Hitler's Table Talk

BORMANN'S TOUR OF THE UKRAINE 587
an inexhaustible scale, while the rest of Europe would have
degenerated into a defenceless plaything of Soviet policy.
It is very stupid to sneer at the Stakhanov system. The arms
and equipment of the Russian armies are the best proof of its
efficiency in the handling of industrial man-power. Stalin, too,
must command our unconditional respect. In his own way he
is a hell of a fellow ! He knows his models, Genghiz Khan and
the others, very well, and the scope of his industrial planning
is exceeded only by our own Four Year Plan. And there is no
doubt that he is quite determined that there shall be in Russia
no unemployment such as one finds in such capitalist States
as the United States of America. . . .
Bormann, who has just returned from a tour of inspection of the
Kolkhoz in the vicinity of General Headquarters, gave his impressions:
"When one looks at the children, it is difficult to realise that sooner
or later they, too, will acquire the flat, Slav faces of their parents. Like
the inhabitants of the Baltic States, they are fair, with blue eyes, bonny
and chubby-faced. In comparison, our children look like tottering little
chicks. It really is curious to think that these children will become
Ukrainian adults, with their vulgar, inexpressive Jaces. I was much
struck by the fact that in these huge open spaces one saw so many children
and so few men. Such prolific breeding may one day give us a knotty
problem to solve, for as a race they are much hardier by nature than we
are. The men have admirable teeth, and rarely does one see a man wearing
glasses. They are well fed and bursting with good health at all ages.
The difficult conditions under which these men have lived for centuries
have brought into being a merciless process of selection. If one of us
drinks a drop of their water, he all but dies. They on the other hand live
in the dirt, drink the muddy stagnant water of their ponds and thrive on
it. We fill ourselves with quinine as a safeguard against malaria, while
the Ukrainians are so immune, not only to malaria but to scarlet fever
as well, that they can live with impunity in surroundings teeming with
fleas and ticks.
" If these people are allowed, under German supervision—that is, under
greatly improved conditions—to multiply too quickly, it will be against
our interests, for the racial pressures which these damned Ukrainians will
exercise will constitute a real danger. Our interests demand just the reverse—namely,
that these territories, hitherto Russian, should in time be