Friedrich A. J. Von Bernhardi Quotes
Without war, inferior and decaying races would easily choke the growth of the healthy ... and human decadence would follow.
This is a very important quotation. This was not the ravings of a right wing extremist. It was a normative view. This book was a best seller in Germany. This quotation illustrates the mentality of the conservative, militarist, culture that dominated Germany at the time. Racism was normative then in Germany. It was not the Nazis who introduced the concept of inferior races to Germany. Through this book and much before it, the idea was well established in aristocratic, militaristic culture. Also, note that the “inferior races” were considered a threat to civilization, not just inferior beings.
Friedrich A. J. von Bernhardi, 1849-1930, Prussian General, Germany and the Next War, 1911
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This was not the ravings of a right wing extremist. It was normative. This book was a best seller in Germany. This quotation illustrates the mentality of the conservative, militarist, culture that dominated Germany at the time.
See the American ambassador’s assessment after the war began {41089}
Hitler ridiculed the letter after receiving it in public speech.
Hitler ridiculed the letter after receiving it in public speech.
The German catastrophic classification of people as superior and inferior did not start with the Nazis. It had been part of the German culture. What many feel makes Bismarck more cold-blooded than most Germans is that the latter were led to a hatred of the other ethnicities and would exterminate them for that reason, but Bismark had sympathy for the Poles yet advocated genocide simply on practical grounds. The analogy with the wolf shows this mentality at its worst.
