Hitler's Table Talk

EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL 45
Who knows? If my parents had been sufficiently well-to-do
to send me to a School of Art, I should not have made the
acquaintance of poverty, as I did. Whoever lives outside
poverty cannot really become aware of it, unless by overthrowing
a wall.
The years of experience I owe to poverty—a poverty that I
knew in my own flesh—are a blessing for the German nation.
But for them, we'd have Bolshevism to-day.
In one respect, the climate of want in which I lived left no
mark on me. At that time, I lived in palaces of the imagination.
And it was precisely at that time that I conceived the
plans for the new Berlin.
We must pay attention to two things :
1. That all gifted adolescents are educated at the State's
expense.
2. That no door is closed to them.
Since I hadn't been able to finish my secondary studies, an
officer's career would have been closed to me, even if by working
I had learnt more about it than is proper for a boy who has
matriculated to know.
Only an officer could win the Pour le Mérite. And at that, it
was quite exceptional for an officer of middle-class origin to
receive it.
In that closed society, every man existed only by virtue of his
origin. The man who lacked this origin, and university degrees
into the bargain, could not dream of becoming a Minister, for
example, except by the short-cut of Social Democracy.
Until not long ago, we had four different styles of messing
in the Navy, corresponding to the sailors' ranks or ratings.
Very recently, that even cost us a ship.
The view that suppression of these discriminations would be
harmful to authority proved to be without foundation. A
competent man always has the authority he needs. A man who
is not superior by his talent invariably lacks authority, whatever
his job may be.
It's a scandal to remember how household servants used to
be lodged, particularly in apartments in Berlin. And the crews
on ships, even luxury ships—what an insult!