Hitler’s Table Talk is written in a way to make you feel as if you are having a direct conversation with Hitler over the dining room table. Or maybe it is more like being lectured by him because the talk offered in the book are monologues. The date and time of day is noted as well as who is with him during his talk. His conversations in the book explain the beliefs he holds dear such as the superiority of the Aryan race and who he considers to be a part of that race. He discusses his feelings on breeding pure Aryans (such as using blonde, blue-eyed Ukrainian women, pp. 617-618). And his admiration for Russian folk costumes and the necessity to pay attention to the details of uniform designs so that the wearer can be comfortable, p. 635). The monologues do seem to be of Hitler talking during a time when and where he feels very comfortable. His talks seem most of all oddly cruel and dissonant with civil norms. A question kept coming to me as I was reading, ‘How could anyone listen to this man and give him credibility?’ But celebrity has a power all on its own and the power he had over life and death would not allow disrespecting his ideas.
The conversations were written down in shorthand but by different people whom he trusted. The talks were also recorded. The range of the talks is over foreign affairs, Fascism, his attitudes towards the leadership in other countries, as well as his feelings about religion and the place of the Church, philosophy, and culture. They include his personal goals and the dreams he had for Nazi Germany and global Fascism. These conversations give important insights into the way that Hitler’s mind worked and what his priorities were in reaching his goals. It becomes clear that his main priority is keeping control of power so that when the world became Fascist he would be the only leader. He also oversaw a war with soldiers fighting other soldiers. Hitler was the leader of the concentration camps into which millions of Jews, Romanians, and enemies of the state, homosexuals and others were murdered. His Nazi soldiers took the order of massacring a whole village as a normal way of doing business. That is because the business was to commit genocide. This is an important book to read for an understanding of how Hitler embodied the revenge and the resentment Germans felt after World War I. His personality seems in many ways to reflect the worst side of the German character that had been evolving during the German Empire’s expansion until its end when the Germans were defeated and lost so much of their national pride.
Already in the first pages he explains why the Germans and Italians are both Aryan (due to their strict work habits and their intelligence as opposed to the Russians). He makes cruel and racist comments about the Russians as they only know how to drink vodka well and they do not even have any ability to hold their families together. It is in this way which he introduces the listener (or the reader) to his visionary dreams for a Fascist Empire. In the first page his personality is very clearly one that needs control, order and rigidity in order to feel comfortable. He begins “What we need is a collective view of people's wish to live and manner of living” (Saturday, 5th July 1941, 3). What we understand him to mean is that the people have a collective vision that matches his own and so they are willing to tailor their lives and way of living to match his vision. Throughout the book he seems to believe very assuredly that the lives of the people in the world will be perfect if they will do as he tells them to do. Unfortunately the only way he knows how to get rid of the lesser races like the Russians is to try to kill them all in war.
His dreams for the Germans that match his criteria of the Aryan race really are fabulous.”The German colonist ought to live on handsome, spacious farms. The German services will be lodged in marvelous buildings, the governors in palaces” (Hitler, 2000, 30) Governors living in palaces sounds very aristocratic. On Saturday, 26th July 1941, in a nighttime conversation he declares that “Monarchy is doomed.” Surely if he believes monarchy is doomed and he supports this outcome for royalty surely he would not want to tempt his governors by placing them in palaces. This is only a small preview of the contradictions he offers in his views of the world and how the world should be ruled.
Hitler’s further descriptions of well ordered German services which were to guarantee a certain standard of living for all the citizens and the handsome villages that would encircle the city are very entertaining. Perhaps these are examples of why so many people were mesmerized by Adolf Hitler, he told lovely fairy tales in a way that each person could suit their own wishes and dreams into his vision of the future for Germany.
But his simple solutions for containing revolutionaries surely must have been frightening to some in his audience who were carefully listening. He commented that he would bomb the (German) city where they were organized and that would be the end of them and be a discouragement for anyone wanting to start another revolt. He has a cavalier and even childish way of talking about bombing that is very disturbing.
