Adolf Hitler Quotes in Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Bridget von Hammersmark: There have been two recent developments regarding Operation Kino. One, the venue has been changed from the Ritz to a much smaller venue.

Lt. Aldo Raine: Enormous changes at the last minute? That's not very Germatic. Why the hell is Goebbels doin' stuff so damn peculiar?

Bridget von Hammersmark: It probably has something to do with the second development.

Lt. Aldo Raine: Which is?

Bridget von Hammersmark: [sits up] The Führer is attending the premiere.

Adolf Hitler: [cut to Hitler] I've been rethinking my position in regards to your Paris premiere of "Nation's Pride". As the weeks have gone on and the Americans are on the beach, I do find myself thinking more and more about this Private Zoller. This boy has done something tremendous for us. And I'm beginning to think my participation in this event could be meaningful.

Sgt. Donny Donowitz: [cut back to the Basterds] Fuck a duck!

Fredrick Zoller: [shouting to the camera, acting in Nation's Pride] Who wants to send a message to Germany?

[Nation's Pride is interrupted by Shosanna's movie]

Shosanna Dreyfus: I have a message for Germany.

[Hitler and Goebbels watch in shock]

Shosanna Dreyfus: [her image on the screen smirks] That you are all going to die.

Adolf Hitler: [yelling in German] Enough! Stop it!

Joseph Goebbels: [yelling in German] Turn off the projector!

Shosanna Dreyfus: And I want you to look deep into the face of the Jew that is going to do it!

Joseph Goebbels: [in German as the audience begins to shout in protest and anger] I don't know what's going on! That does not belong in my movie!

Shosanna Dreyfus: [her image on the screen smiles] Marcel... burn it down.

Marcel: [standing behind the screen, he smiles] Oui, Shosanna.

Kliest: [in German; subtitled] Mein Führer, do you still wish to see Private Butz?

Adolf Hitler: [in German] Who and what is a "Private Butz"?

Adolf Hitler: [in German] NEIN, NEIN, NEIN, NEIN, NEIN, NEIN!

[turns to his men]

Adolf Hitler: How much more of these Jew swine must I endure? They butcher my men like they were fish bait! I have heard the rumors myself! Soldiers of the Third Reich, who have brought the world to its knees, now pecking and clucking like chickens. Do you know the latest rumor they've conjured up in their fear-induced delirium? The one that beats my boys with a bat. The one they call "the Bear Jew" is a golem!

General Frank: [in German] Mein Führer, that is just soldier's gossip. No one really believes that the Bear Jew is a golem.

Adolf Hitler: Why not? They seem to elude capture like an apparition! They seem to be able to appear and disappear at will. You want to prove they're flesh and blood?

[pounds on table]

Adolf Hitler: THEN BRING THEM TO ME! I will hang them naked, by their heels from the Eiffel Tower! And then throw their bodies into the sewers for the rats of Paris to feast on!

Adolf Hitler: [in German, with subtitles] How did you survive this ordeal?

Pvt. Butz: They let me go.

Lt. Aldo Raine: [cut back to the ditch] Now, when you report what happened here, you can't tell 'em you told us what you told us. They'll shoot ya. But they're gonna wanna know why you so special, we let you live? So, tell 'em we let you live so you could spread the word through the ranks what's gonna happen to every Nazi we find.

Adolf Hitler: [cut back to Hitler's office] You are not to tell anybody anything! Not one word of detail! Your outfit was ambushed and you got away! Not one word more!

Pvt. Butz: Yes, mein fuhrer.

Adolf Hitler: Did they mark you like they did they did the other survivors?

Pvt. Butz: Yes, mein fuhrer.

Lt. Aldo Raine: [cut back to the ditch] Now, say we let you go, and say you survive the war. When you get back home, whatcha gonna do?

[Wicki translates to German]

Pvt. Butz: [in German] I will hug my mother like I've never hugged her before.

Cpl. Wilhelm Wicki: [to Aldo] Says he's gonna hug his momma.

Lt. Aldo Raine: Well, ain't that a real nice boy? Are you going to take off your uniform?

