Hitler's Table Talk

662 CRUCIAL THIRD DAY IN RUSSIA
of that gigantic country firmly in his iron grasp. But when he
claims that Russia is a Socialist State, he's a liar ! Russia is the
very personification of the Capitalist State, and there is no other
Capitalist State in the world like it: a population of two hundred
millions, iron, manganese, nickel, oil, petrol—everything one
could desire, in limitless quantities, and all belonging to the
State; and, at the head of it, a man who says: "Do you think
the loss of thirteen million lives is too great a price to pay for
the realisation of a great idea?" Poland would have been overrun,
and Germany, too, with her hundred-thousand-man army,
in the wink of an eye. In Paris itself they hoisted the Red Flag.
Europe has got away with it by a miracle—and with a black
eye!
Europe has once before had a similar lucky escape; at the
battle of Liegnitz the Hungarians—how, goodness only knows—
stopped the Mongol hordes. Whether it was the losses they
suffered in the battle or the death of Genghiz Khan in Mongolia
that caused the Mongols to retreat, we shall never know.
British strategy is founded on hesitancy and fear. If the fools
had but gone on, once they had been cleared out of Greece,
they could have marched straight on to Tripoli and taken the
place. Instead, they chose that very moment to call a halt,
without the slightest reason. It is a classic example of a lack of
imagination and orderly thinking. And why this desperate
desire to take Salonika? Was it because they were less anxious
to bomb us, and wanted instead to attack some Italian town
each night?
For us things are much more simple, for in most cases we
have no choice. In the East, if I don't attack, the Russians will
gain the initiative. We have constantly faced the danger of
being annihilated. On the third day of the Russian campaign,
the issue hung by a thread. If we had not taken the most
audacious risks, even to the extent of putting in our paratroopers
before even our own artillery had ceased to shell the
landing-grounds on which they were to land, the whole campaign
might well have been jeopardised. When one knows that
there is no alternative but to advance, the problem simplifies
itself enormously. In any case, we cannot very well retire out
of Europe, can we? To keep the cowardly on the right path, I