Hitler's Table Talk

62 THE METEOROLOGICAL SERVICE
If at this moment we were to eliminate the religions by force,
the people would unanimously beseech us for a new form of
worship. You can imagine our Gauleiters giving up their
pranks to play at being saints ! As for our Minister for Religion,
according to his own co-religionists, God himself would turn
away from his family!
I envisage the future, therefore, as follows : First of all, to
each man his private creed. Superstition shall not lose its
rights. The Party is sheltered from the danger of competing
with the religions. These latter must simply be forbidden from
interfering in future with temporal matters. From the tenderest
age, education will be imparted in such a way that each
child will know all that is important to the maintenance of the
State. As for the men close to me, who, like me, have escaped
from the clutches of dogma, I've no reason to fear that the
Church will get its hooks on them.
We'll see to it that the Churches cannot spread abroad
teachings in conflict with the interests of the State. We shall
continue to preach the doctrine of National Socialism, and the
young will no longer be taught anything but the truth.
40 Night of 14th-15th October 1941
Meteorological forecasts—Reorganisation of the service.
One can't put any trust in the met. forecasts. The meteorological
services ought to be separated from the Army.
Lufthansa had a first-class meteorological service. I was
terribly sorry when that service was broken up. The present
organisation is not nearly as good as the old one. Moreover,
there are various improvements that could be made to meteorology
generally.
Weather prediction is not a science that can be learnt
mechanically. What we need are men gifted with a sixth sense,
who live in nature and with nature—whether or not they know
anything about isotherms and isobars. As a rule, obviously,
these men are not particularly suited to the wearing of uniforms.
One of them will have a humped back, another will be
bandy-legged, a third paralytic. Similarly, one doesn't expect
them to live like bureaucrats. They won't run the risk of being