Adolf Hitler's Table Talk-1941-1944

312 PRIDE, VANITY,

312 PRIDE, VANITY, EGOTISM, IDEALISM One day I was a passenger in a car that was taking me back from Mainz. Schreck was driving behind us in a car equipped with a siren. We arrived in the middle of a bunch of cyclists. They were Reds and began to hurl insults at us. But when they heard Schreck's siren, they left their bicycles on the road and scattered into the fields. Schreck went by quite calmly, crushing the bicycles. The Reds were taken aback, wondering how a police car could behave like that. When they realised their mistake, they began to abuse us again in their choicest terms. "Murderers, bandits, Hitlerites!" They recognised me, and I take that fact as my badge of rank. We often had very painful incidents of this kind. It was no joke, at that time, to find oneself at grips with a mob of opponents. When one has been driven for years by the same men, one no longer sees them as drivers, but as Party comrades. 148 17th February 1942, midday SPECIAL OUEST: HIMMLER Fascists and aristocrats—Roatta the rat—The Duce should sacrifice the monarchy—The Jews and the natural order— The unhealthy intellectuals of Europe—If the German professor ruled the world. The genuine Fascists are friendly to Germany, but the court circles, the clique of aristocrats, detest everything German. At Florence, the Duce said to me: "My soldiers are brave fellows, but I can't have any confidence in my officers." The last time I met Mussolini, his accents were still more tragic. I learnt, with Pfeffer, that when men acquire the habit of a certain type of behaviour, and make the gestures corresponding to it, it ends by becoming second nature to them. Words lose their meaning, the best-established notions create new events. With them, pride becomes transformed into vanity, egotism becomes confused with idealism. It's difficult to conceive that a genuine officer can be a

BELIEF IN REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT 313 sneaking spy. Now, that was just what Roatta was. He sabotaged the plan of attack by Italian troops along the valley of the Rhine, in June 1940. Until the Duce succeeds in getting rid of this aristocratic Maffia, he won't be able to appoint a genuine élite to the highest posts. This Maffia is every bit as base as the German underworld. It's composed of cretins, who, however, are not so cretinous as not to have a sense of what gives other people their superiority. Their activities, although purely negative, are nonetheless effective, for these are the people who prevent the best men from gaining access to the highest posts. And this conspiracy is what paralyses the Duce's efforts. Things won't improve in Italy until the Duce has sacrificed the monarchy and taken effective control of an authoritarian State. This form of government can last for centuries. The Republic of Venice lasted for nine hundred and sixty years. It ruled the eastern Mediterranean throughout that period, and that thanks to the authority conferred upon the Doge. Under the monarchic form, that would not have been possible. Venice couldn't have claimed more—but whatever she coveted, and whatever lay within the scope of her ambition, she got. The example of the Hanseatic cities likewise proves the quality of this system. All that they lacked was the Imperial power. It's not possible that six thousand families can have, on the one hand, maintained perpetual dominion over three hundred and forty thousand Helots, and, on the other hand, reigned over Asia Minor and Sicily. The fact that they succeeded in doing so for several centuries is a proof of the greatness of this race. The sensational event of the ancient world was the mobilisation of the underworld against the established order. This enterprise of Christianity had no more to do with religion than Marxist socialism has to do with the solution of the social problem. The notions represented by Jewish Christianity were strictly unthinkable to Roman brains. The ancient world had a liking for clarity. Scientific research was encouraged there. The gods, for the Romans, were familiar images. It is some-