Adolf Hitler's Table Talk-1941-1944

424 DENATIONALISATION OF

424 DENATIONALISATION OF CONQUERED TERRITORIES deprive them of any form of State organisation and consequently keep them on as low a cultural level as possible. Our guiding principle must be that these people have but one justification for existence—to be of use to us economically. We must concentrate on extracting from these territories everything that it is possible to extract. As an incentive to them to deliver their agricultural produce to us, and to work in our mines and armament factories, we will open shops all over the country at which they will be able to purchase such manufactured articles as they want. If we started bothering about the well-being of each individual, we should have to set up a State organisation on the lines of our own State administration—and all we should achieve would be to earn the hatred of the masses. In reality, the more primitive a people is, the more it resents as an intolerable restraint any limitation of the liberty of the individual. The other great disadvantage of an organised society is, from our point of view, that it would fuse them into a single entity and would give them a cohesive power which they would use against us. As an administrative organisation, the most we can concede to them is a form of communal administration, and that only in so far as it may be necessary for the maintenance of the labour potential, that is to say for the maintenance of the elementary basic needs of the individual. Even these village communities must be organised in a manner which precludes any possibility of fusion with neighbouring communities; for example, we must avoid having one solitary church to satisfy the religious needs of large districts, and each village must be made into an independent sect, worshipping God in its own fashion. If some villages as a result wish to practise black magic, after the fashion of negroes or Indians, we should do nothing to hinder them. In short, our policy in the wide Russian spaces should be to encourage any and every form of dissension and schism. It will be the duty of our Commissars alone to supervise and direct the economy of the captured territories, and what I have just said applies equally to every form of organisation. Above all, we don't want a horde of schoolmasters to descend suddenly on these territories and force education down the throats

LIMITED PUBLIC SERVICES FOR THE EAST 425 of subject races. To teach the Russians, the Ukrainians and the Kirghiz to read and write will eventually be to our own disadvantage; education will give the more intelligent among them an opportunity to study history, to acquire an historical sense and hence to develop political ideas which cannot but be harmful to our interests. A loud-speaker should be installed in each village, to provide them with odd items of news and, above all, to afford distraction. What possible use to them would a knowledge of politics or economics be? There is also no point in broadcasting any stories of their past history—all the villagers require is music, music and plenty of it. Cheerful music is a great incentive to hard work; give them plenty of opportunities to dance, and the villagers will be grateful to us. The soundness of these views is proved by our experience at home during the time of the Weimar Republic. One thing which it is essential to organise in the Russian territories is an efficient system of communications, which is vital both to the rational economic exploitation of the country and to the maintenance of control and order. The local inhabitants must therefore be taught our highway code, but beyond that I really do not see the need for any further instruction. In the field of public health there is no need whatsoever to extend to the subject races the benefits of our own knowledge. This would result only in an enormous increase in local populations, and I absolutely forbid the organisation of any sort of hygiene or cleanliness crusades in these territories. Compulsory vaccination will be confined to Germans alone, and the doctors in the German colonies will be there solely for the purpose of looking after the German colonists. It is stupid to thrust happiness upon people against their wishes. Dentistry, too, should remain a closed book to them; but in all these things prudence and commonsense must be the deciding factors, and if some local inhabitant has a violent tooth-ache and insists on seeing a dentist—well, an exception must be made in his particular case ! The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed,