Hitler's Table Talk

l8
WEHRMACHT MORE ELASTIC THAN ADMINISTRATION
eldest son of a family to be the only heir to the title—is quite
reasonable. Thus the younger sons go back to the people, and
the family retains its economic power whilst at the same time
keeping its bonds with the people.
When somebody remarks, with an air of sorrowful sympathy,
that such-and-such an outcast from an ancient family is a useless
creature, a tramp, a failure—very good! It's right that a
healthy family should eject one of its members who has become
unworthy of it. The error would be precisely to allow the
failure to continue to be privileged.
It goes without saying that only a planned economy can
make intelligent use of all a people's strength.
Darre has done two good things : the law of agrarian inheritance,
and the regulation of markets.
If in future we obtain the primary materials that the shortage
has compelled us to replace by synthetic products—a thing we
could do, thanks to our scientific researches and our superior
technique—that will be no reason to stop producing these
synthetic products.
13 Night of 1st-2nd August 1941
Bureaucracy—The value of intelligent disobedience—A
continent to be ruled—A dominant race.
I am often urged to say something in praise of bureaucracy—I
can't do it.
It's certain that we have a clean, incorruptible administration,
but it's also too punctilious. It's over-organised, and, at
least in certain sectors, it's overloaded. Its principal fault is that
nobody in it is seeking for success, and that it includes too many
people without responsibility. Our functionaries fear initiative
worse than anything else—and what a way they have of behaving
as if they were nailed to their office chairs ! We have much
more elasticity in the army, with the exception of one sector of
the Wehrmacht, than in these civilian sectors. And that
although the salaries are often inadequate !
Their fixed idea is that legislation should be the same for the
whole Reich. Why not a different regulation for each part of the
Reich? They imagine that it's better to have a regulation which