Hitler's Table Talk

12 FRIENDSHIP WITH ENGLAND
—coal and steel. In this field, the needs of the market had until
then been covered by England. The English demanded the
best, and paid high prices to get it. In these conditions, anyone
who wants nevertheless to do business has only one solution—to
ask lower prices.
Our desperation for work enabled us to produce cheap, massproduced
articles that could nevertheless compete with English
goods on the quality level. We were beginners, and did not
know all the secrets of manufacture. Thus it was that during the
'eighties, at a World Exhibition in Philadelphia, German production
was called "shoddy". Nevertheless, with time, we were
able to out-class English work in three sectors of production :
the chemical industry (especially as regards pharmaceutical
products, the manufacture of dyes and, just before the first
World War, the extraction of nitrogen from the air) ; the production
of electrical apparatus; and the production of optical
instruments.
England felt this competition so keenly that she reacted with
all her strength. But neither her attempts at tariff protection,
nor certain international agreements, nor the compulsory use of
the phrase "Made in Germany" as a label for our goods, made
any difference at all.
For the English, the ideal existence was represented in the
society of the Victorian age. At that time England had at her
service the countless millions of her colonial Empire, together
with her own thirty-five million inhabitants. On top of that, a
million bourgeois—and, to crown the lot, thousands of gentlefolk
who, without trouble to themselves, reaped the fruit of other
people's toil. For this ruling caste, Germany's appearance on the
scene was a disaster. As soon as we started our economic ascent,
England's doom was sealed. It is quite certain that in future
England's Empire won't be able to exist without the support of
Germany.
I believe that the end of this war will mark the beginning of a
durable friendship with England. But first we must give her
the k.o.—for only so can we live at peace with her, and the
Englishman can only respect someone who has first knocked
him out.
The memory of 1918 must be obliterated.