Britain must make peace—Common sense and the French—Consequences of Japan’s entry into the war—Turkey and the Narrows.
If there appeared amongst the English, at the last moment, a man capable of any lucidity of mind, he’d immediately try to make peace, in order to save what can yet be saved.
The Empire is not sufficiently profitable to support simultaneously the world’s largest navy and a powerful land army. The English are in a situation comparable to that of an industrial enterprise that, in order to keep some of its factories working, is forced to shut down the others. The same thing is true of the Americans, as far as their interior economy is concerned.
Every country, I realize, is capable of moments of collective madness—but, at the secret depths of each entity, reason retains its imprescriptible rights.
Daladier, Pétain, the average Frenchman were for peace. It was quite a small gang that succeeded, by surprise, in precipitating the country into war. And it was the same in England. Some were pacifists on principle, others for religious reasons, others again for reasons of an economic nature.
Why, therefore, shouldn’t reason reclaim its rights? In France, the reaction occurred with the speed of a flash of lightning. Pétain’s first declaration had a blinding clarity. As for the English, all they lack is the power to make up their minds. Somebody should get up in Parliament and say to Churchill: “So that we may at last have some good news for the Empire, have the kindness to disappear!” No parliamentarian has the courage to do that, because everyone reflects that, if the affair ends badly, his name will remain attached to the memory of a disaster. And yet no English parliamentarian any longer believes in victory, and each of them expects discomfiture. All the secret sessions of Parliament are favorable to us, because they undermine Churchill’s prestige. But he won’t fall until his successor has given us an inkling. That’s what happened with the French. Their tergiversation was possible only on the basis of our armistice proposals. They began by saying no, then they realized that our conditions were not so terrible.
A day will come, during a secret session, when Churchill will be accused of betraying the interests of the Empire. Each blow we deliver towards the East will bring that moment nearer. But we must prevent Churchill from attempting a successful diversion. With the fall of Singapore, the curtain falls on the Far East. The hope that the Russian winter would destroy us is in the process of disappearing. Churchill invites public debates because he’s depending on the patriotism of the English people, and because he counts on it that nobody who has an independent opinion will risk attacking him from the front. But already several of his opponents are letting slip various disobliging remarks. The influence of events in the Far East is making itself felt on the banks. At present several of them have to be supported to protect them from bankruptcy.
In any case, one thing is clear: the importance of a nation’s fortune is a small matter to it if one compares it with the volume of business done in the course of a year. Supposing a nation could import without limit for five consecutive years, and without exporting in exchange, this would suffice for that nation to be utterly ruined. Let’s go further and imagine that for six months a people produces absolutely nothing—by the end of that period its fortune will be scattered to the winds.
I don’t believe in idealism, I don’t believe that a people is prepared to pay for ever for the stupidity of its rulers. As soon as everybody in England is convinced that the war can only be run at a loss, it’s certain that there won’t be anyone left there who feels inclined to carry on with it.
I’ve examined this problem in all its aspects, turned it round in all directions. If I add up the results we’ve already achieved, I consider that we are in an exceptionally favorable situation. For the first time, we have on our side a first-rate military power, Japan. We must therefore never abandon the Japanese alliance, for Japan is a Power upon which one can rely.
I can well imagine that Japan would put no obstacle in the way of peace, on condition that the Far East were handed over to her. She’s not capable of digesting India, and I doubt whether she has any interest in occupying Australia and New Zealand. If we preserve our connections with her, Japan will derive from this a great sense of security, and will feel that she has nothing more to fear from anybody at all. This alliance is also an essential guarantee of tranquility for us—in particular, in the event of our being able to rely on a lasting friendship with France. There’s one thing that Japan and Germany have absolutely in common—that both of us need fifty to a hundred years for purposes of digestion: we for Russia, they for the Far East.
The English will have got nothing out of the affair but a bitter lesson and a black eye. If in future they make less whisky, that won’t do any harm to anybody—beginning with themselves. Let’s not forget, after all, that they owe all that’s happening to them to one man, Churchill.
The English are behaving as if they were stupid. The reality will end by calling them to order, by compelling them to open their eyes.
Japan’s entry into the war is an event that will help to modify our strategic situation. Whether via Spain or via Turkey, we shall gain access to the Near East. It will be enough for us to inform Turkey that we are renewing the Montreux agreement, and that we are enabling her to fortify the Straits. Thus we can avoid having to maintain an important fleet in the Black Sea, which is merely a frogpond. A few small ships will be enough, if we have on the Dardanelles a sturdy guardian to whom we supply the guns. That requires no more guns than are needed for the armament of a single battleship. This is the solution most to our advantage.
It seems to me that the attitude of the Turks towards the English has changed, that they’re blowing cold on them.
SPECIAL GUESTS: DR. TODT AND MINISTER SPEER
Younger children and the birthrate—America’s technology was founded by Germans.
A people rapidly increases its population when all the younger members of a family are in a position to set up establishments. The peasant needs a numerous labor force, and it is obviously to his interest to be able to employ his children until the age when they become adult. If the latter can set up establishments in their turn, they don’t remain a charge on their father—but it’s quite different when the father is obliged to feed them from his own land, and for all their lives. In that case, of course, the birthrate falls.
The people in the United States who were originally responsible for the development of engineering were nearly all of German stock (from Swabia and Württemberg).
What luck that everything’s in process of taking shape on the Eastern front! At last the German people is about to regain its freedom of movement.
SPECIAL GUESTS: SPEER AND HIMMLER
Once more about Justice—Penalties in wartime—The solution of the religious problem.
Our judicial system is not yet supple enough. It doesn’t realize the danger that threatens us at this moment by reason of the recrudescence of criminality.
It has again been brought to my attention that very many burglaries, committed by recidivists, are punished by terms of penal servitude. If we tolerate it that assaults may be made with the help of the blackout, in less than a year we shall arrive at a state of security which will be most dangerous for the whole population. England is already in this situation, and the English are beginning to demand that recourse should be had to the German methods (which, for my part, I find insufficiently draconic for the period). In some parts of England, the proportion of merchandise stolen is estimated at 40 percent.
During the first World War, a deserter was punished by fortress-arrest and reduction in rank. But what about the courageous soldier? What had he to put up with?
The citizen who traded on the black market in the rear came out of it very nicely. Either he was acquitted, or he had a magnificent time of it reserved for him in prison. The victims of the thefts had no choice but to earn again, by the sweat of their brow, whatever had been stolen from them, whilst the thief could spend his time causing the product of his thefts to multiply. In every regiment there were likewise scoundrels whose misdeeds were punished by three or four years’ imprisonment at the most. That’s what embittered the troops.
It’s a scandal that, at a time when an honest man’s life is so fragile, these black sheep should be supported at the expense of the community.
After ten years of penal servitude, a man is lost to the community. When he’s done his time, who’d be willing to give him work? Creatures of that sort should either be sent to a concentration camp for life or suffer the death penalty. In time of war, the latter penalty would be appropriate, if only to set an example. For a similar reason, second-rate criminals should be treated in the same fashion.
Instead of behaving in this radical manner, our judicial system bends lovingly over individual cases, amuses itself by weighing the pros and cons and in finding extenuating circumstances—all in accordance with the rites of peacetime. We must have done with such practices.
The lawyer doesn’t consider the practical repercussions of the application of the law. He persists in seeing each case in itself.
The criminal, in his turn, is perfectly familiar with the procedures of the system, and benefits by his familiarity with it in the manner in which he commits a crime. He knows, for example, that for a theft committed on a train one is punished with a maximum of so many years of penal servitude. He can tell himself that, if things turn out badly, he’ll be out of it for a few years leading a well-organized existence, sheltered from want, and under the protection of the Minister of Justice. He has still other advantages. He isn’t sent to the front, and, in the event of defeat, he has chances of rising to the highest offices. In the event of victory, finally, he can reckon on an amnesty.
In such cases, the judges should exercise the discretion which is at their disposal. But not all of them understand this.
The evil that’s gnawing our vitals is our priests, of both creeds. I can’t at present give them the answer they’ve been asking for, but it will cost them nothing to wait. It’s all written down in my big book. The time will come when I’ll settle my account with them, and I’ll go straight to the point.
I don’t know which should be considered the more dangerous: the minister of religion who playacts at patriotism, or the man who openly opposes the State. The fact remains that it’s their maneuvers that have led me to my decision. They’ve only got to keep at it, they’ll hear from me, all right. I shan’t let myself be hampered by juridical scruples. Only necessity has legal force. In less than ten years from now, things will have quite another look, I can promise them.
We shan’t be able to go on evading the religious problem much longer. If anyone thinks it’s really essential to build the life of human society on a foundation of lies, well, in my estimation, such a society is not worth preserving. If, on the other hand, one believes that truth is the indispensable foundation, then conscience bids one intervene in the name of truth, and exterminate the lie.
Periods that have endured such affronts without protesting will be condemned by people of the coming generations. Just as the pyres for heretics have been suppressed, so all these by-products of ignorance and bad faith will have to be eliminated in their turn.
SPECIAL GUESTS: HIMMLER AND SPEER
On the forms of Government in Europe and the United States.
The United States of America were born as a republic. That’s what distinguishes that country from the European nations. Amongst the latter, the republican form has been a successor to the monarchical form.
In Great Britain, the Head of the State is merely a symbol. In fact, it’s the Prime Minister who governs.
In Europe, only Germany has a form of State that approximates to that of the United States. In America, the Chamber of Electors does not play a permanent role. As for the Supreme Court, it cannot reverse the President’s decisions unless they are anticonstitutional or unless they infringe upon the prerogatives of Congress. The President of the United States has a much wider power than the Kaiser had, for he depended on parliament. In Germany, if things had remained normal, the monarchy would more and more have approximated to the English form.
The King, in Great Britain, is merely the guardian of the constitution, and it’s only by directly influencing people that he can exercise an influence (provided, moreover, that he’s clever enough) on the political level. The House of Lords, which is practically without influence, is a House of benefice-holders. It acts as a means of sidetracking men in politics whose talent is becoming dangerous.
With us, a man who controlled a majority in the Reichstag could govern against the President. To avoid the crisis that might arise from this duality, I’ve united in one and the same function the role of the Chancellor, who’s responsible to parliament, and that of the Head of the State. But I’m not of the opinion that the Führer is appointed for life. At the end of a certain time, the Head of the State must give way to a successor.
SPECIAL GUEST: SPEER
The farce of gas masks—The economics of the cults—Obersalzberg.
The spectacle of the publicity to which the gas masks have been exposed in England convinces me that this is a piece of commercial exploitation in which the top men are mixed up. To make a few hundred thousand pounds, nobody minds putting on fancy dress airs and going about with a mask slung over one’s shoulder—the more so as the case might contain a satisfactory supply of cigars.
One must clearly see into all that, in order to appreciate properly the significance of the exclamation made by the Roosevelt woman, speaking of ourselves: “It’s a world in which we could not conceivably live!”
Just like the throne and the altar in former times, so now the Jews and the political profiteers form a silent association for the common exploitation of the democratic milch cow.
If, instead of giving five hundred millions to the Church, we made grants to some archbishops, allowing them full freedom to share out as they chose the sums put at their disposal, it’s certain that the number of their collaborators would be reduced to the minimum. They’d try to keep the greater part of the money for themselves, and they’d burst themselves in the attempt to be useful to us. With a tenth part of our budget for religion, we would thus have a Church devoted to the State and of unshakeable loyalty. We must have done with these out-of-date forms. The little sects, which receive only a few hundred thousand marks, are devoted to us body and soul. Let’s abolish the control on money given to the Churches, in accordance with that strictly Christian principle: “Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.” This mania for controls should be regarded as an offense against these just men. Let them fill their own pockets, and give us a bit of peace!
Those rainy days at Berchtesgaden, what a blessing they were! No violent exercise, no excursions, no sunbaths—a little repose! There’s nothing lovelier in the world than a mountain landscape. There was a time when I could have wept for grief on having to leave Berchtesgaden.
As far as possible, one must avoid ruining landscapes with networks of high-tension wires, telpher railways and machines of that sort. I’m in favor of roads, when needs must—but what’s uglier than a funicular?
On New Year’s Day I was obliged to go down to Berchtesgaden to telephone, because at Obersalzberg the telephone wasn’t working. The fact was, it was my yearly custom to give sacks of gunpowder to our village shots. They fired them off to their hearts’ content, playing havoc everywhere with their old rifles and sixteenth-century arquebuses—to the extent of damaging the telephone wires!
British “Fair Play”—Successful air raids—The technological war—Revelations on the Narvik landing.
The last thing these English know is how to practice fair play [phrase in English in the original]. They’re very bad at accepting their defeats.
If I had a bomber capable of flying at more than seven hundred and fifty [kilometers] an hour, I’d have supremacy everywhere. This aircraft wouldn’t have to be armed, for it would be faster than the fastest fighters. In our manufacturing schedules, therefore, we should first attack the problem of bombers, instead of giving priority to fighters, where production can catch up quickly. We ought to make such a leap ahead that we could put a great distance between ourselves and our opponents. A bomber flying at a height of fourteen thousand meters would provide the same safety—but the snag is, it’s difficult to aim from so high.
Ten thousand bombs dropped at random on a city are not as effective as a single bomb aimed with certainty at a powerhouse or a waterworks on which the water supply depends. On the day when the gentry [English word in the original] were deprived of their hydro therapy, they’d certainly lose some of their conceit.
The problem of bombardment should be considered logically. What are the targets to aim for by preference? A bomb of five hundred kilograms on a powerhouse undoubtedly produces the required effect. That’s what’s decisive. With two hundred bombers fulfilling these conditions, and continuing to fly for six months, I’ll annihilate the enemy—for it would be impossible for him to catch up with his loss of production during the period.
What I’ve learnt from Oshima concerning the Japanese submarine war has filled me both with satisfaction and with anger. The fact is that the pocket submarine, with only two men aboard, has been suggested to us several times. With what an air of superiority our specialists rejected it!
In the technological war, it’s the side which arrives at a given point with the necessary weapon that wins the battle.
If we succeed this year in getting our new tanks into the line in the proportion of twelve per division, we’ll crushingly outclass all our opponents’ tanks. It’s enough to give Rommel twenty-four of them to guarantee him the advantage. If the Americans arrive with their tanks, he’ll bowl them over like rabbits.
What’s important is to have the technical superiority in every case at a decisive point. I know that; I’m mad on technique. We must meet the enemy with novelties that take him by surprise, so as continually to keep the initiative.
If the three transports that we wanted to send to Narvik had arrived safely, our warships would not have been sunk, and history would have taken a different course.
Supposing I’d known the exact situation, I’d immediately have recalled my men, for lack of audacity. Praise and thanks to the cretin who carried negligence to the point of not informing us that our transports couldn’t get through, The fact that our enterprise was nevertheless successful, that was a real defiance of fate—for we had no reasonable chance of succeeding.
It’s likewise an event unique in history that we charged to attack a port, believing it to be fortified, and therefore hoping that we could use it as a base—and this all the more inasmuch as we had, from the former Minister for War of the nation concerned, information that later proved to be false.
A savory detail is that Churchill at once sent his son to Norway—an urchin like that!—to trumpet the arrival of the British liberators.
Our good luck was that the English surprised some of our ships, especially the one that was carrying the Flak. Contrary to the orders I’d given, the men of this unit were wearing their uniform. The English returned whence they had come, long enough to ask for instructions—and it’s to this chance circumstance we owed our ability to be the first to land.
The best proof that these swine wanted to try something that time is that they’re in a state of fury. The fact is, we frustrated their intentions by having our information published in the Norwegian and Danish press.
What a postmortem they must have held to find out how we were informed!
As for their Sicilian intrigues, they’ve been nipped in the bud by Kesselring’s arrival.
SPECIAL GUEST: HIMMLER
Motor cars and their drivers.
Adolf Müller’s the man to whom I owe the fact that I understand the art of driving a car.
Müller had very much vexed me by saying that my car was not a car but a saucepan, that my drivers drove like dummies, and that if I went on as I was doing, it wouldn’t last long. “When a car loses one of its wheels,” he said (this is what had just happened to mine), “it’s ready for the scrap heap, and so is its driver.” Thus Müller.
Since he was going to Würzburg to buy a rotary press, Müller suggested I should come with him. He arrived at our rendezvous very oddly attired, and his knickerbockers were only a detail in this rig-out. When he told me he would himself drive his car, my first reaction was to inform him that I wouldn’t come with him. “Get in,” he told me, “and you’ll learn what it is to drive a car.” I must honestly confess that the journey was a revelation to me. Unlike most people, I’m always ready to learn.
The car itself, first of all, was a sixteen-horse Benz, and it was in absolutely impeccable condition. By comparison, I saw at once all the faults of my own car. And I must add that Müller drove wonderfully well.
Secondly, Müller opened my eyes to an infinite number of small details that escape most drivers. Every pedestrian who is installed behind a wheel at once loses his sense of the consideration to which he is convinced he is entitled whilst he is a pedestrian. Now, Müller never stopped thinking of the people on the road. He drove very carefully through built-up areas. He believed that anyone who runs over a child should be put in prison at once. He didn’t skirt the edge of the road, as many people do, but instead he stuck rather to the top of the camber, always mindful of the child who might unexpectedly emerge. When he wanted to pass a car, he first of all made sure that the driver of the car in front of him had taken cognizance of his intention. He took his curves cleverly, without making his rear wheels skid, and without sudden spurts of acceleration—all gently and flexibly. I realized that driving was something quite different from what I’d hitherto supposed, and I was a little ashamed at the comparisons that forced themselves into my mind.
During that journey I took two decisions: I’d buy a Benz, and I’d teach my drivers to drive.
I went to the Benz works, and thus made Werlin’s acquaintance. I told him I wanted to buy a sixteen-h.p. “You’ll decide for yourself in the end,” he said. “I’d advise you to try a ten-h.p., to begin with, to get your hand in: it does only eighty kilometers an hour, but it’s better to arrive at your destination at eighty than to smash yourself up at a hundred and ten.” These were so many dagger thrusts at my pride.
Theoretical and practical knowledge are one thing and presence of mind at the moment of danger is something else. Schreck had them both to the same degree. He was as strong as a buffalo, and cold-bloodedly fearless. He used his car as a weapon for charging at Communists.
Kempka has been my driver for nearly ten years, and I have nothing but praise for him. Moreover, he impeccably manages the collection of cars for which he’s responsible. When I ask him, in September, if he has his stock of oil for the winter and his snow-chains, I know he’s ready equipped. If I need to know the time, I can rely on the clock on the instrument panel. All the instruments are in perfect working order. I’ve never had a more conscientious driver. In utterly critical situations, he wouldn’t have the same calmness as Schreck. He’s entirely wrapped up in his driving. When I had Schreck beside me, it was the old wartime comrade who sat at the wheel.
One day I had to be in Hanover with all speed in order to catch the night train for Munich. I’d been lent a car with a Saxon driver. Since we could see nothing, I suggested that he should switch on his headlights. “They’re switched on,” he said, “but the battery’s apartment.” A moment later, it was a tyre that gave up the ghost. I saw my Saxon becoming very busy with his car, and I asked him whether he hadn’t a spare wheel. “I have one, all right,” he said, “but it’s been apartment for some days.” It suddenly occurred to me that Lutze must be behind us. Sure enough, he arrived—at the wheel of an Opel, the first of the eighteen-h.p., four-cylinder models, the most wretched car that ever came out of the Opel works. So I continued my journey with Lutze, and I asked him whether there was any chance of arriving in time for my train. He’s an optimist, like all drivers. The unlucky thing for Lutze is that he has only one eye and is a poor judge of distances. He lost no time in going astray at a fork, and suddenly we found ourselves confronted by a ditch. We finally got out of it by using the reverse gear. I didn’t worry—I was already resigned to missing the train!
Lutze drove through Hanover at a crazy speed. Another five minutes, another two minutes to go. We arrived in the station. I had just time to leap into the train.
I’ve had some queer drivers in my time.
Göring made a point of always driving on the left-hand side of the road. In moments of danger, he used to blow his horn. His confidence was unfailing, but it was of a somewhat mystic nature.
Killinger was also an ace at the wheel!
Once I saw Bastian get down peacefully from his car, knock out some fools who’d jeered at him, take the wheel again and move off in complete calm.
