SPECIAL GUEST: ADMIRAL FRICKE
The Bavarians and the Navy—Fish as food—Meat-eaters and vegetarians—Vegetarian atavism—Alcohol and smoking.
Of all the areas of the Reich, it’s Bavaria that used proportionally to have the greatest number of seamen. The smallest bookshop in Munich used to display books about the Navy. The chief publisher of works on the Navy had his headquarters in Munich—I mean J. F. Lehmann.
Germany consumes, yearly, an average of twelve kilograms of fish per head. In Japan the average is from fifty to sixty kilos. We still have leeway to make up! To encourage the consumption of fish is above all a matter of organization and presentation, for it’s essentially a perishable commodity. Before the first World War, it was incomparably easier to find fish in Munich than in Vienna, for example. It seems that since then conditions in Austria have much improved.
It’s very difficult to persuade a cannibal not to eat human flesh. According to his ideas, it’s a law of nature.
Hitler turns towards Admiral Fricke:
Above all, don’t go believing that I’ll issue a decree forbidding the Navy to eat meat! Supposing the prohibition of meat had been an article of faith for National Socialism, it’s certain our movement wouldn’t have succeeded. We would at once have been asked the question: “Then why was the leg of the calf created?” At present, the base of our diet is the potato—and yet only 1 percent of the soil in Germany is devoted to growing the potato. If it was 3 percent, we’d have more to eat than is needed. Pasturages cover 37 percent of the surface of our country. So it’s not man who eats grass, it’s his cattle. Amongst the animals, those who are carnivores put up performances much inferior to those of the herbivores. A lion’s in no shape to run for a quarter of an hour—the elephant can run for eight hours! The monkeys, our ancestors of prehistoric times, are strictly vegetarian. Japanese wrestlers, who are amongst the strongest men in the world, feed exclusively on vegetables. The same’s true of the Turkish porter, who can move a piano by himself. At the time when I ate meat, I used to sweat a lot. I used to drink four pots of beer and six bottles of water during a meeting, and I’d succeed in losing nine pounds! When I became a vegetarian, a mouthful of water from time to time was enough. When you offer a child the choice of a piece of meat, an apple or a cake, it’s never the meat that he chooses. There’s an ancestral instinct there. In the same way, the child would never begin to drink or smoke if it weren’t to imitate others. The consumption of meat is reduced the moment the market presents a greater choice of vegetables, and in proportion as each man can afford the luxury of the first fruits.
I suppose man became carnivorous because, during the Ice Age, circumstances compelled him. They also prompted him to have his food cooked, a habit which, as one knows today, has harmful consequences. Our peasants never eat any food that hasn’t been cooked and recooked, and thus deprived of all its virtues. The southern peoples are not acquainted either with a meat diet or with cooking. I lived marvelously in Italy. I don’t know any country that enlivens one more. Roman food, how delicious it is!
Not long ago, I drank for the first time in my life a really good wine, with an extraordinary bouquet. The drinkers with me said it was too sweet. I know people who seem normal and yet suddenly hurl themselves on drinks that on me have the effect of vitriol. If Hoffmann were bitten by a serpent, I suppose the serpent would fall down stiff in a moment, dead-drunk.
When I go into an inn where people are smoking, within an hour I feel I’ve caught a cold. The microbes hurl themselves upon me! They find a favorable climate in the smoke and heat.
The story of the dog Foxl.
How many times, at Fromelles, during the first World War, I’ve studied my dog Foxl. When he came back from a walk with the huge bitch who was his companion, we found him covered with bites. We’d no sooner bandaged him, and had ceased to bother about him, than he would shake off this unwanted load.
A fly began buzzing. Foxl was stretched out at my side, with his muzzle between his paws. The fly came close to him. He quivered, with his eyes as if hypnotized. His face wrinkled up and acquired an old man’s expression. Suddenly he leapt forward, barked and became agitated. I used to watch him as if he’d been a man—the progressive stages of his anger, of the bile that took possession of him. He was a fine creature.
When I ate, he used to sit beside me and follow my gestures with his gaze. If by the fifth or sixth mouthful I hadn’t given him anything, he used to sit up on his rump and look at me with an air of saying: “And what about me, am I not here at all?” It was crazy how fond I was of the beast. Nobody could touch me without Foxl’s instantly becoming furious. He would follow nobody but me. When gas warfare started, I couldn’t go on taking him into the front line. It was my comrades who fed him. When I returned after two days’ absence, he would refuse to leave me again. Everybody in the trenches loved him. During marches he would run all round us, observing everything, not missing a detail. I used to share everything with him. In the evening he used to lie beside me.
To think that they stole him from me! I’d made a plan, if I got out of the war alive, to procure a female companion for him. I couldn’t have parted from him. I’ve never in my life sold a dog. Foxl was a real circus dog. He knew all the tricks.
I remember, it was before we arrived at Colmar. The railway employee who coveted Foxl came again to our carriage and offered me two hundred marks. “You could give me two hundred thousand, and you wouldn’t get him!” When I left the train at Harpsheim, I suddenly noticed that the dog had disappeared. The column marched off, and it was impossible for me to stay behind! I was desperate. The swine who stole my dog doesn’t realize what he did to me.
It was in January 1915 that I got hold of Foxl. He was engaged in pursuing a rat that had jumped into our trench. He fought against me, and tried to bite me, but I didn’t let go. I led him back with me to the rear. He constantly tried to escape. With exemplary patience (he didn’t understand a word of German), I gradually got him used to me. At first I gave him only biscuits and chocolate (he’d acquired his habits with the English, who were better fed than we were). Then I began to train him. He never went an inch from my side. At that time, my comrades had no use at all for him. Not only was I fond of the beast, but it interested me to study his reactions. I finally taught him everything: how to jump over obstacles, how to climb up a ladder and down again. The essential thing is that a dog should always sleep beside its master. When I had to go up into the line, and there was a lot of shelling, I used to tie him up in the trench. My comrades told me that he took no interest in anyone during my absence. He would recognize me even from a distance. What an outburst of enthusiasm he would let loose in my honor! We called him Foxl. He went through all the Somme, the battle of Arras. He was not at all impressionable. When I was wounded, it was Karl Lanzhammer who took care of him. On my return, he hurled himself on me in frenzy.
When a dog looks in front of him in a vague fashion and with clouded eyes, one knows that images of the past are chasing each other through his memory.
SPECIAL GUESTS: LAMMERS, HIMMLER AND COLONEL ZEITZLER
Appreciation of the Czechs—The internal policy of the Habsburgs—When the Popes harried the Jews—The “decent” Jews.
The man who shaped the old Reich hadn’t the slightest notion of what people are like. They grew up in a climate of stupidity. They understand nothing about Austria. The fact that Austria was not a State, in the meaning we give the term, but a fruit-salad of peoples, is one that escapes them. Sancta simplicitas. There was no such thing, properly speaking, as an Austrian Army, but an Army composed of Czech, Croat, Serb units, etc.
Every Czech is a born nationalist who naturally relates everything to his own point of view. One must make no mistake about him: the more he curbs himself, the more dangerous he is. The German of the Old Reich lets himself be duped by the apparent obligingness of the Czech, and by his obsequiousness. Neurath let himself be completely diddled by the Czech nobility. Another six months of that régime and production would have fallen by 25 percent. Of all the Slavs, the Czech is the most dangerous, because he’s a worker. He has a sense of discipline, he’s orderly, he’s more a Mongol than a Slav. Beneath the top layer of a certain loyalty, he knows how to hide his plans. Now they’ll work, for they know we’re pitiless and brutal. I don’t despise them, I have no resentment against them. It’s destiny that wishes us to be adversaries. To put it briefly, the Czechs are a foreign body in the midst of the German community. There’s no room both for them and for us. One of us must give way.
As regards the Pole, it’s lucky for us that he’s idle, stupid and vain. The Czech State—and that’s due to the training the Czechs have had—was a model of honesty. Corruption practically didn’t exist amongst them. Czech officials are generally inspired by a sense of honor. That’s why a man like Hacha is more dangerous than a rogue of a journalist. He’s an honest man, who won’t enrich himself by a crown in the exercise of his functions. Men liable to corruption are less dangerous. Those are things that the Second Reich never understood. Its way of behaving towards the Poles was a deplorable setback. It only succeeded in strengthening their sense of patriotism. Our compatriots of the frontier regions, who would know how to set about things with the neighboring peoples, were repressed by the kindly Germans of the interior—who suppose, for their part, that kindliness is the way to win these foreign hearts for Germany. At the time of Maria Theresa everything was going well, and one can say that in the ’forties there was no question of a Polish patriotism. With the rise to power of the bourgeoisie, the conquered territory was lost again.
The Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria said to me one day: “Do you know who’s the most dangerous man? Beneš. Titulescu is venal, but Beneš, I don’t believe he is.” Ferdinand was really very clever.
It’s the duty of the Party to settle these questions once and for all in the course of the next five hundred years. The Habsburgs broke their teeth on them. They believed they could smooth everything down by kindness. The Czechs didn’t have the feeling that they were being treacherous in acting as they did. In any case, it’s one of the incomprehensible circumstances of history that the ancient Bavarians left those territories and the Czechs settled there. Such a situation is unbearable from the geopolitical point of view. The result has been, we have the Poles close at hand, and, between them and the Czechs, nothing but the narrow Silesian strip.
If I withdraw fifty thousand Germans from Volhynia, that’s a hard decision to take, because of the sufferings it entails. The same is true of the evacuation of Southern Tyrol. If I think of shifting the Jew, our bourgeoisie becomes quite unhappy: “What will happen to them?” Tell me whether this same bourgeoisie bothered about what happened to our own compatriots who were obliged to emigrate?
One must act radically. When one pulls out a tooth, one does it with a single tug, and the pain quickly goes away. The Jew must clear out of Europe. Otherwise no understanding will be possible between Europeans. It’s the Jew who prevents everything. When I think about it, I realize that I’m extraordinarily humane. At the time of the rule of the Popes, the Jews were mistreated in Rome. Until 1830, eight Jews mounted on donkeys were led once a year through the streets of Rome. For my part, I restrict myself to telling them they must go away. If they break their pipes on the journey, I can’t do anything about it. But if they refuse to go voluntarily, I see no other solution but extermination. Why should I look at a Jew through other eyes than if he were a Russian prisoner of war? In the p.o.w. camps, many are dying. It’s not my fault. I didn’t want either the war or the p.o.w. camps. Why did the Jew provoke this war?
A good three hundred or four hundred years will go by before the Jews set foot again in Europe. They’ll return first of all as commercial travelers, then gradually they’ll become emboldened to settle here—the better to exploit us. In the next stage, they become philanthropists, they endow foundations. When a Jew does that, the thing is particularly noticed—for it’s known that they’re dirty dogs. As a rule, it’s the most rascally of them who do that sort of thing. And then you’ll hear these poor Aryan boobies telling you: “You see, there are good Jews!”
Let’s suppose that one day National Socialism will undergo a change, and become used by a caste of privileged persons who exploit the people and cultivate money. One must hope that in that case a new reformer will arise and clean up the stables.
Raw materials, synthetic materials and the Four Year Plan—Two possibilities for the British—Out with Churchill and Roosevelt!
Even in peacetime it is important, when arming oneself, to concentrate solely on those raw materials which one knows one will have in time of war.
When the Four Year Plan was hatched, in 1936, circumstances forced us to have recourse to substitute products.
One can have no idea what it takes, even only in optical instruments, to equip an army of several million men.
One day the English will realize that they’ve nothing to gain in Europe. Sixteen thousand millions of debts from the first World War, to which have since been added nearly two hundred thousand millions! The Conservatives must reckon that, in order to gain a rapid success in Northern Norway, for example, they would have to pay for this by abandoning India. But they’re not so mad as to envisage such a solution! If they want to save New Zealand and Australia, they can’t let India go.
The English have two possibilities: either to give up Europe and hold on to the East, or vice versa. They can’t bet on both tables. When it’s a matter of the richest country in the world (from the capitalist point of view), one understands the importance of such a dilemma. It would be enough for them to be aware of it for everything to be changed. We know that the bourgeoisie becomes heroic when its pocketbook is threatened. A change of government would be associated, in England, with the decision to abandon Europe. They’ll keep Churchill in power only as long as they still have the will to pursue the struggle here. If they were really cunning, they’d put an end to this war, thus dealing a mortal blow to Roosevelt. They would have the following excuse: “We’re no longer strong enough to continue the war, and you cannot help us. This leads us to reconsider our attitude towards Europe.” This would result in the collapse of the American economy, and also the personal collapse of Roosevelt. Simultaneously, America would have ceased to be a danger to England.
SPECIAL GUEST: HIMMLER
Reorganization of the administrative services—Taxes—The importance of bureaucracy must be lessened—The Ministry of Propaganda—A dialogue with von Papen—Tribute payable to nature.
Göring wanted to get from me a decree conferring powers on Stuckart and Reinhardt so that they could undertake the reorganization of our administrative services with a view to simplifying them. I refused. Why entrust these men with such a mission when it’s precisely the Ministry of Finance and Interior, which are their field, whose administrations are plethorically swollen?
There are two ways of revising the administration: a reduction of the Budget, or a reduction of personnel.
The fiscal system is uselessly complicated. Since the days when people paid the Grown its tenth, there’s been no end to the process of adding supplementary taxes to this tenth!
The simplest method consists in restricting oneself to the four following taxes:
1. A tax on luxury goods.
2. A stamp duty. (Everybody obtains the stamps he needs. It does not require any costly administrative apparatus. And it’s a tax that’s not oppressive. Old Austria had this tax. No tradesman could sell anything at all without stamps. He bought them at the post office, which confined itself to keeping an account of the sums realized.)
