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Top 20 Sebastian Haffner Quotes (2025 Update)

Sebastian Haffner Quote: “Comradeship always sets the cultural tone at the lowest possible level, accessible to everyone. It cannot tolerate discussion; in the chemical solution of comradeship, discussion immediately takes on the color of whining and grumbling. It becomes a mortal sin. Comradeship admits no thoughts, just mass feelings of the most primitive sort.”

1. “Comradeship always sets the cultural tone at the lowest possible level, accessible to everyone. It cannot tolerate discussion; in the chemical solution of comradeship, discussion immediately takes on the color of whining and grumbling. It becomes a mortal sin. Comradeship admits no thoughts, just mass feelings of the most primitive sort.”

— Sebastian Haffner

Sebastian Haffner Quote: “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.”

2. “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.”

— Sebastian Haffner

Sebastian Haffner Quote: “The only opponents or rivals whom Hitler had to consider seriously and whom at times he had to fight in the domestic political arena between 1930 and 1934, were the conservatives. The liberals, the Centre people or the Social Democrats never gave him the least trouble, and neither did the communists.”

3. “The only opponents or rivals whom Hitler had to consider seriously and whom at times he had to fight in the domestic political arena between 1930 and 1934, were the conservatives. The liberals, the Centre people or the Social Democrats never gave him the least trouble, and neither did the communists.”

— Sebastian Haffner

Sebastian Haffner Quote: “It was at this time that, invisibly and unnoticed, the Germans divided into those who later became Nazis and those who would remain non-Nazis.”

4. “It was at this time that, invisibly and unnoticed, the Germans divided into those who later became Nazis and those who would remain non-Nazis.”

— Sebastian Haffner

Sebastian Haffner Quote: “If my experience of Germany has taught me anything, it is this: Rathenau and Hitler are the two men who excited the imagination of the German masses to the utmost; the one by his ineffable culture, the other by his ineffable vileness.”

5. “If my experience of Germany has taught me anything, it is this: Rathenau and Hitler are the two men who excited the imagination of the German masses to the utmost; the one by his ineffable culture, the other by his ineffable vileness.”

— Sebastian Haffner

Sebastian Haffner Quote: “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.”

6. “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

Sebastian Haffner Quote: “The truly Nazi generation was formed by those born in the decade from 1900 to 1910, who experienced war as a great game and were untouched by its realities.”

7. “The truly Nazi generation was formed by those born in the decade from 1900 to 1910, who experienced war as a great game and were untouched by its realities.”

— Sebastian Haffner

Sebastian Haffner Quote: “Saint Marx, in whom one had always believed, had not helped. Saint Hitler was obviously more powerful. So let’s destroy the images of Saint Marx on the altars and replace them with images of Saint Hitler. Let us learn to pray: “It is the Jews’ fault” rather than “It is the capitalists’ fault.” Perhaps that will redeem us.”

8. “Saint Marx, in whom one had always believed, had not helped. Saint Hitler was obviously more powerful. So let’s destroy the images of Saint Marx on the altars and replace them with images of Saint Hitler. Let us learn to pray: “It is the Jews’ fault” rather than “It is the capitalists’ fault.” Perhaps that will redeem us.”

— Sebastian Haffner

Sebastian Haffner Quote: “Mass assemblies are quite incapable of independent action. Decisions that influence the course of history arise out of the individual experiences of thousands or millions of individuals.”

9. “Mass assemblies are quite incapable of independent action. Decisions that influence the course of history arise out of the individual experiences of thousands or millions of individuals.”

— Sebastian Haffner

Sebastian Haffner Quote: “What happened was a nightmarish reversal of normal circumstances: robbers and murderers acting as the police force, enjoying the full panoply of state power, their victims treated as criminals, proscribed and condemned to death in advance.”

10. “What happened was a nightmarish reversal of normal circumstances: robbers and murderers acting as the police force, enjoying the full panoply of state power, their victims treated as criminals, proscribed and condemned to death in advance.”

— Sebastian Haffner

Sebastian Haffner Quote: “The most important part of individual life, which cannot be subsumed in communal life, is love. So comradeship has its special weapon against love: smut.”

11. “The most important part of individual life, which cannot be subsumed in communal life, is love. So comradeship has its special weapon against love: smut.”

— Sebastian Haffner

Sebastian Haffner Quote: “It is this lack of self-reliance that opens the possibility of immense catastrophes of civilization such as the rule of the Nazis in Germany.”

12. “It is this lack of self-reliance that opens the possibility of immense catastrophes of civilization such as the rule of the Nazis in Germany.”

— Sebastian Haffner

Sebastian Haffner Quote: “It took me quite a while to realize that my youthful excitability was right and my father’s wealth of experience was wrong; that there are things that cannot be dealt with by calm skepticism.”

13. “It took me quite a while to realize that my youthful excitability was right and my father’s wealth of experience was wrong; that there are things that cannot be dealt with by calm skepticism.”

— Sebastian Haffner

Sebastian Haffner Quote: “There is no development, no maturing in Hitler’s character and personality.”

14. “There is no development, no maturing in Hitler’s character and personality.”

— Sebastian Haffner

Sebastian Haffner Quote: “The German Reich had to cease to be a state in order to become fully an instrument of conquest.”

15. “The German Reich had to cease to be a state in order to become fully an instrument of conquest.”

— Sebastian Haffner

Sebastian Haffner Quote: “Nothing is more misleading than to call Hitler a Fascist. Fascism is upper-class rule, buttressed by artificially manufactured mass enthusiasm.”

16. “Nothing is more misleading than to call Hitler a Fascist. Fascism is upper-class rule, buttressed by artificially manufactured mass enthusiasm.”

— Sebastian Haffner

Sebastian Haffner Quote: “The older generation had become uncertain and timid in its ideals and convictions and began to focus on “youth,” with thoughts of abdication, flattery, and high expectations.”

17. “The older generation had become uncertain and timid in its ideals and convictions and began to focus on “youth,” with thoughts of abdication, flattery, and high expectations.”

— Sebastian Haffner

Sebastian Haffner Quote: “Besides, he promised everything to everybody, which naturally brought him a vast, loose army of followers and voters from among the ignorant, the disappointed, and the dispossessed.”

18. “Besides, he promised everything to everybody, which naturally brought him a vast, loose army of followers and voters from among the ignorant, the disappointed, and the dispossessed.”

— Sebastian Haffner

Sebastian Haffner Quote: “In this, as in so much else, the Communists and the Nazis are of the same opinion.”

19. “In this, as in so much else, the Communists and the Nazis are of the same opinion.”

— Sebastian Haffner

Sebastian Haffner Quote: “I have already remarked in passing that the capacity for individual life and happiness is, in any case, less developed among the Germans than among other peoples.”

20. “I have already remarked in passing that the capacity for individual life and happiness is, in any case, less developed among the Germans than among other peoples.”

— Sebastian Haffner

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