Hitler's Table Talk

156 PORTRAIT OF A SOCIALIST POLITICIAN
could be blamed for entrusting money to all and sundry, and
without having any guarantee that the money was wisely
invested. The man who wants to kill my dog begins by saying
that it has rabies! It does not affect me at all that I myself
should be judged in this fashion. But I should be ashamed if I
used such criteria in passing judgment on others.
All sanctions are justified when it's a question of a real
offence: treason to the Movement, for example. But when a
man has made a mistake in good faith?
Nobody has the right to photograph a man surprised in
intimacy. It's too easy to make a man seem ridiculous. Let
every man ask himself the question, what would he do if he
had the bad luck to be photographed unawares in a delicate
situation? The photos in question were taken from a house
opposite. It was a disgusting way of behaving, and I've forbidden
any use to be made of the photos.
It's not fair to demand more of a man than he can give.
Streicher has not the gifts of a great administrator. Would I
have entrusted the editorship of a great newspaper to Dietrich
Eckart? From the financial point of view, there'd have been a
terrifying mess. One day the newspaper would have come out,
the next day not. If there'd been a pig to share out, Eckart
would have promised it left and right, and distributed at least
twenty-four hams. Those men are made like that, but without
them it's impossible to get anything started.
I haven't myself the talents of a great administrator, but I've
known how to surround myself with the men I needed.
Dietrich Eckart could not, for example, have been the Director
of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. It would be
like asking me to devote myself to agriculture. I'm quite
incapable of it.
One day I had in my hands a pile of letters from Severing.
If they'd been published, he'd have been annihilated. They
were the outpourings of a draper's assistant. I said to Goebbels :
"We haven't the right to make use of these." Reading these
letters had made Severing seem to me more sympathetic than
otherwise, and perhaps that's one of the reasons why later on I
didn't persecute him.