The Best Bruno Ganz Quotes

Magda: My Führer, I beg you to leave Berlin! My Führer, please. Don't leave us! What will become of us?
Adolf: Tomorrow millions of people will curse me, but fate has taken its course.

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

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

Adolf: [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!

General: 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: But that's what young men are for.

Adolf: 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.

Martin: [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: He's betraying Germany... and you!
Walter: 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: I see it differently. Göring wants to seize power. I never trusted that mob he gathered at Obersalzberg; it stinks of a coup.
Adolf: That failure. That sponger... A parvenu! A lazybones!
[Albert Speer returns while Hitler rants offscreen]
Adolf: How dare he declare me unable to act? Tomorrow he might declare me dead!
Albert: Hello, Frau Junge.
Traudl: Herr Speer. How did you get into Berlin?
Albert: It wasn't easy, but I must speak with the Führer.
Heinz: I'd wait here if I were you.
Adolf: 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: He betrayed me of all people! Me of all people!
[pause]
Adolf: 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.

Adolf: 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: The strongest can only be victorious by eradicating the weak.
Adolf: 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: Apes, for example, trample every outsider to death. What goes for apes goes even more for human beings.
[Hitler reads the folder]
Adolf: 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: 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: But not Himmler. Has he gone crazy?
[stands up]
Adolf: He claimed authority by saying I was sick, perhaps already dead!
[pause]
Adolf: Please leave me alone with Lord von Greim and Frau Reitsch.
[Everyone except the following stands up]
Adolf: Oh, and bring me Fegelein.
Heinz: My Führer, we don't know where he is.
Adolf: But he's Himmler's adjutant. He must be here.
General: We haven't seen him for days.
Adolf: I want his report at once!
[Everyone leaves, and Goebbels is about to step out]
Adolf: Please stay, Doctor.

Adolf: 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: I can't permit you to insult the soldiers.
Adolf: They are cowards, traitors and failures!
General: My fuhrer, this is outrageous!
Adolf: 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!

Professor: Societies think they operate by something called morality, but they don't. They operate by something called law.
Professor: 8000 people worked at Auschwitz. Precisely 19 have been convicted, and only 6 of murder.
Professor: The question is never "Was it wrong", but "Was it legal". And not by our laws, no. By the laws at the time.

Adjutant: He is not in the bunker.
Adolf: 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: Fegelein! Fegelein! Fegelein!

Adolf: In a war like this there are no civilians.

Adolf: Burgdorf, what's going on? Where's the firing coming from?
General: 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: Where is the firing coming from?
General: My Führer, we don't know, but I'm talking with Koller.
Adolf: Koller! Let me speak to Koller.
[takes phone]
Adolf: Koller. Do you know that Berlin is under artillery fire?
General: No.
Adolf: Can't you hear the shooting?
General: No, I'm in Wildpark Werder.
Adolf: The city is chaotic. The Russians have captured a railway bridge over the Oder.
General: The enemy has no railway artillery in the Oder.
[takes paper from soldier]
General: 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: 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: This is outrageous. Outrageous! The Russians are twelve miles from the city center, and nobody told me anything. I had to ask.
General: My Führer, it's probably long-range artillery, after all. You mentioned a railway bridge over the Oder.
Adolf: Nonsense.

General: 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: Steiner's assault will bring it under control.
General: My fuhrer, Steiner...
Generaloberst: Steiner couldn't mobilize enough men. He was unable to carry out the assault.
Adolf: [Removes glasses] These men will stay here: Kietel, Jodl, Krebs and Burgdorf.

Professor: You have been skipping seminars.
Michael: I have a piece of information, concerning one of the defendants. Something they do not admitting.
Professor: What information? You don't need to tell me. It's perfectly clear you have a moral obligation to disclose it to the court.
Michael: It happens this information is favorable to the defendant. It can help her case. It may even affect the outcome, certainly the sentencing.
Professor: So?
Michael: There's a problem. The defendant herself is determined to keep this information secret.
Professor: What are her reasons?
Michael: Because she's ashamed.
Professor: Ashamed of what? Have you spoken to her?
Michael: Of course not.
Professor: Why "of course not"?
Michael: I can't. I can't do that. I can't talk to her.
Professor: What we feel isn't important. It's utterly unimportant. The only question is what we do. If people like you don't learn from what happened to people like me, then what the hell is the point of anything?

Adolf: You see, gentlemen? I'll be proved right. Wenck will come.
[leaves generals]
Adolf: Wenck will come.
[passes by guards who salute to him]
General: I want to immediately know if it's possible for Wenck to attack or not.
General: It's unlikely that Wenck's small force can attack the Red Army...
Joseph: [interrupts Krebs] How dare you say it's unlikely?
General: Wenck has nothing to confront the Red Army!
General: Why don't you tell the Führer? Have you all gone crazy?
General: 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: Come on, I have to get out of here.
[leaves with Mohnke]

Generalfeldmarschall: Even at the risk of repeating myself, the Ninth army must be withdrawn, otherwise it is surrounded and wiped out! We must now...
Adolf: The Ninth army will not retreat. Tell Busse to fight where he stands.
Generaloberst: My Führer, then the Ninth army will be lost.
Adolf: We will repel the Soviet troops advancing to the North and East, with a relentless and almighty assault.
Generaloberst: With what force, my Führer?
Adolf: Steiner's force will attack from the North and unite with the Ninth army.
General: The Ninth Army is unable to move North; the enemy army outnumbers us ten to one.
Adolf: Wenck: he will support them with the Twelfth Army.
Generaloberst: But my Führer, the Twelfth Army is heading west to the Elbe.
Adolf: Then tell the army to turn around!
Generaloberst: But we would expose the Western Front!
Adolf: Are you questioning my orders? I believe I made myself clear!

Adolf: [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.