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Category: Table talks (commercial translation)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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1st World War 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.

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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.

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Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 26

the-real-hitler

 

13th October 1941, midday

Europe will gain in importance, of herself. Europe, and no longer America, will be the country of boundless possibilities.

If the Americans are intelligent, they’ll realise how much it will be to their interest to take part in this work.

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Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 27

the-real-hitler

 

13th October 1941

I’ve been wondering lately whether it wouldn’t be best to collect the men responsible for the control of the economics of the following countries: Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Sweden and Finland.

We’d give them a notion of the vistas that present themselves nowadays. The majority of them are not at all aware of the immense field that opens up before us.

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Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 28

the-real-hitler

13th October 1941, night

A war commander must have imagination and foresight. So it’s not extraordinary that our people is at once a people of soldiers and of artists.

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Christendom Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 29

the-real-hitler

 

14th October 1941, midday

SPECIAL GUEST: REICHSFUEHRER HIMMLER

The Churches—Difficulty of compromising with a lie—No truck with religion for the Party—Antagonism of dogma and science— Let Christianity die slowly—The metaphysical needs of the soul—No State religion—Freedom of belief.
 
 
Being weighed down by a superstitious past, men are afraid of things that can’t, or can’t yet, be explained—that is to say, of the unknown. If anyone has needs of a metaphysical nature, I can’t satisfy them with the Party’s programme. Time will go by until the moment when science can answer all the questions.

So it’s not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the Churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. A slow death has something comforting about it. The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble. Christianity, of course, has reached the peak of absurdity in this respect. And that’s why one day its structure will collapse.

But one must continue to pay attention to another aspect of the problem. It’s possible to satisfy the needs of the inner life by an intimate communion with nature, or by knowledge of the past. Only a minority, however, at the present stage of the mind’s development, can feel the respect inspired by the unknown, and thus satisfy the metaphysical needs of the soul.

The average human being has the same needs, but can satisfy them only by elementary means. That’s particularly true of women, as also of peasants who impotently watch the destruction of their crops. The person whose life tends to simplification is thirsty for belief, and he dimly clings to it with all his strength.

Nobody has the right to deprive simple people of their childish certainties until they’ve acquired others that are more reasonable. Indeed, it’s most important that the higher belief should be well established in them before the lower belief has been removed. We must finally achieve this.

the_wagner_god_wotan_by_andrekosslickIt seems to me that nothing would be more foolish than to re-establish the worship of Wotan. Our old mythology had ceased to be viable when Christianity implanted itself. Nothing dies unless it is moribund. At that period the ancient world was divided between the systems of philosophy and the worship of idols. It’s not desirable that the whole of humanity should be stultified—and the only way of getting rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little.

A movement like ours mustn’t let itself be drawn into meta-physical digressions. It must stick to the spirit of exact science. It’s not the Party’s function to be a counterfeit for religion.

If, in the course of a thousand or two thousand years, science arrives at the necessity of renewing its points of view, that will not mean that science is a liar. Science cannot lie, for it’s always striving, according to the momentary state of knowledge, to deduce what is true. When it makes a mistake, it does so in good faith. It’s Christianity that’s the liar. It’s in perpetual conflict with itself.

One may ask whether the disappearance of Christianity would entail the disappearance of belief in God. That’s not to be desired. The notion of divinity gives most men the opportunity to concretise the feeling they have of supernatural realities. Why should we destroy this wonderful power they have of incarnating the feeling for the divine that is within them?

The man who lives in communion with nature necessarily finds himself in opposition to the Churches. And that’s why they’re heading for ruin—for science is bound to win. I especially wouldn’t want our movement to acquire a religious character and institute a form of worship. It would be appalling for me, and I would wish I’d never lived, if I were to end up in the skin of a Buddha!

I envisage the future, therefore, as follows: First of all, to each man his private creed. Superstition shall not lose its rights. The Party is sheltered from the danger of competing with the religions. These latter must simply be forbidden from interfering in future with temporal matters. From the tenderest age, education will be imparted in such a way that each child will know all that is important to the maintenance of the State. As for the men close to me, who, like me, have escaped from the clutches of dogma, I’ve no reason to fear that the Church will get its hooks on them.

We’ll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad teachings in conflict with the interests of the State. We shall continue to preach the doctrine of National Socialism, and the young will no longer be taught anything but the truth.

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Table talks (commercial translation)

Uncle Adolf’s table talk, 30

the-real-hitler

 

15th October 1941, evening

Remedies against inflation—The example of Frederick the Great—The economists make a mess of everything.
 
 
In 1933, the Reich had eighty-three million marks’ worth of foreign currency. The day after the seizure of power, I was called upon to deliver immediately sixty-four millions. I pleaded that I knew nothing about the whole business, and asked time to reflect.

At that point, one must intervene. Even to Schacht, I had to begin by explaining this elementary truth: that the essential cause of the stability of our currency was to be sought for in our concentration camps. The currency remains stable when the speculators are put under lock and key. I also had to make Schacht understand that excess profits must be removed from economic circulation.

I do not entertain the illusion that I can pay for everything out of my available funds. Simply, I’ve read a lot, and I’ve known how to profit by the experience of events in the past. Frederick the Great, already, had gradually withdrawn his devaluated thalers from circulation, and had thus re-established the value of his currency.

All these things are simple and natural. The only thing is, one mustn’t let the Jew stick his nose in. The basis of Jewish commercial policy is to make matters incomprehensible for a normal brain. People go into ecstasies of confidence before the science of the great economists. Anyone who doesn’t understand is taxed with ignorance! At bottom, the only object of all these notions is to throw everything into confusion.

The very simple ideas that happen to be mine have nowadays penetrated into the flesh and blood of millions. Only the professors don’t understand that the value of money depends on the goods behind that money.

One day I received some workers in the great hall at Obersalzberg, to give them an informal lecture on money. The good chaps understood me very well, and rewarded me with a storm of applause.

To give people money is solely a problem of making paper. The whole question is to know whether the workers are producing goods to match the paper that’s made. If work does not increase, so that production remains at the same level, the extra money they get won’t enable them to buy more things than they bought before with less money.

Obviously, that theory couldn’t have provided the material for a learned dissertation. For a distinguished economist, the thing is, no matter what you’re talking about, to pour out ideas in complicated meanderings and to use terms of Sibylline incomprehensibility.