3. A tax on private means.
4. A tax on commercial profits.
As regards direct taxes, the simplest is to take as a basis the amount paid the previous year. The taxpayer is told: “You’ll pay the same sum as last year. If this year your earnings are lower, you’ll report that fact. If they’re higher, you’ll immediately pay a proportionate supplement. If you forget to announce the increase in your income, you’ll be severely punished.”
If I explain this system to the Ministry of Finance or to Reinhardt, the reply will be, after an instant’s reflection: “My Führer, you’re right.” But within six months they’ll certainly have forgotten everything!
Thanks to this method, one might reduce the bureaucracy to a third of its present importance. The snag is that a tax which is easy to collect doesn’t suit these gentlemen of the administration. What would be the use of having been to a University? Where would one find jobs for the jurists? There’d be no more work for them, for everything could be done by means of an extremely simple piece of apparatus, and the Chinese puzzle of declaring one’s taxes would be done away with.
Lammers told me: “My Führer, I’ve been using the simplified method since the beginning, and it works. All the other systems are too cumbrous.”
If I now give a jurist the job of simplifying the mechanism of the administration, his first care will be to create an office of which he will be at the head, with the idea that finally it will entitle him to a Minister’s portfolio. I’ve had the same experience in the Party. One decides to create a group of the Hitler Youth at Salzburg. Suddenly they need a building of five hundred rooms—now, I’ve run a party of eight hundred thousand members, and I housed all my administration in a few attics—(Schwarz listens impassively to the demand formulated, then he cuts in: “We’ll start with twelve rooms”).
I’m all in favor of installing Ministries in monumental majestic buildings, but on condition that everything is reckoned out in advance in such a way that no enlargement can prove to be possible, not even in height. In this way a Ministry learns to make use of its organs of execution. It confines itself to controlling, it avoids direct administration.
The Republic of Venice, which used to reign over the Adriatic Sea, was installed in the palace of the Doges, which today still houses the entire administration of the city.
I created the Ministry of Propaganda with the idea that it should be at everybody’s service. Thus I myself can do without a propaganda service. It’s enough for me to have the possibility of taking my telephone off the hook and asking the question: “Herr Doktor, how am I to set about such and such a matter?” Yet there practically doesn’t exist a Ministry today that hasn’t its own press service. They ought to find the services of the Ministry of Propaganda enough. Since it’s I who give the Reich’s Propaganda Ministry its directives, why should I maintain a private press-section?
In the days when there was a Vice-Chancellery, that service had a budget of six hundred thousand marks. One day I asked Lammers: “What is that shop?” He replied: “It’s a swindle.” Lammers had held an enquiry and had discovered that all the people I’d sacked from the Chancellery had found jobs again in the Vice-Chancellery.
When Papen proposed the Vice-Chancellery to me, I explained to him: “A Vice-Chancellor never becomes active except when the Chancellor is ill. If I am the Vice-Chancellor, you will never be ill. So I refuse the Vice-Chancellery.”
Personally, Papen was an inoffensive man—but, by a sort of fatality, he surrounded himself with people who all had something on their conscience.
Jodl interposed: “In the Wehrmacht, the bureaucracy has become frightful. The Minister for War has made it a point of honor to imitate the other Ministers, as concerns both style and practice. The individual personality has disappeared behind the administrative entities, and I consider that unworthy of a soldier. Nobody speaks any longer in the first person. Everybody expresses himself in the name of an entity. It’s the triumph of impersonality.”
Himmler interposed in turn: “I’ve arranged that each of my subordinates shall sign everything that issues from our offices, with his own name and in a legible fashion. Thus one always knows with whom one is dealing, and nobody can take refuge behind abstractions. What is scandalous is the tone of our administrative people in their relations with the public. Every summons to a meeting, every tax demand, is, in its general effect, an offense against the citizen. I’ve had all our forms of summons cancelled and ordered them to be replaced. Now the first summons is in the following set terms: “I request you, on behalf of the President of Police, to be so kind. . . . If you are unable to attend, I should be grateful if you would inform me in writing concerning the matter mentioned above.’’ If the recipient makes no move, he receives a second letter as follows: ‘ You did not answer my summons. I draw your attention to the fact that you are obliged to . . .’” The Führer replied:
That’s why I’ve never been able to make up my mind to praise publicly the body of officials generally. All that should be reviewed from top to bottom.
The best thing you’ve done, Himmler, is to have transformed the incendiary into a fireman. Thus the fireman lives under the threat of being hanged if there is an outbreak of fire.
I’ve sometimes wondered whether the tax the peasant pays in money couldn’t be replaced by a tax paid in produce. In Russia, it will be absolutely necessary to do things like that. There’ll be barracks there where one will be able to collect tithes. It’s easier for the peasant to pay in produce than to trot out the ready money.
Life used to be very hard for the peasants. To them a good crop used to mean more work, and not more money. A bad crop was simply a disaster. It was the middleman who pocketed the profits!
Origin of Tristan and Isolda—Cosima Wagner—Wahnfried—The Makart style—Bayreuth—On the Nuremberg Congress.
Whatever one says, Tristan is Wagner’s masterpiece, and we owe Tristan to the love Mathilde Wesendonck inspired in him. She was a gentle, loving woman, but far from having the qualities of Cosima. Nobody like Wagner has had the luck to be entirely understood by a woman. Those are things that life does not owe a man, but it’s magnificent when it happens. Neither Mozart nor Beethoven, neither Schiller nor Goethe, have had a share of such happiness. In addition to all Wagner’s gifts, Cosima was femininity personified, and her charm had its effect on all who visited Wahnfried. After Wagner’s death, the atmosphere at Wahnfried remained what it had been during his lifetime. Cosima was inconsolable, and never ceased to wear mourning. She had wanted her own ashes to be scattered over her husband’s tomb, but she was refused this satisfaction. Nevertheless, her ashes were collected in an urn, and this urn was placed on the tomb. Thus death has not separated these two beings, whom destiny had wished to live side by side!
Wagner’s lifetime was also that of a man like Meyerbeer!
Wagner is responsible for the fact that the art of opera is what it is today. The great singers who’ve left names behind became celebrated as interpreters of Wagner. Moreover, it’s since him that there have been great orchestra leaders. Wagner was typically a prince. His house, Wahnfried, for example! It’s been said that the interior, in Makart style, was overloaded. But should a house be mistaken for a gallery of works of art? Isn’t it, above all, a dwelling, the framework for a private life, with its extensions and its radiance? If I possess a gallery of ancestors, should I discard it on the pretext that not all the pictures in it are masterpieces? The houses of that period—and the same remark is equally true of Makart’s studio—were filled with private memories. As far as I’m concerned, I keenly regret that Makart’s studio hasn’t been kept as it was in the artist’s lifetime. Respect for the venerable things that come to us from the past will one day benefit those who today are young. Nobody can imagine what Makart’s vogue was like. His contemporaries extolled him to the heights.
At the beginning of this century there were people called Wagnerians. Other people had no special name. What joy each of Wagner’s works has given me! And I remember my emotion the first time I entered Wahnfried. To say I was moved is an understatement! At my worst moments, they’ve never ceased to sustain me, even Siegfried Wagner. (Houston Stewart Chamberlain wrote to me so nicely when I was in prison.) I was on Christian name terms with them. I love them all, and I also love Wahnfried. So I felt it to be a special happiness to have been able to keep Bayreuth going at the moment of its discomfiture. The war gave me the opportunity to fulfil a desire dear to Wagner’s heart: that men chosen amongst the people—workers and soldiers—should be able to attend his Festival free of charge. The ten days of the Bayreuth season were always one of the blessed seasons of my existence. And I already rejoice at the idea that one day I shall be able to resume the pilgrimage!
The tradition of the Olympic Games endured for nearly a thousand years. That results, it seems to me, from a mystery similar to that which lies at the origin of Bayreuth. The human being feels the need to relax, to get out of himself, to take communion in an idea that transcends him. The Party Congress answers the same need, and that’s why for hundreds of years men will come from the whole world over to steep themselves anew, once a year, in the marvelous atmosphere of Nuremberg. They’ll come, and they’ll see side by side the proofs we shall have left of our greatness, and at the same time the memories of old Nuremberg.
On the day following the end of the Bayreuth Festival, and on the Tuesday that marks the end of the Nuremberg Congress, I’m gripped by a great sadness—as when one strips the Christmas tree of its ornaments.
The Congress, for me, is a terrible effort, the worst moment of the year. We shall prolong its duration to ten days, so that I may not be obliged to speak continually. It’s because of the superhuman effort which that demands of me that I was already obliged to have the opening proclamation read out. I no longer have the strength to speak as long as I used to. So I’ll withdraw when I realize I’m no longer capable of giving these festivities the style that suits them. The most difficult effort comes at the march-past, when one has to remain motionless for hours. On several occasions it has happened to me to be seized by dizziness. Can anyone imagine what a torture it is to remain so long standing up, motionless, with the knees pressed together? And, on top of that, to salute with outstretched arm? Last time, I was compelled to cheat a little. I also have to make the effort of looking each man in the eyes, for the men marching past are all trying to catch my glance. In future I must be given cover against the sun.
The Pope is generally a frail old gentleman. He’s therefore carried under a baldaquin. They used to wave palms around the Pharaohs, to give them some air.
After the war, it will perhaps be best to have the columns march past sixteen deep, and not twelve deep as hitherto. The march-past would last four hours instead of five—and that would always be so much gained!
The Führer’s chauffeurs—Driving a car—Some instructions.
My life is in the hands of a few individuals: my driver, my orderlies, perhaps also a cook.
Kempka begged me, in spring, to allow him to rejoin an armored unit. I wonder which is the more useful to the nation: the man who shoots down some enemy tanks—which others could do in his place—or the man who continues to be the driver who enjoys all my confidence? He’s been in my service for nine years, now, and I’ve nothing but praise for him. His predecessor, Schreck, was a companion of the years of struggle. When things went badly around us, the frontline soldier awoke in him. In such situations, Kempka would perhaps have fainted! But he drives with extraordinary prudence—always excepting when he’s suffering from unrequited love, and that I notice at once.
After all, I can’t devote my time, at the present juncture, to training a new driver. If I were certain that Kempka would return safe and sound, I’d perhaps give in. How many of my drivers I’ve had who lost their heads simply because I was sitting beside them! Kempka is calm personified. Besides, I’m accustomed to chatting with him. Eickenberg drives well, but I’d have to train him. He drives well mechanically, but he hasn’t the initiative. I’ve done more than two and a half million kilometers by car, without the slightest accident. When I rode with drivers for whose training I was not responsible, it was a matter of luck that nothing happened. I’ve always insisted with my drivers, Maurice, Schreck and Kempka, that the speed at which they drive should allow them to pull up in time in any circumstances. If one of my drivers killed a child, and excused himself by saying that he’d sounded his horn, I’d tell him: “A child has no judgment, it’s for you to think.” I find it unpleasant when a car splashes mud on people lined up on the edge of the road, especially when they’re people in their Sunday clothes. If my car passes a cyclist, I don’t allow my driver to keep up the same speed, except when the wind immediately scatters the dust we raise. When the rear tires shriek, that’s a sign that the driver has taken a bend badly. It’s a rule that one should accelerate only in the bend, never before. The more our drivers succeed, on the whole, in driving well (although not always exactly in the manner that suits me), the more our ruling class drives miserably. Of course, I’ve not invented the theory of driving, but I can learn from other people’s experience. Adolf Müller once took me in his car. Thanks to him, I learnt more in a few hours than during the years that had gone before.
In former times I used to read regularly the publications devoted to the motorcar, but I no longer have the time. Nevertheless, I continue to be interested in all new advances made in that field. I talk about them with Kempka. He’s a man who knows all the motorcars in the world! It’s a pleasure to see—since it’s his job to bother about that—how well our motorcar park is kept.
Junge, too, asked me for leave to return to the front. If I had the feeling that he didn’t want to spend his life with me, I’d give him permission to leave me, in his own interests. It would be better for his future. Junge’s by far the most gifted of my orderlies. I hadn’t realized that until I went to Felsennest. There, during our air raid alerts, I often had the opportunity to talk with him. You’ve no notion what a cultivated boy he is.
Linge’s a good chap, but less intelligent, and very absentminded into the bargain. As for Bussmann, he’s of a distinctly inferior class. Krause had a morbid tendency to tell idle stories. It was no part of his duties. He used to tell lies absolutely without motive. I’m a very tolerant employer, and I readily admit that one can occasionally be inattentive. In such a case I confine myself to drawing the silly fellow’s attention to his fault, and I ask him to be less absentminded next time. But I cannot endure lying.
On marriage—Some beautiful women.
It’s lucky I’m not married. For me, marriage would have been a disaster.
There’s a point at which misunderstanding is bound to arise between man and wife; it’s when the husband cannot give his wife all the time she feels entitled to demand. As long as only other couples are involved, one hears women say: “I don’t understand Frau So-and-so. I wouldn’t behave like that.” But when she herself is involved, every woman is unreasonable to the same degree. One must understand this demandingness. A woman who loves her husband lives only for his sake. That’s why, in her turn, she expects her spouse to live likewise for her sake. It’s only after maternity that the woman discovers that other realities exist in life for her.
The man, on the other hand, is a slave to his thoughts. The idea of his duties rules him. He necessarily has moments when he wants to throw the whole thing overboard, wife and children too. When I think of it, I realize that during the year 1932, if I’d been married, I’d scarcely have spent a few days in my own home. And even during these few days, I’d have not been my own master. The wife does not complain only of her husband’s absence. She also resents his being preoccupied, having his mind somewhere else. In a woman, the grief of separation is associated with a certain delight. After the separation, the joy of meeting again! When a sailor returns home, after a long voyage, he has something like a new marriage. After months of absence, he enjoys some weeks of complete liberty. That would never have been the case with me, and my wife would justly have been bored to death. I’d have had nothing of marriage but the sullen face of a neglected wife, or else I’d have skimped my duties.
