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Sebastian Haffner Quotes

A state does not simply fall apart as a result of depression... [Weimar Germany] was not destroyed by economic depression or widespread unemployment, though these naturally contributed to the atmosphere of doom, but

A state does not simply fall apart as a result of depression... [Weimar Germany] was not destroyed by economic depression or widespread unemployment, though these naturally contributed to the atmosphere of doom, but because the Weimar Right was resolved to abolish the parliamentary state in favour of a vaguely conceived authoritarian state.

Sebastian Haffner
Fall, History, Atmosphere

One cannot overstate the childishness of the ideas that feed and stir the masses. Real ideas must as a rule be simplified to the level of a child's understanding if they are to arouse the masses to historic actions. A childish illusion, fixed in the minds of all children born in a certain decade and hammered home for four years, can easily reappear as a deadly serious political ideology twenty years later.

Sebastian Haffner
Children, Real, Home
Sebastian Haffner (2012). “Defying Hitler: A Memoir”, p.14, Hachette UK

The Nazi leaders….treated Germany like a conquered land, a colony to be used and abused without consideration, to be exploited to the full, and its national spirit, happiness and wellbeing to be sedulously ignored

Sebastian Haffner
Land, Used And Abused, Leader
Sebastian Haffner (2005). “Germany: Jekyll and Hyde : an eyewitness analysis of Nazi Germany”

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