Hitler's Table Talk

EARLY DISILLUSIONMENT IN USA 605
cannot imagine the publication of a deliberate lie in the German
official communiqué; but they don't mind how many they
publish in their reports, and one realises now the extent to which
they are hoodwinking their own people.
According to the Americans themselves, America has the
finest, biggest and most efficient of everything in the wide
world; and when one then reads a book like this about them,
one sees that they have the brains of a hen ! Well, the disillusionment
will be all the more severe, and the consternation,
when this house of cards collapses, will be enormous. This has
already occurred as far as the Far East is concerned. Why
should a people of that sort fight—they've got everything they
want ! Anyway, the ardour for battle will soon wane when the
individual finds himself called upon to endure a further curtailment
of the amenities of life !
It is very difficult to argue with Americans. They immediately
shout : "Say, take a look at what our workers earn!"
True, but let us take a look at the shady side as well. The industrial
worker earns his eighty dollars; but the man who is
not in industry gets absolutely nothing. At one time they had
no less than thirteen million unemployed. I have seen pictures
of shelters built out of old kerosene tins which the unemployed
had erected for themselves and which remind me of the holes of
misery to be found in the Bolshevik industrial cities. I grant
you that our standard of life is lower. But the German Reich
has two hundred and seventy opera houses—a standard of
cultural existence of which they over there have no conception.
They have clothes, food, cars and a badly constructed housebut
with a refrigerator ! This sort of thing does not impress us.
I might, with as much reason, judge the cultural level of the
sixteenth century by the appearance of the water-closets of the
time—an apartment which was not then regarded as of
particular importance !
A few days ago I read another book—about Spain. Spaniards
and Americans simply cannot understand each other. Those
things which the Spaniard venerates most highly mean nothing
to the American, and to the Spaniard the American way of life
is a closed book. To sum it up, the Americans live like sows^in
a most luxurious sty !