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Month: September 2015

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Asia Europe Mongols Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 20

the-real-hitler

 

25th September 1941, midday

The perpetual menace of Asia—
A living wall—Justifiable claims.
 
 
Asia, what a disquieting reservoir of men! The safety of Europe will not be assured until we have driven Asia back behind the Urals. No organised Russian State must be allowed to exist west of that line. They are brutes, and neither Bolshevism nor Tsarism makes any difference—they are brutes in a state of nature. The danger would be still greater if this space were to be Mongolised. Suddenly a wave comes foaming down from Asia and surprises a Europe benumbed by civilisation and deceived by the illusion of collective security!

Since there is no natural protection against such a flood, we must meet it with a living wall. A permanent state of war on the Eastern front will help to form a sound race of men, and will prevent us from relapsing into the softness of a Europe thrown back upon itself.

The points we have reached are dotted along areas that have retained the memory of Germanic expansion. We’ve been before at the Iron Gates, at Belgrade, in the Russian space.

As regards myself, I shall never live to see it, but one day my successors must be in a position to bring out from a drawer every historical date that justifies a German claim.

Categories
Art Catholic religious orders Christian art My pinacoteca

Benedict, Maurus, Placidius

Fra Filippo Lippi
Saint Benedict Orders Saint Maurus
to the Rescue of Saint Placidius ~ 1445-50
National Gallery of Art

Categories
1st World War 2nd World War Autobiography Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 21

the-real-hitler

 

Night of 25th-26th September 1941

Preservation of the Germanic peoples.
 
 

The revelation that her encounter with her first man is for a young woman, can be compared with the revelation that a soldier knows when he faces war for the first time. In a few days, a youth becomes a man. If I weren’t myself hardened by this experience, I would have been incapable of undertaking this Cyclopean task which the building of an Empire means for a single man.

It was with feelings of pure idealism that I set out for the front in 1914. Then I saw men falling around me in thousands. Thus I learnt that life is a cruel struggle, and has no other object but the preservation of the species. The individual can disappear, provided there are other men to replace him.

I suppose that some people are clutching their heads with both hands to find an answer to this question: “How can the Fuehrer destroy a city like St. Petersburg?” Plainly I belong by nature to quite another species. I would prefer not to see anyone suffer, not to do harm to anyone. But when I realise that the species is in danger, then in my case sentiment gives way to the coldest reason. I become uniquely aware of the sacrifices that the future will demand, to make up for the sacrifices that one hesitates to allow to-day.

Categories
Christian art Matthias Grünewald My pinacoteca

The Small Crucifixion

Matthias Grunewald
The Small Crucifixion ~ 1511-1520
National Gallery of Art

Categories
Autobiography Pedagogy Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 22

the-real-hitler

 

Night of 27th-28th September 1941

Misery—Social discrimination
—Organisation of study.
 
 
If my parents had been sufficiently well-to-do to send me to a School of Art, I should not have made the acquaintance of poverty, as I did. Whoever lives outside poverty cannot really become aware of it, unless by over-throwing a wall. The years of experience I owe to poverty—a poverty that I knew in my own flesh—are a blessing for the German nation.

We must pay attention to two things: 1. That all gifted adolescents are educated at the State’s expense. 2. That no door is closed to them.

Since I hadn’t been able to finish my secondary studies, an officer’s career would have been closed to me, even if by working I had learnt more about it than is proper for a boy who has matriculated to know. Only an officer could win the Pour le Mérite. And at that, it was quite exceptional for an officer of middle-class origin to receive it.

In that closed society, every man existed only by virtue of his origin. The man who lacked this origin, and university degrees into the bargain, could not dream of becoming a Minister, for example, except by the short-cut of Social Democracy.

The view that suppression of these discriminations would be harmful to authority proved to be without foundation. A competent man always has the authority he needs. A man who is not superior by his talent invariably lacks authority, whatever his job may be.

Categories
Art Christian art My pinacoteca

Beheading of St Cosmas and St Damian

The-Beheading-Of-Sait-Cosmas-And-Saint-Damian-By-Fra-Angelico

Fra Angelico
Beheading of St Cosmas and St Damian ~ 1439-42
Musée du Louvre

Categories
England Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 23

the-real-hitler

28th September 1941, midday

No Englishman ever leaves his country without knowing what he should reply to questions that might be asked him on thorny topics.

They are an admirably trained people. They worked for three hundred years to assure themselves the domination of the world for two centuries.

The reason why they’ve kept it so long is that they were not interested in washing the dirty linen of their subject peoples.

Categories
Art Christian art Matthias Grünewald My pinacoteca

Isenheim Altarpiece (detail)

Matthias Grünewald
Isenheim Altarpiece ~ 1512-1516
Unterlinden Museum at Colmar

Categories
1st World War England Huns Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 24

the-real-hitler

 

Night of 9th October 1941

Germany and the Asiatic hordes—
Balance of power—A Pyrrhic victory.
 
 
We Germans are alone responsible that the tide of Huns, Avars and Magyars was halted in Central Europe. We were already a great empire when the English were only beginning to build up their maritime power. If we hadn’t been such fools as to tear each other to pieces in order to find out whether we should consume God in the forms of bread and wine, or of bread only, England would never have been able to have her say concerning the balance of power on the Continent.

England is never a danger except when she can oppose a power who threatens her supremacy with other powers whom she induces to play her game. For England, the First World War was a Pyrrhic victory. To maintain their empire, they need a strong continental power at their side. Only Germany can be this power.

Categories
2nd World War Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 25

the-real-hitler

 

10th October 1941, midday

Fighting for open spaces—The flow back from West to East—Christianity and natural selection.
 
 
War has returned to its primitive form. The war of people against people is giving place to another war—a war for the possession of the great spaces.

Originally war was nothing but a struggle for pasture-grounds. To-day war is nothing but a struggle for the riches of nature. By virtue of an inherent law, these riches belong to him who conquers them. The great migrations set out from the East. With us begins the ebb, from West to East. That’s in accordance with the laws of nature. By means of the struggle, the élites are continually renewed. The law of selection justifies this incessant struggle, by allowing the survival of the fittest.

Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure.