Hitler's Table Talk

GERMANS AND ROMANS 289
138 4th February 1942, evening
SPECIAL GUEST: HIMMLER
Charlemagne—The call of the South—Struggling through
the mud—Henry the Lion—The sweetness of life—Improving
living conditions—For the Reich no sacrifice is too
great.
The fact that Charlemagne was able to federate the quarrelsome
and bellicose Germans shows that he was one of the
greatest men in world history.
We know to-day why our ancestors were not attracted to the
East, but rather to the South. Because all the regions lying east
of the Elbe were like what Russia is for us to-day. The Romans
detested crossing the Alps. The Germanic peoples, on the
other hand, were very fond of crossing them—but in the opposite
direction. One must bear in mind that at this period Greece
was a marvellous garden, in which oak-forests alternated with
orchards. It was only later that olive-growing was introduced
into Greece.
The reason why the climate has become temperate in Upper
Bavaria is that Italy was deforested. The warm winds of the
South, which are no longer held in check by the vegetation,
pass over the Alps and make their way northwards.
The Germanic needed a sunny climate to enable his qualities
to develop. It was in Greece and Italy that the Germanic spirit
found the first terrain favourable to its blossoming. It took
several centuries to create, in the Nordic climate, the conditions
of life necessary for civilised man. Science helped there.
For any Roman, the fact of being sent to Germania was regarded
as a punishment—rather like what it used to mean to us
to be sent to Posen. You can imagine those rainy, grey regions,
transformed into quagmires as far as eye could see. The megalithic
monuments were certainly not places of worship, but
rather places of refuge for people fleeing from the advance of
the mud. The countryside was cold, damp, dreary. At a time
when other people already had paved roads, we hadn't the
slightest evidence of civilisation to show. Only the Germanics
on the shores of the rivers and the sea-coasts were, in a feeble
way, an exception to this rule. Those who had remained in
L