Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! Please forgive me.

In my normal work as a historian, I do excatly as you mention – you find a snippet with a poor citation and you start using Google Books which is just amazing and see if you can find the original. I also have access to some full-text databases through my university that are subscription only. I don’t know the ones for 20th century Germany so I haven’t really looked there.

The problem is that every citation I’ve found is like the one that you give, but I’ve seen at least four different dates and the context varies. It’s either the day after the Reichstag fire, or the day the Gestapo was formed or whatever, but using my usual methods, I’ve never been able to find anything of the sort.

Anyway, so I should have thanked you for your comment, and now I do. And I feel a bit embarrassed by the misunderstanding so again, please accept my apologies.

I once bought a biography on Albert Einstein just to see if I could find sources for any of the quotes that are attributed to him on the internet. The few quotes I found in the biography had citations like “Letter to ___, 1901″ or whatever. So then I found a book of raw material with those letters in, which I cross referenced to verify some of those quotes.

Now, thanks to Google Books, I can do that to an extent for free on the internet. Which is what I was trying to do with that Hitler quote. That book I posted was literally the only one I could find that actually gave some form citation with a date, so I thought it was worth posting here to point people in a direction.

Sadly, this book like the others I have found has only a vague reference to a “speech to the German nation, 28 February 1933″. This is essentially the same “citation” I’ve seen many times, though commonly the date varies. Furthermore, your quote is in English, so it is obviously not from a primary source.

A true citation would cite the source where the historian found the information. Did the author see an actual film in German or a recording of an actual radio broadcast in German of this speech that he/she accessed at some archive? If so, give the archive call number so that others can verify the source. This is how history is done. If not, did he or she find a source from the period that does quote this, in German and that is contemporaneous with the event (that is, a news report from March 1, 1933)? Then the author must give the publication name, date, publishing information and page number.

No, he or she don’t have that either? Then at the very least I would like to see the author cite the secondary source referenced, giving author, title, publisher info, date, and page reference. This would already not be considered quality history, but it is sometimes done. However in the case of a commonly cited quote of Montaigne, I tracked this down to a misquote in a book by Philippe Ariès, then repeated by Lawrence Stone and then by many others, so we prefer primary sources, but a secondary source, if well-documented, can be used in informal circumstances, though it can’t be considered authoritative.

Since this speech mentioned in that book you cite would have occurred the day after the Reichstag fire, such a speech may well have been made, but what is the source? What is the original? How does the author know it isn’t a bastard translation of the Reichstag Fire decree from that same date? If it is not, where can I find the full text of the speech, in German, from a contemporaneous source, or a serious historian who has seen a recording of the original and excerpted bits.

I’ve seen this date mentioned (and others), but as yet have not been able to find mention of any speech given by Hitler on that day. There was Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat (the Reichspresident’s order for the protection of the people and the state), but the Reichspresident was Hindenberg, not Hitler, and though an oppressive order, it does not contain the language constantly mentioned in these articles comparing Hitler to Bush. That same say, Hindenberg (and signed by Hitler) issued a Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten gegen Verrat am Deutschen Volke und hochverräterische Umtriebe (Reichspresident’s order against the betrayal of the German people), but again I don’t find anything about “evil” (Böse) threatening the “homeland” (Heimat, probably?). A few days later Göring did give a speech titled “Kampf gegen Chaos” (Struggle against Chaos), but the language of the quote is not in that speech either.

So the quest continues… and until then, I will assume this quote is bogus

[Scootle orginally gave a link to a book that attributes this vaguely to an address to the German nation on 28 February 1933 as a hypothesis for further investigation. I misunderstood and thought he was another spammer trying to sell his book in my comments and deleted the link. Sorry Scootle. In any case, the important piece there is the date, since the book itself offered no meaningful citation and I did at least preserve the date, though as I mention above it's only one of a few dates I've seen put forth. Apologies for deleting the link]

‘He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.’ – Thomas Paine

Fine. Those are all good quotes. But you must have entirely missed the point of this article. The point is, these are random quotes with no citation.

You could have just made them up right now. Unless you cite your sources, quotations are worthless.

If those quotes “can be cited” than please cite them.

To be useful, a quote must be traceable to the original source. Anything else hurts the cause. Look at how much amunition the shennangians related to climate change data have given to the climate change deniers.

It is important first and foremost to be transparent and verifiable.

“What we have to fight for is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the creator”

“In actual fact the pacifistic-humane idea is perfectly all right perhaps when the highest type of man has previously conquered and subjected the world to an extent that makes him the sole ruler of this earth… Therefore, first struggle and then perhaps pacifism.”

I’d say its close enough. These ones can be cited.