That’s why it’s better not to get married.
The bad side of marriage is that it creates rights. In that case, it’s far better to have a mistress. The burden is lightened, and everything is placed on the level of a gift.
The Führer noticed two guests who looked somewhat crestfallen, J. W. and Chr. Schr. He turned towards Schr. and explained:
What I’ve said applies only to men of a higher type, of course!
Relieved, Schr. exclaimed: “That’s just what I was thinking, my Führer.”
I don’t believe that W. H. will ever get married. He has created an ideal image of a woman, taking her silhouette from one, her hair from the next, her intelligence from a third, from still another her eyes—and it’s with this image in his mind that he approaches every woman; but there’s nothing like it in nature. One must declare oneself satisfied when one finds one perfect detail in a woman. A girl of eighteen to twenty is as malleable as wax. It should be possible for a man, whoever the chosen woman may be, to stamp his own imprint upon her. That’s all the woman asks for, by the way.
Dora’s a sweet girl, but I don’t think that Kempka and she will be happy. For a girl like her, it seems to me that Kempka is too exclusively interested in mechanics. She’s too intelligent for him!
What lovely women there are in the world!
We were sitting in the Ratskeller at Bremen. A woman came in. One would truly have thought that Olympus had opened its gates. Radiant, dazzling. The diners unanimously put down their knives and forks, and all eyes were fixed on her.
Another time, at Brunswick, a young girl rushed towards my car to offer me a bouquet. She was blonde, dashing, wonderful. Everyone around me was amazed, but not one of these idiots had the idea of asking the girl for her address, so that I could send her a word of thanks. I’ve always reproached myself most bitterly.
On yet another occasion, I was at a reception at the Bayrischer Hof. There were splendid women there, elegant and covered with jewels. A woman entered who was so beautiful that all the others were eclipsed. She wore no jewels. If was Frau Hanfstängl. I saw her again just once, with Mary Stuck at Erna Hanfstängl’s. Three women together, one more beautiful than the others. What a picture!
In my youth, in Vienna, I knew a lot of lovely women.
More about dogs—Origins of the human race—Beauty and the ancient Greeks—The significance of mythology—Thoughts on the prehistoric—The cosmic theories of Hörbiger—Human genius and politics.
I love animals, and especially dogs. But I’m not so very fond of boxers, for example. If I had to take a new dog, it could only be a sheepdog, preferably a bitch. I would feel like a traitor if I became attached to a dog of any other breed. What extraordinary animals they are—lively, loyal, bold, courageous and handsome!
The blind man’s dog is one of the most touching things in existence. He’s more attached to his master than to any other dog. If he allows a bitch to distract his attention for a moment, it’s for hardly any time and he has a bad conscience. With bitches it’s more difficult. When they’re on heat, they can’t be restrained.
During the winter of 1921–22, I was offered a sheepdog. He was so sad at the thought of his old master that he couldn’t get accustomed to me. I therefore decided to part with him. His new master had gone a few steps, when he gave him the slip and took refuge with me, putting his paws on my shoulders. So I kept him.
When Graf made me a present of Muck, the process of getting accustomed was quicker. He came up the stairs rather hesitantly. When he saw Blondi, he rushed towards her, wagging his tail. Next day, it was indescribable. A dog gets used to a new master more quickly when there’s already a dog in the house. It’s enough even if he learns from the scent that his new master has recently had a dog; he feels himself trusted. The dog is the oldest of the domestic animals. He has been man’s companion for more than thirty thousand years. But man, in his pride, is not capable of perceiving that even between dogs of the same breed there are extraordinary differences. There are stupid dogs and others who are so intelligent that it’s agonizing.
I once possessed a work on the origins of the human race. I used to think a lot about such matters, and I must say that if one examines the old traditions, the tales and legends, from close up, one arrives at unexpected conclusions.
It’s striking to realize what a limited view we have of the past. The oldest specimens of handwriting we possess go back three or four thousand years at most. No legend would have reached us if those who made and transmitted them hadn’t been people like ourselves. Where do we acquire the right to believe that man has not always been what he is now? The study of nature teaches us that, in the animal kingdom just as much as in the vegetable kingdom, variations have occurred. They’ve occurred within the species, but none of these variations has an importance comparable with that which separates man from the monkey—assuming that this transformation really took place.
If we consider the ancient Greeks (who were Germanics), we find in them a beauty much superior to the beauty such as is widespread today—and I mean also beauty in the realm of thought as much as in the realm of forms. To realize this, it’s enough to compare a head of Zeus or of Pallas Athene with that of a crusader or a saint! If one plunges further into the past, one comes again with the Egyptians upon human beings of the quality of the Greeks. Since the birth of Christ, we have had scarcely forty successive generations on the globe, and our knowledge goes back only a few thousand years before the Christian era.
Legend cannot be extracted from the void, it couldn’t be a purely gratuitous figment. Nothing prevents us from supposing—and I believe, even, that it would be to our interest to do so—that mythology is a reflection of things that have existed and of which humanity has retained a vague memory. In all the human traditions, whether oral or written, one finds mention of a huge cosmic disaster. What the Bible tells on the subject is not peculiar to the Jews, but was certainly borrowed by them from the Babylonians and Assyrians. In the Nordic legend we read of a struggle between giants and gods.
In my view, the thing is explicable only by the hypothesis of a disaster that completely destroyed a humanity which already possessed a high degree of civilization. The fragments of our prehistory are perhaps merely reproductions of objects belonging to a more distant past, and it’s by means of these, doubtless, that the road to civilization was discovered anew. What is there to prove to us that the stone axe we rediscover in our parts was really an invention of those who used it? It seems to me more likely that this object is a reproduction in stone of an axe that previously existed in some other material. What proof have we, by the way, that beside objects made of stone there were not similar objects made of metal? The life of bronze is limited, and that would explain that in certain earthy deposits one finds only objects made of stone. Moreover, there’s no proof that the civilization that existed before the disaster flourished precisely in our regions. Three-quarters of the earth are covered by water, and only an eighth of the earth’s surface is in practice accessible. Who knows what discoveries would be made if we could explore the ground that is at present covered by the waters?
I’m quite well inclined to accept the cosmic theories of Hörbiger. It’s not impossible, in fact, that ten thousand years before our era there was a clash between the earth and the moon that gave the moon its present orbit. It’s likewise possible that the earth attracted to it the atmosphere which was that of the moon, and that this radically transformed the conditions of life on our planet. One can imagine that, before this accident, man could live at any altitude—for the simple reason that he was not subject to the constraint of atmospheric pressure. One may also imagine that, the earth having opened, water rushed into the breach thus formed, and explosions followed, and then diluvian torrents of rain—from which human couples could escape only by taking refuge in very high regions. It seems to me that these questions will be capable of solution on the day when a man will intuitively establish the connection between these facts, thus teaching exact science the path to follow. Otherwise we shall never raise the veil between our present world and that which preceded us.
If one takes our religions at their beginning, one discovers in them a more human character than they subsequently acquired. I suppose religions find their origin in these faded images of another world of which human memory had retained the distant image. The human mind has kneaded such images together with notions elaborated by the intelligence, and it’s thus that the Churches have created the ideological framework that today still ensures their power.
The period stretching between the middle of the third and the middle of the seventeenth century is certainly the worst humanity has ever known: bloodlust, ignominy, lies.
I don’t consider that what has been should necessarily exist for the simple reason that it has been. Providence has endowed man with intelligence precisely to enable him to act with discernment. My discernment tells me that an end must be put to the reign of lies. It likewise tells me that the moment is not opportune. To avoid making myself an accomplice to the lies, I’ve kept the shavelings out of the Party. I’m not afraid of the struggle. It will take place, if really we must go so far. And I shall make up my mind to it as soon as I think it possible.
It’s against my own inclinations that I devoted myself to politics. I don’t see anything in politics, anyway, but a means to an end. Some people suppose it would deeply grieve me to give up the activity that occupies me at this moment. They are deeply mistaken, for the finest day of my life will be that on which I leave politics behind me, with its griefs and torments. When the war’s over, and I have the sense of having accomplished my duties, I shall retire. Then I would like to devote five or ten years to clarifying my thought and setting it down on paper. Wars pass by. The only things that exist are the works of human genius.
This is the explanation of my love of art. Music and architecture—is it not in these disciplines that we find recorded the path of humanity’s ascent? When I hear Wagner, it seems to me that I hear rhythms of a bygone world. I imagine to myself that one day science will discover, in the waves set in motion by the Rheingold, secret mutual relations connected with the order of the world. The observation of the world perceived by the senses precedes the knowledge given by exact science as well as by philosophy. It’s in as far as percipient awareness approaches truth that it has value.
The notion that the cosmos is infinite in all senses should be expressed in an accessible fashion. It is infinite in the sense of the infinitely great as well as in the sense of the infinitely small. It would have been a mistake at the beginning of the positivist era to picture space as limited by the bounds perceived by the instruments. We should reason in the same fashion today, despite the progress made in methods of measurement—and that applies both on the microscopic and also on the macroscopic scale. Seen in the microscope, a microbe acquires gigantic proportions. In this direction, too, there is no end.
If somebody else had one day been found to accomplish the work to which I’ve devoted myself, I would never have entered on the path of politics. I’d have chosen the arts or philosophy. The care I feel for the existence of the German people compelled me to this activity. It’s only when the conditions for living are assured that culture can blossom.
Women in politics—American methods of production—Towards another economic crash.
I detest women who dabble in politics. And if their dabbling extends to military matters, it becomes utterly unendurable. In no local section of the Party has a woman ever had the right to hold even the smallest post. It has therefore often been said that we were a party of misogynists, who regarded a woman only as a machine for making children, or else as a plaything. That’s far from being the case. I attached a lot of importance to women in the field of the training of youth, and that of good works. In 1924 we had a sudden upsurge of women who were attracted by politics: Frau von Treuenfels and Matilde von Kemnitz. They wanted to join the Reichstag, in order to raise the moral level of that body, so they said. I told them that 90 percent of the matters dealt with by parliament were masculine affairs, on which they could not have opinions of any value. They rebelled against this point of view, but I shut their mouths by saying: “You will not claim that you know men as I know women.” A man who shouts is not a handsome sight. But if it’s a woman, it’s terribly shocking. The more she uses her lungs, the more strident her voice becomes. There she is, ready to pull hair out, with all her claws showing. In short, gallantry forbids one to give women an opportunity of putting themselves in situations that do not suit them. Everything that entails combat is exclusively men’s business. There are so many other fields in which one must rely upon women. Organizing a house, for example. Few men have Frau Troost’s talent in matters concerning interior decoration. There were four women whom I give star roles: Frau Troost, Frau Wagner, Frau Scholtz-Klink and Leni Riefenstahl.
The Americans are admirable at mass production, when it’s a question of producing a single model repeated without variation in a great number of copies. That’s lucky for us, for their tanks are proving unusable. We could wish them to build another sixty thousand this year. I don’t believe in miracles, and I’m convinced that when they come along with their twenty-eight-tonners and sixty-tonners, the smallest of our tanks will outclass them.
They have some people there who scent an economic crisis far surpassing that of 1929. When one has no substitute product for materials like copper, for example, one is soon at the end of one’s tether.
SPECIAL GUEST: HIMMLER
The blood of others—The British and the capitalist system—History but for the advent of Christianity—Constantine the Great and Julian the Apostate—Chamberlain’s return to Munich—Sir Samuel Hoare—The privileged position of Mosley—Class prejudice in Germany and Britain—The process of selectivity—The faith of the German people.
The soldiers whom England used for her wars were for the most part men of German blood. The first great outpouring of blood that could properly be described as English took place in the first World War. And how one understands that that ordeal left its mark on them!
So as not to suffer the aftereffects of the present war on the economic level, the English should have abandoned their capitalistic system, or else shaken off the burden of a debt that was reaching a billion four hundred thousands. They made a timid attempt in that direction, by the classic method: by reducing their armaments budget to a minimum, so as to be able thus to pay the interest on their debt. Their situation after the Napoleonic wars was somewhat similar to that after 1918. They passed through a long period of exhaustion, didn’t become themselves again until under Victoria’s reign.
A people cannot lay claim to mastery of the world unless it’s ready to pay with its blood. The Roman Empire had recourse to mercenaries only when its own blood was exhausted. In fact, it was only after the Third Punic War that Rome had legions of mercenaries.
But for the coming of Christianity; who knows how the history of Europe would have developed? Rome would have conquered all Europe, and the onrush of the Huns would have been broken on the legions. It was Christianity that brought about the fall of Rome—not the Germans or the Huns.
What Bolshevism is achieving today on the materialist and technical level, Christianity had achieved on the metaphysical level. When the Crown sees the throne totter, it needs the support of the masses.
It would be better to speak of Constantine the traitor and Julian the Loyal than of Constantine the Great and Julian the Apostate. What the Christians wrote against the Emperor Julian is approximately of the same calibre as what the Jews have written against us. The writings of the Emperor Julian, on the other hand, are products of the highest wisdom. If humanity took the trouble to study and understand history, the resulting consequences would have incalculable implications. One day ceremonies of thanksgiving will be sung to Fascism and National Socialism for having preserved Europe from a repetition of the triumph of the Underworld.