One day I was a passenger in a car that was taking me back from Mainz. Schreck was driving behind us in a car equipped with a siren. We arrived in the middle of a bunch of cyclists. They were Reds and began to hurl insults at us. But when they heard Schreck’s siren, they left their bicycles on the road and scattered into the fields. Schreck went by quite calmly, crushing the bicycles. The Reds were taken aback, wondering how a police car could behave like that. When they realized their mistake, they began to abuse us again in their choicest terms. “Murderers, bandits, Hitlerites!” They recognized me, and I take that fact as my badge of rank.
We often had very painful incidents of this kind. It was no joke, at that time, to find oneself at grips with a mob of opponents.
When one has been driven for years by the same men, one no longer sees them as drivers, but as Party comrades.
SPECIAL GUEST: HIMMLER
Fascists and aristocrats—Roatta the rat—The Duce should sacrifice the monarchy—The Jews and the natural order—The unhealthy intellectuals of Europe—If the German professor ruled the world.
The genuine Fascists are friendly to Germany, but the court circles, the clique of aristocrats, detest everything German.
At Florence, the Duce said to me: “My soldiers are brave fellows, but I can’t have any confidence in my officers.” The last time I met Mussolini, his accents were still more tragic.
I learnt, with Pfeffer, that when men acquire the habit of a certain type of behavior, and make the gestures corresponding to it, it ends by becoming second nature to them. Words lose their meaning, the best-established notions create new events. With them, pride becomes transformed into vanity, egotism becomes confused with idealism.
It’s difficult to conceive that a genuine officer can be a sneaking spy. Now, that was just what Roatta was. He sabotaged the plan of attack by Italian troops along the valley of the Rhine, in June 1940.
Until the Duce succeeds in getting rid of this aristocratic Mafia, he won’t be able to appoint a genuine élite to the highest posts. This Mafia is every bit as base as the German underworld. It’s composed of cretins, who, however, are not so cretinous as not to have a sense of what gives other people their superiority. Their activities, although purely negative, are nonetheless effective, for these are the people who prevent the best men from gaining access to the highest posts. And this conspiracy is what paralyses the Duce’s efforts.
Things won’t improve in Italy until the Duce has sacrificed the monarchy and taken effective control of an authoritarian State. This form of government can last for centuries. The Republic of Venice lasted for nine hundred and sixty years. It ruled the eastern Mediterranean throughout that period, and that thanks to the authority conferred upon the Doge. Under the monarchic form, that would not have been possible. Venice couldn’t have claimed more—but whatever she coveted, and whatever lay within the scope of her ambition, she got. The example of the Hanseatic cities likewise proves the quality of this system. All that they lacked was the Imperial power.
It’s not possible that six thousand families can have, on the one hand, maintained perpetual dominion over three hundred and forty thousand Helots, and, on the other hand, reigned over Asia Minor and Sicily. The fact that they succeeded in doing so for several centuries is a proof of the greatness of this race.
The sensational event of the ancient world was the mobilization of the underworld against the established order. This enterprise of Christianity had no more to do with religion than Marxist socialism has to do with the solution of the social problem. The notions represented by Jewish Christianity were strictly unthinkable to Roman brains. The ancient world had a liking for clarity. Scientific research was encouraged there. The gods, for the Romans, were familiar images. It is somewhat difficult to know whether they had any exact idea of the Beyond. For them, eternal life was personified in living beings, and it consisted in a perpetual renewal. Those were conceptions fairly close to those which were current amongst the Japanese and Chinese at the time when the Swastika made its appearance amongst them.
It was necessary for the Jew to appear on the scene and introduce that mad conception of a life that continues into an alleged Beyond! It enables one to regard life as a thing that is negligible here below—since it will nourish later, when it no longer exists. Under cover of a religion, the Jew has introduced intolerance in a sphere in which tolerance formerly prevailed. Amongst the Romans, the cult of the sovereign intelligence was associated with the modesty of a humanity that knew its limits, to the point of consecrating altars to the unknown god.
The Jew who fraudulently introduced Christianity into the ancient world—in order to ruin it—reopened the same breach in modern times, this time taking as his pretext the social question. It’s the same sleight of hand as before. Just as Saul was changed into St. Paul, Mordechai became Karl Marx.
Peace can result only from a natural order. The condition of this order is that there is a hierarchy amongst nations. The most capable nations must necessarily take the lead. In this order, the subordinate nations get the greater profit, being protected by the more capable nations.
It is Jewry that always destroys this order. It constantly provokes the revolt of the weak against the strong, of bestiality against intelligence, of quantity against quality. It took fourteen centuries for Christianity to reach the peak of savagery and stupidity. We would therefore be wrong to sin by excess of confidence and proclaim our definite victory over Bolshevism. The more we render the Jew incapable of harming us, the more we shall protect ourselves from this danger. The Jew plays in nature the role of a catalyzing element. A people that is rid of its Jews returns spontaneously to the natural order.
In 1925 I wrote in Mein Kampf (and also in an unpublished work) that world Jewry saw in Japan an opponent beyond its reach. The racial instinct is so developed amongst the Japanese that the Jew realizes he cannot attack Japan from within. He is therefore compelled to act from outside. It would be to the considered interests of England and the United States to come to an understanding with Japan, but the Jew will strive to prevent such an understanding. I gave this warning in vain.
A question arises. Does the Jew act consciously and by calculation, or is he driven on by his instinct? I cannot answer that question.
The intellectual élite of Europe (whether professors of faculties, high officials, or whatever else) never understood anything of this problem. The élite has been stuffed with false ideas, and on these it lives. It propagates a science that causes the greatest possible damage. Stunted men have the philosophy of stunted men. They love neither strength nor health, and they regard weakness and sickness as supreme values.
Since it’s the function that creates the organ, entrust the world for a few centuries to a German professor—and you’ll soon have a mankind of cretins, made up of men with big heads set upon meager bodies.
Big properties in Hungary—The birthplaces of great men—Books for young people—Folk-dancing—Leather shorts.
The magnates of Hungary used to be noted for their hospitality. On their country estates they used to receive up to seventy guests at a time. The wines were better than in Austria, but the country houses were not so beautiful. For most of the time these noblemen led delightful lives in Paris or in the gambling resorts of the Côte d’Azur. One of them, Esterhazy, at least had it greatly to his credit that Haydn didn’t end up like Mozart in a communal grave—which is what happened in Vienna, the homeland of music.
It’s my view that, simply for the sake of their beauty, the great noblemen’s estates should be preserved. But they must retain their size, otherwise only the State would be capable of maintaining them as private country houses. And the ideal thing is that they should remain not only in private hands, but also in the family that has traditionally lived in them—else they lose their character. Thus these great monuments of the past, which have retained their character as living organisms, are also centers of culture. But when the country house is occupied by a caretaker acting as a guide, a little State official with a Bavarian or Saxon accent, who ingenuously recites his unvarying piece of claptrap, things no longer have a soul—the soul is gone.
Wahnfried, as in Wagner’s lifetime, is a lived-in house. It still has all its brilliance, and continues to give the effect of a lover. Goethe’s house gives the impression of a dead thing. And how one understands that in the room where he died he should have asked for light—always more light! Schiller’s house can still move one by the picture it gives of the penury in which the poet lived.
All these thoughts occurred to me whilst I was reflecting what might become of my house at Obersalzberg. I can already see the guide from Berchtesgaden showing visitors over the rooms of my house: “This is where he had breakfast. . .”’ I can also imagine a Saxon giving his avaricious instructions: “Don’t touch the articles, don’t wear out the parquet, stay between the ropes. . .” In short, if one hadn’t a family to bequeath one’s house to, the best thing would be to be burnt in it with all its contents—a magnificent funeral pyre!
I’ve just been reading a very fine article on Karl May. I found it delightful. It would be nice if his work were republished. I owe him my first notions of geography, and the fact that he opened my eyes on the world. I used to read him by candlelight, or by moonlight with the help of a huge magnifying glass. The first thing I read of that kind was The Last of the Mohicans. But Fritz Seidl told me at once: “Fenimore Cooper is nothing; you must read Karl May.” The first book of his I read was The Ride through the Desert. I was carried away by it. And I went on to devour at once the other books by the same author. The immediate result was a falling off in my school reports.
Apart from the Bible, Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe are the two most often read books in the world. Cervantes’ book is the world’s most brilliant parody of a society that was in process of becoming extinct. At bottom, the Spaniards’ habits of life have scarcely changed since then. Daniel Defoe’s book gathers together in one man the history of all mankind. It has often been imitated, but none of these desert-island stories can compete with the original. One Christmas I was given a beautiful illustrated edition. Cervantes’ book has been illustrated by Gustave Doré in a style of real genius. The third of these universal works is Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I could also mention Gulliver’s Travels. Each of these works contains a great basic idea. Unfortunately, we have nothing of the kind in our literature. In Germany, besides Karl May, Jules Verne and Felix Dahn are essential. All those reach a fairly high level.
When I was a young man, there was a book that had an extraordinary success. Its title was Old Heidelberg. Such works can contribute enormously to the publicity of a city or a region. Bremen and Spessart had the same thing happen to them.
But it’s a disaster when a city-dwelling poet sets himself to sing of the beauties of mountains. People who really belong to them don’t lend themselves to dramatic presentation. Their songs are heard amongst themselves. What other people sing doesn’t really belong to our folklore. At one time I bore a severe grudge against Hagenbeck for having made fun of our customs. The dance we call Schuhplattler is the most virile imaginable. It has nothing to do with the dance that our trumpery mountaineers perform under that name. It’s really a pity we haven’t succeeded in popularizing it by means of the theater. The Americans have devised a dance with clappers that’s really worthy of the stage. It’s a dance that owes nothing to Africa, but everything to Scotland. We, for our part, have only been able to make fun of Schuhplattler, and for that we have idiots to thank.
It goes without saying that the North Germans can’t assimilate our folklore. Do you know anything more ridiculous than a Berliner in leather shorts? A Scotsman can be received in London, in the best society, dressed in his national costume—but anyone in Berlin who put on a Tyrol costume would give the impression that he was going to Carnival. It was with great reluctance that I had definitely to give up wearing leather shorts. It was too much of a complication for me to have to change my clothes several times a day, like a mannequin, to adapt myself to the psychology of my visitors. In such dress, I couldn’t have been taken seriously by Germans from north of Goburg. Throughout my youth, even in winter, I never wore anything else.
I first of all adopted the kind of costume that goes with riding-boots, then I fell back on the bourgeois pair of trousers. Indeed, as soon as one gives up the most comfortable clothes, why should one take to the most uncomfortable in exchange? But it’s rather sad to see the old costumes gradually dying out.
I suggested to Himmler that he might dress two or three guards units in leather shorts. Obviously they would have to be handsome chaps, and not necessarily all from the South. I can quite well imagine a soldier with a Hamburg accent displaying sunburnt knees.
Apart from all that, leather shorts have the advantage that one’s not afraid of getting them dirty. On the contrary, they’re ennobled by stains, like a Stradivarius by age. In Germany nowadays all the young men are wearing leather shorts.
There are two things that I find charming when worn by young people—short trousers and skiing trousers. To think that there are idiots who wanted to make them wear boots!
The habit of skiing can never be too much encouraged—because of Russia.
SPECIAL GUEST: GENERAL ROMMEL
Portrait of Churchill.
Churchill is the very type of a corrupt journalist. There’s not a worse prostitute in politics.
He himself has written that it’s unimaginable what can be done in war with the help of lies.
He’s an utterly amoral, repulsive creature. I’m convinced that he has his place of refuge ready beyond the Atlantic. He obviously won’t seek sanctuary in Canada. In Canada he’d be beaten up. He’ll go to his friends the Yankees.
As soon as this damnable winter is over, we’ll remedy all that.
SPECIAL GUESTS: MINISTER SPEER AND FIELD-MARSHAL MILCH
A presentiment about the Russian winter.
I’ve always detested snow; Bormann, you know, I’ve always hated it. Now I know why. It was a presentiment.
Colonizing methods—The perversity of education—Regrets for the help given to Spain—The theater in Germany—Enriching the Museums.
No sooner do we land in a colony than we install children’s crêches, hospitals for the natives. All that fills me with rage.
White women degrading themselves in the service of the blacks. On top of that we have the shavelings shoving their oar in, with their mania for making angels! Instead of making the natives love us, all that inappropriate care makes them hate us. From their point of view, all these manifestations are the peak of indiscretion. They don’t understand the reasons for our behavior, and regard us as intolerable pedants who enjoy wielding the policeman’s truncheon.
The Russians don’t grow old. They scarcely get beyond fifty or sixty. What a ridiculous idea to vaccinate them. In this matter, we must resolutely push aside our lawyers and hygienic experts. No vaccination for the Russians, and no soap to get the dirt off them. But let them have all the spirits and tobacco they want. Anyway, some serious scientists are against vaccination.
Dirt shows on black people only when the missionaries, to teach them modesty, oblige them to put on clothes. In the state of nature, negroes are very clean. To a missionary, the smell of dirt is agreeable. From this point of view, they themselves are the dirtiest swine of all. They have a horror of water.
And those repulsive priests, when they question a child of seven in the confessional, it’s they themselves who incite it to sin, by opening its eyes to sin. And it’s the same thing when they turn on the natives.
In 1911, in the clerical citadel of Breslau, a Bavarian was condemned to a fortnight’s imprisonment for going out in the city in leather shorts. At the time, this attire created scandal. Nowadays everybody goes to the mixed baths without its arousing the slightest arrière-pensée in anyone.
In Rome there are priests who spend their time in measuring the length of women’s sleeves and skirts and in checking whether these women have headdresses. If God cared about such trifles, he’d have created man already dressed! The idea of nakedness torments only the priests, for the education they undergo makes them perverts.
If there hadn’t been the danger of the Red peril’s overwhelming Europe, I’d not have intervened in the revolution in Spain. The clergy would have been exterminated. If these people regained power in Germany, Europe would founder again in the darkness of the Middle Ages.
There are not enough theaters in Germany. A lot of them were built in the ’seventies, it’s true, but the number is no longer related to the importance of our population.
A hundred years ago Munich had three thousand five hundred seats for a population of fifty thousand inhabitants. The Residenztheater, the National and the Volkstheater at the gate on the Isar, were already in existence. Today, for a population of nearly nine hundred thousand inhabitants, Munich has seats for only five thousand spectators. So my plans for Linz are not exaggerated.
Berlin has three operas, but should have four or five for its four million inhabitants. Dresden, with its six hundred thousand inhabitants, supports a very fine opera.
There’s a lot of marvelous comedy acting in Berlin. In the first place, at the Deutsche Theater. The first show I went to after the first World War was Peer Gynt, which I saw with Dietrich Eckart, at the Staatliche Schauspielhaus. In Berlin the play was always given in Eckart’s translation. At Munich, on the other hand, it was in a Jewish translation.
I can’t give an opinion on the value of the theater at Munich, for I’m prejudiced on the subject. Whenever I go there, I have a feeling of apprehension. It’s possible that I may be unjust. In fact, I’m told on all sides that I should go once to the Staatliche Schauspielhaus, which, it appears, has considerably improved under Golling’s direction. I’ll decide, perhaps, when peace is back again. I’ve just been reading that the Kammerspiele have had a brilliant success with Othello.
What sort of concert-hall should Berlin have, if one remembers that Leipzig, with its six hundred thousand inhabitants, possesses the Gewandhaus! One realizes that a small city can have an intense cultural life if somebody concerns himself intelligently with the matter. Only quite exceptional pieces are reserved solely for the capital.
I could live very well in a city like Weimar or Bayreuth. A big city is very ungrateful. Its inhabitants are like children. They hurl themselves frantically upon everything new, and they lose interest in things with the same facility. A man who wants to make a real career as a singer certainly gets more satisfaction in the provinces.
It’s a pity that we haven’t a Gauleiter in Dresden who loves the arts. After Krauss and Furtwängler, Busch would have become the greatest German conductor, but Mutschmann wanted to force on him old Party comrades for his orchestra, so that this orchestra should be inspired by a good National-Socialist spirit!
I mustn’t forget to set up a museum of German masters at Trondhjem.
Museums like those of Dresden, Munich, Vienna or Berlin ought to have at least two millions a year to make new purchases. Wilhelm Bode managed things in his own way. He had an extraordinary gift for making use of rich people. He got huge subsidies from them, and in exchange persuaded the Kaiser to ennoble them. That’s another sphere in which I intend to introduce some order. It’s essential that the director of a museum should be able, without administrative juggleries, to buy a work of value quickly and before it runs the risk of falling into the hands of the dealers.
The spirit in peril—The observatory at Linz—The fight against falsehood, superstition and intolerance—Science is not dogmatic—The works of Hörbiger—Pave the way for men of talent.
The biretta!
The mere sight of one of these abortions in cassocks makes me wild!
Man has been given his brain to think with. But if he has the misfortune to make use of it, he finds a swarm of black bugs on his heels. The mind is doomed to the auto-da-fé.
The observatory I’ll have built at Linz, on the Pöstlingberg, I can see it in my mind. A façade of quite classical purity. I’ll have the pagan temple razed to the ground, and the observatory will take its place. Thus, in future, thousands of excursionists will make a pilgrimage there every Sunday. They’ll thus have access to the greatness of our universe. The pediment will bear this motto: “The heavens proclaim the glory of the everlasting.” It will be our way of giving men a religious spirit, of teaching them humility—but without the priests.
Man seizes hold, here and there, of a few scraps of truth, but he couldn’t rule nature. He must know that, on the contrary, he is dependent on Creation. And this attitude leads further than the superstitions maintained by the Church. Christianity is the worst of the regressions that mankind can ever have undergone, and it’s the Jew who, thanks to this diabolic invention, has thrown him back fifteen centuries. The only thing that would be still worse would be victory for the Jew through Bolshevism. If Bolshevism triumphed, mankind would lose the gift of laughter and joy. It would become merely a shapeless mass, doomed to greyness and despair.
The priests of antiquity were closer to nature, and they sought modestly for the meaning of things. Instead of that, Christianity promulgates its inconsistent dogmas and imposes them by force. Such a religion carries within it intolerance and persecution. It’s the bloodiest conceivable.
The building of my observatory will cost about twelve millions. The great planetarium by itself is worth two millions. Ptolemy’s one is less expensive.
For Ptolemy, the earth was the center of the world. That changed with Copernicus. Today we know that our solar system is merely a solar system amongst many others. What could we do better than allow the greatest possible number of people like us to become aware of these marvels?
In any case, we can be grateful to Providence, which causes us to live today rather than three hundred years ago. At every street corner, in those days, there was a blazing stake. What a debt we owe to the men who had the courage—the first to do so—to rebel against lies and intolerance. The admirable thing is that amongst them were Jesuit Fathers.
In their fight against the Church, the Russians are purely negative. We, on the other hand, should practice the cult of the heroes who enabled humanity to pull itself out of the rut of error. Kepler lived at Linz, and that’s why I chose Linz as the place for our observatory. His mother was accused of witchcraft and was tortured several times by the Inquisition.
To open the eyes of simple people, there’s no better method of instruction than the picture. Put a small telescope in a village, and you destroy a world of superstitions. One must destroy the priest’s argument that science is changeable because faith does not change, since, when presented in this form, the statement is dishonest.
Of course, poverty of spirit is a precious safeguard for the Church. The initiation of the people must be performed slowly. Instruction can simplify reality, but it has not the right deliberately to falsify it. What one teaches the lower level must not be invalidated by what is said a stage higher. In any case, science must not take on a dogmatic air, and it must always avoid running away when faced with difficulties. The contradictions are only apparent. When they exist, this is not the fault of science, but because men have not yet carried their enquiry far enough.
It was a great step forward, in the days of Ptolemy, to say that the earth was a sphere and that the stars gravitated around it. Since then there has been continual progress along the same path. Copernicus first. Copernicus, in his turn, has been largely left behind, and things will always be so. In our time, Hörbiger has made another step forward.
The universities make me think of the direction of the Wehrmacht’s technical service. Our technicians pass by many discoveries, and when by chance they again meet one they disregarded a few years before, they take good care not to remind anyone of their mistake.
At present, science claims that the moon is a projection into space of a fragment of the earth, and that the earth is an emanation of the sun. The real question is whether the earth came from the sun or whether it has a tendency to approach it. For me there is no doubt that the satellite planets are attracted by the planets, just as the latter are themselves attracted by a fixed point, the sun. Since there is no such thing as a vacuum, it is possible that the planets’ speed of rotation and movement may grow slower. Thus it is not impossible, for example, that Mars may one day be a satellite of the Earth.
