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Hugh Trevor-Roper

Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944: His Private Conversations Hardcover – October 1, 2000

by Adolf Hitler (Author), Norman Cameron (Translator), R. H. Stevens (Translator),

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One of the most significant documents of recent history. This book records private,off the record,informal conversations of a man, who, more then anyone else, came close to destroying the western world.

Print length

746 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Enigma Books
Publication date

October 1, 2000
Dimensions

6.16 x 1.83 x 9.26 inches
ISBN-10

1929631057
ISBN-13

978-1929631056
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Enigma Books; 3rd edition (October 1, 2000)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 746 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1929631057
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1929631056
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.16 x 1.83 x 9.26 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,193,783 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,351 in Communism & Socialism (Books)
- #2,431 in Jewish Holocaust History
- #3,721 in European Politics Books

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V-ROD

Adolf, Watch your table manners!

Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2015

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I found reading this book to be an interesting and educational experience. It reads as a diary with the date listed and then a 1 to 5 page dictation of what Hitler had said in conversation. Because of this format it really grabbed my interest because there are short sections of material before another break. This led me to read a short section for a little while at times, and also gave me a nice stopping point. At times it also made me want to keep reading because I couldn't wait to see what was coming next. Hitler's dialog runs the whole gamut on all facets of life. You pick a topic, and I'm sure at least one page has some reference to it.
For those worried if this is a propaganda piece, I believe it is not. The conversation has an overwhelming abundance of detailed conversation which comes across the page as authentic dialog. In reference to Hitler's "Christianity", I will say this. Anyone could list a large number of people who have spoken of their "faith in Christ". For example, I do believe I remember Charles Manson in his numerous interviews compares himself to Christ and his sufferings, or Jim Jones preaching. One has only to look at the fruit or the actions to see what the true heart is. Let's speak plainly here shall we. Hitler was not a Christian. Hitler played word games using Darwinian philosophy wrapped in a cloak of Christian rhetoric. Hitler was no fool. He knew what he was doing. He did it to mock Christianity, and this book has quite a bit of that. Now, in fairness, I agree with him many times when he speaks of the hypocrisy of the Church; especially the Catholic Church. He cites numerous example where I was in strong agreement with him. What is sad to me is what happened with Adolf happens to many people. He was taught as a child a false Christianity intermixed with man made religion, hypocrisy, and superstition. This led him to view Christians as weak, not understanding the meekness of true strength. Hitler being a follower of Darwin believed those who are weak die. Hitler alludes to it a few times that he will not allow the church to continue after the war. The "state" will be the new religion, and that is exactly what all those rallies were about. They were designed to replace worship!
In addition, potential readers should be aware that the book is translated from German into "old" English text. There are many words I had to look up to understand their meaning. Hitler also uses a lot of slang in which a dictionary will not suffice. Also, Hitler is a very well read and intelligent individual, and he lists alot of names in history including all his meetings with church leaders, ambassadors, diplomats, etc. So what I found myself doing is reading this book next to the Google search engine to give meaning and context to the text. I found this to be the only way I could thoroughly enjoy this book. To some this may be a tremendous negative.

26 people found this helpful

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Have a Talk with Hitler

Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2012

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HITLER'S TABLE TALK is much less well known than MEIN KAMPF, but it is infinitely more valuable. The former are the spattered ramblings of a self-educated street agitator whose fledgling political movement had just been crushed. The latter are the vocalized observations of a fiftysomething dictator who ruled Europe, and who'd expanded enormously on his education in the intervening years.

TALK is essentially a vast transcription of Hitler's conversation at the supper table during the years 1941 - 1942, when he was at the absolute height of his power, though there is a also small amount of material from 1943 and 1944. His words were recorded at the order of Martin Bormann, who presumably had plans of publishing them after the war was successfully concluded. And reading, you can see why. Hitler was much more comfortable as an ex tempore speaker than in any other medium, and the breadth of his knowledge and interest is extremely impressive.
Obviously it's not easy to summarize a book over 700 pages in length, but Hitler's pet subjects, which he discusses at great length and with surprising eloquence and insight, were art, music, architecture, economics, history, race, world politics, and his ultimate goals for postwar Europe, particularly as they pertained to Russia. He also enjoyed reminiscing about various periods from his earlier life, particularly the "Kampfzeit", or the Nazi struggle for power. Surprisingly, as much as he bashes the Jews - and he bashes them senseless - his real vitriol is reserved for European nobility, lawyers, and for the "Pfaffengeschmeiss", a German insult which translates roughly as "clerical scum", i.e. the Christian clergy. He seldom discusses military affairs except in general terms - his table talk seems to have been his escape from playing the war-lord.

