[Quote:]

If a movement wins political power, it can do those positive things it wants to do. Only then does it have the power to protect its accomplishments. At the moment a movement or party wins control of the state, its worldview becomes the state and its party becomes the nation. The nation is not the 60 million people who live in it. That is a confused mixture. One says yea, the other nay. That is not a nation. A nation is characterized by consciousness. Instinct alone is not enough. Only when I am aware that I am a member of the nation, when I am consciously a German, do I belong to the German people. The Great Elector did not say: “Think and remember that you are a German.” Rather, he said: “Consider well that you are a German.” Consideration is at the level of consciousness. Such consciousness belongs to the entire nation. Adolf Hitler rightly answered the court in Munich in this way when he was asked: “How could you think of establishing a dictatorship over 60 million with such a tiny minority?” His reply: “If an entire nation has become cowardly, and there are only a thousand left who want something great, and who have to power to transform the state, then these thousand people are the nation.” If the others let a minority conquer the state, then they must also accept the fact that we will establish a dictatorship.

Joseph Goebbels, 9 january 1928