Hörbiger considers a point of detail in all this. He declares that the element which we call water is in reality merely melted ice (instead of ice’s being frozen water): what is found in the universe is ice, and not water. This theory amounted to a revolution, and everybody rebelled against Hörbiger.
Science has a lot of difficulty in imposing its views, because it is constantly grappling with the spirit of routine. The fact is, men do not wish to know. In the last few years, the situation of science has improved.
It’s a piece of luck when men are found at the head of a State who are inclined to favor bold researches—for these latter are rarely supported and encouraged by official science.
There’s no greater privilege, in my view, than to play the part of a patron of the arts or the sciences. Men would certainly have regarded it as a vast honor to be allowed to encourage the career of a man like Richard Wagner. Well, it’s already a great deal gained that people like him are no longer burned alive! One sometimes hears it regretted that our period does not provide geniuses of the same stature as those of bygone times. That’s a mistake. These geniuses exist; it would be enough to encourage them. For my part, when I know that a scientist wishes to devote himself to new researches, I help him. I shall not cease to think that the most precious possession a country can have is its great men. If I think of Bismarck, I realize that only those who have lived through 1918 could fully appreciate his worth. One sees by such examples how much it would mean if we could make the road smooth for men of talent.
It’s only in the realm of music that I can find no satisfaction. The same thing is happening to music as is happening to beauty in a world dominated by the shavelings—the Christian religion is an enemy to beauty. The Jew has brought off the same trick upon music. He has created a new inversion of values and replaced the loveliness of music by noises. Surely the Athenian, when he entered the Parthenon to contemplate the image of Zeus, must have had another impression than the Christian who must resign himself to contemplating the grimacing face of a man crucified.
Since my fourteenth year I have felt liberated from the superstition that the priests used to teach. Apart from a few Holy Joes, I can say that none of my comrades went on believing in the miracle of the eucharist.
The only difference between then and now is that in those days I was convinced one must blow up the whole show with dynamite.
A rich Jewish couple.
I’m thinking of the wife of Consul Scharrer. She had hands laden with rings which were so big that she couldn’t move her fingers. She was the sort of Jewess one sees in caricatures. He was a great devotee of the turf. His wife and his horses were his only preoccupations.
One day Werlin showed me Scharrer’s car. Its radiator was plated, not in nickel, but in gold. It furthermore contained a thousand little articles of everyday use, starting with a lavatory, all in gold. I can still see Consul Scharrer when he used to arrive in a top hat, with his cheeks more puffed out than those of Christian Weber, for the Sunday concert on the avenue.
On their property at Bernried they had white peacocks. Although he received Prussian princes in his house, in the depths of his heart Scharrer was a Bavarian autonomist. A parrot of genius one day made the unforgivable blunder of crying, amidst this brilliant assembly: “Prussian swine!”
Unfortunately for him, Scharrer had a flame. His wife was furious, and threw him out of the house. He died in poverty.
She, the wife, was a daughter of the big brewer, Busch, who had made his fortune in the United States. He must have been some worthy Bavarian, who by chance married a Jewess. As regards Frau Scharrer, she looked like a ball. Nobody ever checked up whether she was wider or taller. When she was sitting in her carriage, her arms necessarily followed the shape of her body, and her hands hung down at the sides. There are Jewesses like that in Tunis. They are shut up in cages until they put on weight. She finally offered herself to a young lover. It’s a painful situation for a husband to be so dependent on a wife as rich as Croesus.
SPECIAL GUEST: A DANISH STURMBANNFÜHRER SS [MAJOR] OF THE VIKING DIVISION
In praise of Dr. Porsche—Defense of the European peninsula—The Russian masses against the individual—Nations must fuse—Europe saved in 1933.
Although one wouldn’t think it seeing him so modest and self-effacing, Dr. Porsche is the greatest engineering genius in Germany today. He has the courage to give his ideas time to ripen, although the capitalists are always urging him on to produce for quick profit. His experiments made during the war concerning the resistance of materials will enable us continually to improve our Volkswagen. In future, mobilization will no longer be a problem of transport for us. We’ll still have the problem of petrol, but that we’ll solve.
Not long ago, at a time when there were still a few acres of land to be shared out in the Far East, everybody went rushing there. Nowadays, we have the Russian spaces. They’re less attractive and rougher, but they’re worth more to us. We’ll get our hands on the finest land, and we’ll guarantee for ourselves the control of the vital points. We’ll know how to keep the population in order. There won’t be any question of our arriving there with kid gloves and dancing-masters.
Asia didn’t succeed, in the course of the centuries, in dislodging us from our peninsula—and all they now have in the way of civilization, they’ve got from us. Now we’re going to see which side has the real strength.
The Russian, as an individual fighting man, has always been our inferior. Russians exist only en masse, and that explains their brutality. I’ve always rebelled against the idea that Europe had reached the end of its mission, and that the hour of Russia or the United States had come.
It was the Continent that civilized Great Britain, and this is what enabled her to Colonize vast spaces in the rest of the world. Without Europe, America is not conceivable. Why shouldn’t we have the strength necessary to become one of the world’s centers of attraction? A hundred and twenty million people of Germanic stock, when they’ve consolidated their positions—that’s a force against which nobody in the world will be able to do anything. The countries that make up the Germanic world will stand only to gain. I see it in my own case. My native land is one of the most beautiful countries in the Reich, but what can it do when left to itself? What could I undertake as an Austrian? There’s no way of developing one’s talents in countries like Austria or Saxony, Denmark or Switzerland. The foundation is missing. So it’s lucky that once again potential new spaces are opening up before the Germanic peoples.
I understand that it may be hard for a young Dutchman or a young Norwegian to find himself called upon to form a common unit, within the framework of the Reich, together with men of other Germanic connections. But what is asked of them is no harder than what was asked of the Germanic tribes at the time of the great migrations. In those days, bitterness was so great that the chief of the Germanic tribes was assassinated by members of his own family. What was asked of the countries that have formed the Second Reich is similar to what we are asking now, and to what we recently asked of the Austrians.
If Germany hadn’t had the good fortune to let me take power in 1933, Europe today would no longer exist. The fact is that since I’ve been in power, I’ve had only a single idea: to rearm. That’s how I was able, last summer, to decide to attack Russia.
Confronted with the innumerable populations of the East, we cannot exist except on condition that all Germanics are united. They must compose the nucleus around which Europe will federate. On the day when we’ve solidly organized Europe, we shall be able to look towards Africa. And, who knows? perhaps one day we shall be able to entertain other ambitions.
There are three ways of settling the social question. The privileged class rules the people. The insurgent proletariat exterminates the possessing class. Or else a third formula gives each man the opportunity to develop himself according to his talents. When a man is competent, it matters little to me if he’s the son of a caretaker. And, by the way, I’m not stopping the descendants of our military heroes from going once more through the same tests.
I wouldn’t feel I had the right to demand of each man the supreme sacrifice, if I hadn’t myself gone through the whole 1914–18 war in the front line.
Turning towards the Danish guest, the Führer commented:
For you, things are easier than they were for us. Our past helps you. Our beginnings were wretched. And if I’d disappeared before we were successful, everything would at once have returned into oblivion.
SPECIAL GUESTS: HIMMLER AND A DANISH STURMBANNFÜHRER OF THE VIKING DIVISION
Party organization—The National Socialist press—Diverting the Jewish virus.
It’s unbelievable what the Party owes Schwarz. It was thanks to the good order in which he kept our finances that we were able to develop so rapidly and wipe out the other parties. For me, it’s marvelous. I don’t concern myself with these matters, so to speak, and Schwarz only reports to me once a year. It’s an immense relief for a man whose business is to breathe life into a movement not to have to bother about affairs of administration. I appreciate the privilege that has been mine, throughout my existence, to meet men who had the liking for responsibilities and the talent necessary to accomplish independently the work that was entrusted to them.
Amann is one of the oldest of my companions. He was infinitely valuable to me, for I had no notion of what double entry bookkeeping was.
My first treasurer was a former poacher who had lost an arm in the exercise of his talents. His name was Meier. The arm that was left to him was very useful for ringing the bell we used at our meetings. He lived in a cabin which one entered by a ladder designed for fowls.
At that time the Party had a total strength of thirty, and daddy Jegg was already one of our chaps. Meier was the very type of proletarian, in the good sense of the word. The fact that he was one-armed, moreover, earned him respect. As for his role of treasurer, the inflation finally took away all its importance. He was succeeded by Singer. He was a very fine man, a small Bavarian official, exactly what suited us at that time. My supporters all had little jobs. Singer, for example, was a guardian at the Bavarian National Museum. He looked after his old mother in a touching manner.
Whilst I was in Landsberg, the Party having been dissolved, Schwarz turned up. He’d begun by looking after the treasury of the Popular Block. One day Esser came to visit me, to announce that he’d discovered the rara avis and to advise me to use him in the new Party. I sent for the man, and it was Schwarz. He told me he was fed up with working with a lot of parsons, and that he’d be delighted to work for me. I was not slow to perceive his qualities. As usual, the man had been stifled by the mediocrities for whom he worked.
Schwarz organized, in model fashion, everything that gradually became the Party’s gigantic administration. He’d be quite capable of administering the finances of Berlin, and would succeed marvelously as the mayor of a big city. He had the fault—and what luck that was!—of not being a lawyer, and nobody had more practical good sense than he had. He knew admirably how to economize on small things—with the result that we always had what we needed for important matters. It was Schwarz who enabled me to administer the Party without our having to rely on the petty cash. In this way, unexpected assets are like manna. Schwarz centralized the administration of the Party. All subscriptions are sent directly to the central office, which returns to the local and regional branches the percentage that’s due to them. When I need information concerning any one—no matter which—of our members, I have only to pick up the telephone, and I get it within two minutes—even if I don’t know the member’s name, and know him only by his Party number. I don’t know whether there’s such a perfect and also such a simple organization anywhere else in the world. This centralization carried to an extreme nevertheless fits in with a high degree of decentralization on another level. Thus the Gauleiters enjoy total independence in their sector.
As regards Amann, I can say positively that he’s a genius. He’s the greatest newspaper proprietor in the world. Despite his great discretion, which explains why it’s not generally known, I declare that Rothermere and Beaverbrook are mere dwarfs compared to him. Today the Zentral Verlag owns from 70 percent to 80 percent of the German press. Amann achieved all that without the least ostentation. Who knows, for example, that the Münchener Neueste is one of our press organizations? Amann makes a point of preserving the individual personality of each of his newspapers. He’s likewise very clever when it’s a matter of handing over to others businesses that are not showing a profit. That’s what happened when he gave Sauckel a newspaper. It had belonged to Dinter, and Amann had taken it over for political reasons. A short time afterwards, I happened to ask Sauckel what Amann’s present had brought him in. “Up to date, it has cost me twenty thousand marks,” he replied. Amann had the idea that the profit of the central organization was made up of the profits made on each separate business. Hence one can conclude that no business which was in the red had, from any point of view, the slightest interest for Amann. That reminds me that Dietrich used to publish in Coburg a magazine entitled Flamme, which was even more violent than Streicher’s Stürmer. And yet I never knew a gentler man than Dietrich.
One must never forget the services rendered by the Stürmer. Without it the affair of the Jew Hirsch’s perjury, at Nuremberg, would never have come out. And how many other scandals he exposed!
One day a Nazi saw a Jew, in Nuremberg station, impatiently throw a letter into the wastepaper basket. He recovered the letter and, after having read it, took it to the Stürmer. It was a blackmailer’s letter in which the recipient, the Jew Hirsch, was threatened that the game would be given away if he stopped coughing up. The Stürmer’s revelation provoked an enquiry. It thus became known that a country girl, who had a place in Nuremberg in the household of Herr Hirsch, had brought an action against him for rape. Hirsch got the girl to swear in court that she had never had relations with other men—then he produced numerous witnesses who all claimed to have had relations with her. The German judges did not understand that Jews have no scruples when it’s a question of saving one of their compatriots. They therefore condemned the servant to one and a half years in prison. The letter thrown impatiently away by Hirsch was written by one of the false witnesses suborned by him—which witness considered that he could, conveniently add blackmail to perjury.
Today everyone’s eyes are opened, but at the time people found it difficult to believe that such things could happen. Poor girls who worked in big shops were handed over defenseless to their employers. In such a state of affairs, Streicher rendered immense services. Now that Jews are known for what they are, nobody any longer thinks that Streicher libeled them.
The discovery of the Jewish virus is one of the greatest revolutions that have taken place in the world. The battle in which we are engaged today is of the same sort as the battle waged, during the last century, by Pasteur and Koch. How many diseases have their origin in the Jewish virus!
Japan would have been contaminated, too, if it had stayed open to the Jews.
We shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jew. Everything has a cause, nothing comes by chance.
The principal newspapers of the Party—Tristan and other pieces at Vienna.
The organization of our press has truly been a success. Our law concerning the press is such that divergences of opinion between members of the Government are no longer an occasion for public exhibitions, which are not the newspapers’ business. We’ve eliminated that conception of political freedom according to which everybody has the right to say whatever comes into his head. Amann controls more than half of the German press.
It’s enough for me to send for Lorenz and inform him of my point of view, and I know that next day all the German newspapers will broadcast my ideas. Our little Dr. Dietrich is an extremely clever man. He doesn’t write well, but his speeches are often first-rate. I’m proud to be able to think that, with such collaborators at my side, I can make a sheer about-turn, as I did on 22nd June last, without anyone’s moving a muscle. And that’s a thing that’s possible in no country but ours.
Our illustrated newspapers have greatly improved. But, to compete abroad with the Anglo-Saxon weeklies, the Leipziger Illustrierte should be more eye-catching. The Berliner, the Münchener and the Wiener are well-made illustrated papers—the JB still better. The Kölner gained the limelight some years ago thanks to the documents it published. On the other hand, we could easily do without the Deutsche Illustrierte. Das Reich is a great success.
When peace has returned, we shall need, as a pendant to Das Reich, a Sunday weekly for people in the country. It should be easy to read, should have a serialized novel—so that young girls should likewise get their share—and should be copiously illustrated.
The English newspapers are in a privileged position as regards both the text and the photographic documentation. From all parts of the world, their material reaches them in floods. We ourselves shall be enabled by our new conquests to make progress in that field.
The brilliance, and what’s called the charm, of Vienna are explained by a long past. For five centuries Vienna was the capital of an empire.
I was so poor, during the Viennese period of my life, that I had to restrict myself to seeing only the finest spectacles. Thus I heard Tristan thirty or forty times, and always from the best companies. I also heard some Verdi and other works—leaving out the small fry.
How great artists can serve their country.
I’ve learnt that young Roller has just fallen at the front. If I’d known that he’d gone out! But nobody told me.
There are hundreds of thousands of men who could serve their country in no better way than by risking their lives for her, but a great artist should find another way. Can fate allow it that the most idiotic Russian should strike down men like that? We have so many men seconded for special duties! What harm could it do to add to their number the five or six hundred gifted men whom it would be important to save?
Roller is irreplaceable. We had only Sievert, Arent and Praetorius—Austria had given us the young Roller. Why didn’t Schirach warn me? I saw his Friedenstag. What a lovely thing!
The young Roller was a brave man. Before the Anschluss he would have had to leave Austria. I’m convinced he went out as a volunteer.
I could have sent him anywhere at all, for personal reasons, if he hadn’t insisted on staying in Vienna.
An exemplary officer—A group of merry fellows.
The death of Under-Secretary of State Hofmann has deeply grieved me.
In 1919 I harangued his battalion at Passau. What a marvelous lot of men we had there! Blazing patriots. To start with, Hofmann trusted me—and yet at that time I stood for so little. Hofmann was already convinced that it was I who would save Germany.
At the time of the Kapp putsch, Hofmann sent a telegram: “Putting myself under Kapp’s orders. What’s regiment doing?” There we’re a lot of officers of that sort in Bavaria. Seeckt got rid of them all. The only ones who were kept were those who never wavered.
I know three people who, when they’re together, never stop laughing. They’re Hoffmann [Hitler’s friend and “photographer”], Amann and Goebbels. When Epp joins them, the whole thing becomes a madhouse. As a matter of fact, Epp is not particularly quick. When the others are laughing at the third joke, Epp is beginning to catch on to the first, and starts to let out a huge laugh, which goes on and on.
Amann, what a jolly chap he is! Already when we were at the front, he used to let joy loose amongst us. In my unit, even at the worst times there was always someone who could find something to say that would make us laugh.
I’m very fond of Hoffmann. He’s a man who always makes fun of me. He’s a “deadpan” humorist, and he never fails to find a victim.
Strengthening the German position—The British proletariat and the threat of revolution—The three objectives of revolution—Paradise on earth—The last somersaults of Christianity.
In the last few weeks, I’ve the feeling that our position has got considerably stronger. The little countries are beginning to look on us as a guarantee of order. They’ll approach us all the more when they see that England is tying herself up more closely with Bolshevism.
When the masses in England realize their own power, probably they’ll make a bloody revolution. One can only hold the masses by habit—or else by force. Nothing stops me from thinking that they’re keeping on the island, as a guard against unexpected circumstances, regiments that would be very useful elsewhere. If the Conservative Party lost the support of the Army, the only thing left to it would be to make an alliance with the nine thousand supporters of Mosley. They’d need a Cromwell to save them, a Premier, who would take everything into his own hands. For lack of this solution, the revolution will sweep away everything.
It will be one of National Socialism’s merits that it knew how to stop the revolution at the proper moment. It’s very nice to see the people arise, but one must be a realist and go further than phrases. Nobody any longer counts the revolutions that have miscarried, or that degenerated for lack of being led. I’ve not forgotten the difficulties I had to overcome in 1933 and 1934. Revolution opens a sluice-gate, and it’s often impossible to curb the masses one has let loose.
A revolution has three main objectives. First of all, it’s a matter of breaking down the partitions between classes, so as to enable every man to rise. Secondly, it’s a matter of creating a standard of living such that the poorest will be assured of a decent existence. Finally, it’s a matter of acting in such a way that the benefits of civilization become common property.
The people who call themselves democrats blame us for our social policy as if it were a kind of disloyalty: according to them, it imperils the privileges of the owning classes. They regard it as an attack on liberty; for liberty, in their view, is the right of those who have power to continue to exercise it. I understand their reaction very well—but we had no choice. National Socialism is a purely German phenomenon, and we never intended to revolutionize the world. It was enough for us to be given a free hand in Russia and to be offered a few colonies. And the English could still be leading their comfortable little existence. It’s obvious that, in the long run, they couldn’t have avoided certain social reforms. One can’t, in fact, bridge the gap that exists between rich and poor merely with the consolations of religion. I realize, for my own part, that if I were offered the choice between nakedness on this earth (with the compensation of supreme happiness in the world beyond) and an earthly paradise, I certainly wouldn’t choose to sing Hallelujahs until the end of time.
In virtue of what law, divine or otherwise, should the rich alone have the right to govern? The world is passing at this moment through one of the most important revolutions in human history. We are witnessing the final somersaults of Christianity. It began with the Lutheran revolution. The revolutionary nature of that rebellion lies in the fact that until then there had been only one authority, on both the spiritual and the temporal level, that of the Pope—for it was he who delegated temporal power. Dogma cannot resist the ceaselessly renewed attacks of the spirit of free enquiry. One cannot teach at ten o’clock in the morning truths which one destroys in the eleven o’clock lesson.
What is ruining Christianity today is what once ruined the ancient world. The pantheistic mythology would no longer suit the social conditions of the period. As soon as the idea was introduced that all men were equal before God, that world was bound to collapse.
What is tragic for the world at present in gestation is that it is itself exposed to the danger of fixing itself in its turn upon a dogma. If Frederick the Great had lived fifty years longer, and had been present as a simple spectator at the evolution of society, he’d have ceaselessly used his baton in sheer anger. Men fortunately have had this piece of luck, that life is taken away from them at the moment when they would have an opportunity to take part in the destruction of the values on which they’d built.
SPECIAL GUESTS: HIMMLER AND STURMBANNFÜHRER [MAJOR] KUMM
Fears for Antonescu—The objectionable King Michael—A corrupt ruling class—Erzberger, trafficker in land—Roads—German minorities in the Balkans—Importance of the Danube.