Hitler is revealed by his own words as a man with mercury for blood. Highly intelligent, even a genius, he is missing some fundamental aspect of humanity. He has no friends in the accepted sense of the word, and admits to lacking any "family feeling", either. When he speaks of things like love, compassion, grief, and pity, one quickly gets the sense he has no idea what these words actually mean; he pronounces death sentences as casually as you might ask someone to pass the butter, and orders the mass execution of epileptics ("defectives") with no more remorse than you'd show for throwing out the trash. Truth and morality are to him mere concepts that can be altered by necessity, and decency itself a construct of "Jewish Christianity." His own mind is powerful but incredibly rigid; his personality is charmismatic but utterly intolerant. It is enough for him to dislike a style of painting to have its adherents thrown into a concentration camp. And yet at the same time, he is often quite funny (his remarks on the German bureacracy are priceless) and had a shockingly liberal attitude on such subjects as animal cruelty, environmentalism, and social inequality - much more liberal, I might add, than many Americans have. He was as much a socialist as a nationalist.

The book does have issues. The translation is from German into British English, which, considering Hitler's frequent use of slang expressions, carries its own problems for an American reader. There is no "glossary of names" and only a very few footnotes. What's more, it is prefaced by an intolerably smug and self-righteous essay by Hugh Trevor-Roper, whose credibility as a historian was largely wiped out by his role in the "Hitler's diaries" debacle, and who, in any case, was a willing tool of the 300 year crime against humanity that was British imperialism , and therefore has no moral right to preach at anybody.

In the end, though, I'd say that this book is an absolutely invaluable tool for understanding just who Adolf Hitler was, what he wanted to do, and why he wanted to do it. It is a brutal, engaging, occasionally humorous and frequently jarring look into the mind of the most reviled man in modern history. In his own words.

35 people found this helpful

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Steven B. Katz

Not in German

Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2019

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This book is advertised as being a bi-lingual edition (at least that's what I thought "English and German edition" meant; but it is only in English--an earlier publication of what I already have.

One person found this helpful

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John L. Dunn

H. R. Trevor-Roper: Hitler's Table Talk

Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2010

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This is an intimate and in depth view of the private thoughts of a true genius, unfortunately one who used terrible, evil means to his ends. Every word Hitler spoke at meals with his "inner circle" was recorded from 1941 until 1944, when his world began to come apart. The material was gathered with comment by the preeminent English historian of the Third Reich, Sir Hugh Trevor-Roper. The Cameron - Stevens translation is quite readable and the foreward by Gerhard Weinberg helps put the material in perspective. This is an important book for anyone with an interest in the Second World War and its causes.

12 people found this helpful

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C.Thomas

Interesting

Reviewed in the United States on October 22, 2000

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Interesting reading if you study the war or the era. The down side is that Adolf sure likes to shoot his mouth off about topics he knows nothing about.
If you correspond the dates given in the book, to the dates of war events, it gets real bizarre. For example, on 5-22-1944, at 4 pm, Hitler is informed of his crushing defeat at Kursk, losing 30,000 tanks and a quarter million dead. His response? By 7pm , he is giving his dinner guests a good rambling about some art show he saw when in Venice 20 years ago.
Corresponding the war to his talks is what will make the book. How can one massacre millions and talk about fresh vegetables in the same breath?!
Personally, I think it proves he had several personalities, formed in childhood from his abusive father.

32 people found this helpful

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HALLOWLEE

Top quality item!

Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2018

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Great condition and was perfectly described. Very happy with this purchase as I had shopped around
for a VERY long time before buying. Best price around!

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Brook Perkins

An excellent book and a remarkable man

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 25, 2018

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An excellent book and a remarkable man. Recommended by historian David Irving as legitimate, this book gives the reader a great insight into the mind of the man, his thoughts and feelings. A must-read book.