[Wicki translates]

Pvt. Butz: Not only shall I remove it, I intend to burn it.

Cpl. Wilhelm Wicki: Says he's gonna burn it.

Lt. Aldo Raine: Yeah, that's what we thought. We don't like that. You see, we like our Nazis in uniform. That way we can spot 'em just like that. But you take off that uniform, ain't no one ever gonna know you were a Nazi. And that don't sit well with us. So, I'm gonna give you a little something you can't take off.

[cut back to Hitler's office. He moves closer to Butz as Butz removes his cap to show a large swastika-shaped scar on his forehead]

Adolf Hitler: [at the premiere of "Nation's Pride"] Extraordinary, my dear. Simply extraordinary. This is your finest film yet.

Joseph Goebbels: [Goebbels' eyes fill with tears] Thank you, mein Führer. Thank you.

Adolf Hitler: Kliest!

Kliest: Ja, mein Führer?

Adolf Hitler: [in German; subtitled] I have an order I want relayed to all German soldiers stationed in France. The Jew degenerate known as the Bear Jew henceforth is never to be referred to as the Bear Jew again. Did you get that, Kliest?

Kliest: Ja, mein Führer.

Adolf Hitler: That was an order! Steiner's assault was an order! Who do you think you are to dare disobey an order I give? So this is what it has come to! The military has been lying to me. Everybody has been lying to me, even the SS! Our generals are just a bunch of contemptible, disloyal cowards.

General der Infanterie Wilhelm Burgdorf: I can't permit you to insult the soldiers.

Adolf Hitler: They are cowards, traitors and failures!

General der Infanterie Wilhelm Burgdorf: My fuhrer, this is outrageous!

Adolf Hitler: Our generals are the scum of the German people! Not a shred of honour! They call themselves generals. Years at military academy just to learn how to hold a knife and fork! For years, the military has hindered my plans! They've put every kind of obstacle in my way! What I should have done... was liquidate all the high-ranking officers, as Stalin did!

Adolf Hitler: In a war as such there are no civilians.

Adolf Hitler: The war is lost... But if you think that I'll leave Berlin for that, you are sadly mistaken. I'd prefer to put a bullet in my head.

Adjutant SS-Hauptsturmführer Otto Günsche: He is not in the bunker.

Adolf Hitler: What do you mean you can't find Fegelein? Keep searching for him! I want to see Fegelein at once! If he goes AWOL, that's desertion. Treason! Bring me Fegelein!

[slams desk]

Adolf Hitler: Fegelein! Fegelein! Fegelein!

Adolf Hitler: [Screaming after Steiner didn't attack after giving an order] Traitors! I've been betrayed and deceived from the very beginning! What a monstrous betrayal of the German people, but all those traitors will pay. They'll pay with their own blood. They shall drown in their own blood!

Adolf Hitler: I always make mistakes when I'm dictating.

Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel: Even at the risk of repeating myself, the Ninth army must be withdrawn, otherwise it is surrounded and wiped out! We must now...

Adolf Hitler: The Ninth army will not retreat. Tell Busse to fight where he stands.

Generaloberst Alfred Jodl: My Führer, then the Ninth army will be lost.

Adolf Hitler: We will repel the Soviet troops advancing to the North and East, with a relentless and almighty assault.

Generaloberst Alfred Jodl: With what force, my Führer?

Adolf Hitler: Steiner's force will attack from the North and unite with the Ninth army.

General der Infanterie Hans Krebs: The Ninth Army is unable to move North; the enemy army outnumbers us ten to one.

Adolf Hitler: Wenck: he will support them with the Twelfth Army.

Generaloberst Alfred Jodl: But my Führer, the Twelfth Army is heading west to the Elbe.

Adolf Hitler: Then tell the army to turn around!

Generaloberst Alfred Jodl: But we would expose the Western Front!

Adolf Hitler: Are you questioning my orders? I believe I made myself clear!

Magda Goebbels: My Führer, I beg you to leave Berlin! My Führer, please. Don't leave us! What will become of us?

