Hitler's Table Talk

468 THOUGHTS OF DANZIG GAULEITER
economic principles. These, unfortunately, disappeared from
the moment that our economists began to influence our politicians.
Take fats, for example. Our position now would
have been very different if, at the opportune moment, we had
paid proper attention to the whale-fishing industry and its
rational exploitation. Whale oil not only possesses anti-rickets
virtues, but also has the advantage that it can be stored indefinitely.
We have to-day various processes which enable us
to make good use of 88 per cent of a whale ; apart from the
oil, the meat can be preserved, leather can be made from the
skin, and the fin-coverings furnish the basis for a material to all
intents and purposes indestructible. The organisation of our
whale-fishing industry is therefore for us a problem of the
most pressing significance.
Gauleiter Forster recalled that in 1830 the population of the town of
Thorn was predominantly German, but that by 1939 the German
element had dwindled to quite insignificant proportions. This elicited
the following reflections from the Fuehrer:
The fault lies with the policy pursued by Prussia during the
last hundred and fifty years. During that period, the Prussian
Government transformed the German eastern territories into a
veritable punitive colony, sending only such teachers,
Government officials and officers as had for some reason or other
fallen from grace, or whom it was desired to remove from the
functions they had been exercising.
We must make good the mistakes committed by Prussia, and
we must do it in the next ten years. At the end of that period I
shall expect my Gauleiters to be in a position to inform me that
these regions have become once again German.
Forster agreed that this might be achieved in the Danzig-West
Prussian province. To succeed, it would be necessary, he thought, to
appeal to the best elements of the old Reich and to restrict recruitment to
men under fifty. To men above that age one could well apply the adage:
"Old trees cannot be transplanted".
I agree. For the re-population of our Eastern territories it is
to the younger generation, obviously, that we must turn in the
first instance. We must imbue them with a feeling of pride in