4 people found this helpful

Baraniecki Mark Stuart

A Unique Historical Document

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 24, 2015

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These are a series of conversations mostly transcribed in the evenings between July 1941 and November 1944 (the greater part to September 1942 while Hitler controlled the German invasion of Russia - Operation Barbarossa) and they were recorded at his two Eastern headquarters, Rastenburg (Wolfschanze) in East Prussia and later at Winnitza (Werwolf) in the Ukraine.

Predictably, they have a more reflective tone than his writing/ pre-prepared speeches and, in the opinion of this reviewer, they give the best record of his world view especially as the main themes tend to repeat.

Probably the most useful approach is to rank the themes in order of salience which I have done below showing the conversation number (they're numbered in the book 1- 328):

MIGHT IS RIGHT - He takes a classical view of power where strong nations should show "virtù" and campaign against and dominate their weaker neighbours. (130) "According to the laws of nature, the soil belongs to he who conquers it. The fact of having children who want to live, the fact that our people is bursting out of its cramped frontiers - these justify all of our claims to the Eastern spaces."

EASTERN EMPIRE - He makes frequent references to the need for a German empire in the East drawing parallels with British Imperial control of India.(25) "I see there (Russia) the greatest possibilities for the creation of an empire of world wide importance." - "The country we are engaged in conquering will be a source of raw materials for us, and a market for our products, but we shall take good care not to industrialize it." (53) "To exploit the Ukraine properly - that new Indian Empire - I need only peace in the West."

SUBJECT PEOPLES - (20) "We'll supply the Ukrainians with scarves, glass beads and everything that colonial peoples like. The Germans - this is essential - will have to constitute among themselves a closed society, like a fortress. The least of our stable-lads must be superior to any native." (11) "We'll take the Southern part of the Ukraine, especially the Crimea, and make it an exclusively German colony. There'll be no harm in pushing out the population that's there now. The German colonist must be the soldier-peasant and for that I'll take professional soldiers, whatever their line may have been previously."

GERMAN COLONISTS - His project doesn't include the British concept of "trusteeship" in Empire. (17) "The German colonist ought to live on handsome, spacious farms. The German services will be lodged in marvellous buildings, the governors in palaces. Beneath the shelter of the administrative services, we shall gradually organize all that is indispensable to the maintenance of a certain standard of living. All around the city to a depth of thirty to forty kilometers we shall have a belt of handsome villages connected by the best roads. What exists beyond that will be another world, in which we mean to let the Russians live as they like. It is merely necessary that we should rule them."

NATIONAL SOCIALISM - His national socialism certainly treated all Germans as equals (and superior to non-Germans) (60) "I never stopped telling my supporters that our victory was a mathematical certainty, for, unlike Social Democracy, we rejected nobody from the national community." (127) "Every reasonably conducted organization is bound to favour the development of beings of worth. It has been my wish that educative organizations of the Party should enable the poorest child to lay claim to the highest functions if he has enough talent. The Party must see to it on the other hand, that society is not compartmentalized, .... It's essential that a balance should be struck, in such a way that dyed-in-the-wool Conservatives may be abolished as well as Jewish and Bolshevik anarchists."

JEWS - A constant theme connected to Bolshevism and Jewish influence in Weimar Germany and the U.S. (145) "Just like the throne and the altar in former times so now the Jews and the political profiteers form a silent association for the common exploitation of the democratic milch cow." (180) "Although the Jew has seized the levers of control in the Anglo-Saxon world (the press, the cinema, the radio, economic life), and although in the United States he is the entire inspiration of the populace, especially of the negroes, the bourgeois of the two countries with the rope already around their necks, tremble at the idea of rebelling against him, even timidly. What is happening now in the Anglo-Saxon world is absolutely identical with what we experienced here in 1918." (63) "Simply the Jew has put a religious camouflage over his racial doctrine." (119) "For my part I restrict myself to telling them they must go away. ... but if they refuse to go voluntarily , I see no other solution but extermination."

GERMAN RACIAL PREFERENCE - He attacks Jewish racial self selection but paradoxically approves of it among Germans. (109) "In the old Austria, nothing could be done without patronage. That's partly explained by the fact that nine million Germans were in fact rulers, in virtue of an unwritten law, of fifty million non-Germans. This German ruling class took strict care that places should always be found for Germans. For them this was the only method of maintaining themselves in this privileged situation. The Balts of German origin behaved in the same way towards the Slav population."

