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Germany

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Germans have a far greater and more urgent duty towards civilization to perform. ~ Friedrich von Bernhardi
Satan is a German invention. ~ Friedrich Schlegel

Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland), is a country in the western-central European Union. It includes 16 constituent states, which retain some sovereignty, and covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres (137,847 sq mi) with a largely temperate seasonal climate. It is bordered by Poland and the Czech Republic to the east, Austria and Switzerland to the south, France, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands to the west, and Denmark, the North Sea and the Baltic Sea to the north. Its capital and largest city is Berlin. With 80.7 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state in the European Union. In the 21st century, Germany is considered a great power and has the world's fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a NATO member state and a global leader in several industrial and technological sectors, it is both the world's third-largest exporter and importer of goods. It is a developed country with a very high standard of living, maintaining a comprehensive social security and a universal health care system. It is currently ruled by the Social Democratic Party, its current head of state is President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and its current head of government is Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

Quotes

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Germany, Germany! Above everything, above everything in the world! ~ August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben
Though remarkable for patient and laborious thought, the true German is a joyous child of freedom, fond of manly sports, a lover of music, and a happy man generally. ~ Frederick Douglass
Unity and justice and freedom are the pledge of happiness. Bloom in the glow of happiness! Bloom, German fatherland! ~ August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben
To no class of our population are we more indebted for valuable qualities of head, heart, and hand, than to the German. Say what we will of their lager, their smoke, and their metaphysics, they have brought to us a fresh, vigorous and child-like nature; a boundless facility in the acquisition of knowledge; a subtle and far-reaching intellect, and a fearless love of truth. ~ Frederick Douglass
Justice and freedom for the German fatherland! Let us all strive for this purpose, brotherly with heart and hand! ~ August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben
Football is a simple game. 22 men chase a ball for ninety minutes and at the end, the Germans win. ~ Gary Lineker
I worked at a factory owned by Germans, at coal pits owned by Frenchmen, and at a chemical plant owned by Belgians. There I discovered something about capitalists. They are all alike. ~ Nikita Khrushchev
What have we now in Germany? A land of bankers and car-makers. ~ Hanna Reitsch
Our great army has gone soft. Soldiers wear beards and question orders. ~ Hanna Reitsch
The true German seeks God for all of his life. ~ Joseph Goebbels
Germany as a country has only been in existence for just over a hundred years. But in that time they've started two world wars, they've had two military coups, they've been brought on the brink of starvation two times, and they've invaded almost all of their neighbors. ~ Jeremy Clarkson
Thinking of Germany in the night robs me of my sleep. ~ Heinrich Heine
The post-Nazi German experience, frequently cited and mistakenly seen as normal, is actually a massive exception to the general rule. The Germans are indeed all but unified in their disgust for the Nazi past, but we should not forget that de-Nazification was first forced upon the Germans by the victorious Allies under an occupation regime and then strengthened by the objective circumstances of the post-war European political and social environment. ~ Andrei N. Lankov
What would have been the consequences of an Allied failure on D-Day? There can be no doubt whatsoever that Germany would still have lost the Second World War. ~ Jeffrey Evan Brooks
The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference. ~ Ian Kershaw
For the first time, I am ashamed to be a German. ~ Wilhelm II
We have 500,000 reservists in America who would rise in arms against your government if you dare to make a move against Germany. ~ Zimmermann
Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people. ~ Ayn Rand

A

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B

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  • We Germans have a far greater and more urgent duty towards civilization to perform than the Great Asiatic Power. We, like the Japanese, can only fulfil it by the sword.
  • I never doubted that the victory over France must precede the restoration of the German kingdom, and if we did not succeed in bringing it this time to a perfect conclusion, further wars without the preliminary security of our perfect unification were full in view.
    • Otto von Bismarck, Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman, Being the Reflections and Reminiscences of Otto Prince von Bismarck, Written and Dictated by Himself After His Retirement from Office (1898)
  • I totally regret as a German what happened at this point of history. But when people ask me are you, as a German, feel responsible for the Holocaust? No, because I'm born 1965 and it would be completely un-logical to say I'm responsible, but as a country we are responsible.
  • You have given [the Austrians] carte blanche – do you realize what you have done? If the late Prince Bismarck could appear here before you, his first words would be: "How could you do such a thing, how could you transform a Germany that was the rider into a Germany that is now being ridden by Austria?"
    • Bernhard von Bülow, in remarks to Theodor Wolff, explaining what he would have said in July 1914 if he had been summoned to the Wilhelmstrasse (c. 1916), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, 'Germany', in Keith Wilson (ed.), Decisions for War 1914 (1995), p. 29

C

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  • The imperialist ideology of force, from whatever side it comes, must be shattered for all time. A one sided Prussian militarism must never again be allowed to assume power. Only in large-scale cooperation among the nations of Europe can the ground be prepared for reconstruction. Centralized hegemony, such as the Prussian state has tried to exercise in Germany and in Europe, must be cut down at its inception. The Germany of the future must be a federal state.
  • And now it's time for me to meet Europe's "cuddly teddybears"... the Germans. Germany as a country has only been in existence for just over a hundred years. But in that time they've started two world wars, they've had two military coups, they've been brought on the brink of starvation two times, and they've invaded almost all of their neighbours.
  • Death is a Master from Germany.

