Hitler's Table Talk

348 STANDARDISATION OF BUILDING
the morning, the works of the alarm-clock must even switch on
the mechanism that boils the water. All these little inventions
that lighten the burden of life must be set to work.
I have a man, Robert Ley, to whom it will be enough for me
to entrust this mission. A nod from me, and he'll set everything
humming.
Every dwelling should carry the right to a garage, and there's
no question of this garage costing forty or fifty marks a month.
It ought to cost a tenth of that. If we haven't reached that
point to-day, it's once again those damned lawyers we have to
thank. I've been told that these maniacs of the Civil Service
have found nothing better to do than to compose a file in which
all possible accidents, imaginable or unimaginable, have been
foreseen. And they've used this as a foundation on which to base
their regulations. Thus they make such demands that buildingcosts
become impossibly high. In many cases, they're based on
technical peculiarities that became obsolete twenty years ago.
For example, there is a regulation limiting the angle of the
stairs to a certain number of degrees. This regulation, if it's
applied, entails enormous expenses : time wasted, room wasted,
materials wasted.
What's more, it's necessary to standardise the necessary
components for the construction of interiors. Don't ask where
to begin! If we succeed in sparing the five million families
who'll inhabit the new apartments the useless expense usually
involved in a move to a new dwelling, this will already be
progress. Everything must have a beginning. Let's begin at
once!
167 Night of a8th February-1st March 1942
The Bayreuth Festival 1925—Bayreuth and National
Socialism—Rôle of Cosima Wagner—Siegfried Wagner.
In 1925, the Bechsteins had invited me to stay with them in
Bayreuth. They lived in a villa in the Liszt Strasse (I think this
was the name of the street), within a few yards of Wahnfried. I
had hesitated to go there, for I was afraid of thus increasing the
difficulties of Siegfried Wagner, who was somewhat in the hands
of the Jews.
I arrived in Bayreuth towards eleven o'clock in the evening.