MONEY - (41) "Only the professors don't understand that the value of money depends on the value of goods behind that money." ... "To give people money is solely a problem of making paper. The whole question is to know whether the workers are producing goods to match the paper that's made."

REPARATIONS - (112) "I made my point of view clear to the British Ambassador when he presented his credentials. His reply was, "You mean to say that the new Germany does not recognise the obligations of preceding governments?" I replied, "Freely negotiated agreements, yes! But blackmail, no! Everything that comes under the heading of Treaty of Versailles I regard as extortion." "Well, I never!" he said, "I shall immediately inform my government of that."

PRIVATE PROPERTY - (171) I absolutely insist on protecting private property. It is natural and salutary that the individual should be inspired by the wish to devote part of the income from his work to building up and expanding a family estate. Suppose the estate consists of a factory. I regard it as axiomatic, in the ordinary way, that this factory will be better run by one of the members of the family than it would be by a state functionary."..... "On the other hand I am distinctly opposed to property in form of anonymous participation in societies of shareholders. This sort of shareholder produces no other effort than that of investing his money, and thus he becomes the chief beneficiary of other people's effort: the worker's zest for their job, the ideas of an engineer of genius, the skill of an experienced administrator."

SEPARATION OF STATE AND COMMERCE - (270) "No servant of the State must be a shareholder. No Gauleiter, no Member of the Reichstag, and , in general, no Party leader must be a member of any board of directors, regardless of whether the appointment is honorary or paid; for even if the individual were actuated by the interests of the State, end even if he possessed the integrity of Cato himself, the public would lose faith in him. In capitalist States, it is essential for a great enterprise to have in its employ men of influence - hence the large number of members of Parliament and high officials who figure on boards of directors. The amounts disbursed to these personages in director's fees, share of profits and so on is more than recouped by one or two fat Government contracts which they are in a position to secure for their company." ... "When an official retires from State service, he should not be allowed to enter a line of business with which he previously had official dealings..."

ADMINISTRATION - He suggests decentralized decision making with a central budget. Also a simple10% tax on all working Germans. (69) "It's likewise nonsense to try to control all of a province's expenditure from Berlin. What is good is to keep a check on the expenditure authorised by the central authority." .... "Again if the theatre at Weimar wants to renew its equipment, it should not have to make a request to Berlin. It's a local problem." (121) "There are two ways of revising the administration: a reduction of the Budget, or a reduction of personnel." ...... " The fiscal system is uselessly complicated. Since the days when people paid the Crown its tenth, there's been no end to the process of adding supplementary taxes to this tenth!"

THE STATE - (42) "To bring decency into civil life, the first condition is to have an integral State: an incorruptible army, a police and administration reduced to a minimum." (39) From the tenderest age, education will be imparted in such a way that each child will know all that is important to the maintenance of the state."

MONARCHY & RELIGION - He's strongly anti-monarchy and anti-religion throughout the text. (15) "Both are institutions that naturally developed in the direction of ceremonial and solemnity. But all that apparatus no longer means anything when the power that lay beneath it has disappeared." (4) The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity. Bolshevism practises a lie of the same nature, when it claims to bring liberty to men, whereas in reality it seeks only to enslave them." (125) "To avoid making myself an accomplice to the lies, I've kept the shavelings out of the Party."

SCIENCE &TECHNOLOGY - He's very pro-technology but troubled that Germany has craftmanship based resistance to U.S. style mass production. (230) "In addition, the initial effect of a new invention is invariably to create disorder. War which gives added impetus to every form of activity, is therefore undoubtedly the most favourable atmosphere for invention." (92) "The hollow charge means the death of the tank. Tanks will have finished their career before the end of this war," (17) "There is something tragic in the fact that the battleship, that monument of human ingenuity,has lost its entire raison d'être because of the development of aviation." (135) "The great success of the Americans consists essentially of the fact that they produce quantitatively as much as we do with two-thirds less labour. We've always been hypnotized by the slogan: "The craftmanship of the German worker".
....... "In America everything is machine made , so they can employ the most utter cretins in their factories." (142) "What is important for us who are men, is less the sum of knowledge acquired, than the maintenance of conditions that enable science to constantly renew itself."

