Hitler's Table Talk

ABUSE OF CENTRAL GOVERNMENT 457
realised this clearly, and it was with this in mind that he made
me a present of the famous Discus Thrower.
The greatest danger which confronts our artistic centres is,
to my mind, an increase in the bureaucratic control that the
Berlin Ministries already exercise over them. The Berlin
bureaucracies confuse central administration, whose proper
task is to indicate broad lines and to intervene when help is
required, with a species of unitarianism, which lays a cold and
lethal hand on activity throughout the country. The danger is
a very real one, because during the last twenty years the Ministerial
bureaucracies have grown and expanded exclusively
within the orbit of their own circle; thus, for example, we see a
man of extreme mediocrity like Suren promoted to the rank of
Under-Secretary of State simply because he has served a
stated number of years in the Ministry of the Interior, and
quite regardless of the fact that in all his activities he has
generally done more harm than good.
As a counter-poise to the bureaucrats of the administration
we must, therefore, recruit really efficient men in large numbers
for the local administrative bodies. Such men, however, must
be given the opportunity of proving their mettle in independent
administrative jobs. The more decentralised the administration
of the Reich becomes, the easier it will be to find efficient people
for the key-posts of the central organisation, endowed with the
ability to give the necessary broad instructions and the sense to
know when their intervention is really necessary.
If we allow the bureaucrats to continue in their present ways,
in a few years we shall find that the nation has lost all faith in
the administration. Efficient men with both feet planted firmly
on the ground will not tolerate that the work they have prepared
as, say, mayors, during years of long and anxious endeavour
should be rejected or destroyed by the decision of some
miserable little jack-in-office in Berlin.
In any case, when the officials of the central administration
do intervene in local affairs, they are very seldom in agreement
with the local authorities, who have studied the problem in
question on the spot and who know quite well what decision
ought to be arrived at. The officials of our Ministries are men
of petty minds, for they have proceeded step by step from minor,