Hitler's Table Talk

82 RELUCTANT WAR LEADER
If I try to gauge my work, I must consider, first of all, that
I've contributed, in a world that had forgotten the notion, to
the triumph of the idea of the primacy of race. Secondly, I've
given German supremacy a solid cultural foundation. In fact,
the power we to-day enjoy cannot be justified, in my eyes,
except by the establishment and expansion of a mighty culture.
To achieve this must be the law of our existence.
The means I shall set in operation to this end will far surpass
those that were necessary for the conduct of this war. I wish to
be a builder.
A war-leader is what I am against my own will. If I apply my
mind to military problems, that's because for the moment I
know that nobody would succeed better at this than I can. In
the same way, I don't interfere in the activity of my colleagues
when I have the feeling that they are performing their task as
well as I could perform it myself.
My reaction is that of a peasant whose property is attacked
and who leaps to arms to defend his patrimony. This is the
spirit in which I make war. For me, it's a means to other
ends.
The heroic deeds of our troops will turn pale, one day. After
the War of the Spanish Succession, nobody thought any longer
of the Thirty Years' War. The battles of Frederick the Great
made people forget those of the years after 1700. Sedan took
the place of the Battle of the Nations fought at Leipzig.
To-day the Battle of Tannenberg, and even the campaigns of
Poland and the Western Front, are blotted out before the
battles of the East. A day will come when these battles, too,
will be forgotten.
But the monuments we shall have built will defy the challenge
of time. The Coliseum at Rome has survived all passing events.
Here, in Germany, the cathedrals have done the same.
The re-establishment of German unity was Prussia's task, in
the last century. The present task, of building Great Germany
and leading her to world power, could have been successfully
performed only under the guidance of a South German.
To accomplish my work as a builder, I have recourse
especially to men of the South—I instal in Berlin my greatest