If something happened to Antonescu, I’d tremble for Romania. Who’d succeed him? King Michael. He didn’t even help his mother to get down from her carriage! Did he think it would injure his royal dignity? I saw he was choked with rage when he noticed I’d put his mother on my right, the place due to the king. I know very well it wasn’t according to protocol—but one can’t go on maintaining these obsolete customs.
The Romanian peasantry are merely wretched cattle. As for the ruling class, it’s rotten to the marrow. In the film Stadt Anatol, those Balkan regions, turned upside down by black gold, are admirably rendered. These people for whom chance has suddenly put a petroleum well under their feet, and who all at once become fabulously rich, it’s contrary to the whole natural order!
A town like Bucharest grows only as a result of speculation.
I was once able to prove Erzberger guilty of illicit dealing—a squalid deal in real estate. As a result of an indiscretion, he’d learnt of a development scheme between Pankow and Berlin. In association with a monsignore, he’d bought for a hundred thousand marks or so some land that was later sold for three million seven hundred thousand marks. That’s why we inserted in the Party program a clause concerning speculation in real estate. I don’t object to legitimate landowners making a small profit on such occasions, but one must discourage these usurers’ enterprises.
For the construction of autobahnen, I’ve made a law by the terms of which the indemnities due to the expropriated persons are fixed by the State.
All strategic roads were built by tyrants—for the Romans, the Prussians or the French. They go straight across country. The other roads wind like processions and waste everybody’s time.
The people loves to be ruled. That’s why it’s sensitive to the loss of certain chiefs. We saw it when Todt died. The sorrow was universal. The people loves to have the best man in command.
I’m in favor of our building roads everywhere, but it’s not essential always to proceed in a uniform manner. The landscape of Flanders doesn’t call for roads like ours. These regions should each keep its own character. Let’s not kill the picturesque in the world.
The Hungarians are better governed than the Romanians. What a pity they can’t instal Groats instead of Romanians! The Hungarians are wildly nationalist. They assimilate the Germans at extraordinary speed, and they know how to select the best of them for posts of command. We shan’t succeed in preserving the German minorities in Hungary except by taking over control of the State—or else we shall have to withdraw our minorities from Hungary.
Apart from those in Transylvania, the German minorities in Hungary have a tendency to degenerate. I realized this at Nuremberg, when I saw their delegations march past. In our plans for colonization in Russia, we’ll find room for these minorities. It’s not profitable for us to repatriate minorities, but if I settle them on territories that don’t cost me anything, that’s quite different. A government must have a lot of authority to succeed in such an operation. Anyway, I suppose that if we want to practice a sincere friendship with Hungary, we shall have to withdraw our minorities from the country.
Obviously, if we want to convert the Danube into a German river, our policy will have to be different. In that case, we’d have to settle all our minorities from the Balkans on the banks of the river. But we would be obliged to give the Germans of the Banat, for example, a land as fertile as the Banat.
It’s clear that the Hungarians and Romanians will never be reconciled, even if they regard Germany as a common enemy.
If I settle the fifteen hundred thousand Germans of our minorities in the Eastern territories, I’ll build an autobahn fifteen hundred kilometers long, dotted at intervals of fifty to a hundred kilometers with German agglomerations, including some important towns.
That’s a tentative solution, but the Danube remains the Danube. We should establish a strong foothold at the Iron Gates. Unfortunately it’s an unprepossessing region and won’t attract our colonists. It will always be possible to populate the region by the exploitation of the copper mines. That will be an excellent way of procuring the copper we need, and there will be all the more reason for it if we’re not on good terms with the Yugoslavs.
The Danube is also the link with Turkey.
And it’s only when one’s lines of communication are safe that one can build a world empire.
Relief in Russia—The fate of Napoleon—GHQ, Wolfsschanze—Death blow to the petit bourgeois ideal.
Sunday will be the 1st March.
Boys, you can’t imagine what that means to me—how much the last three months have worn out my strength, tested my nervous resistance.
I can tell you now that during the first two weeks of December we lost a thousand tanks and had two thousand locomotives out of operation. As a result of the general lack of material, I seemed to be a liar, and yet I wasn’t lying. I told the front that trains were arriving, but the locomotives were always broken down. I told the front that tanks were arriving, but they arrived in what a state!
Now, when I send something to the southern sector, I know that it will reach its destination. We have nothing more to fear from climatic mishaps.
Now that January and February are past, our enemies can give up the hope of our suffering the fate of Napoleon. They’ve lost nothing by waiting. Now we’re about to switch over to squaring the account. What a relief!
I’ve noticed, on the occasion of such events, that when everybody loses his nerves, I’m the only one who keeps calm.
It was the same thing at the time of the struggle for power, but at that time I had the luck to be only thirty, whilst my opponents were twenty or thirty years older.
Here in the Wolfschanze, I feel like a prisoner in these dugouts, and my spirit can’t escape. In my youth I dreamed constantly of vast spaces, and life has enabled me to give the dream reality. Ah, if we were at least in Berlin!
Space lends wings to my imagination. Often I go at night to the card-room, and there I pace to and fro. In that way I get ideas.
My finest headquarters, when all is said, was Felsennest. At the Wolfschlucht, the place wasn’t very safe, and I had constant eye-ache because of the caustic emanations given off by the fireproofed wood of which the barracks had been built. The third of our headquarters was quite simple, but very agreeable. Unfortunately, it was so damp there that we’d all have ended by falling sick if we’d stayed there. The fourth, which was intended to be our genuine headquarters, I saw only in a photograph. They made exactly what I didn’t want, a castle—and that’s the main reason why I refused to settle there.
When peace has returned, I’ll begin by spending three months without doing anything. Our soldiers themselves should have a holiday. I’ll immediately resign the command of the Wehrmacht. I’ll at once send for Speer again. All our wartime administrative services will be reduced to their simplest terms. Even the Four Year Plan will be reduced to a more modest scope of activity. I’ll pass it over to the Ministry of Economics, by the way. What counts is to organize the work properly, and to see that everywhere we have the right man in the right place [English expression in the original].
I shall be glad to know that the petit bourgeois ideal of a nation squeezed between the Elbe and the Weser is receiving its deathblow. A new youth is there, avid to make the world’s acquaintance, ready to carry on.
Laws, man-made and natural—God and the religions—Force and torture impose belief—The true religion—Truth will triumph—Towards a new conception of the world.
I believe that Providence gives the victory to the man who knows how to use the brains nature has given him. The notions of law invented by the jurists have little to do with natural laws. The wisdom of nations sometimes expresses truths as old as the world, that perfectly reproduce nature’s intentions. “God helps him who helps himself!” It’s obvious that man forgets his own destiny.
One day I explained to Eltz that what is conventionally called creation is probably an immovable thing, that only man’s conception of it is subject to variations. Why doesn’t God give everybody the possibility of understanding truth? Every man of average culture knows that at this precise moment the Catholic religion is of interest to just one tenth of the population of the globe. He’s astonished, too, that Providence, which has willed all that, can allow so many religions, all true from the point of view of those who practice them, to compete for the faith of the faithful. He knows, too, thanks to the view in depth that history enables him to take, that the Christian religion interests only those living in a tiny period of the life of mankind.
God made men. But thanks to original sin we are men in the image of our world, earning our bread in the sweat of our brow.
For five hundred thousand years, God impassively contemplated the spectacle of which He is the author. Then one day He decided to send upon earth His only son. You remember the details of that complicated story!
Those who don’t believe should, it seems, have faith imposed on them by force. If God is truly interested in men being enlightened, one wonders why He resorts to torture for that purpose.
While we’re on the subject, let’s add that, even amongst those who claim to be good Catholics, very few really believe in this humbug. Only old women, who have given up everything because life has already withdrawn from them, go regularly to church. All that’s dead wood—and one shouldn’t waste one’s time in concerning oneself with such brains.
In the trade union formed by the Church, many of the members have tangible interests to defend, and see no further. A given set of grimaces, certain people identify them with true religion. After that, let’s express surprise that these cynical exploiters of God are the true purveyors of atheism.
Why should men fight to make their point of view triumph, if prayer should be enough? In the Spanish struggle, the clergy should have said: “We defend ourselves by the power of prayer.” But they deemed it safer to finance a lot of heathens, so that Holy Church could save her skin.
If I’m a poor devil and die without having had time to repent, I’m all right. But if, as a preliminary, I can dispose of ten marks to the Church’s benefit, my affairs appear in a more favorable light. And is that what God would have wanted?
That little country girls and simple working men should be set dancing to that tune, that’s a thing that can be explained. But that intelligent men should make themselves accomplices to such superstitions, and that it’s because of these superstitions, and in the name of love, that hundreds of thousands of human beings have been exterminated in the course of history—that is something I cannot admit.
I shall never believe that what is founded on lies can endure for ever. I believe in truth. I’m sure that, in the long run, truth must be victorious.
It’s probable that, as regards religion, we are about to enter an era of tolerance. Everybody will be allowed to seek his own salvation in the way that suits him best. The ancient world knew this climate of tolerance. Nobody took to proselytizing.
If I enter a church, it’s not with the idea of overturning idols. It’s to look for, and perhaps to find, beauties in which I’m interested.
It would always be disagreeable for me to go down to posterity as a man who made concessions in this field. I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors—but to devote myself deliberately to error, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie. In acting as I do, I’m very far from the wish to scandalize. But I rebel when I see the very idea of Providence flouted in this fashion.
It’s a great satisfaction for me to feel myself totally foreign to that world. But I shall feel I’m in my proper place if, after my death, I find myself, together with people like me, on some sort of Olympus. I shall be in the company of the most enlightened spirits of all times.
I adopted a definite attitude on the 21st March 1933 when I refused to take part in the religious services, organized at Potsdam by the two Churches, for the inauguration of the new Reichstag.
I’ve never concerned myself, in the Party, with learning to which Church the men around me belonged, or did not belong. But if I were to die today, it would shock me to know that there’s a single “sky pilot” within a radius of ten kilometers around me. The idea that one of these fellows could bring me the slightest help would by itself make me despair of Providence.
As far as I’m concerned, I act according to my convictions. I don’t prevent anyone from praying silently, but I rebel against all blasphemy. So let nobody waste prayers on me that I shall not have asked for.
If my presence on earth is providential, I owe it to a superior will. But I owe nothing to the Church that trafficks in the salvation of souls, and I find it really too cruel. I admit that one cannot impose one’s will by force, but I have a horror of people who enjoy inflicting sufferings on others’ bodies and tyranny upon others’ souls.
Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity. It will last another hundred years, two hundred years perhaps. My regret will have been that I couldn’t, like whoever the prophet was, behold the promised land from afar. We are entering into a conception of the world that will be a sunny era, an era of tolerance. Man must be put in a position to develop freely the talents that God has given him.
What is important above all is that we should prevent a greater lie from replacing the lie that is disappearing. The world of Judaeo-Bolshevism must collapse.
A Governor for Belgium—The Dutch and Germanic solidarity—Dislike of monarchs—A second French Government—Slogans for the British.
In Holland, Denmark and Norway there are movements whose leaders have preferred to nourish an ambition to be one day, thanks to us, Presidents of the Council, rather than to be, without us, merely retired majors, or something similar.
I need a man for Belgium. The difficulty is to choose the man. No question of sending there a North German, somebody brutal, a martinet. I need an extraordinarily clever man, as supple as an eel, amiable—and at the same time thick-skinned and tough. For Holland, I have in Seyss-Inquart a man who has these qualities. I must surrender to the evidence that I’m again going to have to fall back upon my Austrian compatriots. When I try to decide who, amongst my Gauleiters, would carry enough guns, I always come back to Jury. He’s clever, intelligent, conciliatory—but intractable in the essential things. My Gauleiter from Styria would be perfect, too, but he’s still a little young.
How would it be to send men like Seyss and Jury to Russia? It would be better to send bulls! But one mustn’t confuse suppleness and weakness—and both of them would cut a good figure there. Schirach has done his job very well, and he’s now in the running for any important task.
Seyss has succeeded in encouraging in Holland a movement that is numbering more and more adherents, and is waging war against Wilhelmina without our having to put a shoulder to the wheel. The idea of Germanic solidarity is making more and more impression on the minds of the Dutch.
As regards the monarchs, the worst nuisances are those who’ve grown old in harness. They become, in a sort of way, tabu. You scarcely touch them, and everybody begins to howl. Franz Josef, for example, was much less intelligent than his successor, but a revolution against him was not possible. What a lot of affronts he swallowed in the course of his interminable life! Finally he acquired the style of a Buddha! For more than half a century he witnessed events without reacting to them.
If the Dane goes about it like the old Swede (who does nothing but gather his strength by playing tennis), he’ll reach the age of Methuselah. Gustav V was telling me that he had an excellent constitution, for if his absence from the country lasted more than four weeks, he had to be replaced. It’s by dint of doing nothing that these puppets become impudently old. In Denmark, we already have the successor. That’s Clausen.
When we’ve reached that point, we’ll have three men who’ll have sinned so much that they’ll be obliged to remain allied to us whatever happens. We can count on Clausen, and likewise on Mussert.
In Belgium, there’s this damned king! If only he’d cleared out like the others. I’d have allowed his pretty girlfriend to go and join him.
In Paris, we’ll probably have a second French government. Abetz is too exclusively keen on collaboration, to my taste. Unfortunately, I can’t tell him precisely what my objects are, for he has a wife. The fact is, I know of a man who talks in his sleep, and I sometimes wonder whether Abetz doesn’t do the same. But he’s intelligent at organizing resistance in Paris against Vichy, and in this respect his wife is useful to him. Thus things take on a more innocent character.
If we succeeded in forming a second French government in Paris, the opposition in Vichy would have only one wish, that we should stay—for fear that it should be discovered how many of them are paid by us. My opinion is that the longer we stay in Paris, the better worth while it will be. In any case, I shall never have any difficulty in finding occupants for Paris, and there’s no risk that one day a unit of the Wehrmacht may mutiny, saying: “We don’t want to stay in France any more!”
I’ve explained to Himmler that, if I’d been an emperor of the Holy Empire, I’d have put him in disgrace. I very well understand the emperors who were not tempted by the conquest of the East. These spaces had no roads, and no means of heating. Winter there lasted all the year round. It’s easy to say: “Blood and soil.” But for the particularism of the German princes, we’d have succeeded in Germanizing the whole of Northern Italy. Racially, the West is to a great extent Germanic. Himmler’s theory needs serious consideration. We pay far too much honor to Heinrich the Lion, for he helped in frustrating the policy of Barbarossa and Heinrich VI. If everyone had supported the emperors’ policy, what would we not have achieved?
Supposing the expansion to the West had been pursued logically, we’d have a great Germanic empire stretching from Denmark to the Loire—and England would not have acquired the importance that is hers today.
The moment has come when propaganda can play an important role in our favor. It’s not a matter of attacking each Englishman individually to induce him to such and such a particular action. It’s a matter of a propaganda that sets forth undeniable facts, and consequently slogans that fall upon a soil well prepared to receive them. For example: “The British Empire is becoming more and more a colony of American Jews.”
On the organ of Westminster Abbey, the Internationale was played after the service. What can that mean, if not the fall of Christianity?
It’s enough to compare the statements now being made in London with those issuing a year ago from Lisbon, to realize the change in the situation. It’s a turning point in history.
Financial organization of the Party press.
Amann’s great idea was to guarantee the financial existence of the newspaper by the profits realized on the Party editions. These profits accumulated so quickly that the newspaper quickly stopped being exposed to any risks.
Amann realized what a tour de force it was to maintain the house of publication during my incarceration in Landsberg. For once, the juggleries of the lawyers were useful to us. The publishing house was a limited company, and the law required the unanimous agreement of its members for its dissolution. By chance, one of the members, Herr von Sebottendorff, was always abroad (in Turkey, I think), and of course Amann could never succeed in getting hold of him.
At the time, I owned a part of the capital (Gutberlet had made me a present of a share of five thousand marks, and I had bought other shares). The firm had existed for thirty or forty years under the name of Franz Eher Publishing Co. I retained for the newspaper the name of Völkischer Beobachter. Dietrich Eckart was furious. “What’s the meaning of that word, Beobachter [observer]?,” he would say. “I could understand something like ‘the chain-smasher’!”
Very intelligently, for reasons of camouflage, Amann created on the side the Hoheneichen Publishing Co., whose name covered certain publications. And he left the press to Adolf Müller so as not to have to bring action against Party comrades for payment of their bills.
Housing crisis—new constructions.
To put an end to the housing crisis, we shall build, as soon as the war is over, a million dwellings a year, and that for five consecutive years.
The time necessary to build a house should not exceed three months. In this field, the achievements of modern technology must be used in their entirety. The mistress of the house must be set free from all the minor chores that make her waste her time. Not only must the children’s play-gardens be near the houses, but the mother must not even be compelled to take her children there herself. All she should have to do is to press a button for the woman in charge to appear immediately. No more refuse to take downstairs, no more fuel to carry up. In the morning, the works of the alarm clock must even switch on the mechanism that boils the water. All these little inventions that lighten the burden of life must be set to work.
I have a man, Robert Ley, to whom it will be enough for me to entrust this mission. A nod from me, and he’ll set everything humming.
Every dwelling should carry the right to a garage, and there’s no question of this garage costing forty or fifty marks a month. It ought to cost a tenth of that. If we haven’t reached that point today, it’s once again those damned lawyers we have to thank. I’ve been told that these maniacs of the Civil Service have found nothing better to do than to compose a file in which all possible accidents, imaginable or unimaginable, have been foreseen. And they’ve used this as a foundation on which to base their regulations. Thus they make such demands that building-costs become impossibly high. In many cases, they’re based on technical peculiarities that became obsolete twenty years ago. For example, there is a regulation limiting the angle of the stairs to a certain number of degrees. This regulation, if it’s applied, entails enormous expenses: time wasted, room wasted, materials wasted.
What’s more, it’s necessary to standardize the necessary components for the construction of interiors. Don’t ask where to begin! If we succeed in sparing the five million families who’ll inhabit the new apartments the useless expense usually involved in a move to a new dwelling, this will already be progress. Everything must have a beginning. Let’s begin at once!
The Bayreuth Festival 1925—Bayreuth and National Socialism—Role of Cosima Wagner—Siegfried Wagner.
In 1925, the Bechsteins had invited me to stay with them in Bayreuth. They lived in a villa in the Liszt Strasse (I think this was the name of the street), within a few yards of Wahnfried. I had hesitated to go there, for I was afraid of thus increasing the difficulties of Siegfried Wagner, who was somewhat in the hands of the Jews.
I arrived in Bayreuth towards eleven o’clock in the evening. Lotte Bechstein was still up, but her relatives were in bed. Next morning, Cosima Wagner came and brought me some flowers. What a bustle there was in Bayreuth for the Festival! There exist a few photographs of that period, in which I figure, taken by Lotte Bechstein.
I used to spend the day in leather shorts. In the evening, I would put on a dinner jacket or tails to go to the opera. We made excursions by car into the Fichtelgebirge and into Franconian mountains. From all points of view, those were marvelous days. When I went to the cabaret of the Chouette, I found myself immediately in sympathy with the artistes. I was not yet celebrated enough for my fame to interfere with my peacefulness.
Dietrich Eckart, who had been a critic in Bayreuth, had always told me of the extraordinary atmosphere prevailing there. He told me that one morning they had broken into the Chouette, and had gone, in company with the artistes, into the meadow behind the theater, to play the Miracle of Good Friday there.
At the first performance of Parsifal that I attended at Bayreuth, Cleving was still singing. What a stature, and what a magnificent voice! I’d already been present at performances of Parsifal in Munich. That same year, I was also present at the Ring and the Meistersinger. The fact that the Jew Schorr was allowed to sing the role of Wotan had the effect of a profanation on me. Why couldn’t they have got Rode from Munich? But there was Braun, an artiste of exceptional quality.
For years I was unable to attend the Festival, and I’d been very distressed about it. Cosima Wagner also lamented my absence. She often urged me to come, by letter or by telephone. But I never passed through Bayreuth without paying her a visit.
