Ahh, now that is the most normal thing he could have ever said. Ever.

By: ROTFL

ROTFL — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 17:02:21 -0800

A google search for "Hitler Speeches" revealed a number of archives in English. I picked an archive at random and a date at random (Sept. 12, 1936), and came up with this immortal phrase:

"It is hard to build up a new life out of your poverty, but I am not complaining. On the contrary, I find it wonderful to face difficult problems."

By: languagehat

languagehat — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 17:04:28 -0800

Second the Table Talk recommendation, it's a much more likely source of quotes than Mein Kampf.

Yes, Hitler was a bad man. I don't think we have to use this AskMe thread to show off how much we hate him. Thank you.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 17:05:41 -0800

"I never asked to be born in the first place." (reportedly overhead by K. Vonnegut)

By: brundlefly

brundlefly — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 17:41:36 -0800

What's the source for that, Blazecock Pileon?

By: meehawl

meehawl — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 17:50:31 -0800

In one of my books, I wrote about Hitler's last words. As he's down there in the bunker and the Russians are right up above him, and if they catch him they're going to put him in a cage and show him around and humiliate him, piss on him. So he's definitely gonna have to kill himself. The whole question is what his last words should be. There are other witnesses to hear his last words. Goebbels is there, and Martin Bormann, to hear what this great man's last words are. And Hitler says, "I regret nothing." Goebbels points out to him that this is in fact a song by Edith Piaf. People are going to see the similarity. She was called "the little sparrow." His last words are going to be the same thing the little sparrow says. Finally he says, "I never asked to be born in the first place." And he blows his brains out. What are you gonna do?

By: fixedgear

fixedgear — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 17:52:45 -0800

I think Blazecock Pileon is making a joke. How could Vonnegut have overheard that? He was a POW in Dresden at the time. Maybe he had very keen hearing?

By: brundlefly

brundlefly — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 18:01:53 -0800

Ah, thank you, meehawl! That's great.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 18:05:56 -0800

Es tut mir leid, brundlefly, it was a weak attempt to be witzig. I can't remember where I originally read Vonnegut's line, but despite my desperate attempts, meehawl's search results were the very same as mine.

By: meehawl

meehawl — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 18:22:29 -0800

For exact phrases on Google, put them in double quotes, otherwise you get this.

By: TheRaven

TheRaven — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 19:50:07 -0800

A Google search on Hitler sagte gives a few. Let me quote a couple about his missus.

1. He allegedly said Eva Braun Deutschland ist und dass er einmal nur zwei Freunde haben wird. Seinen Hund und seine Frau which means Eva Braun is Germany and he will have only two friends - his dog and his wife.
2. He allegedly said ein intelligenter Mann brauche eine "einfache, dumme Frau" which means an intelligent man needs a simple, stupid wife. Clearly he wasn't a feminist.

I haven't looked at all of them but most of them seem to be the sort of thing you would expect him to say.

By: pandaharma

pandaharma — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 03:04:52 -0800

"This place is mine. I built it with money I earned." - A. Hitler