If I had a bomber capable of flying at more than seven hundred and fifty (kilometres) an hour, I'd have supremacy everywhere. This aircraft wouldn't have to be armed, for it would be faster than the fastest fighters. . . A bomber flying at a height of fourteen thousand metres 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 water-works on which the water supply depends. On the day when the gentry (English word, in the original) were deprived of their hydrotherapy, they'd certainly lose some of their conceit. (Hitler, 2000, 313)
The above talk was recorded in 1942 and the subject was centered on the English people’s inability to “practice fair play” plus he was dismissive of the English for being “very bad at accepting their defeats” (Hitler, 2000, 2007). The long quote above shows Hitler to be a megalomaniac and/or very childish in his ability to gain “supremacy” by having a plane that “would be faster than the fastest fighters.”
Hitler’s discussion of avoiding dropping bombs randomly on a city are not nearly as effective as planning and targeting a bomb to drop on important infrastructure such as the “water-works on which the water supply depends” does hint at the surety of his goals and the war planning he does to reach his goal (Hitler, 2000, 307). “Hitler intended to control Europe, colonise Russia and Eastern Europe, and eradicate communism, the Jews and the Christian Churches” (Towle, 2000, 123). This Towle explains demonstrated that Hitler had his senses about him when he started World War II.
According to the great Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz, ‘no one starts a war – or rather no one in his senses ought to do so – without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it” (Towle, 2000, 123).
In Hitler’s conversations over and over he discusses in one way or another the need for him to hold tightly the reins of power so that nothing can go wrong. He feels strongly that all that his orders will be carried out as he intends them to be done only if he is the supreme power. His talk makes it clear that he has no room in his governance for anyone to share his level of power.
For example, he often talks about the annoyance he feels with Italy. Since Mussolini is his ally, after all, Hitler does not pile on the same amount of disdain to Mussolini he gives other world leaders. Although in general he does make pointed comments directed at Italy such as “I must admit that the Italians infuriate me with their continual running away, but purely from the point of view of a world philosophy, they are the only people on earth with whom we can see eye to eye” (Hitler, 2000, 614). He is quite sure that Mussolini is not doing as well as Hitler could if he were in charge of Italy. In a discussion taking place on 5th August 1942, in the evening with his special guest, Field Marshal Kesselring, Hitler notes that
The main difference between Italy and Germany is that in the former the Duce has not been made the supreme Dictator of the State; as a result, there are always ways and means of circumventing his orders. If, for example, he calls for a particularly valiant effort, the corps of officers immediately appeals to the King! (Hitler, 2000, 614)
Hitler seems to be giving Mussolini a break in one way; Mussolini still has the King in the picture, while at the same time questioning Mussolini’s power and skills. After all why does Mussolini still contend with the King. On the other hand if Mussolini became the only power in Italy, Hitler would have an enemy because more than one all powerful Fascist leaders did not fit into Hitler’s plans. This is the timbre of all the sly and cutting remarks Hitler uses to prove to himself and his listener’s his greater capacity as a leader than any other leader in the world. It is a strategy that would belittle a truly great man but seems fitting for the frightened and weak man Hitler was really. His conversations bring attention to his fears and his weaknesses. His way of building up his own self-esteem by belittling so many others is a key to the greatest weakness of his personality; that and his madness. He lacks any feeling of compassion or understanding what his orders mean to other human beings. Although he was born and raised in Austria, he has built a fantasy of a superior German race that will live brilliantly in well designed communities without interference from undesirable foreigners.
I recommend this book as a good way to gain an understanding of the type of man Hitler really was. It is a way to try to also gain some understanding on the general and personal reasons followers joined him in the Nazi regime. This is a difficult book to read because of the constant negative and racists comments. His discussion on the weak and the strong and the deficiencies in the character of his enemies are interesting. It often seems that Hitler could be talking about his own weaknesses and deficiencies. His disrespect for human beings and the lack of boundaries that normally keep civil relation between people possible – are astonishing.
Hitler, Adolf. Hitler’s Table Talk 1941 – 1944 His private conversations. Intro. Hugh Tervor-Roper. Trans. Norrnan Camerson and R.H. Stevens. New York, NY: Enigma Books, 2000.
