Hitler's Table Talk

288 REFLECTIONS ON COLLECTIVE MADNESS
There are towns in Germany from which all joy is lacking.
I'm told that it's the same thing in certain Calvinistic regions
of Switzerland. In Trier and Freiburg, women have addressed
me in so ignoble a fashion that I cannot make up my mind to
repeat their words. It's on such occasions that I become aware
of the depth of human baseness. Clearly, one must not forget
that these areas are still feeling the weight of several centuries of
religious oppression.
Near Würzburg, there are villages where literally all the
women were burned. We know of judges of the Court of the
Inquisition who gloried in having had twenty to thirty thousand
"witches" burned. Long experience of such horrors cannot
but leave indelible traces upon a population.
In Madrid, the sickening odour of the heretic's pyre remained
for more than two centuries mingled with the air one breathed.
If a revolution breaks out again in Spain, one must see in it
the natural reaction to an interminable series of atrocities.
One cannot succeed in conceiving how much cruelty, ignominy
and falsehood the intrusion of Christianity has spelt for this
world of ours.
If the misdeeds of Christianity were less serious in Italy, that's
because the people of Rome, having seen them at work, always
knew exactly the worth of the Popes before whom Christendom
prostrated itself. For centuries, no Pope died except by the
dagger, poison or the pox.
I can very well imagine how this collective madness came to
birth.
A Jew was discovered to whom it occurred that if one
presented abstruse ideas to non-Jews, the more abstruse
these ideas were, the more the non-Jews would rack their brains
to try to understand them. The fact of having their attention
fixed on what does not exist must make them blind to what
exists. An excellent calculation of the Jew's part. So the Jew
smacks his thighs to see how his diabolic stratagem has succeeded.
He bears in mind that if his victims suddenly became
aware of these things, all Jews would be exterminated. But,
this time, the Jews will disappear from Europe.
The world will breathe freely and recover its sense of joy,
when this weight is no longer crushing its shoulders.