Adolf Hitler: Tomorrow millions of people will curse me, but fate has taken its course.

Adolf Hitler: You see, gentlemen? I'll be proved right. Wenck will come.

[leaves generals]

Adolf Hitler: Wenck will come.

[passes by guards who salute to him]

General der Artillerie Helmuth Weidling: I want to immediately know if it's possible for Wenck to attack or not.

General der Infanterie Hans Krebs: It's unlikely that Wenck's small force can attack the Red Army...

Joseph Goebbels: [interrupts Krebs] How dare you say it's unlikely?

General der Infanterie Hans Krebs: Wenck has nothing to confront the Red Army!

General der Artillerie Helmuth Weidling: Why don't you tell the Führer? Have you all gone crazy?

General der Infanterie Wilhelm Burgdorf: The Führer knows it himself, but he will never surrender, and we won't either! I went through that before, and once is enough!

General der Artillerie Helmuth Weidling: Come on, I have to get out of here.

[leaves with Mohnke]

Adolf Hitler: General von Greim, I appoint you to Commander in Chief of the Air Force and General Field Marshal. A large responsibility rests on your shoulders. You must shake up the entire air force. Many mistakes have been made, so be ruthless. Life never forgives weakness. This so called humanity... is just priests' drivel. Compassion is a primal sin. Compassion for the weak is a betrayal of nature.

Joseph Goebbels: The strongest can only be victorious by eradicating the weak.

Adolf Hitler: I have always obeyed this law of nature by never permitting myself to feel compassion. I have ruthlessly suppressed domestic opposition and brutally crushed the resistance of alien races. It's the only way to deal with it.

[Linge enters with a folder in hand]

Adolf Hitler: Apes, for example, trample every outsider to death. What goes for apes goes even more for human beings.

[Hitler reads the folder]

Adolf Hitler: Himmler, in Lübeck, has made an offer to surrender to the western powers through Count Bernadotte... according to a report by English radio.

[finishes reading]

Adolf Hitler: Himmler... Of all people, Himmler! The truest of the true... This is the worst betrayal of all! Göring, yeah; he was always corrupt, of course. Speer, yeah: an idealistic, unpredictable artist. All the others, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah!

[puts folder down]

Adolf Hitler: But not Himmler. Has he gone crazy?

[stands up]

Adolf Hitler: He claimed authority by saying I was sick, perhaps already dead!

[pause]

Adolf Hitler: Please leave me alone with Lord von Greim and Frau Reitsch.

[Everyone except the following stands up]

Adolf Hitler: Oh, and bring me Fegelein.

Heinz Linge, Kammerdiener: My Führer, we don't know where he is.

Adolf Hitler: But he's Himmler's adjutant. He must be here.

General der Infanterie Wilhelm Burgdorf: We haven't seen him for days.

Adolf Hitler: I want his report at once!

[Everyone leaves, and Goebbels is about to step out]

Adolf Hitler: Please stay, Doctor.

Adolf Hitler: [dictating to secretary] My political statement. Since 1914, when I invested my modest strength in the First World War, which was forced upon the Reich, over 30 years have passed. In those 3 decades, all my thoughts, actions and my life were dictated by my love for and loyalty to the German people. Centuries will pass, but from the ruins of our cities and cultural monuments our hatred will be renewed for those who are responsible, the people to whom we owe all this: The international Jewry and its supporters.

Adolf Hitler: Burgdorf, what's going on? Where's the firing coming from?

General der Infanterie Wilhelm Burgdorf: First of all, Happy Birthday, my Führer. My Führer, the city of Berlin is under artillery fire; grenades have hit near the Brandenburg gate, Reichstag, and the Friedrichstrasse station.

Adolf Hitler: Where is the firing coming from?

General der Infanterie Wilhelm Burgdorf: My Führer, we don't know, but I'm talking with Koller.

Adolf Hitler: Koller! Let me speak to Koller.

[takes phone]

Adolf Hitler: Koller. Do you know that Berlin is under artillery fire?

General der Flieger Karl Koller: No.

