Hitler's Table Talk

694 LOSS OF FIRST WORLD WAR
commander. When the time comes for the Legion to return
to Spain, we must re-equip it on a regal scale, give it a heap of
booty and a handful of Russian Generals as trophies. Then they
will have a triumphal entry into Madrid, and their prestige will
be unassailable.
Taking it all round, the Spanish press is the best in the world !
315 6th September 1942, midday
The tenuous thread of Destiny—Russian mistakes at
Stalingrad—Racial mixtures—Sailors on leave.
It is sobering to think on how thin a thread of fate the
history of the world sometimes depends! We lost the 1914-18
war; but we have not the right to say that we did so because the
Home Front let us down. Our enemies at the time had some
men of the highest quality. It was in 1916, at the battle of the
Somme, that tanks made their first appearance; but it was not
until 1917 that our industry was switched to their construction,
with orders to make an initial quota of six hundred. At the
same moment Fuller, supported by Lloyd George and
Churchill, succeeded in causing the ban on their production to
be lifted, which had been imposed by Haig.
It is becoming more and more obvious that a rift in public
opinion in Britain is gradually widening, each individual going,
to the Right or the Left as it suits him.
Of all our allies, it is Antonescu who has the greatest breadth
of vision. He is a man of real personality, and he has, moreover,
realised that this war gives Rumania the chance to become predominant
in the Balkans, but at the expense of finding the other
Balkan States in alliance against her.
The concentration of effort in the defence of Stalingrad is a
grave mistake on the part of the Russians. The victor in war is
he who commits the fewest number of mistakes, and who has,
also, a blind faith in victory. If the Russians had not decided
to make a stand at Stalingrad, they would have done so elsewhere;
but it does prove that a name can give to a place a significance
which bears no relation to its intrinsic value. For the
Bolsheviks it would have been an evil omen to lose Stalingrad—
and so they still hold Leningrad ! For this reason I have always