Best Gestapo Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Christianity has always been the Gestapo of desire, since long, long before there was a Gestapo. Instead of Jews to hate, Christianity has desire. Though I guess Christianity has Jews, too. In any case, all the ovens in the world can’t incinerate desire.”

Desire Christianity Gestapo

Book:Short Century

Source: Short Century

“That concentration camps were ultimately provided for the same groups in all countries, even though there were considerable differences in the treatment of their inmates, was all the more characteristic as the selection of the groups was left exclusively to the initiative of the totalitarian regimes: if the Nazis put a person in a concentration camp and if he made a successful escape, say, to Holland, the Dutch would put him in an internment camp. Thus, long before the outbreak of the war the police in a number of Western countries, under the pretext of "national security," had on their own initiative established close connections with the Gestapo and the GPU [Russian State security agency], so that one might say there existed an independent foreign policy of the police. This police-directed foreign policy functioned quite independently of the official governments; the relations between the Gestapo and the French police were never more cordial than at the time of Leon Blum's popular-front government, which was guided by a decidedly anti-German policy. Contrary to the governments, the various police organizations were never overburdened with "prejudices" against any totalitarian regime; the information and denunciations received from GPU agents were just as welcome to them as those from Fascist or Gestapo agents. They knew about the eminent role of the police apparatus in all totalitarian regimes, they knew about its elevated social status and political importance, and they never bothered to conceal their sympathies. That the Nazis eventually met with so disgracefully little resistance from the police in the countries they occupied, and that they were able to organize terror as much as they did with the assistance of these local police forces, was due at least in part to the powerful position which the police had achieved over the years in their unrestricted and arbitrary domination of stateless and refugees.”

National Security Totalitarianism Nazism Refugees Police State 1967 Gestapo Concentration Camps 1938 Stateless

Book:The Origins of Totalitarianism

Source: The Origins of Totalitarianism

“In this prison camp, the Gestapo state brain-police planet Earth, what is normal is insane and what is insane is normal. But it doesn't pay to tell that to the local politicians or other organizational structures that run the place that. They didn't crucify Christ because they liked what he said.”

“They didn't crucify Christ because they liked what he said.”

Said Christ Christianity Gestapo

Author:Frederick Lenz

“By the end of the war, I could pick out Jewish people almost as if I had a sixth sense about it, even if they had blue eyes and blond hair. I would have been a very valuable Gestapo person.”

People Ifs Persons Has Beens War Ends Eye Hair Picks Blue Valuable Blue Eyes Sixth Sense Gestapo

Author:Diet Eman

“Indeed, the ideal for a well-functioning democratic state is like the ideal for a gentleman's well-cut suit it is not noticed. For the common people of Britain, Gestapo and concentration camps have approximately the same degree of reality as the monster of Loch Ness. Atrocity propaganda is helpless against this healthy lack of imagination.”

“I believe all sin, love, glory are this: when you slide down the knotted sheets, escaping from Gestapo headquarters, and she hugs you, there, suspended, and she whispers that she's always dreamed of you. The rest is just sex, copulation, the perpetuation of the vile species.”

Believe I Believe Sex Sin Glory Species Hug Sheets Slides Escaping Suspended Headquarters Hug You Gestapo

Author:Umberto Eco

“Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those 'good Germans' who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo.”

Has Beens War Use Humanity Ignorance Tactics Gestapo

Author:Frank Rich

“Freedom is when one hears the bell at seven o'clock in the morning and knows it is the milkman and not the Gestapo.”

Knows Freedom Morning Seven Clock Bells Milkman Gestapo

Author:Georges Bidault

“Americans have no idea why they have been at war in the Middle East, Asia and Africa for a decade. They don't realize that their liberties have been supplanted by a Gestapo Police State. Few understand that hard economic times are here to stay.”

Has Beens Ideas War Hard States Realizing Liberty Economic Middle Police East Decades No Idea Middle East Asia Police State East Asia Gestapo

Author:Paul Craig Roberts

“No socialist government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp or violently worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanly directed in the first instance.”

Firsts Country Government Form Fall Doubt Expression Industry Instance No Doubt Socialist Discontent Fall Back Conducting Gestapo Socialist Government

Book:Churchill: The Power of Words

Source: Churchill: The Power of Words

“Men use up their lives in heart-breaking political struggles, or get themselves killed in civil wars, or tortured in the secret prisons of the Gestapo, not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another.”