Adolf Hitler: Can't you hear the shooting?

General der Flieger Karl Koller: No, I'm in Wildpark Werder.

Adolf Hitler: The city is chaotic. The Russians have captured a railway bridge over the Oder.

General der Flieger Karl Koller: The enemy has no railway artillery in the Oder.

[takes paper from soldier]

General der Flieger Karl Koller: It's not long-ranged artillery; the divisional headquarters of the Flak and Zoo-Bunker report that the shells are ten to twelve calibers. The Russians went into position in Marzahn.

Adolf Hitler: That's only twelve miles from the city center. Are the Russians really this close? The Lufwaffe leadership must be hanged immediately!

[hangs up]

Adolf Hitler: This is outrageous. Outrageous! The Russians are twelve miles from the city center, and nobody told me anything. I had to ask.

General der Infanterie Hans Krebs: My Führer, it's probably long-range artillery, after all. You mentioned a railway bridge over the Oder.

Adolf Hitler: Nonsense.

Martin Bormann: [reading folder in hand] My Führer, following your decision to stay in Berlin, do I have your approval as Vice Chancellor to immediately take charge of the entire Reich with the necessary power and authority? If I receive no answer by 10 p.m., I will assume that you have been incapacitated. I will serve the well-being of our people and fatherland.

[closes folder and puts it down]

Martin Bormann: He's betraying Germany... and you!

Walter Hewel: Göring's concern isn't unjustified. If our communication system breaks down, which could happen at any time, we'd be cut off from the world; we could no longer pass on orders.

Joseph Goebbels: I see it differently. Göring wants to seize power. I never trusted that mob he gathered at Obersalzberg; it stinks of a coup.

Adolf Hitler: That failure. That sponger... A parvenu! A lazybones!

[Albert Speer returns while Hitler rants offscreen]

Adolf Hitler: How dare he declare me unable to act? Tomorrow he might declare me dead!

Albert Speer: Hello, Frau Junge.

Traudl Junge: Herr Speer. How did you get into Berlin?

Albert Speer: It wasn't easy, but I must speak with the Führer.

Heinz Linge, Kammerdiener: I'd wait here if I were you.

Adolf Hitler: The Luftwaffe... What did he do with it? That was reason enough to execute him! That morphine addict... helped to corrupt this country! And now this...

[Hewel looks down in disappointment]

Adolf Hitler: He betrayed me of all people! Me of all people!

[pause]

Adolf Hitler: I want Göring to be deprived of power and removed from office. If I don't survive the war, that man is to be executed at once.

General der Artillerie Helmuth Weidling: My Führer, as a soldier I suggest we try to break through the encirclement. During the fight for Berlin we've already lost 15-20,000 of the younger officers.

Adolf Hitler: But that's what young men are for.

Adolf Hitler: [in a furious tirade upon hearing of Himmler's attempt to surrender] Has he gone crazy?

General der Infanterie Hans Krebs: The enemy has broken through along a wide front. They've taken Zossen to the south, and are advancing to Stahnsdorf. They're now on the northern outskirts between Frohnau and Pankow. They've reached Lichtenberg, Mahlsdorf and Karlshorst to the east.

Adolf Hitler: Steiner's assault will bring it under control.

General der Infanterie Hans Krebs: My fuhrer, Steiner...

Generaloberst Alfred Jodl: Steiner couldn't mobilize enough men. He was unable to carry out the assault.

Adolf Hitler: [Removes glasses] These men will stay here: Kietel, Jodl, Krebs and Burgdorf.

Adolf Hitler: Where's Goering?

Staff Member: He's on his way.

Adolf Hitler: Well, when you are fat you don't move so fast.

[laughter]

Adolf Hitler: It's good fortune for the government that the masses don't think. Otherwise, human society as we know it might cease to exist.

[Hitler has been informed that there will be no Steiner attack]

Adolf Hitler: An order of mine has not been executed... that is what we have come to.

[voice rising]

Adolf Hitler: An order of mine has not been executed - you LIED to me! I've been betrayed! Everyone has betrayed me, even the SS! Traitors and cowards, every one of you! You, the cheats of the General Staff!

