How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Even today I think back with genuine emotion on this gray-haired man who, by the fire of his words, sometimes made us forget the present; who, as if by magic, transformed dry historical facts into vivid reality. There we sat, often aflame with enthusiasm, sometimes even moved to tears... He used our budding national fanaticism as a means of educating us, frequently appealing to our sense of national honor.
This teacher made history my favorite subject.
And indeed, though he had no such intention, it was then that I became a young revolutionary. (1.1.59-61)
Aww, isn't this sentimental? The history teacher Hitler is describing in Mein Kampf was Leopold Poetsch, a man who later joined the Nazi S.S. after Hitler began to seize political power. It's great to have a teacher who sets you aflame with enthusiasm, but not if he or she is fanning the flames of racism and hate. Thanks, Mr. Poetsch. Can we be excused now? (1.1.62)
Quote #2
What were the ideas which he acquired from his reading and his experience and which, as he says, would remain essentially unaltered to the end? That they were mostly shallow and shabby, often grotesque and preposterous, and poisoned by outlandish prejudices will become obvious on the most cursory examination. That they are important to this history, as they were to the world, is equally obvious, for they were to form part of the foundation for the Third Reich which this bookish vagrant was soon to build. (1.1.110)
Shirer notes that Hitler read constantly during his destitute years in Vienna and later described that period of his life as the critical time for his political, historical, and social education. ButHitler's so-called "knowledge" of subjects such as German and European history, racial and religious difference, and the nature of human rights was often obscenely, horrifically false. He read a ton of anti-Semitic literature that was widely available in Vienna at the time and bought all of it.
Quote #3
Though some of the party roughnecks, veterans of street fighting and beerhouse brawls, opposed bringing women and children into the Nazi Party, Hitler soon provided organizations for them too. The Hitler Youth took in youngsters from fifteen to eighteen who had their own departments of culture, schools, press, and propaganda, "defense sports," etc., and those from ten to fifteen were enrolled in the Deutsches Jungfolk. (2.5.14)
In its early stages, the Hitler Youth movement was designed to foster the growth of the party: in later years, as we'll see soon, it was designed to ensure that all young people in Germany grew up immersed in Nazi ideology. Hitler abolished all other youth organizations.