D

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  • To no class of our population are we more indebted for valuable qualities of head, heart, and hand, than to the German. Say what we will of their lager, their smoke, and their metaphysics, they have brought to us a fresh, vigorous and child-like nature; a boundless facility in the acquisition of knowledge; a subtle and far-reaching intellect, and a fearless love of truth. Though remarkable for patient and laborious thought, the true German is a joyous child of freedom, fond of manly sports, a lover of music, and a happy man generally.

F

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  • Germany, Germany above everything, above everything in the world! When, for protection and defense, it always stands brotherly together. From the Meuse to the Memel, from the Adige to the Belt, Germany. Germany, above everything, above everything in the world!
  • German women, German loyalty, German wine and German song, shall retain in the world, their old beautiful chime and inspire us to noble deeds, during all of our life. German women, German loyalty, German wine and German song! German women, German loyalty, German wine and German song!
  • Unity and justice and freedom for the German fatherland! Let us all strive for this purpose, brotherly with heart and hand! Unity and justice and freedom are the pledge of happiness. Bloom in the glow of happiness! Bloom, German fatherland!
  • The creation of two German states, an event unforeseen at Tehran, Yalta, or even at Potsdam, was a signal Cold War phenomenon. Foreshadowed by the dual occupation of Korea, Germany’s partition in 1949 combined both real and symbolic elements as a means of stabilizing Central Europe as well as a punishment for the Nazis’ crimes. Four-power occupation had worked in Austria—thanks to the smaller strategic stakes, a moderate socialist government, and the Allies’ Tehran decision to treat this country gently as “Hitler’s first victim”—and the country remained intact. In the more populous, resource-rich Germany, which lacked a central government, the occupiers were able to dominate the revival of local politics. East Germany became the first “workers’ and peasants’ state on German soil,” and West Germany a liberal, robustly capitalist state. Both regimes represented not only a renunciation of the Nazi past but also the revitalization of two opposing political traditions—Marxism and liberalism—each claiming redemptive power over Germany and Europe’s future and each mirroring the Cold War itself.
    • Carole C. Fink, The Cold War: An International History (2017), p. 74

G

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  • The union of the States of Germany into a form of government similar in many respects to that of the American Union is an event that can not fail to touch deeply the sympathies of the people of the United States. This union has been brought about by the long-continued, persistent efforts of the people, with the deliberate approval of the governments and people of twenty-four of the German States, through their regularly constituted representatives.
  • The true German seeks God for all of his life.

H

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  • The state of Germany at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 is difficult to describe except in biblical terms. Syria today might give us some idea. At least a third of the entire population seems to have perished, more in some areas. In 1631, Magdeburg on the Elbe, Otto the Great’s most-favoured city, had over 20,000 inhabitants; by 1649, it was 450, the rest having been mostly slaughtered in the streets. Even today, when German children sing their version of ‘Ladybird, Ladybird, Fly Away Home’, it’s not a house that’s on fire, but Pomerania.
  • Thinking of Germany in the night robs me of my sleep.
    • Original (German): Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht, dann bin ich um den Schlaf gebracht.
    • Heinrich Heine, Nachtgedanken (1843).
  • Germany never defends herself, except by a few flaming protests on the part of our parliamentary elite, and the rest of the world has no reason for fighting in our defense.
  • If the Providence has so willed that the German people cannot be spared this fight, then I can only be grateful that it entrusted me with the leadership in this historic struggle which, for the next 500 or 1,000 years, will be described as decisive, not only for the history of Germany, but for the whole of Europe and indeed the whole world. The German people and their soldiers are working and fighting today, not only for the present, but for the coming, nay the most distant, generations. A historical revision on a unique scale has been imposed on us by the Creator... The next incursion against this homestead of European culture was carried out from the distant East. A terrible stream of barbarous, uncultured hordes sallied forth from the interior of Asia deep into the hearts of the European Continent, burning, looting, murdering—a true scourge of the Lord... From the time when the Movement I consisted of seven men, until we took over power in January 1933, the path was so miraculous that only Providence itself with its blessing could have made this possible...

