Hitler's Table Talk

PARTY RALLIES 565
round the table, gathering up the odds and ends left by the
others and muttering in justification: "Vegetables are the
most health-giving food in the world!" In the evenings, in the
same way, remarking that cheese was "so nourishing", he would
go round scrounging bits of cheese from the whole company.
On one occasion when we had to undertake a journey in a
great hurry I told Hanfstaengl to get something to eat for everybody
before we left. Although he knew full well that most of us
disliked cheese, he came back with two baskets full of cheese
sandwiches—and then with the greatest aplomb and satisfaction
he carted the not inconsiderable remnants off to his own
house !
Reichsleiter Bormann and General Bodenschatz then told anecdotes
about Hanfstaengl and his miserly avarice which confirmed the description
the Fuehrer had painted of him.
In the course of our many electoral tours my companions
and I have got to know and to love the Reich from Berlin to its
uttermost corners. As for the most part I was invited to take
my meals en famille, I also got to know intimately Germans all
over Germany. There I used to meet whole families, in which
the father would be working in our political section, the mother
was a member of the Women's Association, one brother was in
the SS, the other in the Hitler Youth, and the daughter was
in the German Girls' League. And so when we all meet once a
year at the Party Rally at Nuremberg, it always gives me the
impression of being just one huge family gathering.
The Party Rally has, however, been not only a quite unique
occasion in the life of the NSDAP but also in many respects a
valuable preparation for war. Each Rally requires the organisation
of no fewer than four thousand special trains. As these
trains stretched as far as Munich and Halle, the railway
authorities were given first-class practice in the military problem
of handling mass troop transportation.
Nor will the Rally lose its significance in the future. Indeed, I
have given orders that the venue of the Rally is to be enlarged
to accommodate a minimum of two million for the future—as
compared to the million to a million and a half to-day. The