Hitler's Table Talk

640 LAWS MUST BE MERCILESS
humanitarian ideals than was our system of justice. Circumstances
alter cases. The main thing is to be honest and logical
with one's self. Weakness in war-time is not admissible. In
the case of a traitor, the amount of damage he has done carries
little weight; it is the act itself which counts. There are some
crimes which, without any shadow of doubt, put him who commits
them outside the pale of the community. In the Third
Reich no traitor shall commit treason and escape with his life.
It is the least we can do for those who have left their homes and
wives to do battle at the front. In such matters I am merciless.
And the law should be equally merciless; it should also be
capable of appreciating public opinion. As it is, a poacher kills
a hare and goes to prison for three months ! I myself should
have taken the fellow and put him into one of the guerilla companies
of the SS. I am no admirer of the poacher, particularly
as I am a vegetarian; but in him I see the sole element of
romance in the so-called sport of shooting. Incidentally, there
is no doubt that we number quite a few poachers among the
most stalwart adherents of the Party. When I say all this, do
not imagine that I condone the wholesale depredations of
poachers among the wild life of the forests. On the contrary,
my sympathies are entirely with the gamekeepers.
It is most interesting to note how wisely a people, from children
upwards, react to measures taken in the general interest.
If a woman sends her man at the front a parcel, and it is stolen
on the way, the primary reaction is: "Bloody swine! he should
be bumped off !" That is primitive human instinct. The woman
deprived herself of something for her man's sake; this bastard
grabbed it from her! Kill him! There's nothing sentimental
about that. It is just plain, sane herd-instinct.
The community at large derives no benefit or support from
the inbred degenerates in its midst. It is nevertheless curious
to see how these latter, in certain circumstances, react in much
the same manner as ordinary people. I know of a comedian,
Pallenberg by name, who was a typical Jew intellectual. He
salted his money away in a Jew bank in Holland ; now that he
has, of course, lost it all, he is violently anti-Semitic!
In the case of Seefeld I told Gürtner that if the fellow had
really committed thirty-six murders, it was essential to find out