That’s a danger that especially threatens England. The Conservatives would face a terrible ordeal if the proletarian masses were to seize power. If Chamberlain, on his return from Munich, had based elections on the choice between war and peace, he’d have obtained a crushing majority in favor of peace. When I took possession of Memel, Chamberlain informed me through a third party that he understood very well that this step had to be taken, even although he could not approve of it publicly. At this period Chamberlain was being fiercely attacked by the Churchill clan. If he’d had the presence of mind to organize an election, he’d have been saved. In similar cases, I’ve always made arrangements for a plebiscite to be held. It produces an excellent effect, both at home and abroad.
It wasn’t at this juncture that the Labor Party could return into the lists. The Jews had set the cat among the pigeons. If Samuel Hoare were to come to power today, as is desirable, all he’d have to do would be to set free the Fascists. The English have to settle certain social problems which are ripe to be settled. At present these problems can still be solved from above, in a reasonable manner. I tremble for them if they don’t do it now. For if it’s left to the people to take the initiative, the road is open to madness and destruction. Men like Mosley would have had no difficulty in solving the problem, by finding a compromise between Conservatism and Socialism, by opening the road to the masses but without depriving the élite of their rights.
Class prejudices can’t be maintained in a socially advanced State like ours, in which the proletariat produces men of such superiority. Every reasonably conducted organization is bound to favor the development of beings of worth. It has been my wish that the educative organizations of the Party should enable the poorest child to lay claim to the highest functions, if he has enough talent. The Party must see to it, on the other hand, that society is not compartmentalized, so that everyone can quickly assert his gifts. Otherwise discontent raises its head, and the Jew finds himself in just the right situation to exploit it. It’s essential that a balance should be struck, in such a way that dyed-in-the-wool Conservatives may be abolished as well as Jewish and Bolshevik anarchists.
The English people is composed of races that are very different from one another and have not been blended together as in many other countries. There lies the danger that amongst them a class war may be transformed into a racial war. The English could escape this risk by ceasing to judge their fellow-citizens in accordance with their outward aspects and paying attention, instead, to their real qualities. One can be the son of a good family and have no talent. If the English behaved as we behave in the Party, they would give advancement only to the most deserving. It’s good that the professions should be organized, but on condition that each man finds his place. It’s folly to have a man build roads who would at best be capable of sweeping them, just as it is scandalous to make a road-sweeper of a man who has the stuff of an engineer.
National Socialism has introduced into daily life the idea that one should choose an occupation because one is predisposed to it by one’s aptitudes, and not because one is predestined for it by birth. Thus National Socialism exercises a calming effect. It reconciles men instead of setting them against one another. It’s ridiculous that a child should ever feel obliged to take up his father’s profession. Only his aptitudes and gifts should be taken into consideration. Why shouldn’t a child have propensities that his parents didn’t have? Isn’t everyone in Germany sprung from the peasantry? One must not put a curb on individuals. On the contrary, one must avoid whatever might prevent them from rising. If one systematically encourages the selection of the fittest, the time will come when talents will again be, in a sort of way, the privilege of an élite. I got this impression especially strongly on the occasion of the launching of the Tirpitz. The workers gathered for that ceremony gave an extraordinary impression of nobility.
Evolution usually occurs in one direction—that is to say, in the direction of the development of intellectuality. One has a tendency to forget what the potential of energy to be found in the people means for the nation’s life. For the maintenance of social order, it’s important that room should be found not only for the intellect but also for strength. Otherwise the day comes when strength, having divorced the intellect, rebels against it and crushes it. The duel between intellect and strength will always be decided to the advantage of strength. A social class made up solely of intellectuals feels a sort of bad conscience. When a revolution occurs, this class is afraid to assert itself; it sits on its sacks of coin; it plays the coward.
My own conscience is clean. If I am told that somewhere there exists a young man who has talent, I myself will do what I can for him. Nothing could be more agreeable to me than to be told, when somebody is introduced to me: “Here’s a man of rare talent. Perhaps one day he’ll be the Führer of the nation.”
Precisely because I favor a maximum of equity in the established social order, for that very reason I feel myself entitled to rage with pitiless severity against whoever might try to undermine that order. The order I’m building must be solid enough to withstand all trials, and that’s why we shall drown in blood any attempt to subvert that order. But in this National Socialist society nothing will be left undone to find their proper place for competence and talent. We really want every man to have his chance. Let those who have an aptitude for commanding, command, and let the others be the agents who carry these commands out. It’s important to appreciate, without prejudice, everyone’s aptitudes and faults—so that everyone can occupy the place that suits him, for the greatest good of the community.
On the day when the English set free their nine thousand Fascists, these men will tear the guts out of the plutocrats, and the problem will be solved. In my view, when there are nine thousand men in a country who are capable of facing prison from loyalty to an idea, this idea remains a living one. And as long as a man is left to carry the flag, nothing is lost. Faith moves mountains.
In that respect, I see things with the coldest objectivity. If the German people lost its faith, if the German people were no longer inclined to give itself body and soul in order to survive—then the German people would have nothing to do but disappear!
Capitalist economy and prosperity—Sabotage of synthetic petrol in 1933—Deterding backs Schacht—The British have ruined the solidarity of the white races—History will justify Lloyd George—The Jew must disappear from Europe.
America should be living in abundance. But rationalization is the beginning of an unspeakable poverty. The counterpart of this poverty is the insolent opulence of the privileged caste. Obviously the Jew thinks as a capitalist, and not as an economist.
I believe the United States have promised Brazil to buy up its crop of coffee after the war. The Brazilians must have been lured in one way or another. States like Brazil should understand that such a policy will more and more drive Europe to autarky.
Vögler made me the proposal, in 1933, to supply us with two million tons of synthetic petrol in the space of three years, on condition that we should undertake to buy his entire output, at a price fixed beforehand, for a period of ten years. His offer covered our entire needs for the year 1934. The Ministry of Economics torpedoed the scheme. It was arranged in advance that the I.G. Farben would finance the construction of the factories. The scheme furthermore guaranteed employment for hundreds of thousands of workers.
As a result of this piece of torpedoing, I sacked some high officials of the Ministry of Economics, and I installed Keppler there. Thereupon they tripped him up with the knave of Düsseldorf. And thus another nine months were wasted. Behind Schacht was Deterding. I’d much like to know who wasn’t corrupt in that bucket shop!
These circumstances led me to set afoot the Four Year Plan, at the head of which I placed Göring.
As regards buna, there were the same kinds of resistance. Whatever I did, things didn’t go forward. Things began to change at the Ministry of Economics when Funk took it in hand.
It was only after the beginning of the winter of 1936 that I began to have something to say about the State Railways. Until then, it was the clauses of the Treaty of Versailles that were operative. I cancelled these clauses by a law that I had passed by the Reichstag, so that no lawyer could come and argue with me about the illegality of the measures on which I decided.
Thus the State Railways, the State Bank and the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal came back beneath our sovereignty. What troubles I had, until the moment when I could regain the effective control of German affairs in their entirety!
It’s an imperative obligation for the white man, in the colonies, to keep the native at a distance.
The Japanese haven’t any transport problems to solve. Wherever they instal themselves, they can live on the resources of the region. All they need is ammunition. The Americans, on the other hand, need a gigantic transport fleet.
All the same, what happened wasn’t inevitable. The English had a right to be cowards, but at least they had to be clever. A policy of friendship with us would have entailed their offering us Guinea, for example. Now, because of their stupidity, they’re losing a whole world—and they’ve turned us into allies of the Japanese!
What would have happened on the 13th March 1936, if anybody other than myself had been at the head of the Reich! Anyone you care to mention would have lost his nerve. I was obliged to lie, and what saved us was my unshakeable obstinacy and my amazing aplomb. I threatened, unless the situation eased in twenty-four hours, to send six extra divisions into the Rhineland. The fact was, I only had four brigades. Next day, the English newspapers wrote that there had been an easing of the international situation.
I must recognize that Ribbentrop is not a particularly agreeable companion, but he’s a sturdy and obstinate man. Neurath displayed the same qualities on that occasion. A retreat on our part would have spelt collapse.
Our negotiators were in a situation similar to that of 1919. They could have obtained much more favorable peace-conditions. But was it in the interests of the German people? That was quite another question. What did it matter, after all, to obtain an Army of two or three hundred thousand men in place of the Army of a hundred thousand? What matters to a nation is to be free. And it was the German nation’s despair that gave birth to National Socialism.
We had a fundamental problem to deal with, and it’s only after the event that one can say that a certain good could be born of evil. But it goes without saying that the task of a negotiator is to extract the best possible conditions from his adversary. Amongst the Social-Democrats there were men who favored an energetic policy, and were willing to take the risks. It was two Catholics, Wirth and Erzberger who gave in.
If we’d had an Army of two or three hundred thousand men, the French Army would not have degenerated as it did. That circumstance stood us in good stead. The French having fallen into indolence, we recovered much more quickly than they did.
The man who, without any doubt, will find himself justified by history is Lloyd George. In a memorandum drafted at the time, Lloyd George declared that, if peace were made in the conditions foreseen, it would help to start a new war. “The Germans fought so heroically,” he wrote “that this proud nation will never be content with such a peace.” If Lloyd George had had the necessary power, he would certainly have been the architect of a German-English understanding. The British Navy was the chief partisan of such an understanding. It was the jumping jacks of politics, inspired by world Jewry, who set themselves against it. The sailors thought that the German fleet represented the necessary supplement to the British fleet to guarantee the policing of the seas. In a conflict of no interest to Europe, the German Navy would have had as its mission to guard the safety of European waters, which would have set free the entirety of the British fleet. Events missed actually taking that direction only by a hair’s breadth.
The Jews must pack up, disappear from Europe. Let them go to Russia. Where the Jews are concerned, I’m devoid of all sense of pity. They’ll always be the ferment that moves peoples one against the other. They sow discord everywhere, as much between individuals as between peoples.
They’ll also have to clear out of Switzerland and Sweden. It’s where they’re to be found in small numbers that they’re most dangerous. Put five thousand Jews in Sweden—soon they’ll be holding all the posts there. Obviously, that makes them all the easier to spot.
It’s entirely natural that we should concern ourselves with the question on the European level. It’s clearly not enough to expel them from Germany. We cannot allow them to retain bases of withdrawal at our doors. We want to be out of danger of all kinds of infiltration.
SPECIAL GUESTS: FIELD-MARSHAL MILCH AND THE AIRMEN JESCHONNEK AND GALLAND
When one reflects that Frederick the Great held out against forces twelve times greater than his, one gets the impression: “What a grand fellow he must have been!”
This time, it’s we who have the supremacy. I’m really quite ashamed of it.
Birth control and the victory of Christianity—Families of two or three in France—Propagating German blood—The rights born of conquest.
Do you know what caused the downfall of the ancient world?
The ruling class had become rich and urbanized. From then on, it had been inspired by the wish to ensure for its heirs a life free from care. It’s a state of mind that entails the following corollary: the more heirs there are, the less each one of them receives. Hence the limitation of births. The power of each family depended to some extent on the number of slaves it possessed. Thus there grew up the plebs which was driven to multiplication, faced by. a patrician class which was shrinking. The day when Christianity abolished the frontier that had hitherto separated the two classes, the Roman patriciate found itself submerged in the resulting mass. It’s the fall in the birthrate that’s at the bottom of everything.
France, with its two-children families, is doomed to stagnation and its situation can only get worse. The products of French industry do not lack quality. But the danger, for France, is that the spirit of routine may triumph over the generative impulses of progress.
It’s the feeding-bottle that will save us.
Even if this war costs us two hundred and fifty thousand dead and a hundred thousand disabled, these losses are already made good by the increase in births in Germany since our seizure of power. They will be paid for several times over by our colonization in the East. The population of German blood will multiply itself richly.
I would regard it as a crime to have sacrificed the lives of German soldiers simply for the conquest of natural riches to be exploited in capitalist style.
According to the laws of nature, the soil belongs to him who conquers it. The fact of having children who want to live, the fact that our people is bursting out of its cramped frontiers—these justify all our claims to the Eastern spaces.
The overflow of our birthrate will give us our chance. Overpopulation compels a people to look out for itself. There is no risk of our remaining fixed at our present level. Necessity will force us to be always at the head of progress.
All life is paid for with blood.
If a man doesn’t like this notion of life, I advise him to renounce life altogether—for it proves he is not suited for the struggle. In any case, on the margin of this continual struggle, there’s so much pleasure in living. So why be sad at what is so, and could not be otherwise!
The creative forces make their home in the bosom of the optimist. But faith is at the bottom of everything.
SPECIAL GUESTS: DR. LEY, HEYDRICH, DR. WEBER AND BENNO VON ARENT
A French agent—Further misdeeds of the jurists—Memories of prison—Hacha.
As an orator, my most dangerous opponent was Ballerstedt. What a feat it was to hold my own against him! His father was a Hessian, his mother was from Lorraine. He was a diabolical dialectician. To give his hearers the impression that he agreed with them, he’d begin with a eulogy of the Prussians. I’ve been condemned several times for accusing this man of treason—and yet he was in fact sold to the French. Finally I got three months’ imprisonment for breaking up one of his meetings. In the reasons adduced for the verdict, the point of view was put in evidence that the fact of regarding Ballerstedt’s policy as treason towards the Reich did not correspond to any objective reality. The Court recorded that this was simply a matter of a policy which I, personally, regarded as treason.
The experience I’ve had, in the course of my life, of the stupidity of lawyers has resulted in these people’s being definitely classified, in my view. They’re the people who used to burn witches!