General Jodl: I must insist, but there are no grounds on such an accusation!

Adolf Hitler: You spent years in military academies, and all you've learned is how to hold a knife and fork. But you understand nothing!

[beats his fist on the table]

Adolf Hitler: NOTHING... about the job of soldiering! I didn't go to a military academy, but I read Clausewitz and Moltke! I didn't even go to a cadet school, but single handed, I conquered Europe and half of Russia! And now you dare to disobey? Cowards! Traitors and cowards!

[stamps his feet]

Adolf Hitler: You'll be the ruin of me, and the ruin of the German people!

Adolf Hitler: They lose me right after the bunker scene.

Adolf Hitler: Even Poland still exists!

Adolf Hitler: Do I look like a criminal?

Kioskbesitzer: You look like Adolf Hitler.

Adolf Hitler: Exactly.

Fabian Sawatzki: It's you. You're him.

Adolf Hitler: I never claimed to be anything else. History repeats itself. I guess it's my fate to have to part with my dearest companions.

Fabian Sawatzki: That way.

Fabian Sawatzki: Yes history repeats itself. You're fooling people with your propaganda.

Adolf Hitler: Oh, Sawatski. In 1933, people were not fooled by propaganda. They elected a leader who openly disclosed his plans in great clarity. The Germans elected me.

Random Man: You have to learn from the past. Something like that should never be repeated.

Adolf Hitler: It won't be repeated. This time we're going to do this right.

Adolf Hitler: [about current TV shows] I'm glad that Goebbels doesn't see this anymore.

Adolf Hitler: Here. Write depressing stuff in this as if the little girl wrote it. We'll sell it after the war and make millions.

Adolf Hitler: Boba Fett!

Adolf Hitler: Do you recognize my voice?

Major Otto Ernst Remer: Yes, my fuhrer.

Adolf Hitler: The Valkyrie; handmaidens of the gods, choosing who will live and who will die, sparing the most heroic from an agonizing death. One cannot understand National Socialism if one does not understand Wagner.

Adolf Hitler: To understand National Socialism, you must understand Wagner.

Max Rothman: So you're an anti-Semite.

Adolf Hitler: On the contrary, I admire the Jews.

Max Rothman: Really?

Adolf Hitler: Yes, they're very intelligent people.

Max Rothman: Well, there are intelligent ones and not so intelligent ones...

Adolf Hitler: No, no, no, they're all intelligent because they guard the purity of their blood.

Max Rothman: The what?

Adolf Hitler: The purity of the blood. Because the secret of the Jews lies in their pure Jewish blood. That's why they're the mightiest counterpart to the Aryan race.

Max Rothman: What's the secret?

Adolf Hitler: Is your father Jewish?

Max Rothman: Yes, he is.

Adolf Hitler: Mother?

Max Rothman: Why not ask whether she's a German? Isn't that a far more relevant question?

Adolf Hitler: Mensch! Of course your mom's Jewish.

Max Rothman: You're an awfully hard man to like, Hitler, but I'm gonna try, because if I've learned anything over the past four years, it's that we all shit the same, scream the same, and die the same.

Adolf Hitler: There's no need for vulgarity, Rothman.

Max Rothman: I know where you've been and God knows we've all been turned into assholes there. Now listen to me well: you may not think you're an anti-Semite, but in fact you are.

Adolf Hitler: I'm not.

Max Rothman: But in this, as in all things, there's a reason. Your own hero Nietzsche said anti-Semitism is the ideology of those who feel cheated.

Adolf Hitler: How do you know Nietzsche's my hero?

Max Rothman: Because you've obviously skimmed his ideas.

Adolf Hitler: Well, I don't feel cheated.

Max Rothman: Excellent. Then stop acting like it.

Adolf Hitler: Are you gonna smoke another cigarette? You just put one out.

Max Rothman: Exactly. But now where is my instinct, my secret instinct for self-preservation, I ask you? I've heard these theories all my life: blood science, eugenics; it's rubbish. It's complete nonsense. It's kitsch. Put it out of your mind. It's not modern. It's not scientific. It will hold you back as an artist.

