Hitler's Table Talk

ELECTION CAMPAIGNS 197
succession. It was in the direction of Brunswick. How many
times we made forced landings in the fields! On the agth of
July 1932, for example, at Ulm.
On another occasion, I said to Baur: "We must go, we're
expected at Munich." We had no equipment for night flying.
So Baur had had an improvised lighting system installed. On
arriving at Munich, we wheeled around above the stadium.
It was at the time of the Papen elections, when we got our two
hundred and ninety-seven seats. That same day I'd had
meetings at Constance, Friedrichshafen and Kempten. At the
meeting in Munich, I could hardly speak. I was dizzy. As I
went back home, I thought I was going to faint. I got nothing
easily in those days ! I remember I once spoke at Stralsund at
three o'clock in the morning.
These rapid, incessant moves were due to the necessity of my
speaking sometimes in great halls and sometimes in the open air,
and we didn't always have a choice of dates. For example, on
my birthday in 1932. The day before, I'd held six meetings at
Königsberg, the last ending at half-past two in the morning.
I was in bed by five, and by half-past eight I was back on the
airfield. A young girl of ravishing beauty offered me a nosegay,
and I regarded that as a happy omen. Meetings at Schneidemühl,
at Kassel, then at Göttingen, where from forty to fifty
thousand people were waiting for us in the night, under torrential
rain.
Next day, at three o'clock in the morning, we set out by car
for Wiesbaden, Trier and Koblenz. The organisation of these
round-trips was very difficult, for we had to take mainly into
account the possibility of getting halls. Often I had to use a
little Junker single-motor that had belonged to Sepp Dietrich.
It was a rather unstable aircraft, and we were violently shaken
by the bad weather. Baur once set it down on a race-course. Ke
did better than that, for he succeeded in starting off again in
black darkness. As a matter of fact, we had no meteorological
protection.
My very first flight, Munich to Berlin, was so unfavourable
that I spent years without entering an aircraft again.
My weakness is for motor-cars. I owe it some of the finest