Hitler's Table Talk

THE PROBLEM OF NATIONALISATION 365
obviously not have amended. They'd simply have gone and
gambled somewhere else, on the other side of the frontier—to
the profit, that's to say, of the French. Speaking of that, I
enquired how much foreign currency the gambling at Wiesbaden
might bring us in, and I told myself that even a hundred
thousand marks in foreign money (it's not much, when one has
it) is quite a sum when one is poor. I drew the conclusion from
all this that gamblers can be useful to the State, by losing their
money—and especially foreign gamblers, when they lose in
their own currency.
Experience proved that, in retaining gambling in a few
casinos, we made a sound calculation. In addition to the
foreign currencies we thus collected, it enabled us to retain
resorts like Wiesbaden for the German community. It goes
without saying that the institution of gambling, which produces
great profits simply because it's a monopoly and because it entails
no payment of labour in exchange, must go to enrich the
State and not private people.
Bormann commented that this principle should be equally true as
regards industrial power production. Hitler went on:
It's obvious that the power monopoly must be vested in
the State. That does not exclude the participation of private
capital. The State would offer its securities for investment by
the public, which would thus be interested in the exploitation
of the monopoly, or, rather, in the favourable progress of State
business. The fact is that, when State affairs are not prospering,
the holders of certificates can put a cross through their unearned
incomes—for the various affairs in which the State is
interested cannot be dissociated. The advantage of our formula
would be to enable everyone to feel closely linked with State
affairs. To-day, unfortunately, most people are not clearsighted
enough to realise the closeness of this link.
What is true of the power industry is equally true of all the
essential primary materials—that is to say, it applies also to
petroleum, coal, steel and water-power. Capitalist interests
will have to be excluded from this sort of business. We do not,
of course, contemplate preventing a private person from using
the energy of the tiny stream that powers his small works.