Originally I used to think it was an idiosyncrasy of Dietrich Eckart’s continually to attack lawyers. He used to say that the mere fact of wanting to be a lawyer came from a mental deficiency. Alternatively, he used to explain, the mental deficiency came of being a lawyer. It was Eckart who asked the advocate Zetzschwitz, on whom some dignity had just been conferred: “Was it to reward you for having lost all your cases?”
My first long term of imprisonment was at Stadelheim. As he led me into my cell, the warder amiably pointed out to me that a number of celebrated men had lived there before: Ludwig Thoma, for example—and likewise Kurt Eisner.
Kriebel continually complained at Landsberg. During the first days, it was because of the heating. He spent his time finding fault with the warders. One day he had the idea of sending for the prison regulations, which dated from 1860. He read them attentively and discovered that the prisoners were entitled, notably, to a chest of drawers. Another day it was revealed to him that the reverend priests were obliged to visit the prisoners, and he complained of not yet having seen the shadow of a cassock. The Mufti—this was the name we gave the director of the prison—was at his wits’ end and came and consulted me: “Might Colonel Kriebel be a war-wounded?” “What do you mean by that?” “He’s raving mad.” “I think he once had malaria.” “So he should be treated with care?” “I think that would be the proper course.”
We must present Hacha as one of the greatest men who’ve ever lived—but on condition that he leaves the Czechs a legacy that will destroy them for ever. We mustn’t hesitate to make at least as much of him as King Wenceslas—so that until the end of time all the cowards can complain of him. His successor? It doesn’t matter who, as long as he’s a lecher. We’ll always get along better with cads than with men of character!
We’ll settle the Czechs’ hash if we follow a consistent policy with them, without letting this policy be influenced by accidents of persons. Since the Battle of the White Mountain, in 1620, and until 1867, the Austrian State pursued this policy towards the Czechs. Thus the Czechs ended in being ashamed of speaking their own tongue. A great part of the Czechs are of Germanic origin, and it’s not impossible to re-Germanize them.
Former German colonies—The British plutocracy—The psychological moment to stop the war—Possibility of collaboration with France—The era of Italian Fascism—The birth of the SA—Two worlds cheek by jowl—The fossils of the Italian Court—venice, Naples, Rome, Florence—The third Power.
The German colonies suffered from a lack of skilled labor. That explains why there was no possibility for big investments. Yet they were territories populated by three or four million natives.
In India, the English invested huge sums: railways and other methods of transport, factories and port installations. If each of three hundred and eighty million Indians merely buys a reel of cotton every year, imagine what a volume of business that adds up to!
Cotton goods were at first manufactured in England. It’s only little by little that factories were built in India herself. It’s the capitalist notion of business that led to that result. People thought that the saving on transport costs and the employment of less expensive labor would increase the margin of profit. For a capitalist, it would be a crime to waste a crumb. What was the result? Today England has an army of two million and a half unemployed.
There are in Great Britain more than four hundred taxpayers with a yearly income of more than a million pounds. In Germany, only the Kaiser, Henckel von Donnersmarck and Thurn-and-Taxis had incomes of three to four million marks. A man who had a fortune of a million marks was already regarded as a nabob.
But for the first World War, the English would have gone on enjoying the blessings of the Victorian Age.
What is Libya to Great Britain? Another desert. Every war comes to an end at the moment when one of the belligerents decides he must cut costs. In this war it’s the English who’ll throw in the sponge. Strategic successes can make no difference to the Empire’s precarious situation. England can continue to be viable only if she links herself to the Continent. She must be able to defend her imperial interests within the framework of a continental organization. It’s only on this condition that she’ll keep her Empire.
But nothing’s more difficult than to come down from a pedestal. Thus Austria clung until 1866 to the fiction of supremacy—and then it took her another seventy years to learn from the facts.
British military prestige has been reestablished by the conquest of Benghazi. It was the psychological moment to put an end to the war. But Churchill had Russia at the back of his mind—and he didn’t see that, if Russia were to triumph over Germany, Europe would at once come under the hegemony of a Great Power.
Too many Jews had an interest in seeing events take this turn. The Jew is so stupid that he himself saws through the branch on which he’s sitting. In 1919 a Jewess wrote in the Bayrischer Kurier: “What Eisner’s doing now will recoil upon our heads.” A rare case of foresight.
France remains hostile to us. She contains, in addition to her Nordic blood, a blood that will always be foreign to us. In addition to Paris, which is more spontaneous in its reactions, she has the clerical and masonic South. In imitation of Talleyrand in 1815, the French try to profit by our moments of weakness to get the greatest possible advantage from the situation. But with me they won’t succeed in their plans. There’s no possibility of our making any pact with the French before we’ve definitely ensured our power. Our policy, at this moment, must consist in cleverly playing off one lot against the other. There must be two Frances. Thus, the French who have compromised themselves with. us will find it to their own interests that we should remain in Paris as long as possible. But our best protection against France will be for us to maintain a strong friendship, lasting for centuries, with Italy. Unlike France, Italy is inspired by political notions that are close to ours.
I was thinking of the Italian delegation I received yesterday. I met men who have rulers’ qualities such as are very much to my taste. What handsome individuals, and what a resolute air! Those are men who could play a part at the top level.
The Fascists paid with their blood much more than we did. The story of the conquest of power in Italy is an heroic epic. It always warms my heart to think of it. I can understand their emotion when they once more live through the time of the March on Rome.
Why should such men suddenly become worthless as soldiers? It’s quite simply because they lack a command. The Italian people is idealistic, but the cadres of the Italian Army are reactionary.
It’s strange how, throughout the last hundred years, our two peoples have had perceptibly the same destiny. First of all, the wars for unity, then the fact that each was cheated of its rights. Then, more recently, the two sister revolutions that knew nothing of one another.
It was in 1921 that I first heard Fascism mentioned. The SA was born in 1920, without my having the least idea of what was going on in Italy. Italy developed in a manner at which I was the first to be surprised. I could see fairly clearly the orientation that it would be proper to give the Party, but I had no ideas concerning paramilitary organizations. I began by creating a service to keep order, and it was only after the bloody brawls of 1920 that I gave these troops the name of Sturm-Abteilung [SA], as a reward for their behavior. I had taught them the technique of concentrating their efforts on limited objectives, and at meetings to attack the opponent table by table. But it was confined to that. When the brassard proved no longer sufficient, I equipped them with a specially designed cap. That was after Goburg. The skier’s cap didn’t cost much. It was all done in a very empirical manner. Nothing of that sort was thought out in advance.
The SS started with formations of seven or eight men. In these we gathered the tough ’uns. Things developed spontaneously, and subsequently acquired a speed comparable to that of developments in Italy. The Duce himself has told me that at the moment when he undertook the struggle against Bolshevism, he didn’t know exactly where he was going.
What crowns these parallel destinies is that today we arc fighting side by side against the same Powers and against the same personages.
At the same period, the Duce and I were both working in the building-trade. This explains that there is also a bond between us on the purely human level. I have a deep friendship for this extraordinary man.
From the cultural point of view, we are more closely linked with the Italians than with any other people. The art of Northern Italy is something we have in common with them: nothing but pure Germans.
The objectionable Italian type is found only in the South, and not everywhere even there. We also have this type in our own country. When I think of them: Vienna-Ottakring, Munich-Giesing, Berlin-Pankow! If I compare the two types, that of these degenerate Italians and our type, I find it very difficult to say which of the two is the more antipathetic.
There is a difference as between day and night, between the genuine Fascists and the others. Those society people with whom we are compelled to associate, that cosmopolitan world, they’re more or less the same there and here. But the man of the people has plenty of spirit and, even physically, quite a different bearing. Compare that man with the parade-ground Fascists who people the Embassy—why, it’s like in Germany, with our diplomats from the Wilhelmstrasse—excuse me, Hewel!
All these people are intolerable—deceivers, hypocrites, liars. I’ve never seen anything worse than those courtiers at Naples. As for the bodyguard they so kindly gave me—what foul creatures, what gallows birds! The Fascists and the others, they’re really two worlds in watertight compartments. The Fascists call the courtiers “lobsters,” because of their red livery.
I was greeted at the station by the Duke of Pistoia, a real degenerate. Beside him was another duke, no less degenerate. There was an admiral there who looked like a court toad, a bogus coin, a liar. Happily there was also a group of Fascists. All of them, even Ciano, spoke with the deepest contempt of this ridiculous masquerade.
During my excursions with the Duce, my breath was taken away by the skill and audacity of the motorcyclists who escorted us. What a handsome race!
When I went out with the Court, I was perched on a badly slung carnival carriage, which hobbled along in a lamentable fashion. The least depressing people there were the carabinieri who escorted us. “There’s hope,” the Duce said to me, “that in fifty years’ time the Court will discover the internal combustion engine.”
The officers’ corps belongs to this fossilized world. The senior officers have no contact with the people. Zeitzler told me he had a meal of five or six courses, given by front-line officers. Meanwhile the other ranks were supplied with a watery soup. I consider it scandalous that such a thing can happen in the middle of a war. It must either feed the soldier’s hatred for his officers, or make him indifferent to everything. Our own fellows say the Italian simple soldier is a man full of good will, inclined to enthusiasm for any cause, and that one could get all one wanted out of him if he were well led.
Perhaps the Duce came on the scene a year or two too early with his revolution. He probably should have let the Reds have their own way for a bit first—they’d have exterminated the aristocracy. The Duce would have become Head of a Republic. Thus the abscess would have been lanced.
When I was with Mussolini, the crowd shouted: “Duce! Duce!” When I was with the King, it shouted: “Führer! Führer!” In Florence I was alone with the Duce, and I read in the eyes of the population the respect and burning love they devoted to him. The common people gazed at him as though they’d have liked to eat him.
Rome captivated me. At Naples, I was interested above all by the harbor. At the Court, I was aware only of the hostile atmosphere. But at Florence, everything was quite different—simply because the Court, that foreign body, wasn’t there. I’ve retained a painful memory of a visit I paid to units of the fleet in the Bay of Naples. The little king didn’t know where to look; nobody paid him any attention. At table I was surrounded only by courtiers. I’d rather have entertained myself with the Marshals.
During the parade, at Rome, the front row was occupied by old nanny goats, dried-up and enamelled, and wearing outrageously low-necked dresses, what’s more, with a crucifix hanging between their withered breasts. The generals were in the second row. Why display this comedown of the human race?
At the palace in Venice, on the other hand, everything teemed with lovely girls. But they managed to apologize to me for the faux pas that had been committed. Some mannequins from a fashion-house in Rome, I was told, had strayed into the audience!
The difficulty for the Duce is that he’s made himself a sort of prisoner to this society, and has thus to some extent betrayed his own men. In his place, I’d invite some lovely girls from the Campagna to my receptions—the place overflows with them. It wouldn’t occur to me to compete with the King on his own ground, I’d be beaten in advance.
These misunderstandings arise because the situation is not clear.
The poor Duce; I’m often sorry for him. All the affronts he has to swallow. I don’t think I’d endure them.
There’s also the third power—the Vatican. Don’t forget that! Why be surprised if our confidential letters are broadcast to the world a few days after being received?
I’ll never forget the gratitude we owe to Noske, Ebert and Scheidemann for having rid us of such people. Their intentions weren’t pure, and that’s why they’ve been punished, but we’ve reaped all the profit!
SPECIAL GUEST: HIMMLER
The instigators of the 1918 revolution—Attitude towards former opponents—The Bavarian police—The arms traffic.
Amongst the men who became conspicuous during the events of 1918, I draw certain distinctions. Some of them, without having wished it, found themselves dragged into the revolution. Amongst these was first of all Noske, then Ebert, Scheidemann, Severing—and, in Bavaria, Auer,
In the struggle that set these men against us, I was merciless. It was only after our victory that I could say to them: “I understand the motives that drove you on.”
Those who were truly base were men of the Catholic Center—Spiecker, for example. Tortuous methods and lies. Brüning utterly lacked character, and Treviranus was a bounder.
I’m full of understanding for a worker who was hurled into a hostile world, and, quite naturally, found himself exposed to the seductions of Marxism. But not for those swine of theoreticians like Hilferding and Kautsky. Braun was not the worst of them. In any case, he was quick to put water in his wine. Luppe, at Nuremberg, was not a bad mayor. As for Scharnagel, he was a baker from head to foot.
In Bavaria, men like Stützel, Schweyer, Koch and others were not bribable, but this did not prevent them from being fundamentally base. Lerchenfeld and Lortz were just poor devils. Matt was more a fool than a knave. Several of them were descended from Mongols and Huns. Some of them succeeded in improving themselves in the following generation.
I’ve been particularly correct towards my opponents. The Minister who condemned me, I’ve made him my Minister of Justice. Amongst my prison guards, several have become chiefs of the SA. The director of my prison has risen in rank. The only one whose situation I’ve not improved is Schweyer. On the contrary, I’ve suppressed his plurality of offices, for on top of his pension as Minister he used to receive eighteen thousand marks as administrator of Bavarian Electricity.
Social-Democracy of the time lacked only a leader. Its worst mistake was to persevere in a path condemned by the facts.
I was pitiless to all who indulged in Separatism—if only by way of warning, and to get it into everyone’s head that in that sort of thing we have no time for jokes. But, in a general way, I can say I’ve been full of moderation.
My conversations with Nortz, the Police President, were amusing. In 1923, two days before the 27th January, he claimed the right to compel me to hold in a hall a meeting that I wanted to hold in the open air. He invoked the security of the State as an argument in support of his decision, and likewise the fact that he had not enough police forces to guarantee our safety. I retorted that we were capable of guaranteeing order by our own methods. Moreover, I claimed the right to hold a dozen meetings in succession, not just one. I added that if he opposed our decision, the blood that would be shed would be upon his head. Our haggling continued, and Nortz finally proposed that we should split the baby in two: six meetings, instead of twelve, held simultaneously in the Circus and on the Field of Mars in front of the Circus (for I’d declared that the Circus wasn’t big enough to hold all my supporters). Finally, Nortz granted me my twelve meetings, but in the following form: we would hold simultaneously six times two meetings. For him that made six—for us, twelve!
