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Quote by Geoffrey Hill

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New and Collected Poems, 1952-1992

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Author

Geoffrey Hill
Geoffrey Hill

Geoffrey Hill, a British poet, was born on June 18, 1932, and passed away on June 30, 2016. His poetry is renowned for its profound philosophical thinking, complex linguistic structure, and unique personal style. more

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“To purchase a Volkswagen, customers were required to make a weekly deposit of at least 5 Reichsmarks into a DAF account on which they received no interest. Once the account balance had reached 750 Reichsmarks, the customer was entitled to delivery of a VW. The DAF meanwhile achieved an interest saving of 130 Reichsmarks per car. In addition, purchasers of the VW were required to take out a two-year insurance contract priced at 200 Reichsmarks. The VW savings contract was non-transferable, except in case of death, and withdrawal from the contract normally meant the forfeit of the entire sum deposited. Remarkably, 270,000 people signed up to these contracts by the end of 1939 and by the end of the war the number of VW-savers had risen to 340,000. In total, the DAF netted 275 million Reichsmarks in deposits. But not a single Volkswagen was ever delivered to a civilian customer in the Third Reich. After 1939, the entire output was reserved for official uses of various kinds. Most of Porsche’s half-finished factory was turned over to military production. The 275 million Reichsmarks deposited by the VW savers were lost in the post-war inflation. After a long legal battle, VW’s first customers received partial compensation only in the 1960s.”

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Book:The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy
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“1. Mein Kampf does not contain the word "Nazi." 2. Mein Kampf does not contain the term “Third Reich.” 3. Mein Kampf does not contain the word "Fascist" ever as a self reference by Hitler. 4. Mein Kampf does not contain a single use of the word "swastika." 5. Nazis did not call their symbol a "swastika." 6. Swastikas represented crossed "S" letters for "SOCIALISTS" under Adolf Hitler. 7. Nazi salutes and Nazi behavior originated from the USA's Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. 8. The Nazi salute came from the military salute (as used in the original Pledge of Allegiance in the USA). I learned the above revelations and more from the the historian Dr. Rex Curry's scholarly discoveries.”

FascismNazismMein KampfThird ReichRex CurrySwastikasDead Writers Club
Book:MEIN KAMPF Adolf Hitler: Dead Writers Club & Pointer Institute
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“Philip Conwell-Evans, who three years earlier had witnessed the book burning at Königsberg University with such equanimity. Choosing to operate discretely behind the scenes, Conwell-Evans had been instrumental in bringing together a number of influential British figures with leading Nazis. It was he, for instance who in December 1934, had been the driving force behind the first major dinner party Hitler ever hosted for foreigners and at which Lord Rothermere had been guest of honour. And it was now Conwell-Evans, in harness with his close friend Ribbentrop, who was masterminding the Lloyd-George expedition. 'He is so blind to the blemishes of the Germans,' Dr Jones wrote of his fellow Welshman in his diary,' as to make one see the virtues of the French.”

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Book:Travellers in the Third Reich
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“Sir Barry Domvile sensed the chill as soon as he arrived in Nuremberg for the 1937 Reichsparteitag. 'Thought the SS more truculent than usual,' he observed ... And he was further disappointed when the Führer passed by him at the reception without a word. Indeed as Hitler walked along the line of British guests, he remained stiff and expressionless until introduced to Francis Yeats-Brown when he burst into smiles. Yeats-Brown's autobiography, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1930), had been made into a Hollywood movie (starring Gary Cooper) that had become a great favourite of Hitler's. He thought the film such a valuable demonstration of how Aryans should deal with an inferior race that he had made it compulsory viewing for the SS.”

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Book:Travellers in the Third Reich
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“Thelma Cazalet MP, unlike most of the other British 'honoured guests' attending [the 1938 Reichsparteitag], was strongly anti-Nazi and had accepted Ribbentrop's invitation only because she thought it important 'to be aware of what was going on.' As she entered the dining room of the Grand Hotel on the first night, she immediately caught sight of Unity Mitford seated at the long 'British' table with her parents Lord and Lady Redesdale. 'Unity is alarmingly pretty,' she wrote in her diary, 'but I have never seen anyone so pretty with absolutely no charm in her face and a rather stupid expression.”

FascismNazismNazisAdolf HitlerThird ReichNancy MitfordMitford SistersFascist SympathiserNuremberg RalliesReichsparteitag
Book:Travellers in the Third Reich
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“When Hitler addressed the Reichstag in January 1934, he could look back on a year of achievement without parallel in German history. Within twelve months he had overthrown the Weimar Republic, substituted his personal dictatorship for its democracy, destroyed all political parties but his own, smashed the state governments and their parliaments and unified and defederalized the Reich, wiped out the labor unions, stamped out democratic associations of any kind, driven the Jews out of public and professional life, abolished freedom of speech and of the press, stifled the independence of the courts and "co-ordinated" under Nazi rule, the political, economic, cultural and social life of an ancient and cultivated people.”

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“The historian Meike Wöhlert has analyzed and compared the judgments rendered by courts responsible for malicious acts of treason in five cities. Although her research only deals with registered cases and not unofficial ones, the results suggest that the telling of political jokes was a mass phenomenon beyond state control. In 61 percent of official cases, joke-tellers were let off with a warning, alcohol consumption often being cited as an extenuating circumstance. (People who had had one too many in bars were considered only partially responsible for their actions, and because most of the popular jokes that made it to court had been told in bars, the verdicts were accordingly lenient.)”

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Book:Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler's Germany
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“The historical record contradicts the assumption that the Nazis sentenced large numbers of people to death during World War II for telling jokes. In the final phase of the Third Reich, some cases did receive capital sentences, but they were extreme exceptions to the rule. (We will return to them later.) The compilations of jokes that circulated in Germany after the war bore titles like Deadly Laughter and When Laughter Was Dangerous, but there is not much evidence that the jokes they contained were inevitably risky for the teller.”

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Book:Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler's Germany
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