Hitler's Table Talk

FREEMASONS SUGGEST A BARGAIN
judgment without knowing. I said to him: "Save your saliva.
For me, Freemasonry's poison." Ludendorffand Pöhnerwent
there. And Ludendorff was even so ill-advised as to put his
signature in their register, under some stupidly compromising
phrase. A few days later, I happened to be visiting Pöhner.
He was grinning like a monkey. He told me they'd played the
same trick on him as on Ludendorff, and that he'd written in
their book : "Hitherto I believed that Freemasonry was a danger
to the State. I now believe additionally that it should be forbidden
for the offence of major imbecility." Pöhner had been
dumbfounded by the ridiculousness of these rites, which transformed
men who were quite sane and sober in their ordinary
lives into informed apes. The Freemasons tried to use Ludendorff's
clumsy declaration for publicity purposes—but it goes
without saying that with Former's they were more discreet.
Richard Frank is one of the greatest idealists I've known.
Since we needed headquarters, he made efforts to procure the
money for us. With this object, he introduced me, in Munich,
to a certain Dr. Kuhlo. On Frank's initiative, this Kuhlo had
formed a syndicate to buy the Hotel Eden, situated near the
station. It was obviously out of the question to make this purchase
with the Party's money. This was in 1923, and the sellers
demanded payment in Swiss francs. When all was ready, the
syndicate met, with Kuhlo in the chair. The latter rose to his
feet and announced that the hotel would be put at the Party's
disposal for a modest rental. He suggested, in passing, that
perhaps the Party might suppress the article in its programme
concerning Freemasonry. I got up and said good-bye to these
kindly philanthropists. I'd fallen unawares into a nest of Freemasons
!
How many times subsequently I've heard comments of this
sort: "Why declaim against the Freemasons? Why not leave
the Jews in peace?" It's by means of these continual blackmailings
that they succeeded in acquiring the subterranean
power that acts in all sectors, and each time by appropriate
methods.
After the prohibition of the Lodges, I often heard it said that,
2&I