Hitler's Table Talk

580 BRITAIN'S MILITARY NAÏVETÉ
hundred million marks. And thus my autobahn would cost the
State nothing.
During our conversation that old fox Lloyd George asked me
what thickness of concrete I proposed to use? The American
motor highways have five or six centimetres of concrete, and
Lloyd George could hardly believe me when I told him that
ours would have from twenty-five to thirty centimetres. Indeed,
Kempka told me later that one day Lloyd George stopped his
car, pulled a tape measure out of his pocket and verified the
correctness of what I had told him.
The war shows how right I was. Even direct hits from bombs
have caused only minor damage on the autobahnen. But the
war, alas, has obliged us to change their appearance, and to
paint them black in order to render them invisible to hostile
aircraft. Those who know how near to my heart the autobahnen
lie will be able to appreciate how much it hurts me no longer to
be able to bowl along those lovely white tracks.
202 18th July 1942, evening
An interview on the war on the Eastern front—What I
shall say about the "Second Front".
To enable me to make some retort to the constant allusions
to a Second Front in the British press, I have instructed Dr.
Dietrich to arrange an interview for me with a foreign journalist
on the subject of the Eastern front.
As each individual picks from an interview of this sort the
things which seem to him personally to be the most important,
I hope to be able to touch on the subject of the Second Front in
an oblique way. I propose to develop the idea that, as the
British are children in military affairs, we must, of course, be
prepared for anything, however foolish, and that we cannot
therefore dismiss out of hand all the twaddle written in the
Anglo-Jewish press; but that, in the same way as our preparations
allowed us to counter the onslaught of the Russians, we are
now taking all the necessary steps to prepare a worthy reception
for such unfortunate British soldiers as may be led, by those
military nonentities who command them, to attempt a landing
on the coast of Europe.