Hitler's Table Talk

HITLER'S LIBEL ACTION 681
nights which I find are a torment; I know that I shall never
reach the ripe old age of the ordinary citizen. But what would
become of me if I led a life like his, smoking and drinking my
time away . . .?
308 and September 1942, midday
Justice and injustice—Anomalies and confusions—The case
of the poachers—War on the criminals—Habits and customs
of the mountaineers—The Gauleiter of Carinthia.
A certain butcher had a vicious dog, which one day he deliberately
set on a small child. The child was very badly
mauled, and died ; the Public Prosecutor demanded a sentence
of several years of penal servitude, and the court sentenced the
man to two and a half years' simple imprisonment. There we
have one case ; in another, a man gets three months for kicking
a chicken!
There was a case which concerned me very closely. A certain
blackguard asserted that I had spent the whole of my war
service as a cook, that I had then deserted, and that it was only
thanks to the revolution that I was reprieved. Naturally I took
him to court, where he was fined fifty marks! Very shortly
afterwards, the same judge fined our friend Zaeper eighty
marks because his dog had barked at a Jew !
It is high time that our courts introduced some measure of
relative continuity in their judgments; as things are, the judge
is far more interested in the soul of the criminal than in that of
his victim.
I observe that since the revolution no sentence of death has
been carried out on the young blackguard who murders a girl
because she is going to bear him a child. His state of mind,
they tell me, must be taken into consideration; Meissner himself
explained it all to me as if it were a matter of course. To
Gürtner I have always said: "Are you mad, to recommend
mercy in cases like these? There is only one thing to be done—
carry out the sentence!"
Let me tell you that the hardened criminal is in for a very
bad time in Germany in the near future; youngsters, on the
other hand, who are guilty of some foolishness, will be arrested,