Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 120

23rd April 1942, midday

The history of Germany starts with Arminius.

The British have overestimated the power of their prestige during the last few decades; and now they are reaping the rewards of their weakness and paying the penalty for failing to remain faithful to those wise principles which characterised the epoch of their greatest glory. Just as the Americans give the impression of being rather vulgar upstarts when they start boasting about their history, so the British look like puffed-up poodles when, in the course of referring to the three hundred years during which they dominated the world, they look disdainfully at the German Reich with its thousand years of living history.

Our history goes back to the days of Arminius and King Theodoric, and among the German Kaisers there have been men of the most outstanding quality; in them they bore the germ of German unity.

This fact is too often forgotten, because since the fifteenth century it is only in Austria that the history of ancient Germania has been taught.

In other places this history has been sacrificed for the sake of the histories of the various dynasties which fought each other for the possession of our land. It is the duty of our historians to teach our people the story of the German Kaisers, to make the drama of their lives come alive again for us, and above all to portray the greatness of their struggle against Popery.