I had another conflict with him concerning an individual whom the police maintained in our midst. The man was, in any case, ill chosen, for he stank of the police spy at a radius of a hundred meters. One day I was visited by a policeman who announced himself to me as an old comrade from the front. He said he was racked by remorse, for it was he who took down the spy’s reports from dictation. I asked the comrade from the front to go on recording what the spy had to say, but on condition that he sent me a copy every time. In reality, the comrade in question was inspired quite simply by a desire for revenge, as I subsequently learnt. He was the victim of our spy, who was cuckolding him!
When I asked for the Circus for our demonstration on the 1st May, Nortz refused it me on the pretext that his forces were not enough to ensure order, and that my men continually provoked their adversaries. I leapt on the word “provoke.” “My men!” I said. “But it’s you who send us provocative agitators in plain clothes. It’s your spies who urge my innocent lambs on to illegal acts.” Nortz supposed I was exaggerating. When I insisted, and offered him proofs, he sent for his colleague Bernreuther. The latter, who was certainly well informed, tried to calm me down. It was only when I threatened them that I’d publish in my newspaper a replica of the reports in my possession, that the affair was settled. An hour later, we had the authorization to hold our meeting.
There had been talk of attempting a. coup, in agreement with the bourgeois parties. It was to take place here and there all over Germany, especially in Thuringia. I’d been well let down by the bourgeois over the business, which I remember as the finest of our mess-ups. But Nortz couldn’t prevent our march on Oberwiesenfeld.
At three o’clock in the morning, after taking possession of our weapons, we occupied Oberwiesenfeld according to plan. The hours passed, and still nothing happened. Our bourgeois allies had stayed in their beds. Calm prevailed throughout Germany, whilst we awaited from all quarters the confirmation of the expected risings. At six o’clock, gangs of Reds gathered to meet us. I sent some men to provoke them, but they didn’t react. Ten o’clock, eleven o’clock, and the Reich still did not emerge from its stupor—and we were still there on the lookout, armed to the teeth!
We had to make up our minds to go home. During the return march, we met a few inoffensive Reds, fellows who could be dispersed by a flourish of trumpets. We beat them up a little, in the hope of getting a big row started, but it was no use.
Everything was over when a trotting, horse-drawn battery, which I hadn’t sent for, arrived from Tolz. It unfolded like a flower, right in the face of the police. I’d done well to swear never again to undertake anything in collaboration with the bourgeois.
Three days later I was summoned to appear before the Prosecutor General, a bloody man, to reply to the accusation of having endangered public security. “I in no way infringed public order,” I said. “But an attempt was made to do so.” “Who says that?” “The law declares that the fact of arming gangs...” “Who is speaking of gangs? My men are perfectly disciplined. As for my weapons, they were stored in the State arsenals.” “So you possess weapons?” “Of course. Are you not aware that the others possess them, too?”
This inculpation had no consequences. In the circumstances, Stenglein and Ehardt were sitting pretty.
This was how I’d procured weapons. A certain Councillor Schäffer had a store of weapons at Dachau, and he offered to sell them to me. At that time I made it a principle to leave weapons in the hands of the civic guards, reasoning that they would keep them in good condition as long as there was no question of using them, and that in case of need they would ask nothing better than to hand them over to us, so that we could take their place in the first rank.
Nevertheless, I thought it opportune not to reject Schäffer’s proposal. I therefore went to Dachau with Göring. We had the impression we’d fallen into a bandits’ lair. Their first concern was to ask us for the password. We were led into the presence of a woman. I remember her, for this was the first time I saw a woman with her hair dressed like a boy’s. She was surrounded by a gang of individuals with gallows birds’ faces. This was Schäffer’s wife. We drove the bargain, although not without my warning them that they wouldn’t see the color of my money until the weapons were in my possession. We also found, on the airfield at Schleissheim, thousands of rifles, mess-tins, haversacks, a pile of useless junk. But, after it had been repaired, there would be enough to equip a regiment.
I went to see Lossow and handed him all this material, urging him to take care of it and telling him, moreover, that I would make no use of it except in the event of a showdown with Communism. It was thus solemnly agreed that the material would remain in the hands of the Reichswehr as long as this eventuality did not arise. Amongst the mixed parcels, there were notably seventeen guns of all calibres.
I got my hands on the second parcel in particularly comic circumstances: Somebody had mysteriously rung me up on the telephone to ask me to “take possession of the crates.” I didn’t waste time in having the whole bill of fare read out to tell me what it was all about. I thought to myself that there were crates going for the asking, and I told myself that it was at least worth the trouble of going to find out. Nevertheless, I asked my interlocutor’s name. “Voll,” he said, “the brother-in-law of the proprietor of the warehouse.”
I arrived at this warehouse, which was in the Landsbergstrasse, and, sure enough, I found there forty-eight crates that had been deposited there in my name. Voll told me that they contained arms, and that it was impossible for him to keep them any longer, for there were numerous Communists amongst his workers. He begged me to have the crates removed as soon as possible. I went first to see Röhm to ask him if he could put any trucks at my disposal. He replied that he couldn’t do that immediately. I then applied to Zeller. He accepted, refusing any payment but laying it down as a condition that he should share the booty with me. Agreed. When we were loading the trucks, up came Major Stefani. He claimed that the arms were his. “They’re in my name,” I replied, “and nobody will stop me from taking possession of them.”
Three days later, Zeller told me that the aforesaid arms were from his own warehouse in the Franz Joseph Strasse, from which they’d been stolen. “What are you complaining about?” I said. “Haven’t you recovered half of them?”
There were arms practically everywhere in those days: in monasteries, on farms, amongst groups of civic guards. It was to the citizens’ credit that they thus assembled arms that had been thrown away by soldiers returning, demoralized, from the front—and that others had pillaged at the depots.
Churchill and Robespierre—The citadel of Singapore—In praise of François-Poncet—Inadequacy of the diplomats—Reorganization of German diplomacy.
Churchill is like an animal at bay. He must be seeing snares everywhere. Even if Parliament gives him increased powers, his reasons for being mistrustful still exist. He’s in the same situation as Robespierre on the eve of his fall. Nothing but praise was addressed to the virtuous citizen, when suddenly the situation was reversed. Churchill has no more supporters.
Singapore has become a symbol to the entire world. Before 1914, it was only a commercial harbor. It was between the two wars that Singapore began its great rise and acquired the strategic importance that it’s recognized to have today. When one builds a citadel like Singapore, it must be made an impregnable position—else it’s a waste of money. The English have lived on the idea of an invincibility whose image is invoked for them by the magic names of Shanghai, Hongkong and Singapore. Suddenly they have to sing smaller, and realize that this magnificent façade was merely a bluff. I agree, it’s a terrible blow for the English.
I’ve been told that an English statesman left a will in which he reminded his compatriots of the following sacred truth: that the only danger to England was Germany!
François-Poncet did not want the war. The reports dating from the end of his mission to Berlin are worthless, in my view. The little vulgarities in which he indulged at my expense had no other object but to prove to his compatriots that he wasn’t contaminated by us. If he had said in his reports what he really thought, he’d have been recalled at once. In all his reports, he insisted on the necessity of following the evolution of the situation in Germany with close attention.
Poncet is the most intelligent of the diplomats I’ve known—including the German ones, of course. I’d not have risked discussing German literature with him, for I’d have been put out of countenance. When he said good-bye to me at the Gralsburg, he was very much moved. He told me he’d done everything humanly possible, but that in Paris he was regarded as a man won over to our cause. “The French are a very clever people,” he added. “There’s not a Frenchman who doesn’t believe that in my place he would do much better than I.”
François-Poncet speaks absolutely perfect German. He once made a speech at Nuremberg that began: “Now that I’ve had conferred upon me the dignity of an orator of the National-Socialist Party ...” I’ve forgiven him all his remarks about me. If meet him, I shall confine myself to saying to him: “It’s dangerous to give one’s opinion in writing on people whom one does not entirely know. It’s better to do it viva voce.”
Our difficulties on the subject of Morocco were smoothed out by him in two days. Henderson and Poncet certainly both had connections in industry. Henderson, for his part, was interested in seeing to it that war should come. Poncet was the proprietor of some factories in Lorraine. But, tell me, do you know a diplomat who poked his nose into everything, as he did, who was connected with everybody and knew everything? Nothing escaped him. What didn’t he distribute, like sweets! A supplementary attraction of his was his wife. What natural behavior! She hadn’t the slightest affectation. Truly, an exceptional woman.
One day there was a dramatic incident! A foreign statesman passing through Berlin paid François-Poncet a visit. It was the hour when children were leaving school. The children rushed into the drawing room, shouting “Heil Hitler!” When he told me the story, Poncet appealed to me: “It was very embarrassing for me. Put yourself in my place!”
Soon afterwards, François-Poncet went to Paris, and returned to Berlin without his children. I asked him if his children weren’t happy in Berlin. “Young people are easily influenced,” he said. “Just think, my children don’t know who is the President of the Republic. I’m aghast! The other day we were passing by a monument in Paris and suddenly they exclaimed: ‘Look, daddy, there’s Bismarck!’ I decided to send them to a good school in France.”
In my opinion, the man most guilty of all is Churchill—then Belisha, Vansittart and a swarm of others. The French let themselves be dragged in. In a general way, they supposed that Germany was about to collapse immediately. The Polish ambassador Lipski had the cheek to write in a report that he knew from a sure source that Germany could hold out only for a week. People like that bear a great share of responsibility for what has happened. Lipski, particularly, used to frequent the Dirksens’ receptions. If a man like Lipski could believe such a thing—a man who was present at all the Party demonstrations—what can the other diplomats have written? I attach absolutely no value to what these people say.
Each time he changes his post, the diplomat begins by paying his formal visits in the city where he’s now residing. He exchanges conventional remarks with all and sundry. He has fulfilled the essential part of his mission. After that he moves in a closed world, with no windows open on the outside, and knows nothing of what is happening in the country, except through the tittle-tattle of a barber, a manicurist or a chauffeur. But these latter, by dint of living in the narrow circle of their clientele, have themselves lost contact with the people. In any case, they’re cunning enough to tell tendentious old wives’ tales, if they think it appropriate.
The less these diplomats know, the more they talk. They’ve nothing to do, and it would never occur to any of them to profit by his leisure to learn some thing.
François-Poncet is the only one I knew who used to run about continually, taking an interest in everything—to the point even of sometimes embarrassing me a little.
Besides the big mandarins, one usually has to deal with agents of the needy, sponging type. They’re timid, scared—always groping to know whether they should or should not pass on certain information. At the slightest slip or indiscretion, they might lose their jobs, be switched on to a side track. In many cases, it seems to me it would be better to replace them by more modest representatives, who would confine themselves to receiving and sending despatches.
Of what use were our own diplomats to us? What did they teach us before the first World War? Nothing! During the first World War? Nothing! After the first World War? Nothing! I suppose that for the others it must be very much the same.
Diplomacy should be reorganized from top to bottom. Take the case of the Far East. What useful information did I get from our services? A man like Colin Ross, for example, gave me infinitely more precious information on the subject. And yet Kriebel, whom we had out there, was one of our men. It was he who wrote to me that the Japanese were not nearly strong enough to settle with the Chinese. I recalled him, and he tried to justify himself in my eyes by insisting: “But it’s what everyone was saying in Shanghai!” That kind of thing is obviously explained by the company he kept. All of the same kidney, as is usual amongst diplomats. Colin Ross, on the other hand, saw all kinds. His view was that the Japanese would win the war, but that in the long run they’d be absorbed by the Chinese.
I am speaking now only of the diplomats of the classic sort. Amongst these, I admit only two exceptions: François-Poncet and Böttscher—the only ones who ruled the roost. Men like Abetz will always be regarded as amateurs by the careerists.
The Dutch representative was a man who knew what he was about. He worked hard, and he gave his Government valuable information.
The Belgian, he was a dwarf!
As for the Swiss, he did his daily dozen, sent a report every day. To say what? God preserve me from such bureaucrats!
I rack my brains wondering how to improve our diplomacy. On the one hand, one would like to keep men for a long time at the same post, so that the experience they acquire may be of use to them—knowledge of the language, and of local customs. On the other hand, one would like to prevent them from sinking into a rut. What is one to do?
Probably the English have the best system. Besides their official representatives, they have a great number of spies. It would be very useful to me at this moment, for example, to be informed concerning the importance of the opposition in England, to know who belongs to it. As it is, all I know on this subject is what I’ve learnt by reading the newspapers!
Besides, can’t I learn from my diplomats what Washington has in store?
Importance of coal and iron—Superiority of American technique—Production and unemployment—Economy of labor—The defeat of stagnation.
We must achieve higher yields of coal and steel—the rest will follow automatically. Why are some countries industrialized, and others not? There are permanent reasons for that. France, for example, has always suffered from lack of coal, and that’s why she has never been a great industrial Power. The opposite example is that of Great Britain. With us, it’s the same. Here everything is based on coal and iron.
Hitherto we haven’t reached our ceiling in any field of industry. It’s not until we’ve solved the problem of the raw materials that we’ll be able to have our factories giving 100 percent production, thanks to ceaselessly alternating shifts.
Another factor with which we should reckon is the simplification and improvement of processes of manufacture, with the object of economizing on raw material. The mere fact of reducing by two-thirds the wastage in manufacture entails an economy of transport that is far from being negligible. Thus the improvements made in manufacture help to solve the vital transport problem.