    Our enemies must not deceive themselves—in the 2,000 years of German history known to us, our people have never been more united than today. The Lord of the Universe has treated us so well in the past years that we bow in gratitude to a providence which has allowed us to be members of such a great nation. We thank Him that we also can be entered with honor into the ever-lasting book of German history!

    • Adolf Hitler, speech before the Reichstag (11 December 1941)
  • You see, it's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?
    • Adolf Hitler, as quoted in Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs by Albert Speer, p. 115.
  • If the war is lost, the nation will also perish. This fate is inevitable. There is no necessity to take into consideration the basis which the people will need to continue even a most primitive existence. On the contrary, it will be better to destroy these things ourselves, because this nation will have proved to be the weaker one and the future will belong solely to the stronger eastern nation. Besides, those who will remain after the battle are only the inferior ones, for the good ones have all been killed.

J

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  • Europe has been at peace since 1945. But it is a restless peace that's shadowed by the threat of violence. Europe is partitioned. An unnatural line runs through the heart of a very great and a very proud nation. History warns us that until this harsh division has been resolved, peace in Europe will never be secure. We must turn to one of the great unfinished tasks of our generation, and that unfinished task is making Europe whole again.
    • Lyndon B. Johnson, remarks before the National Conference of Editorial Writers, New York City (7 October 1966); in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966, book 2, p. 1126.

K

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  • There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin.
  • [Southern U.S.] laws defining race are not to be compared with those once enforced by Nazi Germany, the latter being relatively more liberal. In the view of the Nazis, persons having less than one fourth Jewish blood could qualify as Aryans, whereas many of the American laws specify that persons having one-eighth, one-sixteenth, or "any ascertainable" Negro blood are Negroes in the eyes of the law and subject to all restrictions governing the conduct of Negroes.
    • Stetson Kennedy, Jim Crow Guide: The Way it Was (1955), Ch.4, "Who is Colored Where"
  • We Germans have learned from history. We are a peace-loving, freedom-loving people. For us, love of our native country, love of freedom, and the spirit of being a good neighbor always belong together.

L

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  • In regard to Germans and foreigners, I esteem foreigners no better than other people, nor any worse. They are all of the great family of men, and if there is one shackle upon any of them, it would be far better to lift the load from them than to pile additional loads upon them.
  • Football is a simple game. 22 men chase a ball for ninety minutes and at the end, the Germans win.
    • Gary Lineker, after losing the 1990 FIFA World Cup semifinal to Germany by penalty shootout.
    • As quoted in Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France, by Laurent DuBois, p. 79.
  • In the valley of the Pegnitz, where,
    Across broad meadow-lands,
    Rise the blue Franconian mountains,
    Nuremberg, the ancient, stands.

    Quaint old town of toil and traffic,
    Quaint old town of art and song,
    Memories haunt thy pointed gables,
    Like the rooks that round thee throng.

M

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  • We do not fear that the operations of time may never bring a united Europe, with a reunited Germany at its centre. We do not know how it will happen, how this unnaturally divided Germany is to become once again. It is obscure to us, and we must take refuge in the belief that history will find ways and means of overcoming the unnatural and restoring the natural: a Germany as a consciously serving member of a Europe united in self-awareness – not as its lord and master...

    Let us not delude ourselves over the fact that among the difficulties delaying the unification of Europe is a mistrust of the purity of German intentions, a fear by other peoples of Germany and of hegemonic plans that its vital energy may install into it, which in their view it does not conceal very well….It is for the rising German generation, for German youth, to dispel the mistrust, this fear, by rejecting what has long been rejected and clearly and unanimously announcing their desire: not for a German Europe, but for a European Germany."

    • Thomas Mann, in a lecture at the University of Hamburg (1953)
  • In Germany, it's, let's say it's 5:59 and you're heading for the bakery or whatever and it's due to close at 6. The German will walk right up to that door and close it right in your face, they will lock it on the other side of that glass door with a shrug, like 'sorry'.

O

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  • Germany was the most dangerous component of the Axis, though German forces, unlike Japanese and Italian, did not fire a shot in anger until the invasion of Poland in September 1939 which launched world war. The source of the German threat was Hitler. Other German nationalists wanted Germany to reassert herself as a major state in the 1930s following years of enforced subservience to the victor states of 1918. Few Germans of any political shade had accepted the Allied demands for reparations and German disarmament, or been reconciled to the loss of territory to Poland and France. But very few Germans wanted to run the risk of war again. Hitler's outlook was quite different. Any account of the origins and course of the Second World War must give Hitler the leading part. Without him a major war in the early 1940s between all the world's great powers was unthinkable.

P

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  • The events of the past one and one-half years have gripped the whole German people and affected them deeply. It seems almost like a dream that out of the valley of misery, hopelessness, hate, and fragmentation we have found our way back to a German national community. The horrendous tensions in which we have lived since the August days of 1914 have dissolved, and out of this discord, the German soul has emerged once again, before which the glorious and yet so painful history of our people pass in review, from the sagas of the German heroes to the trenches of Verdun, and even to the street fights of our time.