It’s Cosima Wagner’s merit to have created the link between Bayreuth and National Socialism. Siegfried was a personal friend of mine, but he was a political neutral. He couldn’t have been anything else, or the Jews would have ruined him. Now the spell is broken. Siegfried has regained his independence, and one again hears works by him. Those dirty Yids had succeeded in demolishing him! I heard, in my youth, his Bärenhäuter. It’s said that the Schmied von Marienburg is his best work. I still have a lot of things to see and hear!
In Berlin, I’ve been present at a performance of a work of Richard Wagner’s youth, The Novice of Palermo, containing themes that are still reminiscent of Mozart. Only, here and there, a few new themes make their appearance, the first fruits of a new style.
SPECIAL GUEST: HIMMLER
A picturesque personality, the Party printer.
It was through Dietrich Eckart that I got to know Müller. Our first encounter was not favorable, and I was astonished that Eckart should have put me in touch with such an individual. “I agree that he’s as black as the devil,” Eckart replied, “and more cunning than the cunningest peasant, but he’s the best printer I’ve known in my life, and also the most generous man.”
That happened well before I had the Völkischer Beobachter. Müller was wedged in his armchair with the self-assurance of a plutocrat. His first words were: “To prevent any misunderstanding from arising, let it be clearly understood that, where there’s no payment, there’s no printing, either.”
When one visited him, Müller never ceased to groan. Nevertheless he grew fatter and fatter. He printed more and more. He constantly bought new machines, but his leitmotiv was: “I can’t get along on these rates, I’m ruining myself.” “To see you so fat, one wouldn’t believe it!” “I’ve so many worries that I drink a little to drown them, and that swells you up!” His press is equipped in the most modern style. He’s a real genius in the Party. Cunning, nobody could be more so, but he was an employer with a sense of social responsibility. He paid his workers well, and when he took them on an outing, he paid no attention to expense. For a firm of that size, in any case, that meant less than nothing. And the Völkischer Beobachter was always there to cough up!
I never made a journey with Müller without his having to pay a visit to some woman by whom he had a child. At the birth of each of his bastards, he would open an account for them at the Savings Bank, with a first payment of five thousand marks. I actually know four illegitimate children of his. I wonder how such an ugly blighter manages to have such lovely children! I must add that Müller adores children.
Every week, he spends two days with Ida on the Tegernsee, although he’s divorced from her. He had married her simply so that his children should have a respectable name. He likewise spends two days with his legitimate wife, at Munich, and lastly two days at his business. The rest of the time he devotes to shooting.
That Müller’s really quite a fellow.
SPECIAL GUEST: HIMMLER
Jealousy of women—Disproportion between men and women—Polygamy and the Thirty Years’ War—Hypocrites of the upper classes—The bourgeois marriage—Social prejudices on their way out.
In the eyes of a woman, the finest of dresses at once loses its charm—if she sees another woman wearing one like it. I’ve seen a woman suddenly leave the opera at the sight of a rival who had entered a box wearing the same dress as herself. “What cheek!” she said. “I’m going!”
In the pleasure a woman takes in rigging herself out, there is always an admixture of some troublemaking element, something treacherous—to awaken another woman’s jealousy by displaying something that the latter doesn’t possess. Women have the talent, which is unknown to us males, for giving a kiss to a woman-friend and at the same time piercing her heart with a well-sharpened stiletto. To wish to change women in this respect would be ingenuous: women are what they are. Let’s come to terms with their little weaknesses. And if women really only need satisfactions of that sort to keep them happy, let them not deprive themselves, by any means! For my part, I prefer to see them thus occupied than devoting themselves to metaphysics. There’s no worse disaster than to see them grappling with ideas. In that respect, the point of disaster is reached by women painters, who attach no importance to beauty—when it’s a question of themselves!
Other women are extremely careful of their appearance, but not beyond the moment when they’ve found a husband. They’re obsessed by their outlines, they weigh themselves on exact scales—the least gram counts! Then you marry them, and they put on weight by the kilo!
Without doubt, when we mock at women’s artifices, they could pay us back by pointing out our own coquetry—our poor, male coquetry. It’s true that we shave, that we get our hair cut, that we, too, try to correct the mistakes of nature!
When I was a child, only actors and priests had shaven faces. At Leonding, the only civilian whose face was beardless was regarded as the most extreme of eccentrics. The beard gives character to some faces, but it’s easier to descry the true personality of a shaven man. By the way, the evolution that has taken place in the sense of sobriety seems to accord with the laws of nature. Hasn’t man gradually, through the ages, cleared away some of his hair?
In the countries where women are more numerous than men, the female has recourse to all kinds of methods to dispossess her rivals. It’s a form of the spirit of conservation, a law of the species. The gentlest woman is transformed into a wild beast when another woman tries to take away her man. The bigger the element of femininity in a woman, the further is this instinct developed. Must one regard this innate savagery as a fault? Is it not rather a virtue?
The state of society in which woman was regarded merely as a slave (as is still the case in certain tribes) would be, if we returned to it, a clear regression for humanity. But it’s not the only possible state. In prehistoric times, matriarchy was certainly a fairly widely spread form of social organization. When all’s said, a people never dies out for lack of men. Let’s remember that after the Thirty Years’ War polygamy was tolerated, so that it was thanks to the illegitimate child that the nation recovered its strength. Such particular situations cannot give rise to a legal regulation—but as long as we have in Germany two and a half million women vowed to celibacy, we shall be forbidden to despise the child born out of wedlock.
Social prejudices are in the process of disappearing. More and more, nature is reclaiming her rights. We’re moving in the proper direction. I’ve much more respect for the woman who has an illegitimate child than for an old maid. I’ve often been told of unmarried women who had children and brought these children up in a truly touching manner. It often happens amongst women servants, notably. The women who have no children finally go off their heads.
It’s somewhat striking to observe that in the majority of peoples the number of women exceeds that of men. What harm is there, then, in every woman’s fulfilling her destiny? I love to see this display of health around me. The opposite thing would make me misanthropic. And I’d become really so, if all I had to look at were the spectacle of the ten thousand so-called élite. Luckily for me, I’ve always retained contacts with the people. Amongst the people, moral health is obligatory. It goes so far that in the country one never reproaches a priest for having a liaison with his servant. People even regard it as a kind of guarantee: the women and girls of the village need not protect themselves. In any case, women of the people are full of understanding; they admit that a young priest can’t sweat his sperm out through his brain.
The hypocrites are to be found amongst the ten-thousand-strong élite. That’s where one meets the Puritan who can reproach his neighbor for his adventures, forgetting that he has himself married a divorcee. Everybody should draw from his own experience the reasons to show himself indulgent towards others. Marriage, as it is practiced in bourgeoise society, is generally a thing against nature. But a meeting between two beings who complete one another, who are made for one another, borders already, in my conception, upon a miracle.
I often think of those women who people the convents—because they haven’t met the man with whom they would have wished to share their lives. With the exception of those who were promised to God by their parents, most of them, in fact, are women cheated by life. Human beings are made to suffer passively. Rare are the beings capable of coming to grips with existence.
The road to independence—The British Tories are right—No German schoolmasters for the Eastern territories—Ideas on a curriculum for schools.
If ever we allowed a country conquered by us to have its own Army, that would be the end of our rights over that country—for autonomy is the way to independence.
It’s not possible to retain by democratic methods what one has conquered by force. In that respect, I share the point of view of the English Tories. To subjugate an independent country, with the idea of later giving it back its freedom, that’s not logical. The blood that has been shed confers a right of ownership.
If the English give India back her liberty, within twenty years India will have lost her liberty again. There are Englishmen who reproach themselves with having governed the country badly. Why? Because the Indians show no enthusiasm for their rule. I claim that the English have governed India very well, but their error is to expect enthusiasm from the people they administer.
If it’s true that the English have exploited India, it’s also true that India has drawn a profit from English domination. Without the English, India would certainly not have a population of three hundred and eighty million inhabitants.
Above all, nobody must let loose the German schoolmaster on the Eastern territories! That would be a sure way to lose at once the pupils he’d be given, and the parents of these pupils. The ideal solution would be to teach this people an elementary kind of mimicry. One asks less of them than one does of the deaf and dumb. No special books for them! The radio will be enough to give them the essential information. Of music, they can have as much as they want. They can practice listening to the tap running. I’m against entrusting them with any work that calls for the least mental effort.
Just tell me how Russia has requited Europe for the European culture she has imported! They used it to invent anarchism. The more they’re allowed to loll in peace, the happier these people are. Any other attitude will have the result of awakening ferocious enemies against us.
The logic of our pedagogues would entail the building of a university at Kiev. That will be their first discovery.
In any case, I don’t believe there’s any sense in teaching men anything, in a general way, beyond what they need to know. One overloads them without interesting either them or anybody else. It’s better to awaken men’s instinct for beauty. That was what the Greeks considered the essential thing. Today people persist in cramming children with a host of unrelated ideas.
School training should form a foundation on which it would subsequently be possible to build, if there is room for it, a specialized instruction. In any case, instruction must be adapted to things as they are. What counts today, more than the trivial details, is the history of the Reich. It’s a waste of children’s time, and a useless cumbering of their minds, to delay while one teaches them item by item all that concerns the village, the region and the country. Let’s not forget that the events which we are in the process of witnessing will one day be recited by heart in all the schools of the Reich. The brain of a little peasant-boy can’t take in everything.
Moreover, where’s the sense in teaching a child in an elementary school a foreign language in addition to German? Eighty percent of the children will never go further. Of what use will the rudiments of a foreign language be to them? Let’s rather give them some general knowledge. Thus, instead of teaching them French for four years, at the rate of three hours a week, why not wait until the last year? And even during this last year, let’s give them only one hour’s French a week. That’s quite enough to give a good start to those who intend to continue their studies.
Do you see the necessity for teaching geometry, physics and chemistry to a young man who means to devote himself to music? Unless he has a special gift for these branches of study, what will he have left over of them later? I find it absolutely ridiculous, this mania for making young people swallow so many fragmentary notions that they can’t assimilate.
In my day, pupils were not only compelled to achieve a given average, but also in certain branches their reports must not fall below a minimum level. If a pupil is particularly brilliant in his speciality, why embarrass him in his studies by obliging him to assimilate notions that are beyond his powers of assimilation? Wouldn’t it be better to help him further in the direction that comes naturally to him?
Forty years ago, the teaching of history was restricted to a dry listing of dates. There was a total absence of principles. What happened when the teacher, into the bargain, lacked the necessary gift for giving these dead things a soul? Such teaching was a real torture.
I had a teacher of French whose whole preoccupation was to catch us out in a mistake. He was a hairsplitter and a bully.
When I think of the men who were my teachers, I realize that most of them were slightly mad. The men who could be regarded as good teachers were exceptional. It’s tragic to think that such people have the power to bar a young man’s way.
Some children have so much vitality that they can’t sit still, and won’t and can’t concentrate their attention. It seems to me useless to try to force them. I understand, of course, that such an attitude annoys the teachers. But is it just to deprive a child of the possibilities that life offers him, simply because he’s unruly?
I remember that on the average I spent a tenth of the time my comrades spent in doing my prep. My selected branch was history. I felt sorry for those of my comrades who never had a minute for play. Some children begin their school careers as excellent book-learners. They pass the barrage of examinations brilliantly. In their own eyes, everything is at their feet. So what a surprise it is for them when they see a comrade succeeding who is cleverer than they are, but whom they used to regard as a dunce!
Peculiarities of the German language—Abuse of consonants—Borrowed words—Licence accorded only to great writers.
If one compares the German language with English, and then with Italian, a few remarks at once occur to the mind.
The English language lacks the ability to express thoughts that surpass the order of concrete things. It’s because the German language has this ability that Germany is the country of thinkers.
The Italian language is the language of a nation of musicians. I was convinced of this one day at Obersalzberg, where I heard a speech by an Italian blinded in the war. When his speech was translated, nothing was left—a vacuum.
We Germans are not inclined to talk for the sake of talking. We don’t become intoxicated with sounds. When we open our mouth, it’s to say something. But our language is poor in vowel-sounds, and we must combat this tendency.
Today Germany lacks poets, and our literature tries to make up for this deficiency by stylistic researches. We must take care not to attach too much importance to words. The form is only a means. The essential thing, always, is the inspiration.
If we let our language-reformers have their way, German would end by losing all its music. We’re already restricted, unfortunately, to vowels a, e and i. Moreover, we have far too many sibilants. When I say Kurzschriftler instead of Stenograf, I have the feeling that I’m talking Polish. As it happens, the word itself is silly. Why not stick to the baptismal name given by the author?
The linguists who recommend these Germanizations are deadly enemies of the German language. If we followed them in that path, we’d soon be unable to express our thoughts with precision, and our language would be poorer and poorer in vowels. It would end—I scarcely dare to say it—by being like Japanese: such a cackling and cawing! How would it be imaginable that one could actually sing in a language like that?
Let’s be glad we have a vocabulary rich enough to introduce infinite gradations into our thought. And let’s gratefully accept the foreign words that have entered our language, if only for their sonorousness.
What would happen if we expelled from the German language all the words of foreign origin that it has assimilated? First of all, we wouldn’t know exactly where to stop. Secondly, we’d be stupidly sacrificing the extra enrichments we owe to our predecessors.
Logic would bid us, whilst we’re giving up a word, also to give up the thing this word signifies. It wouldn’t be honest to retain the thing whilst repudiating the word. We’d suppress, for example, the word “theater”—and we’d try to pretend that it was we who invented the theater (now rebaptized by us!). Enough of such childishness.
Only writers of genius can have the right to modify the language. In the past generation, I can think of practically nobody but Schopenhauer who could have dared to do such a thing. As long as a language evolves, as long as it’s alive, it remains a proper medium for expressing new thoughts and notions.
I could wish that, when we take a word from a foreign language, the German spelling would correspond to the pronunciation, so that everybody can pronounce the word in the same way. The example of the English in this respect is not a good one to follow. As long as a language has a letter for every different sound, it’s not proper that the exact pronunciation of a word should depend on a knowledge of the language in which the word originates. A word should be written as it is pronounced.
Feminine jealousy is a defensive reaction—Some stories about women.
In woman, jealousy is a defensive reaction. It surely has an ancestral origin, and must go back to the time when woman simply couldn’t do without the protection of a man. First of all, it’s the reaction of a pregnant woman, who as such has all the more need of protection. She feels so weak in those circumstances, so timid—for herself and for the child she’s carrying. And this child itself, how many years will it take to gain its independence! Without the protection of a man, woman would feel exposed to all perils. So it’s natural that she should be quite particularly attached to the hero, to the man who gives her the most security. Once this security is obtained, it’s comprehensible that she should bitterly defend her property—hence the origin of jealousy.
Man is inspired by a similar feeling towards the woman he loves, but the realm of feminine jealousy is infinitely vaster. A mother is jealous of her daughter-in-law, a sister of her sister-in-law.
I was present one day at a scene that Eva Chamberlain made at the expense of her brother, Siegfried Wagner. It was absolutely incredible, the more so as they were both married. Siegfried’s young wife, Winifred, was, so to speak, tolerated by her sisters-in-law. Nevertheless, on the day of the catastrophe, her presence was thought particularly opportune. She was a woman of irreproachable behavior. Siegfried owes her four handsome children, all of them obviously his—all of them Wagners!
One day I detected an unexpected reaction even in Frau Bruckmann. She had invited to her house, at the same time as myself, a very pretty woman of Munich society. As we were taking our leave, Frau Bruckmann perceived in her female guest’s manner a sign of an interest that she doubtless deemed untimely. The consequence was that she never again invited us both at once. As I’ve said, the woman was beautiful, and perhaps she felt some interest in me—nothing more.
I knew a woman whose voice became raucous with emotion when I spoke in her presence to another woman.
Man’s universe is vast compared with that of woman. Man is taken up with his ideas, his preoccupations. It’s only incidental if he devotes all his thoughts to a woman. Woman’s universe, on the other hand, is man. She sees nothing else, so to speak, and that’s why she’s capable of loving so deeply.
Intelligence, in a woman, is not an essential thing. My mother, for example, would have cut a poor figure in the society of our cultivated women. She lived strictly for her husband and children. They were her entire universe. But she gave a son to Germany.
Marriages that originate only in sensual infatuation are usually somewhat shaky. Such bonds are easily untied. Separations are particularly painful when there has been a genuine comradeship between man and wife.
I think it improper that a woman should be liable to be called upon to give evidence in Court on intimate matters. I’ve had that abolished. I detest prying and espionage.
That reminds me of a characteristic of Frederick the Great. He was complaining one day to his Chief of Police that he was the worst informed monarch in Europe concerning what went on inside his kingdom. “Nothing would be easier, Sire. Put at my disposal the methods that my colleagues have use of, and I shall certainly do as well as they.” “At that price,” said the King, “I won’t take it.” I myself never used such methods, and I shall never give audience to a sneak. There’s something utterly repugnant about such a person. As for female spies, let’s not speak of them! Not only are these women prostitutes, but they make the man whom they are preparing to betray the victim of the obscenest sort of playacting.
In the days of my youth, I was something of a solitary, and I got along very easily without society. I’ve changed a lot, for nowadays I can no longer bear solitude. What I like best is to dine with a pretty woman. And rather than be left at home by myself, I’d go and dine at the Osteria.
I never read a novel. That kind of reading annoys me.
The Augsburger Abendzeitung is the oldest newspaper in Europe. It’s a good thing that Amann let it go on existing. But it’s a pity that the Fliegende Blätter have disappeared, and that the Jugend has degenerated.
When one cannot keep two enterprises alive at once, I’m in favor of suppressing the newer and keeping the older.
The evils of smoking—Three farthings a day—Berlin, capital of the world.
I made the acquaintance in Bayreuth of a business man, a certain Möckel, who invited me to visit him in Nuremberg. There was a notice above his door: “Smokers not admitted.” For my part, I have no notice above my door, but smokers aren’t admitted.
Some time ago I asked Göring if he really thought it a good idea to be photographed with a pipe in his mouth. And I added, “What would you think of a sculptor who immortalized you with a cigar between your teeth?”
It’s entirely false to suppose that the soldier wouldn’t endure life at the front if he were deprived of tobacco. It’s a mistake to be written on the debit side of the High Command, that from the beginning of the war it allotted the soldier a daily ration of cigarettes. Of course, there’s no question now of going into reverse. But as soon as peace has returned, I shall abolish the ration. We can make better use of our foreign currency than squandering it on imports of poison.
I shall start the necessary reeducation with the young. I’ll tell them: “Don’t follow the example of your elders.”
I experienced such poverty in Vienna. I spent long months without ever having the smallest hot meal. I lived on milk and dry bread. But I spent thirty kreuzers a day on my cigarettes. I smoked between twenty-five and forty of them a day. Well, at that time a kreuzer meant more to me than ten thousand marks do today. One day I reflected that with five kreuzers I could buy some butter to put on my bread. I threw my cigarettes into the Danube, and since that day I’ve never smoked again.
I’m convinced that, if I had continued to be a smoker, I’d not have held out against the life of incessant worry that has for so long been mine. Perhaps it’s to this insignificant detail that the German people owes my having been spared to them.
So many men whom I’ve known have died of excessive use of tobacco. My father, first of all. Then Dietrich Eckart, Troost. Soon it’ll be your turn, Hoffmann.
Berlin, as a world capital, can make one think only of ancient Egypt, it can be compared only to Babylon or Rome.
In comparison with this capital, what will London stand for, or Paris?
Information at the enemy’s disposal—Better use of manpower in the Wehrmacht—Protection of private property—Limits of private ownership—The rights of the State—The ethics of lotteries and gambling—Industrial power monopolies—Capitalist interests.
In spite of their inclination to criticize all we do, the democracies miss no opportunity of imitating us when we take measures designed to simplify our organization. That’s why it will be better in future to give no press publicity to our innovations in this field, for by so doing we are giving useful information to the enemy nations and enabling them to profit from our own experiences. Even in dealing with facts of this nature, silence is nowadays obligatory.
As regards the use of manpower, General Jodl observed that there had been a clear improvement in the Wehrmacht, as compared with the Army of the first World War—in which a fisherman was transformed into an Alpine Light Infantryman, and a butcher into an office clerk, under the pretext of training the soldier. Nowadays, on the other hand, every effort was taken to make the best use of each man’s talents, to the greatest benefit of the community. Hitler interrupted:
We mustn’t look at things from the narrow standpoint of the Wehrmacht, but from the standpoint of the nation as a whole. I’ll take the case of a Reserve officer. I’ll suppose that in civil life he holds an important post, even from the standpoint of the conduct of the war. Very naturally this man will be tempted to leave his job and offer his services to the Army—either from patriotism or for fear of being regarded as a draft-dodger. Thus the Wehrmacht will take the man and put him in an office, thus swelling an already plethoric administration, and the man will be lost to the activity in which he’d have been most useful to us. Wouldn’t it be simpler to put a uniform on his back and mobilize him at his job?