Source: The Complete Works of George Orwell: I have tried to tell the truth, 1943-1944

“Well, the role of our "allies," in my view, is a scandal. 53 other countries cooperated in the kidnapping, "extraordinary rendition," of suspected terrorists to black sites where they were administered enhanced interrogation techniques, which by the way is a direct, literal translation of "verschärfte Vernehmung" right out of the Gestapo manual.”

“I would say that not many German people are still alive, who experienced what happened during the third reich. We don't have to go to the Stasi, we can go to the Gestapo, and see what happens, when your human rights, your ability to a freedom of expression and a freedom of thought is infringed upon. This is terribly, terribly dangerous territory.”

People Humans Stills Happens Ability Alive Rights Happened Dangerous Expression Thirds Human Rights Territory Freedom Of Thought Freedom Of Expression Gestapo

Author:Ray McGovern

“A large group of us were crowded into the Gestapo hall, and at that moment the circumstances of all our lives were the same. All of us occupied the same space, the men behind the desk no less than those about to be questioned. What distinguished each of us was only our inner attitude.”

Source: Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943

“The IRS has become morally corrupted by the enormous power which we in Congress have unwisely entrusted to it. Too often it acts like a Gestapo preying upon defenseless citizens.”

Liberty Citizens Congress Enormous Intriguing Irs Defenseless Gestapo

Author:Edward V. Long

“Nothing whatever but the constitutional law, the political structure, of these United States protects any American from arbitrary seizure of his property and his person, from the Gestapo and the Storm Troops, from the concentration camp, the torture chamber, the revolver at the back of his neck in a cellar.”

“The mission of the Gestapo expanded steadily as from 1933 onward, "political criminality" was given a much broader definition than ever before and more forms of dissent and criticism were gradually criminalized. The result was that more "laws" or law-like measures were put on the books than ever.”

Book Form Law Political Given Results Criticism Definitions Missions Tyranny Dissent Criminality Gestapo

Author:Sheila Fitzpatrick

“The EPA, the Gestapo of government, pure and simply has been one of the major claw-hooks that the government maintains on the backs of our constituents.”

Has Beens Government Pure Majors Hook Claws Constituents Epa Gestapo

Author:Tom DeLay

“Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them in cattle cars to Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they're sending all the Jews....If it's that bad in Holland, what must it be like in those faraway and uncivilized places where the Germans are sending them? We assume that most of them are being murdered. The English radio says they're being gassed.”

Ifs Bigs Taken Car Assuming Radio Jew Rough Camps Holocaust Acquaintance Cattle Holland Uncivilized Gestapo Jewish Friends

Author:Anne Frank

“And I know you’re not supposed to say ‘Nazi Germany,’ but I don’t care about political correctness. You know, you had a government using its tools to intimidate the population. We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe.”

People Knows Believe Government Care Political Crazy Tools Population Don't Care I Don't Care Germany Nazi Intimidating Political Correctness Correctness Nazi Germany Gestapo

Author:Benjamin Carson

“In our town there was a Gestapo officer who loved to play chess. After the occupation began, he found out that my father was the chess master of the region, and so he had him to his house every night.”

Play Night Found Father House Masters Towns Chess Regions Occupation Officers Every Night Our Town Gestapo

Author:Bruno Schulz

“It is natural that people do not want to be involved with us too much. There is no problem down to the smallest egotistical longing which the Gestapo cannot solve. Regarded in this way we are, if a joke is permitted, looked upon as a cross between a general maid and the dustbin of the Reich.”

People Ifs Way Want Problem Natural Too Much Involved Jokes Crosses Longing Solve Smallest No Problem Maids Egotistical Dustbin Gestapo

Author:Reinhard Heydrich

“Just the minute the FBI begins making recommendations on what should be done with its information, it becomes a Gestapo.”

Should Done Minutes Information Fbi Recommendations Gestapo

Author:J. Edgar Hoover

“Before the advent of Hitler or Stalin, who took their power from the German and the Russian people, measures were thrust upon the free legislatures of those countries to deprive the people of the possession and use of firearms, so that they could not resist the encroachments of such diabolical and vitriolic state police organizations as the Gestapo, the Ogpu, and the Cheka.”

People Country States Use Organization Police Possession Thrust Legislature Second Amendment Firearms Advent Diabolical Encroachment Gestapo

Author:Edwin Arthur Hall

“To put the point sharply: If an informer in the French underground who sent a friend to the torture chambers of the Gestapo was equally a victim, then there can be no right or wrong in life that I understand.”

Ifs Victim Torture Chamber Gestapo Informers

Author:Albert Maltz