“The extravagant propaganda for a ‘Yes’ vote. One very commercial vehicle, post office van, mailman’s bicycle, on every house and shopwindow, on broad banners, which are stretched across the street — quotations from Hitler are everywhere and always ‘Yes’ for peace! It is the most monstrous of hypocrisies. Demonstrations and chanting into the night, loudspeakers on the streets, vehicles (with wireless apparatus playing music mounted on top), both cars and trams.<\/p>\n
Yesterday from one until two the ‘festive hour.’ ‘During the 13th hour Adolf Hitler will come to the workers.’ The language of the Gospels exactly. The Redeemer comes to the poor. And on top of that the American show style. The howl of sirens, the minute’s silence.<\/p>\n
I was upstairs with the Dembers. In the little room sat Frau Dember, doing needlework, Emita, an elderly Wendish children’s nurse and part-time maid, Frau Mark and myself. From the engine shop at Siemensstadt. For several minutes one heard the whistling, squealing, hammering, then the siren and the humming of the switched-off wheels. A very skillful, calmly delivered evocation of the atmosphere by Goebbels, then more than forty minutes of Hitler. A mostly hoarse, strained, agitated voice, long passages in the whining tone of the sectarian preacher. Content: I know no intellectuals, bourgeois, proletarians — only the people.<\/p>\n
Why have millions of my opponents remained in the country? The emigres are ‘scoundrels’ like the Rasser brothers. And a couple of hundred thousand rootless internationalists — interruption: “Jews!” — want to set nations of millions at one another’s throats. I want only peace, I have risen from the common people, I want nothing for myself, I have power for another three and half years and need no title. You should say yes for your own sake. Etc., in no proper order, impassioned; every sentence mendacious, but I almost believe: unconsciously mendacious. The man is a blinkered fanatic.”<\/p>\n
— Nov. 11, 1933<\/i><\/p>\n