Hitler's Table Talk

CHILDHOOD AT LEONDING 637
is without doubt a lawyer—probably the Minister of Finance
himself! What a pity Bormann was not there !
293 2Oth August 1942, midday
SPECIAL GUESTS : DR. LAMMERS, DR. THIERAGK AND
DR. ROTHENBERGER
Crimes big and little—The punishment fits the crime—
Judges and the nation's morale—I am not by nature a brutal
man—No mercy on traitors—An anti-Semitic Jew—The
hero of a hundred murders—Legislators and Magistrates
—The education of judges—The lawyer as a Civil Servant.
I have just read that a man has been sentenced to three
months' imprisonment for having ill-treated an animal; apparently
he kicked a hen which had strayed into his garden. Well,
I do not approve. In my opinion shooting hares is a far greater
horror of cruelty. Every sportsman who shoots an animal without
killing it should, in my opinion, receive at least a like
sentence. The nation must not get the idea that one type of
sadist is applauded and the other put in prison. The sportsman
shoots game to satisfy his lust for murder. The man who kicked
the hen simply did so to guard his garden from damage, and
had no murderous intention. I know how irritating it can be
when a hen gets in your garden, and every time you chase it out,
back it comes again ! When I was a child my parents had a little
garden in Leonding. Our neighbour insisted on letting her hens
forage in our garden. One day I loaded a shot-gun and blazed
off at them. Since then I have learnt that the legal remedy is
for the hens to be confiscated and returned only after damages
have been paid. All that palaver over a hen pecking in a
neighbour's garden !
The case of the persistent poacher who steals a hen is quite
different. Here, I would say, his activities constitute an offence
against public austerity in time of war.
I think justice in cases like these must take motive, which is
by no means constant, into consideration. I have had a good
deal to do with the law and have been behind the bars for quite
a time. At Landsberg, the Great Pundit once told me quite
solemnly that he could not make up his mind whether