The great success of the Americans consists essentially in the fact that they produce quantitatively as much as we do with two-thirds less labor. We’ve always been hypnotized by the slogan: “the craftsmanship of the German worker.” We tried to persuade ourselves that we could thus achieve an unsurpassable result. That’s merely a bluff of which we ourselves are the victims. A gigantic modern press works with a precision that necessarily outclasses manual labor.
American cars, for example, are made with the least possible use of human labor. The first German manufacture of the sort will be the Volkswagen. In this respect, we are far behind the Americans. Moreover, they build far more lightly than we do. A car of ours that weighs eighteen hundred kilos would weigh only a thousand if made by the Americans. It was reading Ford’s books that opened my eyes to these matters. In the ’twenties the Ford used to cost about two hundred and fifty-five dollars, whilst the least expensive of our cars, the little Opel, cost four thousand six hundred marks. In America everything is machine-made, so that they can employ the most utter cretins in their factories. Their workers have no need of specialized training, and are therefore interchangeable.
We must encourage and develop the manufacture of machine tools.
The prejudice has for a long time prevailed that such practices would inexorably lead to an increase in unemployment. That’s actually true only if the population’s standard of living is not raised. Originally, all men were cultivators. Each of them produced everything he needed, and nothing else. In the degree to which methods were improved, men were set free from working on the soil and could thereafter devote themselves to other activities. Thus the artisan class was born. Today only 27 percent of the population of Germany is engaged in tilling the soil. In the artisan class there has been a similar evolution. The improvement in methods of manufacture has made it possible to economize on labor.
One day an idiot had the idea that men had reached a stage that could not be surpassed. Yet progress consists in making life, within the limits of the possible, more and more agreeable for human beings. It does not consist in stagnation. My idea is that we shall never economize enough on labor. If I found that I needed only half as much labor to build an autobahn, well, I’d build it twice as wide.
All this confusion is the work of professors of political economy. The pontiff of Munich teaches a universal doctrine which is entirely different from the universal doctrine taught by the pontiff of Leipzig. Only one doctrine, however, can correspond to reality, and that’s not necessarily the doctrine taught by either of these pontiffs.
It is certainly possible to economize another 30 percent on our labor. Necessity will make us ingenious.
German Freemasonry—Ludendorff’s gaffe—A masonic manoeuvre—Democratic ritual—Bismarck beaten by a shoemaker.
There used to be a large number of Freemasons in Germany who didn’t at all know what exactly Freemasonry was. In our lodges, it was above all an occasion for eating, drinking and amusing oneself. It was a very cleverly adjusted organization. People were kept on the alert, they were entertained with children’s rattles the better to divert their gaze from the essential truth.
I knew little towns that were entirely under the dominion of masonry, much more so than the big towns—for example, Bayreuth and Gotha.
Zentz once invited us—Ludendorff, Pöhner and myself—to be present at a full-dress gathering of the Lodge of St. John. I refused the invitation, and Zentz reproached me with passing judgment without knowing. I said to him: “Save your saliva. For me, Freemasonry’s poison.” Ludendorff and Pöhner went there. And Ludendorff was even so ill-advised as to put his signature in their register, under some stupidly compromising phrase. A few days later, I happened to be visiting Pöhner. He was grinning like a monkey. He told me they’d played the same trick on him as on Ludendorff, and that he’d written in their book: “Hitherto I believed that Freemasonry was a danger to the State. I now believe additionally that it should be forbidden for the offense of major imbecility.” Pöhner had been dumbfounded by the ridiculousness of these rites, which transformed men who were quite sane and sober in their ordinary lives into informed apes. The Freemasons tried to use Ludendorff’s clumsy declaration for publicity purposes—but it goes without saying that with Pöhner’s they were more discreet.
Richard Frank is one of the greatest idealists I’ve known. Since we needed headquarters, he made efforts to procure the money for us. With this object, he introduced me, in Munich, to a certain Dr. Kuhlo. On Frank’s initiative, this Kuhlo had formed a syndicate to buy the Hotel Eden, situated near the station. It was obviously out of the question to make this purchase with the Party’s money. This was in 1923, and the sellers demanded payment in Swiss francs. When all was ready, the syndicate met, with Kuhlo in the chair. The latter rose to his feet and announced that the hotel would be put at the Party’s disposal for a modest rental. He suggested, in passing, that perhaps the Party might suppress the article in its program concerning Freemasonry. I got up and said good-bye to these kindly philanthropists. I’d fallen unawares into a nest of Freemasons!
How many times subsequently I’ve heard comments of this sort: “Why declaim against the Freemasons? Why not leave the Jews in peace?” It’s by means of these continual blackmailings that they succeeded in acquiring the subterranean power that acts in all sectors, and each time by appropriate methods.
After the prohibition of the Lodges, I often heard it said that, amongst the former masons, there were many who felt a sense of relief at the idea that we’d freed them from this chain.
Not only has there always been an incompatibility between membership of a Lodge and membership of the Party, but the fact of having been a Freemason forbids access to the Party. Of course, there are men who are so stupid that one knows very well that it was only from stupidity that they became masons. The very rare cases in which an exception can be made come exclusively under my authority. And I grant absolution only to men whose entire lives bear witness to their indisputably nationalist feelings.
We were obliged to call a general meeting of the Party each year to elect the Directing Committee. The result of the vote, recorded in a minute, had to appear in the Register of Societies. But for this formality, the Party would have lost its juridical personality and accompanying rights.
This annual meeting had something of farce about it. I would offer my resignation. Two accountants, in the space of two hours, would succeed in checking a balance for a total movement of funds of six hundred and fifty millions. The President of the Assembly, elected ad hoc, would conduct the debates and proceed to the election of the new Committee. Voting was by a show of hands. “Who is for, who is against?” he would ask. His silly questions would arouse storms of mirth. I would then present myself to the Registry of the Court to have our documents registered. The antidemocratic parties, just like the democratic parties, had to go through these grotesque ceremonies.
The other parties had practically no paying members. We, with our two and a half million members, banked two and a half million marks every month. Many members paid more than the subscription demanded (at first it was fifty pfennig a month, then it was raised to a mark). Fräulein Schleifer, from the post office, used to pay ten marks a month, for example. Thus, the Party disposed of considerable sums. Schwarz was very openhanded when it was a question of large matters, but extremely thrifty in small ones. He was the perfect mixture of parsimony and generosity.
It was necessary to have a minimum of sixty thousand votes in a district to be entitled to a mandate. Our base was in Bavaria. Here we had six mandates, to start with, which gave us an equal number of delegates to the Reichstag.
There were some extraordinary parties in that Republic. The most incredible was Häusser’s. I happened to be passing through Stuttgart. This was in 1922 or 1923. Frau Waldschmidt suggested that I should go and see this phenomenon, without committing myself. I’m fairly sure Häusser was an Alsatian. If my memory is correct, he addressed his audience more or less as follows: “You, you filthy rabble....” And it went on in the same tone, consisting solely of insults. In the Munich district, he got a greater number of votes than Stresemann. As for us, we had all the difficulty in the world to have Epp elected.
What scatterbrains we sometimes had opposed to us! Let’s not complain about it too much—it mustn’t be forgotten that one day Bismarck was beaten by a cobbler.
Memories of Bayreuth—The automobile craze—Leaving Landsberg—Reconstitution of the Party—The world will recapture its sense of joy.
I’ve been lucky that I never had an accident while traveling.
You know the story of the Hound of the Baskervilles. On a sinister, stormy night I was going to Bayreuth through the Fichtelgebirge. I’d just been saying to Maurice: “Look out on the bend!” I’d scarcely spoken when a huge black dog hurled itself on our car. The collision knocked it into the distance. For a long time we could still hear it howling in the night.
I’d settled down with the Bechsteins, within a few yards of Wahnfried. On the morning of my arrival, Cosima Wagner paid me a visit, which I returned in the course of the day. Siegfried was there. Bayreuth exerted its full charm upon me. I was thirty-six years old, and life was delightful. I had all the pleasures of popularity, without any of the inconveniences. Everybody put himself out to be nice to me, and nobody asked anything of me. By day I’d go for a walk, in leather shorts. In the evening, I’d go to the theater in a dinner jacket or tails. Afterwards, we would prolong the evening in the company of the actors, either at the theater restaurant or on a visit to Berneck. My supercharged Mercedes was a joy to all. We made many excursions, going once to Luisenberg, another time to Bamberg, and very often to the Hermitage.
There are a lot of photos of me taken at this time which Frau Bechstein has. She used often to say to me: “You deserve to have the finest motorcar in the world. I wish you had a Maybach.”
The first thing I did on leaving the prison at Landsberg, on the 20th December 1924, was to buy my supercharged Mercedes. Although I’ve never driven myself, I’ve always been passionately keen on cars. I liked this Mercedes particularly. At the window of my cell, in the fortress, I used to follow with my eyes the cars going by on the road to Kaufbeunen, and wonder whether the time would return when I would ride in a car again. I discovered mine by reading a prospectus. At once I realized that it would have to be this or none. Twenty-six thousand marks, it was a lot of money! I can say that, as to what gives the Mercedes-Benz its beauty nowadays, I can claim the fatherhood. During all these years I’ve made innumerable sketches with a view to improving the line.
Adolf Müller had taught me to drive all right, but I knew that at the slightest accident my conditional liberty would be withdrawn, and I also knew that nothing would have been more agreeable to the Government. In November 1923 I was already owner of a marvelous Benz. On the 9th, it was in Müller’s garage under lock and key. When the police came to seize it, they must have filed through the chain. But they dared not use it in Munich, for the whole population would have risen in revolt, shouting: “Car thieves!” So they sent it to Nuremberg, where it immediately had an accident. I’ve bought it back since, and it can be seen among our relics.
It was a queer experience when the Mufti of the prison came to tell me, with all sorts of circumlocution, and panting with emotion: “You’re free!” I couldn’t believe it was true. I’d been sentenced to six years!
I owe my liberation to the juryman Hermann, a scowling, supercilious man, who throughout the trial had looked at me with a grim expression. I supposed him to be a member of the Bavarian People’s Party, reflecting that the Government had doubtless appointed jurymen to suit it.
Through Hermann I learnt the details of my trial. The jury wanted to acquit me. On the evidence of my defense, they were convinced that Kahr, Lossow and Seisser must have been equally guilty. They were informed of the objection that an acquittal might entail the risk of having the affair referred to the Court at Leipzig. This made the jury reflect. They decided it was prudent to have me found guilty, the more so as they had been promised a remission of the sentence after six months. This had been a little piece of knavery on the Court’s part, for they had no reason to suppose that an appeal by the public prosecutor could have resulted in the case being referred to the Supreme Court. In fact it’s certain that Kahr, Lossow and Seisser would not have appeared at Leipzig. Since the promise of conditional liberation was not kept, Hermann wrote to the Government informing it that the three jurymen would appeal to public opinion if I were not set free immediately.
When I left Landsberg, everybody wept (the Mufti and the other members of the prison staff)—but not I! We’d won them all to our cause. The Mufti came to tell me that Ludendorff, on the one hand, and the Popular Block, on the other, wanted to send a car for me. Since he was afraid of demonstrations, I reassured him by saying: “I’m not keen on demonstrations, I’m keen only on my freedom.” I added that I would make no use of the offers of transport, but it would be agreeable to me if my printer, Adolf Müller, might come and fetch me. “Do you permit me,” he asked, “to inform the Government to that effect? These gentlemen would be much reassured.”
Müller accordingly arrived, accompanied by Hoffmann. What a joy it was for me to be in a car again! I asked Müller whether he couldn’t accelerate. “No,” he replied. “It’s my firm intention to go on living for another twenty-five years.” At Pasing we met the first messengers on motorcycles. I found them gathered at my door, in the Thierschstrasse, in Munich, men like Fuess, Gahr and the other old faithfuls. My apartment was decorated with flowers and laurel wreaths (I’ve kept one of them). In his exuberant joy, my dog almost knocked me down the stairs.
The first visit I paid was to Pöhner. He could almost have kissed me—he who had in front of him what I had behind me. He had a conversation with Cramer Cletl, asking him to inform Held that I maintained my demand that all my men should also be set at liberty. Held granted me an appointment, and I must acknowledge that his attitude was entirely correct. Thus, later on, I refrained from making any trouble for him, unlike what I did for Schweyer. Held asked me whether, if I started the Party up again, I contemplated associating myself with Ludendorff. I told him that such was not my intention. Held then told me that, because of the attitude taken up by Ludendorff towards the Church, he found himself obliged to oppose him. I assured him that the Party program did not entail a struggle with the Church, and that Ludendorff’s affairs were no concern of mine. Held undertook to get in touch with the Minister of Justice and to inform me of the decisions that would be taken concerning my men.
The news reached Pöhner that Gürtner, the Minister of Justice, refused to be persuaded that my demand was justified. I again visited Held, who advised me to go and see Gürtner. There, I fell in with a lawyer! He opposed me with a lawyer’s arguments. My men, he claimed, had not been imprisoned so long as I had. In any case, he couldn’t set them free before the vacation. Besides, he hadn’t the files. I had no difficulty in replying to him that the files were not necessary, that I knew all the names! During my enumeration, he reacted violently at the name of Hess: “Not him, in any case! He exposed Ministers to the risk of being stoned by the crowd!” “What can we do about that? Is it our fault if you are so unpopular? Besides, nothing happened to you!”
