Hitler's Table Talk

KNOWLEDGE IS DANGEROUS 589
once in his lifetime. Finally, elementary instruction in reading
and writing in German will complete the course. Mathematics
and such like are quite unnecessary.
In setting up the educational system, the same principles
apply to both Eastern territories and any other colonies. We
do not want any of this enlightenment nonsense propagated
by an advance guard of parsons ! What is the use of talking
about progress to people like that? Jodl is quite right when he
says that notices in the Ukrainian language "Beware of the
Trains" are superfluous; what on earth does it matter if one or
two more locals get run over by the trains?
I am in favour of teaching a little German in the schools
simply because this will facilitate our administration. Otherwise
every time some German instruction is disobeyed, the local
inhabitant will come along with the excuse that he "didn't
understand". For the same reason, the Russian script must be
replaced by the Latin. The greatest possible mistake we could
make would be to take the local population too much under the
wing of the State ; and to avoid all danger of our own people
becoming too soft-hearted and too humane towards them, we
must keep the German colonies strictly separated from the local
inhabitants.
Germans will in no circumstances live in a Ukrainian town.
If essential, it will be better to put Germans in barracks outside
a town than to allow them to live inside it. Otherwise, sooner
or later, the process of cleaning up and improving the town will
inevitably start; and Russian and Ukrainian towns are not in
any circumstances to be improved or made more habitable. It
is not our mission to lead the local inhabitants to a higher
standard of life; and our ultimate object must be to build towns
and villages exclusively for Germans and absolutely separate
from Russian or Ukrainian towns. The houses to be constructed
for the Germans must in no respect resemble those of the
Russians, and lime-plaster and thatched roofs will not be used.
In pre-war Germany everything was too meticulous and too
stylised. One reason for this is that we Germans were compelled
to cluster in such close proximity, that the police had no
option but from time to time to issue regulations for the conduct
of communal life. This craze for regimentation, however,