“Hindenburg died at nine o’clock. A little like the death of Franz Joseph. For a long time no more than a name and yet a last counterweight, which now falls away. The people may see it like that too. Only yesterday evening Schmidt, the tax official up in Dolzschen, spoke in a similar vein (the meaning was the same). He said: ‘After all Hitler had to deliver a report to him.’ I: ‘Rarely and only for show, in reality Hitler had been ruling alone for a long time.’ He: ‘That certainly — but the old gentleman was still there nevertheless.’ And his wife: ‘Surely he cannot be both, President and Chancellor. Two offices in one hand?’ Quite simple, Aryan, petit bourgeois people. And the man, depressed: He had enough with his wound, his long imprisonment in Russia, he doesn’t want another war. But all this in a whisper, depressed, fearful, helpless. That is probably the voice of the German people.”
— Aug. 2, 1934