My point of view was as follows: it was not possible for my men to remain in prison whilst I, who was responsible for everything, was at liberty. Held confessed to me that he did not understand Gürtner’s attitude. The latter, by reason of his belonging to the National-German Party, should have felt closer to me than Held himself. It was finally Pöhner who, with extreme brutality, informed Gürtner of his views. On returning home one evening, I found a message signed by my thirteen companions. They had just been set free. Next morning, Schaub came to fetch my mail. He had lost his job. He has never left me since that moment.
I had already borrowed three hundred marks to pay for the taxis that the newly liberated men had to take when they left Landsberg—but they were already in Munich when I learnt of their liberation.
I didn’t know what to do with my first evening of freedom. I had the impression that at any moment a hand would be laid on my shoulder, and I remained obsessed by the idea that I’d have to ask leave for anything I wanted to do!
During the first weeks, I remained quite quiet, but time seemed to me to drag. I regained contact with reality, and began by reconciling the enemy brothers. On the 27th January 1925, I again founded the Party.
My thirteen months of imprisonment had seemed a long time—the more so because I thought I’d be there for six years. I was possessed by a frenzy of liberty. But, without my imprisonment, Mein Kampf would not have been written. That period gave me the chance of deepening various notions for which I then had only an instinctive feeling. It was during this incarceration, too, that I acquired that fearless faith, that optimism, that confidence in our destiny, which nothing could shake thereafter.
It’s from this time, too, that my conviction dates—a thing that many of my supporters never understood—that we could no longer win power by force. The State had had time to consolidate itself, and it had the weapons. My weakness, in 1923, was to depend on too many people who were not ours. I’d warned Hess that it would take us two years to give the Party a solid foundation—and, after that, the seizure of power would only be a matter of five to ten years. It was in accordance with these predictions that I organized my work.
There are towns in Germany from which all joy is lacking. I’m told that it’s the same thing in certain Calvinistic regions of Switzerland. In Trier and Freiburg, women have addressed me in so ignoble a fashion that I cannot make up my mind to repeat their words. It’s on such occasions that I become aware of the depth of human baseness. Clearly, one must not forget that these areas are still feeling the weight of several centuries of religious oppression.
Near Würzburg, there are villages where literally all the women were burned. We know of judges of the Court of the Inquisition who gloried in having had twenty to thirty thousand “witches” burned. Long experience of such horrors cannot but leave indelible traces upon a population.
In Madrid, the sickening odor of the heretic’s pyre remained for more than two centuries mingled with the air one breathed. If a revolution breaks out again in Spain, one must see in it the natural reaction to an interminable series of atrocities. One cannot succeed in conceiving how much cruelty, ignominy and falsehood the intrusion of Christianity has spelt for this world of ours.
If the misdeeds of Christianity were less serious in Italy, that’s because the people of Rome, having seen them at work, always knew exactly the worth of the Popes before whom Christendom prostrated itself. For centuries, no Pope died except by the dagger, poison or the pox.
I can very well imagine how this collective madness came to birth.
A Jew was discovered to whom it occurred that if one presented abstruse ideas to non-Jews, the more abstruse these ideas were, the more the non-Jews would rack their brains to try to understand them. The fact of having their attention fixed on what does not exist must make them blind to what exists. An excellent calculation of the Jew’s part. So the Jew smacks his thighs to see how his diabolic stratagem has succeeded. He bears in mind that if his victims suddenly became aware of these things, all Jews would be exterminated. But, this time, the Jews will disappear from Europe.
The world will breathe freely and recover its sense of joy, when this weight is no longer crushing its shoulders.
SPECIAL GUEST: HIMMLER
Charlemagne—The call of the South—Struggling through the mud—Henry the Lion—The sweetness of life—Improving living conditions—For the Reich no sacrifice is too great.
The fact that Charlemagne was able to federate the quarrelsome and bellicose Germans shows that he was one of the greatest men in world history.
We know today why our ancestors were not attracted to the East, but rather to the South. Because all the regions lying east of the Elbe were like what Russia is for us today. The Romans detested crossing the Alps. The Germanic peoples, on the other hand, were very fond of crossing them—but in the opposite direction. One must bear in mind that at this period Greece was a marvelous garden, in which oak forests alternated with orchards. It was only later that olive-growing was introduced into Greece.
The reason why the climate has become temperate in Upper Bavaria is that Italy was deforested. The warm winds of the South, which are no longer held in check by the vegetation, pass over the Alps and make their way northwards.
The Germanic needed a sunny climate to enable his qualities to develop. It was in Greece and Italy that the Germanic spirit found the first terrain favorable to its blossoming. It took several centuries to create, in the Nordic climate, the conditions of life necessary for civilized man. Science helped there.
For any Roman, the fact of being sent to Germania was regarded as a punishment—rather like what it used to mean to us to be sent to Posen. You can imagine those rainy, grey regions, transformed into quagmires as far as eye could see. The megalithic monuments were certainly not places of worship, but rather places of refuge for people fleeing from the advance of the mud. The countryside was cold, damp, dreary. At a time when other people already had paved roads, we hadn’t the slightest evidence of civilization to show. Only the Germanics on the shores of the rivers and the seacoasts were, in a feeble way, an exception to this rule. Those who had remained in Holstein have not changed in two thousand years, whilst those who had emigrated to Greece raised themselves to the level of civilization.
What persists, through the centuries, in a people’s customs is what relates to their habits of eating. I’m convinced that the soup of Holstein is the origin of the Spartan gruel. As regards the archaeological discoveries made in our part of the world, I’m skeptical. The objects in question were doubtless made in entirely different regions. Their presence would indicate that they were articles of exchange, which the Germanics of the coast obtained for their amber. In the whole of Northern Europe, the level of civilization cannot much have surpassed that of the Maoris. Nevertheless, the Greek profile, and that of the Caesars, is that of the men of this North of ours, and I’d wager that I could find amongst our peasants two thousand heads of that type.
If Henry the Lion had not rebelled against the Imperial power, certainly nobody would ever have had the notion of expanding to the East. Supposing he’d succeeded, the Slav world would have been given a Germanic ruling class, but it wouldn’t have gone further than that. All these strivings towards the East were translated into a loss of Germanic blood, to the profit of the Slavs.
I prefer to go to Flanders on foot rather than eastwards in a sleeping car. It has always been my delight, towards March, to leave Munich and go to meet the spring in the Rhineland. On the way back, one leaves the sweetness of living behind as one passes the mountains of Swabia. There is still a smiling valley near Ulm, and then one is definitely caught once more by the rude climate of the high Bavarian plain. I’m sorry for those who have to suffer this hardening process permanently.
Yet we’ve made those inclement regions habitable. In the same way, we’ll transform the spaces of the East into a country in which human beings will be able to live. We must not forget that over there are found iron, coal, grain and timber. We’ll build there welcoming farms, handsome roads. And those of our people who thrust as far as that will end by loving their country and loving its landscapes—as the Germans on the Volga used to do.
You’ll understand, Himmler, that if I want to establish a genuine civilization to the North and East, I’ll have to make use of men from the South. If I were to take official architects of the Prussian Government to beautify Berlin, for example, I’d do better to abandon the project!
In our ambition to play a role on the world level, we must constantly consult Imperial history. All the rest is so new, so uncertain, so imperfect. But Imperial history is the greatest epic that’s been known since the Roman Empire. What boldness! What grandeur! These giants thought no more of crossing the Alps than crossing a street.
The misfortune is that none of our great writers took his subjects from German Imperial history. Our Schiller found nothing better to do than to glorify a Swiss crossbowman!
The English, for their part, had a Shakespeare—but the history of his country has supplied Shakespeare, as far as heroes are concerned, only with imbeciles and madmen.
Immense vistas open up to the German cinema. It will find in the history of the Empire—five centuries of world domination—themes big enough for it.
When I meet the heads of other Germanic peoples, I’m particularly well placed—by reason of my origin—to discuss with them. I can remind them, in fact, that my country was for five centuries a mighty empire, with a capital like Vienna, and that nevertheless I did not hesitate to sacrifice my country to the idea of the Reich.
I’ve always been convinced of the necessity of welcoming into the Party only truly sturdy fellows, without taking heed of numbers, and excluding the lukewarm. In the same way as regards the new Reich, wherever there are wholesome Germanic elements in the world, we shall try to recover them. And this Reich will be so sturdy that nobody will ever be able to attempt anything against it.
A raid on the Brown House—The Munich putsch—Imprisoned Ministers
One day the police made a raid on the Brown House. I had in my strongbox some documents of the highest importance. One of the keys I had on me, and I happened to be in Berlin. The other was in Hess’s possession. The police demanded that he should open the strongbox. He excused himself for not being able to do so, pleading that I was absent and it was I who had the key. The police therefore had to content themselves with putting seals on the box and waiting for my return. Hess had informed me by telephone of this search. Two days later, he told me I could return. The fact was, he had noticed that it was possible to unscrew the handles on which the seals had been placed. Very cleverly, Hess had himself performed this operation, had opened the box with his own key, and had shut it again (replacing the seals), after having emptied it of compromising documents.
On my return, the police presented themselves for the opening of the strongbox. I protested very energetically, in order to induce them to threaten me that they’d resort to force. I then decided to unlock the box. The lid was opened, the box contained nothing. Their discomfited expressions were a pleasure to behold.
On another occasion, I was present when the police took the Brown House by storm. The crowd in the street hurled insults at the policemen who were straddling over the railings. At the windows of the Nuncio’s palace, on the other side of the street, where one never saw anyone, there were gloating faces of fat ecclesiastics. The search, which was unfruitful, went on until the middle of the night.
What a struggle there was before we could obtain the right to hoist our flag over the Brown House! The police were against it but they were not themselves in agreement on the subject, and they even brought us in to be present at their disputes. For once, our luck lay in the immeasurable stupidity of the lawyers. Our skill triumphed over their arguments. This detail shows that one should in no circumstances put one’s trust in lawyers. They certainly won’t defend our régime any better then they defended its predecessor.
Little by little, there was a revulsion in our favor. Now and then a policeman would come and whisper into our ears that he was at heart on our side. More and more we could count on genuine supporters amongst them, who did not hesitate to compromise themselves for the Party, and through whom we learnt whatever was afoot.
A particularly repulsive individual was Hermann in 1923. He was one of the chiefs of the criminal police. Believing in our success, he put himself at our disposal as soon as we’d proceeded to the arrest of members of the Government, offering us his help in laying our hands on those who’d escaped our net. When the affair had turned out badly, we knew that he’d be one of the chief witnesses for the prosecution, and we were very curious to see how he’d behave. We were ready, according to what he said, to shut his mouth by saying to him: “Wasn’t it you, Hermann, who handed Wutzelhofer over to us?” But he was as dumb as a carp.
It was Weber who opened up for us, unknown to the proprietor, the Villa Lehmann, in which we locked up the members of the Government. We’d threatened them that if a single one of them attempted to flee, we’d shoot them all. Their panic was so great that they remained shut up for two days, though the revolution had come to an end long before. When Lehmann returned to his house, he was quite surprised to discover this brilliant assemblage.
A few days later, Lehmann even had the surprise of receiving a visit from a daughter of one of the Ministers. She’d come to fetch a signet ring that her father claimed to have forgotten between the pages of a book he had taken from the library. Instead of a signet ring, what she was looking for was a pile of foreign banknotes that the father had slipped into a book by the poet Storm!
Excursions with Baroness Abegg—The fake Donatello—A dubious Murillo.
I would find no pleasure in living all the time on the banks of the Königssee. It’s too depressing. None of our lakes is so reminiscent of the Norwegian fjords. By contrast, it gives one an impression as of fairyland to arrive there after having come along the Chiemsee, whose blurred tints are so restful to the eye.
I’ve made innumerable excursions on the mountain, led by the Baroness Abegg. (Without her, I’d probably never have been on the summit of the Jenner. She was indefatigable and could climb like a goat.) All that was arranged by Eckart, who didn’t care for walking and could thus remain in peace at the boardinghouse. Dietrich Eckart used to say that she was the most intelligent woman he’d ever known. I’d have been willing to accept the intelligence, if it hadn’t been accompanied by the most spiteful tongue imaginable. The woman was a real scorpion. She was as blonde as flax, with blue eyes and excessively long canine teeth, like an Englishwoman. I admit she was remarkably intelligent. A woman in the class of Frau Bruckmann. She had traveled a lot, all over the world. She was always in one or other of two extreme states. The first kept her at home in a state of almost complete collapse. She would sprawl on her veranda, like a run-down battery, whilst everybody around her was kept busy attending to her. The second state was one of incredible petulance—she’d fly into a rage, sweep out like a whirlwind, climb up somewhere and come rushing torrentially down again.
In my opinion, the most attractive thing about her was the famous bust by Donatello. She valued it at a hundred and fifty thousand marks in gold. In the event of sale, half the money was to go to the Party funds—which would have enabled us to solve all the difficulties caused by the inflation. Unfortunately, nobody believed in the authenticity of this Donatello. When I saw her for the first time, my instinct immediately told me it was a fake. She claimed that the stuccoworker in whose house she’d bought it had no knowledge of its value. At the best, it could only be a bad copy.
The Baroness’s husband had thrown himself into the Königssee. As can well be understood! In his place, I’d have done the same. Of the two faithful admirers whom she was known to have, one died, and the other went mad.
That story reminds me of the story of Simon Eckart’s Murillo. The picture contained a fault in design that could not have escaped Murillo’s attention. If it had done so, there were people in his entourage who would have called it to his attention. These great painters used often to work in collaboration. One of them would paint the Madonna, another the flowers, etc. I intended to write a play on the subject of this Murillo.
A man who was furious was the banker Simon Eckart. What a difference between the two Eckarts! A whole world separated them. Dietrich was a writer full of idealism. Simon was a man deeply immersed in the realities of nature.