I absolutely insist on protecting private property. It is natural and salutary that the individual should be inspired by the wish to devote a part of the income from his work to building up and expanding a family estate. Suppose the estate consists of a factory. I regard it as axiomatic, in the ordinary way, that this factory will be better run by one of the members of the family than it would be by a State functionary—providing, of course, that the family remains healthy. In this sense, we must encourage private initiative.
On the other hand, I’m distinctly opposed to property in the form of anonymous participation in societies of shareholders. This sort of shareholder produces no other effort but that of investing his money, and thus he becomes the chief beneficiary of other people’s effort: the workers’ zest for their job, the ideas of an engineer of genius, the skill of an experienced administrator. It’s enough for this capitalist to entrust his money to a few well-run firms, and he’s betting on a certainty. The dividends he draws are so high that they can compensate for any loss that one of these firms might perhaps cause him. I have therefore always been opposed to incomes that are purely speculative and entail no effort on the part of those who live on them.
Such gains belong by right to the nation, which alone can draw a legitimate profit from them. In this way, at least, those who create these profits—the engineers and workers—are entitled to be the beneficiaries. In my view, joint-stock companies should pass in their entirety under the control of the State. There’s nothing to prevent the latter from replacing these shares that bring in a variable interest by debentures which it guarantees and which produce a fixed interest, in a manner useful to private people who wish to invest their savings. I see no better method of suppressing the immoral form of income, based only on speculation, of which England today provides the most perfect example.
This attitude towards stocks and shares entails, by way of compensation on our part, the obligation to maintain the value of money, no matter what happens, and to prevent any boom in products of prime necessity.
A man who, within the framework of such an organization, consented to pay a thousand marks for a Persian rug that’s worth only eight hundred, would prove that he’s an imbecile, but there’s no way of stopping him. In the same way, one can’t stop a gambler from losing his money at gambling, or from taking his own life when he has lost his money. One might relevantly wonder whether the State, which is the main beneficiary of gambling, should not make itself responsible for the cost of the suicide’s funeral! We should bear in mind, in fact, that more than half of the profits of gambling—whether lotteries or games of chance played in the casinos—goes into the coffers of the State.
In addition to the material profit the State derives from them, I think I can say that, from a purely philosophic point of view, lotteries have their good side. Tangible realities are not enough to ensure men’s happiness. It’s not a bad idea to keep alive in them the taste for illusions, and most of them live on hopes which to a great extent cannot become reality. It seems to me, therefore, that the best part of a lottery is not the list immediately proclaiming the winners. On the contrary, the results should be dragged out, for a year if possible—a year in which the gambler has leisure to nourish his illusions and forge his dreams of happiness. The Austrian State knew about this, and used the system very intelligently. This explains why, even in the most difficult times, there were always so many happy people in that country.
The origin of the lottery goes back doubtless to the beginning of the eighteenth century, when an astute minister wondered why the profits of gambling should not go into the State’s coffers instead of going to swell private purses. When the State uses the money it wins thus for some good purpose—to build hospitals, for example—the affair takes on a coloring of idealism. Gambling first of all sustains the gambler’s hopes. When chance has given its verdict, and if the gambler is thereafter comparable to a man who has made an unlucky bet, he still has a consolation, that of having contributed to a good work.
I studied the question of gambling, as regards Wiesbaden, with Gauleiter Wagner. What gives the lottery its pleasant character is not to be found, unfortunately, in roulette and other games of chance played in the casinos. But if we’d withdrawn the authorization for gambling at Wiesbaden, that would have done a considerable wrong to that thermal resort without any profit to the inveterate gamblers, whom this measure would obviously not have amended. They’d simply have gone and gambled somewhere else, on the other side of the frontier—to the profit, that’s to say, of the French. Speaking of that, I enquired how much foreign currency the gambling at Wiesbaden might bring us in, and I told myself that even a hundred thousand marks in foreign money (it’s not much, when one has it) is quite a sum when one is poor. I drew the conclusion from all this that gamblers can be useful to the State, by losing their money—and especially foreign gamblers, when they lose in their own currency.
Experience proved that, in retaining gambling in a few casinos, we made a sound calculation. In addition to the foreign currencies we thus collected, it enabled us to retain resorts like Wiesbaden for the German community. It goes without saying that the institution of gambling, which produces great profits simply because it’s a monopoly and because it entails no payment of labor in exchange, must go to enrich the State and not private people.
Bormann commented that this principle should be equally true as regards industrial power production. Hitler went on:
It’s obvious that the power monopoly must be vested in the State. That does not exclude the participation of private capital. The State would offer its securities for investment by the public, which would thus be interested in the exploitation of the monopoly, or, rather, in the favorable progress of State business. The fact is that, when State affairs are not prospering, the holders of certificates can put a cross through their unearned incomes—for the various affairs in which the State is interested cannot be dissociated. The advantage of our formula would be to enable everyone to feel closely linked with State affairs. Today, unfortunately, most people are not clear-sighted enough to realize the closeness of this link.
What is true of the power industry is equally true of all the essential primary materials—that is to say, it applies also to petroleum, coal, steel and waterpower. Capitalist interests will have to be excluded from this sort of business. We do not, of course, contemplate preventing a private person from using the energy of the tiny stream that powers his small works.
Here’s a typical fact, and one that proves the dishonesty of the commercial procedures to which the joint-stock companies resort. It’s the case of the former Bavarian Minister Schweyer, who owed his Ministerial appointment only to his remarkable imbecility—and on that everyone was unanimous! He received from Bavaria Electricity, of which he was chairman, a yearly pension of thirty-eight thousand marks. Despite all the legal obstacles, I managed to have this pension suppressed, since this man had not supplied any services to an equivalent value—far from it! The present law allows the Chancellor of the Reich a pension of thirty-four thousand marks, and this comparison enables one to realize the scandalous enormity of privileges like Schweyer’s.
The problem of monopolies handed over to capitalist interests interested me even in my boyhood. I’d been struck by the example of the Danube Shipping Company, which received an annual subsidy of four millions, a quarter of which was at once shared out amongst its twelve directors. Each of the big parties was represented in this august college by at least two of its members, each of them pocketing about eighty million kronen yearly! One may feel sure that these mandarins saw to it that the comrades voted punctually for the renewal of the subsidy! But the Socialists were acquiring more and more importance, and it happened that none of their lot was on the board. That’s why the scandal broke. The Company was attacked in the Parliament and in the press. Threatened with being deprived of the subsidy, it replied by abolishing the passenger-service. And since the politicians on the board had already taken care that no railway should be built along the Danube, the riverside populations were the chief victims of these arbitrary measures. A solution of the conflict was found quite rapidly—and you can imagine which! Quite simply, the number of members of the board was increased to fourteen, and the two new seats were offered to two well-known Socialists—who hastened to accept them.
What makes England so fragile is that her whole economic system is founded on similar practices.
From the moment of our seizure of power, having my own set ideas on the subject, I took the precaution of forbidding every director of a company to be a member of the Reichstag. Since men who have interests in a private company cannot be objective on a great number of questions, I likewise forbade office-holders in the Party to take part in business of a capitalist complexion. The same prohibition applies, by the way, to all servants of the State. I therefore cannot allow an official, whether he belongs to the Army or to the civil administration, to invest his savings in industry, except in companies controlled by the State.
Influence of Stafford Cripps—British Conservatives and German middle classes—Labor Party needs a Cromwell—Unrest in India—Jewish influence on German art—Painting in Germany—Women in politics—Madame Chiang Kai-shek—Lola Montez.
One thing is indisputable: in Stafford Cripps, and as a counterpart to Churchill, England has found a statesman whose influence is not negligible. It’s a symptom, to say the least, that the English trade unions have been able recently to draw up a program for the nationalization of the land, to propose a law on the ownership of buildings and another on an organic reform of industry and transport. All that must have a repercussion on the country’s internal situation. We have always found it difficult to believe that such reforms can be put through from one day to the next, and that reasonable Englishmen should think this possible. Let’s not forget that it took the Russians more than ten years to carry the experiment through to the end. There is, doubtless, a state of crisis in England, and we must reckon with it. The economy is deficient, the organization of the Civil Service is deplorable, the English middle class has to submit to dietary restrictions, and there are military set backs. In the long run, all that ends by having an effect on a nation’s morale.
Let us always take care not to exaggerate the importance of these signs. If the King has no real influence on the orientation of English politics, that doesn’t prevent him from being an important political factor—in so far as the Army retains its strength and integrity. For the British Army is monarchist in spirit, and is, so to speak, entirely recruited amongst the aristocracy and the Conservative world. Now, these people are not at present showing any inclination to make the slightest concessions to the people. It’s enough to glance through an English illustrated periodical to be convinced of that. One sees only photos of men belonging to the aristocracy, and two thirds of them are photographed in uniform.
One cannot compare the English Conservatives to the old German bourgeoisie that formed the nationalist parties before 1933. The English Conservatives identify themselves with the Empire, they represent traditions and a solidly established form of society—and it’s difficult to see them capitulating to the people, like the French aristocracy in 1789. Quite the contrary, they’re striving, by means of a gigantic organization, to propagate their own ideas amongst the people, trying to fill it with the patriotic fanaticism that inspires its airmen and sailors.
To establish himself against the Conservatives, it would take a Cromwell at the head of the Labor Party, for the Conservatives will not yield without a fight. Now, although Cripps (who has Stalin’s confidence) has succeeded in sowing Socialist ideas in England, I don’t think he carries enough guns for this role. From my point of view, a Red (and therefore fallen) England would be much less favorable than an England of Conservatives. In fact, a Socialist England, and therefore an England tainted with Sovietism, would be a permanent danger in the European space, for she would founder in such poverty that the territory of the British Isles would prove too small for thirty million inhabitants to be able to keep alive there. I hope, therefore, that Cripps will be sunk by the fiasco of his mission to India—the most difficult mission with which an Englishman can now be charged. If he isn’t, it would become more and more difficult to avoid civil war on British soil. But the mobilization of the masses, on which the Labor Party’s propaganda is working, and which would be the result of the execution of the trade unions’ new program, should be regarded as a very serious threat. Between Churchill and Cripps I have no hesitation in choosing. I prefer a hundred times the undisciplined swine who is drunk eight hours of every twenty-four, to the Puritan. A man who spends extravagantly, an elderly man who drinks and smokes without moderation, is obviously less to be feared than the drawing room Bolshevist who leads the life of an ascetic. From Churchill one may finally expect that in a moment of lucidity—it’s not impossible—he’ll realize that the Empire’s going inescapably to its ruin, if the war lasts another two or three years. Cripps, a man without roots, a demagogue and a liar, would pursue his sick fancies although the Empire were to crack at every corner. Moreover, this theoretician devoid of humanity lacks contact with the mass that’s grouped behind the Labor Party, and he’ll never succeed in understanding the problems that occupy the minds of the lower classes.
To judge Cripps accurately, and to appreciate the dangers he represents, one must not forget that the Tories have always been the props of the Empire, and that Cripps’s gaining control would mean the end of the Empire. With his hypocritical social programs, he’d be sure to dig a pit between the mother country and the Dominions, especially the Catholic Canadians, Australia and South Africa. One must therefore eagerly hope for the failure of his mission to India. It is questionable, by the way, whether Cripps will get any hearing from the Indian people. The Indian world has already been so disturbed by the presence of the Japanese on its frontiers, and by the fall of Singapore, that the man of compromise, Nehru, has been eclipsed by Bhose. If today Cripps endeavors, with the help of blackmail or begging, to induce the Indians to resist the Japanese, I doubt whether Nehru, however much he would like to, would be able to help him effectively. Nehru’s fate will be like that of the Socialists in 1918 who were swept away by the masses. I’m thinking of Ebert—who had come to the meeting in the Treptow park with the intention of opposing the munitions strike. He began by making a few concessions to the crowd, in the hope of getting himself heard—but he was quickly overcome by the crowd’s enthusiasm, with the result that he himself had to preach the very strike he had intended to torpedo. In an affair of this nature, every negotiator, every speaker runs the same danger. I’ve experienced it myself at Weimar in 1926, and I’ve seen with what precautions, and how artfully, one must proceed when one intends to tell the public the opposite of what it expects from you.
As for the Indian masses, in any case one thing is certain, that it doesn’t want to have anything more to do with the English.
I’ve often had occasion, during recent years, to immerse myself in collections of the review Die Kunst.
It’s striking to observe that in 1910 our artistic level was still extraordinarily high. Since that time, alas! our decadence has merely become accentuated. In the field of painting, for example, it’s enough to recall the lamentable daubs that people have tried to foist, in the name of art, on the German people. This was quite especially the case during the Weimar Republic, and that clearly demonstrated the disastrous influence of the Jews in matters of art. The cream of the jest was the incredible impudence with which the Jew set about it! With the help of phony art critics, and with one Jew bidding against another, they finally suggested to the people—which naturally believes everything that’s printed—a conception of art according to which the worst rubbish in painting became the expression of the height of artistic accomplishment. The ten thousand of the élite themselves, despite their pretensions on the intellectual level, let themselves be diddled, and swallowed all the humbug. The culminating hoax—and we now have proof of it, thanks to the seizure of Jewish property—is that, with the money they fraudulently acquired by selling trash, the Jews were able to buy, at wretched prices, the works of value they had so cleverly depreciated. Every time an inventory catches my eye of a requisition carried out on an important Jew, I see that genuine artistic treasures are listed there. It’s a blessing of Providence that National Socialism, by seizing power in 1933, was able to put an end to this imposture.
When I visit an exhibition, I never fail to have all the daubs pitilessly withdrawn from it. It will be admitted that whoever visits the House of German Art today will not find any work there that isn’t worthy of its place. Everything that hasn’t an undeniable value has been sieved out. I never hesitated, even when it was a question of works by painters given prizes by the Academy of Prussia, to ban these works from the House of German Art whenever they were worthless. It’s a pity that the Academy is not up to its task, and that its members played amongst themselves the game of you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours. The latest victim was our Minister of Religious Affairs, who knows as much about art as a hippopotamus. He fell into the most obvious traps and gave official rewards to genuine ordure. The Jews had succeeded in lulling him to sleep by using on him the same methods as had already enabled them to trick the whole German people. On the subject of these daubs, people assert that it isn’t easy to understand them and that, to penetrate their depth and significance, one must be able to immerse oneself entirely in the image represented—and other idiocies from the same mill. In the years 1905–1906, when I entered the Vienna Academy, these hollow phrases were already being used—to give publicity to innumerable daubs, under the pretext of artistic experiment.
In a general way, the academies have nothing to tell me that’s worth listening to. In fact, the professors who are active there are either failures, or else artists of talent (but who cannot devote more than two hours a day to their teaching), or else weary old men who therefore have nothing more to give.
Genuine artists develop only by contact with other artists. Like the Old Masters, they began by working in a studio. Let’s remember that men like Rembrandt, Rubens and others hired assistants to help them to complete all their commissions. Amongst these assistants, only those reached the rank of apprentice who displayed the necessary gifts as regards technique and adroitness—and of whom it could be supposed that they would in their turn be capable of producing works of value. It’s ridiculous to claim, as it’s claimed in the academies, that right from the start the artist of genius can do what he likes. Such a man must begin, like everyone else, by learning, and it’s only by working without relaxation that he succeeds in achieving what he wants. If he doesn’t know the art of mixing colors to perfection—if he cannot set a background—if anatomy still has secrets for him—it’s certain he won’t go very far! I can imagine the number of sketches it took an artist as gifted as Menzel before he set himself to paint the Flute Concert at Sans Souci.
It would be good if artists today, like those of olden days, had the training afforded by the Masters’ studios and could thus steep themselves in the great pictorial traditions. If, when we look at the pictures of Rembrandt and Rubens, for example, it is often difficult to make out what the Master has painted himself and what is his pupils’ share, that’s due to the fact that gradually the disciples themselves became masters. What a disaster it was, the day when the State began to interfere with the training of painters! As far as Germany is concerned, I believe that two academies would suffice: in Düsseldorf and Munich. Or perhaps three in all, if we add Vienna to the list. Obviously there’s no question, for the moment, of abolishing any of our academies. But that doesn’t prevent one from regretting that the tradition of the studios has been lost. If, after the war, I can realize my great building program—and I intend to devote thousands of millions to it—only genuine artists will be called on to collaborate. The others may wait until doomsday, even if they’re equipped with the most brilliant recommendations.
Numerous examples taken from history prove that woman—however intelligent she may be—is not capable of dissociating reason from feeling, in matters of a political nature. And the formidable thing in this field is the hatred of which women are capable. I’ve been told that after the occupation of the province of Shanghai, the Japanese offered Chiang Kai-shek’s Government to withdraw their troops from Chinese territory, on condition: (a) of being able to maintain a garrison in Shanghai’s international concession; (b) of obtaining advantageous terms on the conclusion of a trade treaty. It seems that all the generals approved of this proposal and encouraged Chiang Kai-shek to accept it. But when Mme Chiang Kai-shek had spoken—urged on by her measureless hatred of Japan—the majority of the generals reversed their decisions, and thus it was that Japan’s offer, although a very generous one, was rejected.
One might speak likewise of the influence of Lola Montez over Ludwig I of Bavaria. The latter was, by nature, a reasonable and understanding king. But that woman completely drove him from his course.
Commercial honesty in the Middle Ages—Five hundred years of honesty—Legal juggling—Reforms in the magistrature—Three good lawyers.
The Führer had alluded to the respect enjoyed by merchants and princes during the Middle Ages. In the discredit now attached to them, he saw the work of the Jews.
The Hanseatic League should not be regarded solely as an instrument of political power. It also personified, on the level of relations between individuals, a conception of justice. For example, it never agreed to carry a consignment unless it was provided with a sure guarantee of the weight and quality of the goods. Equipped with the Hansa’s seal, the goods thereby enjoyed a high reputation, both in the interior of the country and abroad. A case is cited of some cloth merchants who had employed the Hanseatic agency in Lubeck to send a bale of linen to Bergen. Now, this merchandise did not correspond to the Hansa’s specifications, with the result that, by way of a sanction, the guilty city was excluded for a period of ten years from the traffic of the League. What is important to notice is that the decision was not taken as the result of a complaint by the addressee, but simply as the result of a check-up held at the outset. It was observed that the merchandise did not correspond to the specifications, a few threads of flax were absent in the weaving of the linen.
It was not one of the Hansa’s least merits to have stabilized the notion of commercial probity, as it is still honored in some houses in Bremen and Hamburg. It was thanks to very severe sanctions, and even to barbarous punishments, that gradually this conception of probity in trade was established. When the Hansa refused its seal to a merchant, for the latter, in view of the League’s prestige and the extent of its relations, this meant the first fruits of ruin.
The example of the Hansa inspired all commercial and industrial activity of the Middle Ages. That’s how the price of bread could be kept the same for four hundred years, that of barley—and, consequently, that of beer—for more than five hundred years; and this in spite of all the changes of money. The notion of probity was not implanted solely in commercial relations. It was the basis of the small crafts; the guilds and corporations always took care that this tradition should be maintained. A baker, for example, who cheated on the quality of the flour intended for the manufacture of rolls, was ducked several times in a basin filled with water, and in such a way that he escaped only by a hair from drowning.
As soon as the Jews were allowed to stick their noses out of the ghetto, the sense of honor and loyalty in trade began to melt away. In fact, Judaism, this form of mental depravation that must at all costs be abolished, has made the fixing of prices depend on the laws of supply and demand—factors, that is to say, which have nothing to do with the intrinsic value of an article. By creating the system of caveat emptor, the Jew has established a juridical basis for his rogueries. And thus it is that during the last two centuries, and with rare exceptions, our commerce has been dragged down to such a level that it has become absolutely necessary to apply a remedy. One first condition is necessary: to do away with the Jews.
