Hitler's Table Talk

636 FOOD SMUGGLING
without increasing the cost of living and without suffering any
of the devaluation which one sees in other countries.
My attention was recently drawn to the fact that all the laws
which we submit are systematically rejected by three Ministers
—Schacht, Stanislaus and Neurath. The rest are always in
agreement. And the infuriating thing is that most of these laws
are no concern of the Ministers mentioned, who, in any case,
are not members of the Cabinet!
The best method is always to settle the thing directly with the
Minister concerned, and thus avoid tedious discussion, in which
one will argue from the legal point of view, while another quotes
principles of financial orthodoxy. That sort of thing drives me
to fury. One day I said to one of these gentlemen: "The
German nation has survived the period of the great migrations,
the wars with the Romans, the onslaughts of the Huns, the
Magyars and the Mongols, the Thirty Years' War, the campaigns
of Frederick the Great and Napoleon—and it will no
doubt survive even my rule!"
2§2 16th August 1942
An invention of the lawyers—Sabotaging the nation's
morale.
Major Engel reported that at Königsberg Air Port one of the Port
officials had seized from a plane some foodstuffs brought in by the pilots
and destined for the black market. The Fuehrer was very angry and
said:
That is the sort of thing which one would expect from enemies
of the State and which would infuriate our soldiers beyond all
control, if they knew of it. So that's the thanks they get from
the Home Front! Sabotage of the people's will to resist! I'll
get to the bottom of this affair; I don't care whether the culprit
is in the Wehrmacht or the Customs, I'll have him in prison, and
I shall employ the utmost savagery to put an end to such
practices. What can one bring back from the East—works of
art? There are none. Only odds and ends of food, and one
cannot do better than distribute that among German families.
It is perfectly true that the soldier lives better at the front than
he does at home on leave. The instigator of this sorry practice