Max Rothman: Listen, do you wanna meet some girls?

Adolf Hitler: Girls?

Max Rothman: Yes, Hitler, girls! You know, those brilliant creatures who make you feel artistic without doing a stitch of work? Come on.

Adolf Hitler: Listen Rothman, I've lost FOUR YEARS!

Max Rothman: Yes, we've *all* lost four years. Some of us a little more. Do you want a show?

Adolf Hitler: I'd kill for you if you gave me a show!

Max Rothman: Don't kill for me, please. Just do what you do. Be anxious, be nervous, *tell* me you're the unknown soldier come back to haunt us - with your brush, Hitler! With your brush - can you do that? 'Cause that's what you've got to do. You've got to take all this pent-up stuff you're quivering with, and you've got to hurl it onto the canvas. It doesn't have to be good and it doesn't have to be beautiful, it just has to be true.

[pause]

Max Rothman: And even if it's a lie, make it an interesting lie, and I'll put it up. I swear.

Adolf Hitler: You do think I'm talented, don't you?

Max Rothman: I think there's definitely *something* rustling behind your curtain, yes.

Adolf Hitler: Politics is the new art!

Adolf Hitler: I am the new avant garde!

Adolf Hitler: "Would you die for the mother in law land?"! You're a menace, Rothman.

Max Rothman: I've heard these theories all my life: blood science, eugenics; it's rubbish. It's complete nonsense. It's kitsch. Put it out of your mind. It's not modern. It's not scientific. It will hold you back as an artist. Speaking of which, how's your work coming along? I mean, why are you making those appalling speeches for the army?

Adolf Hitler: I'm just keeping my hand in it.

Max Rothman: Keeping your hand in what?

Adolf Hitler: The army is paying my expenses.

Max Rothman: Ah, so you don't actually believe that rubbish.

Adolf Hitler: Don't tell me you're happy with the peace.

Esther: Hello, Max.

Max Rothman: Hello, Esther. How are you, sweetheart?

[Max stands up, kisses Esther on both cheeks, and sits back down]

Max Rothman: I think the peace is a travesty, but I don't think I can be bothered to pick up the German banner from the mud with my left arm. I gave at the office, you know.

[discussing Max's play]

Adolf Hitler: Rothman.

Max Rothman: What did you think? The other night? My disaster? Did it remind you of Ypres? Or was it just rubbish?

Art patron/friend of Max's: Yes, what did you think?

Adolf Hitler: It didn't remind me of Ypres

Max Rothman: No? What did it remind you of, if anything?

Adolf Hitler: It reminded me perhaps - - perhaps, of a particularly disgusting and depraved dream of Ypres.

Max Rothman: [sardonically] As opposed to the happy, glorious one.

Adolf Hitler: [sincerely] Exactly. Exactly! Which your piece implies is ipso facto impossible.

Max Rothman: Would you like a cigarette?

Adolf Hitler: They give you cancer of the lung.

Max Rothman: Are you a doctor?

[first lines]

Adolf Hitler: Before us lies Germany, within us marches Germany, and after us comes Germany!

Adolf Hitler: The original footage, the original... reality, the truth, is now lost to them forever. The future führers must understand, no matter how carefully you plan or execute your production, you can never get it exactly right. But with editing... a Black Magic... I have edited the imagination of people not yet born.

[last lines]

Adolf Hitler: All this madness... the destruction... the human suffering... I, too, was trapped in the whirlwind we created - an empty mirror filled with hate. I expected God to reach down and stop me... but He never did. Please... please say something. Please help me.

Adolf Hitler: Mach schnell! Mach schnell!

Adolf Hitler: Did you know that last year more people died from cigarette smoking than from bombings?

Brendan Byers III: What will you do about that, Führer?

Adolf Hitler: Increase the bombings!

Klaus Abard: My führer, I can explain. That young man over there

[points at a young SS officer]

Klaus Abard: is me.

Adolf Hitler: Ah-ha.