There was a time when I suffered from fistulas, and this affliction seemed to me more serious than it actually was. Having thought of the possibility of cancer, I one day settled down at my table to write, on official paper, a holograph will. As you know, this task demands a quite special effort on my part, since for years I’ve had the habit of writing directly on the machine or dictating what I have to say. My will hadn’t had time to grow old when I learnt of a decision by the Court of Appeal that declared an old woman’s will null and void simply because mention of the place was printed on the paper instead of being written by her hand. I took my head in both hands and wondered what the law was coming to, if the will of the Chancellor of the Reich in person did not satisfy the legal formalities. I came to the conclusion that such juggleries are simply a mockery, and scarcely the sort of thing that gets Justice respected. So I sent for Gürtner, the Minister of Justice, and requested him to have this idiocy put right. Well, it took nothing less than a Decree to achieve this result.
I was equally struck by another stupidity. It often happens that people leave me legacies. In principle I refuse these, only permitting the NSV [the Party’s welfare organization] to benefit by them. Now, so that such a declaration may be valid, my signature must be authenticated by a notary. So it seems, according to our worthy jurists, that the signature of the German Chancellor, accompanied by the Seal of the Reich, is worth less than that of a notary! A merely reasonable being could not conceive of such a thing. That’s only a small example, but I suggest in principle that it’s impossible for a normal intelligence to understand any part of the edifices built up by the jurists, and I can explain this mental distortion only by the influence of the Jews. In a nutshell, I regard the whole of our present jurisprudence as a systematization of the method that consists in saddling other people with one’s own obligations. I shall therefore do everything in my power to make the study of law utterly contemptible, if it is to be guided by such notions. I understand, of course, that University studies should turn out men who are fitted for life and capable of ensuring for the State the preservation of natural law. But the studies to which I am referring merely cultivate the liking for irresponsibility in those who devote themselves to them.
I’ll see to it that the administration of justice shall be cleared of all judges who don’t constitute a genuine élite. Let their number be reduced to a tenth, if necessary! The comedy of courts with a jury must come to an end. I wish once and for all to prevent a judge from being able to shake off this responsibility by claiming that he has been outvoted by the jurymen, or by invoking other excuses of that nature. I desire only judges who have the requisite personality—but in that case they must be very generously reimbursed. I need men for judges who are deeply convinced that the law ought not to guarantee the interests of the individual against those of the State, that their duty is to see to it, above all, that Germany does not perish.
Gürtner has not succeeded in forming judges of this type. He has himself had a lot of difficulty in getting rid of his legal superstitions. Threatened by some and despised by others, he has succeeded only slowly in adopting more reasonable attitudes, spurred on by the necessity of bringing justice into harmony with the imperatives of action.
If anyone were to think I chose Gürtner as Minister of Justice because once upon a time, in his capacity as judge, he must have treated me with particular understanding, that wouldn’t at all correspond to the facts. It was I who had to make an effort of objectivity—and a great effort, too—to call to the Ministry of Justice the man who had me imprisoned. But when I had to choose amongst the men who were in the running, I couldn’t find anyone better. Freissler was nothing but a Bolshevik. As for the other (Schlegelberger), his face could not deceive me. It was enough to have seen him once.
I’ve had an ample harvest of experiences with the lawyers. In 1920, when I organized my first big assemblies in Munich, a certain Councillor Wagner put himself at my disposal as a speaker. That was a period when I was in search of starched collars, in the hope that they’d help me to reach the intellectual class. So what a blessing I thought this man’s offer, and what a bait to win over the lawyers! It’s true that, before giving him a chance to speak before a big gathering, I had the prudence to try him out before twenty or so faithful followers gathered at the Sternecker beer-hall. What faces they pulled when they heard the worthy soul, with trembling hands and waggling head, recommending the reconstruction of a State in which “the clan was based on the family, the stock upon the clan, and the common mother upon the stock.” Since then I’ve always been distrustful in my dealings with the jurists. In that respect, I know only three exceptions: von der Pfordten, Pöhner and Frick. Von der Pfordten, quite the contrary of Gürtner, was a man of revolutionary tendency. As for Pöhner, I still remember his statement during our trial for high treason: “Above all, I’m a German, and after that I’m an official. As an official, I’ve never been a whore. You can take that as admitted. If you think that my activity against the usurpers constitutes a case of high treason, then let me tell you that, as a German, I have for six years considered it a duty to wage the struggle against the usurpers, and thus to commit—if you really cling to this expression—the crime of high treason!” Frick, too, conducted himself admirably at that time. As adjutant to the Chief of Police, he was able to supply us with all kinds of information, which enabled the Party rapidly to expand its activity. He never missed an opportunity to help us and protect us. I can even add that without him I’d never have got out of prison. But as it is....
There exists, unfortunately, a particular type of National Socialist who at a certain moment did great things for the Party, but who is never capable of doing still better. When our activities spread beyond the framework of what he has been able to grasp, and of what corresponds to his own ideas, he takes fright, for lack of being able to take into account the logic of the facts and that certain acts inescapably demand certain consequences.
Dietrich Eckart always judged the world of jurists with the greatest clear-sightedness, the more so as he had himself studied law for several terms. According to his own evidence, he decided to break off these studies “so as not to become a perfect imbecile.” Dietrich Eckart, by the way, is the man who had the brilliant idea of nailing the present juridical doctrines to the pillory and publishing the result in a form easily accessible to the German people. For myself, I supposed it was enough to say these things in an abbreviated form. It’s only with time that I’ve come to realize my mistake.
Thus today I can declare without circumlocution that every jurist must be regarded as a man deficient by nature, or else deformed by usage. When I go over the names of the lawyers I’ve known in my life, and especially the advocates, I cannot help recognizing by contrast how morally wholesome, honorable and rooted in the best traditions were the men with whom Dietrich Eckart and I began our struggle in Bavaria.
Attempted assassination of Papen at Ankara—Confidence in the Turks—Distrust of Bulgarians—German eastern policy—Charlemagne “slayer of Saxons” and Hitler “slayer of Austrians”—The work of Charlemagne—From Chancellor to Führer—The First Consul should not have allowed himself to become an Emperor—Frederick the Great a greater man than Napoleon—The best man should be Head of the State—Examples of the Vatican and the Venetian Republic—The Future German Constitution—Need of separation of powers.
The conversation turned on the attempted assassination of Papen, at the time ambassador in Ankara.
This attempted assassination is revealing as it concerns the mentality of the Russian organizers. With other peoples, supposing such an attempt was judged necessary for political reasons, an attempt would be made to save the man who was given the job of carrying it out. The Russians, on the other hand, for all their cleverness, arranged the action in such a way that it should cost the performer his skin. The setting was well designed. The poor wretch had an apparatus that enabled him, once the murder was committed, to produce an artificial fog thanks to which he could try to escape. But what he had not been told was that, as soon as he set the machine working, he would himself detonate the explosive charge that was destined to pulverize him. The only traces of him discovered were one of his shoes and his revolver! The assassin’s accomplices were so disgusted by their masters’ villainy that they decided to reveal all they knew of the plot.
As Allies, I prefer the Turks to the Bulgarians. That’s why I’m ready to conclude a trade treaty with Turkey, by which we’d supply her with arms and ammunition. In addition, I’d be ready to guarantee the inviolability of the Straits and the integrity of their frontiers, if the Turks had any wish for an alliance with us.
Our advantage would be as follows: thanks to the arms we would have delivered, the Turks would be able to defend the Straits, a defense in which we, too, shall have an interest as holders of territory on the Black Sea. In this way, the authoritarian régime in Turkey would be consolidated—and I think that this consequence, on the level of internal politics, couldn’t be a matter of indifference to the Turkish patriots who wish to support Ataturk’s successor.
In Bulgaria, on the other hand, everything is uncertain. Thus, I was struck to learn that after the conclusion of the Tripartite Pact the President of the Bulgarian Council was scarcely acclaimed by the population of Sofia, despite the major importance of this pact to Bulgaria. And I was not less struck to know that at the same time the population of Sofia was enthusiastically welcoming a Russian football team. The fact is that Bulgaria is strongly affected by Pan-Slavism, both on the political and on the sentimental level. She’s attracted by Russia, even if Sovieticized. I recognize that the King of Bulgaria is a very intelligent, even cunning, man, but he doesn’t seem to be capable of guaranteeing the stability of his régime. He himself confessed that he couldn’t change a single Minister or relieve a general of his command without endangering his crown. He has to act very cautiously, he says, beginning with granting sick leaves and then retaining these men’s attachment with the help of numerous favors. To sum up, as regards Bulgaria and Turkey, it’s certain that conditions have scarcely changed since the first World War. From our point of view, Bulgaria can be regarded as reliable only in so far as we’re allies of Turkey. On the political and sentimental level, there’s no obstacle to an alliance between Turkey and the Reich. By reason of her attachment to Islam, Turkey has a completely clear-cut religious policy. The same is not true of Bulgaria, which, since it practices the Greek Orthodox religion, finds in it new reasons to feel friendly towards Russia.
A reflection of Bormann‘s on Heinrich I led the Führer to speak of German policy on her Eastern frontiers.
As regards the East, our present policy has no precedents in history. Whereas it is true that, on several occasions already, combats, sometimes even of a certain size, have taken place on the Eastern frontiers of the Reich, it must be agreed that it was then a matter of tribes that came carrying war to our frontiers. And the Reich found itself confronted with the alternatives of accepting combat or disappearing. These old-time struggles cannot therefore be regarded as the expression of a German policy in the East. The historians who attributed the idea of such a policy to Heinrich I were in error. What drove Heinrich I in that direction was merely the fact that only in the East could he hew himself out a kingdom.
Throughout the Imperial period, it’s not possible to discern any sign that the Reich was interested in the East, or that it followed any coherent policy concerning the colonization of the Eastern territories for example. The racial policy of the Empire was firmly fixed, it aimed only towards the South. The East—with its population totally different in respect of race, scarcely marked by a Germanic contribution to the higher strata—remained foreign to them. The South, on the other hand, and Lombardy, in particular, had all the special characteristics necessary to make it part of the Roman-Germanic Holy Empire. Thus it was always one of the essential preoccupations of Imperial policy. To what an extent the political ideas of the time were governed by the notion of race is shown by the fact that as late as the fourteenth century an Imperial German party continued to exist in Florence. Who knows whether Lombardy would not still be in our hands today if prince-vassals like Heinrich the Lion had not broken their oaths of fealty, counteracted the policy of the Reich and compelled the Emperor suddenly to interrupt his campaigns in the South in order to extinguish the blaze that had broken out in his own house. The policy of the Reich can be successful only if it is characterized by unity of action.
In this respect, the Swabians especially deserve our esteem, for they always realized the meaning of the Imperial idea and never ceased to prove their loyalty to the Reich. We are certainly wrong to glorify princes like Heinrich the Lion because of their nonconformism. These are men who clearly conducted a policy against the interests of the Reich. That’s why I’ve drawn Rosenberg’s attention to the fact that one mustn’t let the great German Emperors be relegated to the background, to the benefit of perjurers, and that it was improper to call a hero like Charlemagne by the name “killer of Saxons.” History must be interpreted in terms of the necessities of the time. It’s possible that, in a thousand years—supposing that, for one reason or another, the Reich is again obliged to pursue a policy directed against the South—some pedagogue may be found who will claim that “Hitler’s Eastern policy was certainly well-intentioned,” but that it was nevertheless crack-brained, since “he should have aimed at the South.” Perhaps even some caviler of this type will go so far as to call me “the killer of Austrians,” on the grounds that, on my return from Austria to Germany, I locked up all those who had tried to thwart the enterprise!
Without compulsion, we would never have united all the various German families with these thickheaded, parochially minded fellows—either in Charlemagne’s time or today.
If the German people is the child of ancient philosophy and Christianity, it is so less by reason of a free choice than by reason of a compulsion exercised upon it by these triumphant forces. In the same way, in Imperial times, it was under the empire of compulsion that the German people engineered its fusion beneath a Christianity represented by a universal church—in the image of ancient Rome, which also inclined to universality. It is certain that a man like Charlemagne was not inspired merely by a desire for political power, but sought, in faithfulness to the ancient idea, for an expression of civilization. Now, the example of the ancient world proves that civilization can flourish only in States that are solidly organized. What would happen to a factory given over to anarchy, in which the employees came to their work only when the fancy took them?
Without organization—that is to say, without compulsion—and, consequently, without sacrifice on the part of individuals, nothing can work properly. Organized life offers the spectacle of a perpetual renunciation by individuals of a part of their liberty. The more exalted a situation a man occupies, the easier this renunciation should appear to him. Since his field of vision is wider, he should be able all the better to admit the necessity for self-compulsion. In a healthy State, this is what distinguishes the élite from the men who remain mingled with the great masses. The man who rises must grow with his task, his understanding must expand simultaneously with his functions. If a street-sweeper is unable or unwilling to sacrifice his tobacco or his beer, then I think: “Very well, my good man, that’s precisely why you’re a street sweeper and not one of the ruling personalities of the State!” It’s just as well, by the way, that things are like that, for the nation, collectively, has just as much need of its street-sweepers.
Guided by these rules, which are quite simple and quite natural, Charlemagne gathered the Germans into a well-cemented community and created an empire that continued to deserve the name long after his death. The fact was that this empire was made of the best stuff of the ancient Roman Empire—so much so that for centuries the peoples of Europe have regarded it as the successor to the universal empire of the Caesars. The fact that this German empire was named “the Holy Roman Empire” has nothing whatsoever to do with the Church, and has no religious significance.
Unlike the idea attached to the word “Reich,” the idea of the “Chancellor of the Reich” has unfortunately lost its significance in the course of the centuries. On a single occasion a giant gave it its full glory, and then it came to signify abortions like Wirth, Brüning, etc. At present, in view of the authoritarian form we have given the State, that has no importance. One can even declare that this title is not a suitable designation for the Head of the State. Historically, as a matter of fact, it is connected with the mental picture according to which, above the Chancellor, there is yet another person who represents the State as its supreme chief—and it little matters whether he is called Emperor, President, or by some quite different name.
In the National Socialist form of State, the title “Führer” is the most suitable. It implies, amongst other things, the idea that the Head of the State has been chosen by the German people. Although it sometimes produces superfluities and overlappings—when one reads beneath a photograph, for example: “At the Führer’s side, the Oberführer So-and-So,” that has no importance, at least while I’m still alive. But when I’m no longer there, it will be necessary to alter that and to give the notion of “Führer” a uniform meaning.
In any case it would be inopportune to change the title of the Head of the State, since this title is associated with the very form of the State itself. In addition to being a display of family pride in political matters, it was Napoleon’s greatest error, and at the same time a proof of bad taste on his part, to have renounced the title of “First Consul” in order to have himself called “Emperor.” As a matter of fact, it was under the title of “First Consul” that the Revolution—the one that shook the world—carried him to power above the Directoire (that public house committee)—him, the Republican General. By giving up this title and having himself called emperor, he denied the Jacobins, his former companions in the struggle, and lost their support. At the same stroke he alienated, both at home and abroad, countless partisans who saw in him the personification of the moral resurrection that the French Revolution was to bring with it. To understand the effect produced by this willful action, it’s enough to imagine the effect it would have on the people of Munich, and on the rest of the world, if I had myself carried through the streets of Munich in a gilded coach.
In any case, Napoleon gained nothing by committing this fault, for the old monarchies did not fail to display the scorn they felt for a self-made man. The only thing he ever got from them was the Habsbürgertum [a joke on the name of the Habsburg dynasty and the word Bürgertum, meaning bourgeoisie], which was foisted upon him and whose arrival irremediably wounded the national pride of the French. In fact, in the eyes of the French, the lovely Josephine, cast off in favor of the Habsbürgertum, was the model of the strictly Republican French-woman. She was esteemed as the woman who, at Napoleon’s side, had climbed the rungs leading to the highest post in the State. The stupefaction caused in Europe by that title of “Emperor” is well characterized by the gesture of Beethoven, who tore up a symphony he had just dedicated to Napoleon. He trampled on the fragments, exclaiming: “He’s not the extraordinary man I believed, he’s only a man!”
What’s tragic in Napoleon’s case is that when he adopted the imperial title, formed a court and instituted a ceremonial, he didn’t realize that, by making common cause with degenerates, he was merely putting himself on their level. Personally, I should regard it as an example of pure lunacy if anyone came and offered me, for example, a dukedom. It would be like asking me to recognize bonds of kinship with all the dwarfs who bear the title.
By looking after his relatives’ interests as he did, Napoleon furthermore displayed incredible weakness on the purely human level. When a man occupies such a position, he should eliminate all his family feeling. Napoleon, on the contrary, placed his brothers and sisters in posts of command, and retained them in these posts even after they’d given proofs of their incapability. All that was necessary was to throw out all these patently incompetent relatives. Instead of that, he wore himself out with sending his brothers and sisters, regularly every month, letters containing reprimands and warnings, urging them to do this and not to do that, thinking he could remedy their incompetence by promising them money, or by threatening not to give them any more. Such illogical behavior can be explained only by the feeling Corsicans have for their families, a feeling in which they resemble the Scots.
By thus giving expression to his family feeling, Napoleon introduced a disruptive principle into his life. Nepotism, in fact, is the most formidable protection imaginable: the protection of the ego. But wherever it has appeared in the life of a State—the monarchies are the best proof—it has resulted in weakening and decay. Reason: it puts an end to the principle of effort.
In this respect, Frederick the Great showed himself superior to Napoleon—Frederick who, at the most difficult moments of his life, and when he had to take the hardest decisions, never forgot that things are called upon to endure. In similar cases, Napoleon capitulated. It’s therefore obvious that, to bring his life’s work to a successful conclusion, Frederick the Great could always rely on sturdier collaborators than Napoleon could. When Napoleon set the interests of his family clique above all, Frederick the Great looked around him for men, and, at need, trained them himself.
Despite all Napoleon’s genius, Frederick the Great was the most outstanding man of the eighteenth century. When seeking to find a solution for essential problems concerning the conduct of affairs of State, he refrained from all illogicality. It must be recognized that in this field his father, Frederick-William, that buffalo of a man, had given him a solid and complete training. Peter the Great, too, clearly saw the necessity for eliminating the family spirit from public life. In a letter to his son—a letter I was rereading recently—he informs him very clearly of his intention to disinherit him and exclude him from the succession to the throne. It would be too lamentable, he writes, to set one day at the head of Russia a son who does not prepare himself for State affairs with the utmost energy, who does not harden his will and strengthen himself physically.
Setting the best man at the head of the State—that’s the most difficult problem in the world to solve.
In a republic in which the whole people is called upon to elect the chief of the State, it’s possible, with money and publicity, to bring the meagrest of puppets to power.
In a republic in which the reins of power are in the hands of a clique made up of a few families, the State takes on the aspect of a trust, in which the shareholders have an interest in electing a weakling as President, so that they may play an important part themselves.
A hereditary monarchy is a biological blunder, for a man of action regularly chooses a wife with essentially feminine qualities, and the son inherits his mother’s mildness and passive disposition.
In a republic that sets at its head a chief elected for life, there’s the risk that he will pursue a policy of personal self-interest.
In a republic where the Chief of State changes every five or ten years, the stability of the government is never assured, and the execution of long-term plans, exceeding the duration of a lifetime, is thereby compromised.
If one sets at the head of the State an old man who has withdrawn from all worldly considerations, he is only a puppet, and inevitably it’s other men who rule in his name.
Thinking over all that, I’ve arrived at the following conclusions:
1. The chances of not setting a complete idiot at the head of the State are better under the system of free elections than in the opposite case. The giants who were the elected German Emperors are the best proof of this. There was not one of them of whom it can truly be said that he was an imbecile. In the hereditary monarchies, on the other hand, there were at least eight kings out of ten who, if they’d been ordinary citizens, would not have been capable of successfully running a grocery.
2. In choosing a Chief of State, one must call upon a personality who, as far as human beings can judge, guarantees a certain stability in the exercise of power for a longish while. This is a necessary condition, not only so that public affairs can be successfully administered, but in order to make possible the realization of great projects.
3. Care must be taken that the Chief of State will not succumb to the influence of the plutocracy, and cannot be forced to certain decisions by any pressure of that sort. That’s why it’s important that he should be supported by a political organization whose strength has its roots in the people, and which can have the upper hand over private interests.
In the course of history, two constitutions have proved themselves:
(a) The papacy, despite numerous crises—the gravest of which, as it happens, were settled by German emperors—and although it is based on a literally crazy doctrine. But as an organization on the material level, the Church is a magnificent edifice.
