How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
The political power in Germany no longer resided, as it had since the birth of the Republic, in the people and in the body which expressed the people's will, the Reichstag. It was now concentrated in the hands of a senile, eighty-five-year-old President and in those of a few shallow ambitious men around him who shaped his weary, wandering mind. (2.6.52)
Our pro-democracy author tells us what he thinks happens when a few ambitious men get their hands of exclusive power. He thinks that von Schleicher, von Papen, and Hitler put the final nails in the coffin of the democratic Weimar Republic—and with it, any hopes of peace for the rest of the world.
Quote #5
In the former Austrian vagabond the conservative classes thought they had found a man who, while remaining their prisoner, would help them attain their goals. The destruction of the Republic was only the first step. What they then wanted was an authoritarian Germany which at home would put an end to democratic "nonsense" and the power of the trade unions and in foreign affairs undo the verdict of 1918, tear off the shackles of Versailles, rebuild a great Army and with its military power restore the country to its place in the sun. (2.6.151)
"These were Hitler's aims too," Shirer writes (2.6.151). There was just one teensy little detail that the conservative classes overlooked. Hitler had every intention of establishing an authoritarian rule, but he had no intention whatsoever of dictating under the thumb of the conservative classes or anyone else.
Quote #6
The President, backed by the Army and the conservatives, had made him Chancellor. His political power, though great, was, however, not complete. It was shared with three sources of authority, which had put him into office and which were outside and, to some extent, distrustful of the National Socialist movement.
Hitler's immediate task, therefore, was to quickly eliminate them from the driver's seat, make his party the exclusive master of the State and then with the power of an authoritarian government and its police carry out the Nazi revolution. (2.7.1-2)
Hitler was not the sort of man to be satisfied with only great power. Until his control over Germany was utterly complete, he continued to use whatever means were necessary to get it. And we mean whatever means necessary.