R

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  • And what have we now in Germany? A land of bankers and car-makers. Even our great army has gone soft. Soldiers wear beards and question orders. I am not ashamed to say I believed in National Socialism. I still wear the Iron Cross with diamonds Hitler gave me. But today in all Germany you can't find a single person who voted Adolf Hitler into power.
    • Hanna Reitsch, as quoted in "The first astronaut: tiny, daring Hanna", by Ron Laytner, The Deseret News (19 February 1981), pp. C1+, p. 12C
  • Many Germans feel guilty about the war. But they don't explain the real guilt we share; that we lost.
    • Hanna Reitsch, as quoted in "The first astronaut: tiny, daring Hanna", by Ron Laytner, The Deseret News (19 February 1981), pp. C1+, p. 12C

S

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  • The Satan of the Italian and English poets may be more poetic; but the German Satan is more satanic; and in this respect one could say, the Satan is a German invention.
    • Original (German): Der Satan der italienischen und englischen Dichter mag poetischer sein; aber der deutsche Satan ist satanischer; und insofern könnte man sagen, der Satan sei eine deutsche Erfindung.
    • Friedrich Schlegel, Athenäumsfragmente 379.
  • America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany.
  • Thus we see that India's influence was widespread throughout Europe, but it was the greatest in Germany. In fact, Germany was called "the India of the Occident". Hugo said that "Germany is to the West what India is to the East, a sort of great forbear. Let us venerate her".
    • Ram Swarup (2000). On Hinduism: Reviews and reflections. Ch. 4.
  • [I]n Germany we are giving work to two million people from Turkey.

T

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  • We came here not because we wanted to attack Germany, but because Germany attacked us and invaded our territory all the way to Moscow. Later on, two worlds based on two different ideologies developed. Maybe one proved better and more successful. But we feel that we fulfilled our role here.
  • I sincerely wish that every member of Congress could visit the displaced person's camp in Germany and Austria and see just what is happening to 500,000 human beings through no fault of their own.
  • Germany is an anatomical oddity: it writes with its left hand and acts with its right.
    • Original (German): Deutschland ist eine anatomische Merkwürdigkeit: Es schreibt mit der Linken und tut mit der Rechten.
    • Kurt Tucholsky, Schnipsel, in Die Weltbühne, 3 February 1931, p. 185.
  • Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
    • Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), Ch. 22.

U

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V

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W

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  • I am convinced that Germany has drawn conclusions and Europe has drawn conclusions as well. And I can say an unpopular thing. If once again Germany should risk destabilizing Europe, then there would be no division of Germany — it would simply be blown off the map of Europe. With the kind of technology that exists, with the kind of experiences we have had, there can be no other way — and the Germans know it.
  • If once again Germany destabilizes Europe, then Germany will be not be divided again, but wiped off the map. East and West have the necessary technology in order to enforce this verdict. If Germany begins again, there is no other solution.
  • The imperialist ideology of force, from whatever side it comes, must be shattered for all time. A one sided Prussian militarism must never again be allowed to assume power. Only in large-scale cooperation among the nations of Europe can the ground be prepared for reconstruction. Centralized hegemony, such as the Prussian state has tried to exercise in Germany and in Europe, must be cut down at its inception. The Germany of the future must be a federal state.
  • I am not a man who believes that we Germans bled and conquered thirty years ago...in order to be pushed to one side when great international decisions call to be made. If that were to happen, the place of Germany as a world power would be gone for ever, and I am not prepared to let that happen. It is my duty and privilege to employ to this end without hesitation the most appropriate and, if need be, the sharper methods.
    • Wilhelm II of Germany‎‎, speech at the launching of the battleship Wittelsbach (3 July 1900), quoted in Michael Balfour, The Kaiser and His Times (London: Penguin, 1975), pp. 158-159
  • In spite of the fact that we have no such fleet as we should have, we have conquered for ourselves a place in the sun. It will now be my task to see to it that this place in the sun shall remain our undisputed possession, in order that the sun's rays may fall fruitfully upon our activity and trade in foreign parts, that our industry and agriculture may develop within the state and our sailing sports upon the water, for our future lies upon the water.

Z

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  • We have 500,000 reservists in America who would rise in arms against your government if you dare to make a move against Germany.
    • Zimmermann to Ambassador Gerard. James W. Gerard: "I told him that we had five hundred thousand and one lamp posts in America, and that was where the German reservists would find themselves if they tried any uprising." Ambassador Gerard's answer. James W. Gerard, My Four Years in Germany, p. 237.

See also

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