(b) The constitution of Venice, which, thanks to the organization of its Government, enabled a little city-republic to rule the whole eastern Mediterranean. The constitution of Venice proved itself effective as long as the Venetian Republic endured—that is to say, for nine hundred and sixty years.
The fact that the Head of the Republic of Venice was chosen from amongst the families who composed the framework of the State (numbering between three hundred and five hundred) was not a bad thing. Thus power was allotted to the best man amongst the representatives of those families who were traditionally linked with the State. The difference between this system and that of hereditary monarchy is obvious. In the former, it was impossible for an imbecile or an urchin of twelve to come to power. Only a man who had pretty well proved himself in life had a fair chance of being appointed. Isn’t it ridiculous, by the way, to think that a child of twelve, or even of eighteen, can rule a State? It goes without saying that, if a king is still a minor, power is provisionally gathered in other hands, those of a Council of Regents. But supposing the members of this Council disagree (and the more competent the councillors are, the greater are the risks of disagreement, in view of the complexity of the problems to be solved daily), then the absence is felt of the personality capable of taking a sovereign decision. A youth of eighteen cannot take a decision that requires deep reflection—that’s difficult enough for a man who has reached full maturity! It’s enough to imagine where King Michael of Romania would be without the support of a man as remarkable as Field-Marshal Antonescu. As it happens, the young man is stupid. Moreover, he has been rotted by his spoilt child’s upbringing, his father having entrusted him entirely to women during the most important period of his development. To sense the tragic nature of this abyss, it’s enough to compare the development of any man who’s ambitious to do something in life, with that of a prince by inheritance. Think of the amount of knowledge that a man of normal rank must acquire, of the desperate work he must do, without truce or rest, to succeed in having his own way. There is a tendency to believe, on the contrary, that one can prepare budding kings for the task that awaits them by keeping them amused. A third of their time is devoted to the study of foreign languages, so that they may be able to utter trivialities in several tongues; a second third to the sports of society (riding, tennis, etc.). The study of the political sciences takes only the last place. Moreover, the education they receive has no firmness. Their tutors are weakness itself. They resist the temptation to distribute the smacks their princely pupils deserve—for fear of calling down the disfavor of a future monarch. The result is obvious. That’s how creatures like Michael of Romania and Peter of Yugoslavia were formed.
As regards the government of Germany, I’ve come to the following conclusions:
1. The Reich must be a republic, having at its head an elected chief who shall be endowed with an absolute authority.
2. An agency representing the people must, nevertheless, exist by way of corrective. Its role is to support the Chief of State, but it must be able to intervene in case of need.
3. The task of choosing the Chief shall be entrusted, not to the people’s assembly, but to a Senate. It is, however, important that the powers of the Senate shall be limited. Its composition must not be permanent. Moreover, its members shall be appointed with reference to their occupation and not individuals. These Senators must, by their training, be steeped in the idea that power may in no case be delegated to a weakling, and that the elected Führer must always be the best man.
4. The election of the Chief must not take place in public, but in camera. On the occasion of the election of a pope, the people does not know what is happening behind the scenes. A case is reported in which the cardinals exchanged blows. Since then, the cardinals have been deprived of all contact with the outside world, for the duration of the conclave! This is a principle that is also to be observed for the election of the Führer: all conversation between [? with] the electors will be forbidden throughout operations.
5. The Party, the Army and the body of officials must take an oath of allegiance to the new Chief within the three hours following the election.
6. The most rigorous separation between the legislative and executive organs of the State must be the supreme law for the new Chief. Just as, in the Party, the SA and the SS are merely the sword to which is entrusted the carrying out of the decisions taken by the competent organs, in the same way the executive agents of the State are not to concern themselves with politics. They must confine themselves exclusively to ensuring the application of laws issued by the legislative power, making appeal to the sword, in case of need. Although a State founded on such principles can lay no claim to eternity, it might last for eight to nine centuries. The thousand-year-old organization of the Church is a proof of this—and yet this entire organization is founded on nonsense. What I have said should a fortiori be true of an organization founded on reason.
In praise of the Tsar Ferdinand—Boris the Fox of Bulgaria—Political plots—Wisdom of Kemal Ataturk.
In my view, King Boris is a somebody. There’s nothing surprising about that, for he has been to a good school with his father, the Tsar Ferdinand, the most intelligent monarch I’ve known.
If one can reproach the Tsar Ferdinand with having been more rapacious than a Jew in money-matters, one must nevertheless acknowledge that he was admirable as regards his audacity and decisive spirit. If we’d had him on the Imperial throne of Germany instead of William II, we’d certainly not have waited until 1914 before unleashing the first World War. We’d have acted as long ago as 1905. Just as the cunning fox succeeded, after the collapse in 1918, in preserving the throne for his son, in the same way I think he’d have found some way for Germany to save herself from the disaster. Moreover, he was an extremely cultivated man, very much above the average in all fields of knowledge. For years on end, for example, he was seen regularly at the Bayreuth Festival.
Unlike what other monarchs usually do, the Tsar Ferdinand gave his son Boris a severe education, driving him on at the study of all that had to do with political and military matters. Under the rod of the old fox, son Boris himself became a young fox, who was able to work his way out of the complicated tangle of Balkan affairs.
In 1919 Boris kept his throne by marching on Sofia at the head of a division. And it was always by behaving like a true soldier that he overcame the political crisis of 1934. While we’re on the subject, he himself has told the story of how one night the lights in the barracks at Sofia, which had been put out at ten o’clock, were suddenly relit at eleven o’clock, and were still burning at midnight. From this he concluded that there was a conspiracy against his life. It’s a fact that, until then, when an assassination was attempted in the Balkans, the assassins regularly arranged to find the politician who was to be struck at—in his nightshirt. Boris therefore at once put on his uniform again, and waited for the conspirators sword in hand. He greeted their ringleader with the words: “You want to kill me! What have you against me? Do you think you can do any better than I can?” Thereupon the conspirators, who were completely put out of countenance, asked leave to retire to their barracks to deliberate. Boris kept their leader behind, then he told him that he was about to appoint him President of the Council of Ministers, to give him an opportunity of proving his abilities as a politician. It took less than a year, of course, for the experiment to end in the man’s failure.
As an end to this story, Boris made a very intelligent remark, to the effect that, in a case of this sort, the worst mistake was to warn the police. You prevent the conspirators, he said, from seeing reason and abandoning their plot. On the contrary, you encourage them to persevere with it out of mere feeling.
Alas, we must be on our guard against political assassination as much now as then. That’s shown by the attempt on our Ambassador in Turkey, von Papen. The attempt has a lesson for us in the fact that the conspirators realized that they’d been betrayed by the Russians who commissioned them. The principal author of the attempt had been provided—allegedly to facilitate his flight—with a machine which he was told would produce artificial fog. In fact, the machine contained a powerful explosive charge designed to liquidate the assassin himself. When this treachery on their leaders’ part was revealed to them, the accomplices had no scruples in telling all they knew about the objects pursued by the Soviets.
For my part, I’ve never allowed anyone to resort to assassination in our political struggles. The method is generally inopportune, and to be recommended only in exceptional cases. In fact, it cannot lead to any important success, unless it enables one to eliminate the man on whose shoulders rest the whole organization and power of the enemy. But, even in such a case, I’d have refused to use this weapon.
The reason why political assassination continues to be so formidable in the Balkans is that nowadays the population is still impressed by the idea that, by shedding blood, one is avenging oneself. That’s why Kemal Pasha acted wisely, immediately after the seizure of power, by proclaiming a new capital. Thus control by the police could be exercised effectively.
Inelasticity of German protocol—Our eminent visitors get bored—Graceful customs of the French—Italian Statesmen visit Berlin.
What I dislike most about the Wilhelmstrasse is the protocol organization. When an official guest arrives in Berlin, protocol seizes hold of him from six o’clock in the morning until deep into night. They put on Faust or a showing of Tristan for Balkan types who would enjoy only a farce or an operetta. Old gentlemen who’ve come to Berlin to discuss important problems, and who’d be the better for half a day’s rest, are dragged from receptions to banquets, where they see the same faces everywhere. For the majority of our guests, the constraint imposed by protocol is a genuine martyrdom. Wouldn’t it be better to offer them the company of some pretty women who speak their language fluently? In Berlin, of all cities, we have the luck to number amongst our actresses women like Lili Dagover, Olga Tschechowa and Tiana Lemnitz.
In this respect, Boris of Bulgaria showed himself to be more of a fox than we knew. When he received the offer of somebody to pilot him through Berlin, he expressed the wish that his stay should be deprived of official character. He didn’t want to put anyone out, he said. The fact was, he wanted to escape the martyrdom of protocol. He wasn’t present at the showing of Faust, or of another opera, but he went and saw The Poor Student and then The Count of Luxemburg. He had a royal time.
When dealing with Balkan princes, one must bear in mind that they can scarcely leave their country for more than a week, for fear of losing their thrones during their absence.
If one bears in mind the political atmosphere in the Balkans, always heavy with threats of assassination and revolution, one must allow the political figures who come from those countries to enjoy themselves. We should offer them a show like The Merry Widow, for example, instead of those dramas chosen by protocol, almost all of which contain the inevitable scene with the dagger. I know only one oriental prince who could allow himself to stay for more than a week outside his own country—that was the old Shah of Persia. Every year, before the first World War, he made a trip abroad. But he was really an exception.
I also consider that protocol goes off the rails when it thinks fit to drag our guests from one museum to the next, exactly allotting the time allowed them in which to admire each picture. Without bothering about the distinguished guest’s personal preferences, the guide strikes the ground with his long, gold-knobbed cane, and this means it’s time to pass on to the next masterpiece! As long as protocol shows so little understanding, it will merely poison our guests’ lives.
In Paris, the matter is dealt with quite differently. As soon as the guest arrives, the Quai d’Orsay organizes a magnificent procession, with soldiers in brilliant uniform, and the whole affair is followed by a reception at the Elysée. During the next six days, the guest’s time is at his own disposal. The Parisian press, which is usually so gossipy, is extremely discreet on this occasion—a thing that greatly pleases the visitor. The latter—and all the more so if he’s from the Balkans—goes home absolutely delighted with the welcome he’d had in Paris, and begins dreaming of the trip he’ll make next year. Since some justification has to be found for this trip, the visitor manages to wangle things so that it will be justified, and France has always profited by its way of treating illustrious guests.
Before showing off their talents, our diplomats should at least try to put themselves into the skins of their Balkan visitors. The latter spend most of their time in a capital which, to them, acquires the look of a village where everybody knows everybody. Each of them is like a Hindu prince who since his adolescence has been afflicted with a legitimate wife. Consequently, when he is at last alone, the poor man heaves a sigh of relief to think that, since the discretion of the press is guaranteed, he can make sheep’s eyes at a pretty woman without worrying. That’s why, in cities like Berlin and Vienna, it’s entirely the proper thing to give our passing guests some liberty. We’ve everything to gain on the political level—not to speak of the fact that it always brings in a little bundle of foreign currency.
When I went to Rome, I received a most agreeable kind of welcome. The Duce saw to it that I had all the necessary time to look in peace at the works of art that interested me. As a result of that visit, I took care that the Italian political personages who came to see us should be subjected to the minimum of obligations for reason of protocol. The result was stupefying. One after another, the Italians accepted our hospitality with enthusiasm. That’s what gave me the idea of proposing to Göring that he and I should grant each of them perhaps an hour of our time, so as to enable them to justify their trip to Germany. The great Berlin physicians were usually sufficient to justify the rest of their time spent in Berlin!
Japanese political philosophy—Jewish origin of religious terrorism—Jewish influence in Britain—The élite of the future—Rules for a good education—Cowardice of the German Princes—The Red Flag of Canterbury—No mercy on the feeble—Nature is better than pedantry—All climates are alike to the Jews—I like hard, self-opinionated men—Condemnation of the pessimists—Most Germans are optimists.
The fact that the Japanese have retained their political philosophy, which is one of the essential reasons for their successes, is due to their having been saved in time from the views of Christianity. Just as in Islam, there is no kind of terrorism in the Japanese State religion, but, on the contrary, a promise of happiness. This terrorism in religion is the product, to put it briefly, of a Jewish dogma, which Christianity has universalized and whose effect is to sow trouble and confusion in men’s minds. It’s obvious that, in the realm of belief, terrorist teachings have no other object but to distract men from their natural optimism and to develop in them the instinct of cowardice.
As far as we are concerned, we’ve succeeded in chasing the Jews from our midst and excluding Christianity from our political life. It’s therefore in England and America that one can nowadays observe the effects of such an education upon a people’s conduct. Our measures against decadent art have enabled us to get rid of the smears of the Jews. But these daubs, which we’ve banned, are at present fetching the highest prices in England and America. And nobody amongst the bourgeois over yonder dares to protest. One may well exclaim: “Cowardice, thy name is bourgeoisie!” Although the Jew has seized the levers of control in the Anglo-Saxon world (the press, the cinema, the radio, economic life), and although in the United States he is the entire inspiration of the populace, especially of the negroes, the bourgeois of the two countries, with the rope already round their necks, tremble at the idea of rebelling against him, even timidly.
What is happening now in the Anglo-Saxon world is absolutely identical with what we experienced here in 1918. The Jew, in his imprudence, can’t even think where he is to interfere next; the priesthood restricts itself to the shameful exploitation of the people; and, to cap it all, a king who’s an utter nitwit! The King of England is worth no more than William II, who in 1918 was trembling with fear and incapable of taking the slightest decision, his only idea being to put his flag in his pocket. Under such a monarch, the Jew can propagate and spread himself in the way he understands, and instil his poison into the mind of the bourgeois world. The cream of it is that today it’s exactly the same in the Anglo-Saxon world as it used to be amongst us: these idiotic petit bourgeois believe that no economic life is possible without the Jew—for, as they put it, “without the Jew, money doesn’t circulate.” As if there hadn’t been flourishing periods in our economic life before the intrusion of the Jews—in the Middle Ages, for example!
I reckon that our future élite must be given a tough upbringing, so that it may be definitely immunized against such cowardice.
I’m in favor of an absolutely strict law of inheritance, declaring that a single child shall inherit everything, and all the others shall be thrown out into life and obliged to ensure their livelihood themselves. The father who truly loves his child bequeaths him a healthy heredity and a good education.
A good education consists in the following:
(a)forming the child’s character by giving him a sense of what is good;
(b)giving him a background of solid knowledge;
(c)it must be strict as regards the object to be attained, and firm as regards the methods used.
Furthermore, the father who has a lot of money must take care to give his child as little of it as possible. The man who wishes to bring up his child rightly must not lose sight of the example of nature, which shows no peculiar tenderness.
The peasant class has remained healthy in so far as this form of law has been applied to the countryside. One child inherited the estate, the others received nothing, or almost nothing. That’s exactly the practice amongst the English nobility. The title passes to a single one of the descendants, to the exclusion of all the others. By thus ensuring that the bananas don’t fall from the trees into the mouths of the young people, one protects them from cowardice and idleness. I’ve given instructions that, from now on, estates given to our colonists in the Eastern territories may not be parceled out. Only the most capable son will be entitled to inherit his family’s farm, the other children will have to break a road through life themselves. Such measures apply to the family as they do to other living things. Every human organism, however small, can recognize only one chief—and it is only in this way that the patrimony acquired by a family has a good chance of being preserved.
As soon as it’s admitted that one can’t put a human being in a box full of cotton wool for the whole duration of his life, Bormann is right in regarding the tough education given in our boarding schools as exemplary. The State can prop itself only on capable and courageous men. Only those who have proved their worth should be summoned to control public affairs. In the lower strata of the population, life itself assumes the task of practicing a pitiless selection. Likewise, when the popular masses find themselves confronted by rulers who are too pusillanimous, they do not hesitate to treat them with the utmost brutality. That’s how one can explain that the revolution from below swept away the tottering house of cards of the monarchs of 1918. If there had been a single German prince of the stamp of Boris of Bulgaria, who remained at the head of his division, declaring that he did not dream of withdrawing a single step, we’d have been spared that lamentable collapse. At bottom, destiny is indulgent and benevolent rather than the contrary; it dooms to decrepitude only what is already rotten. If only a single shoot remains healthy and strong, destiny allows it to exist. As it turned out, the poor German princes, in their panic fear, didn’t retain even the power of judgment that would have enabled them to assume the inaccuracy of such a report as that of the capitulation of the second Guards division!
The proof that things are no better in England, that there, too, everything is rotten to the marrow, is that an Archbishop of Canterbury should hang the flag of the Soviets from his throne. No pity must be shown to beings whom destiny has doomed to disappear. If one must rejoice that a creature as weakly as the present King of England should be irresistibly thrust downhill by the Jews, by the clergy and by the cowardice of the bourgeois, we must likewise rejoice that our decayed potentates underwent a similar fate after 1918. It’s absolutely ridiculous to take pity on our old princely houses. On the contrary, it’s quite fortunate that with them disappeared the chief obstacle that still existed to the realization of German unity. In a general way, one must never have pity on those who have lost their vital force. The man who deserves our pity is the soldier at the front, and also the inventor who works honestly amidst the worst difficulties. I would add that, even here, our sympathy should naturally be restricted to the members of our national community.
As in everything, nature is the best instructor, even as regards selection. One couldn’t imagine a better activity on nature’s part than that which consists in deciding the supremacy of one creature over another by means of a constant struggle. While we’re on the subject, it’s somewhat interesting to observe that our upper classes, who’ve never bothered about the hundreds of thousands of German emigrants or their poverty, give way to a feeling of compassion regarding the fate of the Jews whom we claim the right to expel. Our compatriots forget too easily that the Jews have accomplices all over the world, and that no beings have greater powers of resistance as regards adaptation to climate. Jews can prosper anywhere, even in Lapland and Siberia. All that love and sympathy, since our ruling class is capable of such sentiments, would by rights be applied exclusively—if that class were not corrupt—to the members of our national community. Here Christianity sets the example. What could be more fanatical, more exclusive and more intolerant than this religion which bases everything on the love of the one and only God whom it reveals? The affection that the German ruling class should devote to the good fellow-citizen who faithfully and courageously does his duty to the benefit of the community, why is it not just as fanatical, just as exclusive and just as intolerant?
My attachment and sympathy belong in the first place to the front-line German soldier, who has had to overcome the rigors of the past winter. If there is a question of choosing men to rule us, it must not be forgotten that war is also a manifestation of life, that it is even life’s most potent and most characteristic expression. Consequently, I consider that the only men suited to become rulers are those who have valiantly proved themselves in a war. In my eyes, firmness of character is more precious than any other quality. A well-toughened character can be the characteristic of a man who, in other respects, is quite ignorant. In my view, the men who should be set at the head of an army are the toughest, bravest, boldest, and, above all, the most stubborn and hardest to wear down. The same men are also the best chosen for posts at the head of the State—otherwise the pen ends by rotting away what the sword has conquered. I shall go so far as to say that, in his own sphere, the statesman must be even more courageous than the soldier who leaps from his trench to face the enemy. There are cases, in fact, in which the courageous decision of a single statesman can save the lives of a great number of soldiers. That’s why pessimism is a plague amongst statesmen. One should be able to weed out all the pessimists, so that at the decisive moment these men’s knowledge may not inhibit their capacity for action.
This last winter was a case in point. It supplied a test for the type of man who has extensive knowledge, for all the bookworms who become preoccupied by a situation’s analogies, and are sensitive to the generally disastrous epilogue of the examples they invoke. Agreed, those who were capable of resisting the trend needed a hefty dose of optimism. One conclusion is inescapable: in times of crisis, the bookworms are too easily inclined to switch from the positive to the negative. They’re waverers who find in public opinion additional encouragement for their wavering. By contrast, the courageous and energetic optimist—even although he has no wide knowledge—will always end, guided by his subconscious or by mere commonsense, in finding a way out.
God be praised, in our people the optimists are in a majority. In basing itself upon them, by the way, the Church has given away its whole game. In the last analysis, in fact, the Christian doctrine is addressed to the optimist, with the object of persuading him that the present life will be followed by another life, a much nicer one, on condition that he decides in time for the right creed—I nearly said, for the right side. Compared with the natural objectivity of the male, the true upholders of optimism are women. They discover the most amazing qualities in their offspring within a week of their birth, and they never lose this faith.