PERSONNEL SELECTION - (59) "What indicates an aptitude, to the High Command, is the gift of using each man according to his personal possibilities, and awakening in each man the will to devote himself to the communal effort." (81) "I'm always ready to replace an inadequate man by another with better qualifications. In fact whatever may be said about the bonds of loyalty, it's the quality of the man who assumes responsibilities that's finally decisive." (60) A military unit needs a commander, and the men never hesitate to recognize the qualities that make a commander. A man who is not capable of commanding usually feels no wish to do so." (81) "I haven't myself the talents of a great administrator, but I've known how to surround myself with the men I've needed."

RUSSIANS - (1) "In the eyes of the Russian, the principle support of civilisation is vodka. His ideal consists of never doing anything except the indispensable."

POLES - (119) "As regards the Pole it's lucky for us that he's idle stupid and vain."

SLAVS - (281) "As for the ridiculous hundred million Slavs, we will mould the best of them to the shape that suits us, and we will isolate the rest of them in their own pigstys; and anyone who talks about cherishing the local inhabitant and civilising him, goes straight off into a concentration camp!"

DUTCH - (313) "What a fine race the Dutch are! The girls are splendid and very much to my taste."

FLEMISH - (241) ".... we have the magnificent conduct of the Flemish on the Eastern front. The Flamands have indeed shown themselves on the Eastern front to be more pro-German and more ruthless than the Dutch legionaries. This is certainly due to the fact that the Flemish have for centuries been oppressed by the Walloons. The lack of harmony between the Flamands and the Walloons has not escaped the attention of the Duce. When he speaks of the Europe of the future, he is wont to group the Flemish and the Dutch on one side, and the Walloons and the French on the other."

SWEDES & DANES - (300) "As for the Swedish vermin, they must be swept away like the Danish vermin in 1848!"

SWITZERLAND - (300) "A state like Switzerland, which is nothing but a pimple on the face of Europe, cannot be allowed to continue."

ITALIANS - (280) "I must admit that the Italians infuriate me with their continual running away, but purely from the point of view of a world philosophy, they are the only people on earth with whom we can see eye to eye."

SPAIN - (311) "Franco ought to erect a monument to the glory of the Junker 52. It is this aircraft that the Spanish revolution had to thank for its victory. It was a piece of luck that our aircraft were able to fly direct from Stuttgart to Spain."

AMERICANS & BRITISH - (302) "The Americans are a completely unpredictable crowd. In a tight corner, the British are infinitely more courageous than they are - there's no comparison! How they have the nerve to cast aspersions on the British passes my comprehension." (99) "I don't see much future for the Americans. In my view it's a decayed country. And they have their racial problem, and the problem of social inequalities. Those were what caused the downfall of Rome, and yet Rome was a solid edifice that stood for something. Moreover the Romans were inspired by great ideas. Nothing of the sort in England today. As for the Americans, that kind of thing is non-existent. That's why, in spite of everything, I like an Englishman a thousand times better than an American."

WOMEN - (169) "In the pleasure a woman takes in rigging herself out, there is always an admixture of some sort of trouble-making element, something treacherous - to awaken another woman's jealousy by displaying something that the latter doesn't posses." (359) "Man is inspired by a similar feeling towards the woman he loves, but the realm of feminine jealousy is infinitely vaster. A mother is jealous of her daughter-in-law, a sister of her sister-in-law."... "Everything that entails combat is exclusively men's business. There are so many other fields in which one must rely on women. Organizing a house for example."

SMOKING - (173) "I experienced such poverty in Vienna. I spent long months without ever having the smallest hot meal. I lived on milk and dry bread. But I spend thirty kreuzers a day on my cigarettes. I smoked between twenty-five and forty of them a day. Well at that time a kreuzer meant more to me than ten thousand marks today. One day I reflected that with five kreuzers I could buy some butter to put on my bread. I threw my cigarettes into the Danube, and since that day I've never smoked again."

OPTIMISM & HUMOUR - (90) "How could I have been successful without that dose of optimism which has never left me, and without that faith that moves mountains?" .... "A sense of humour and a propensity for laughter are qualities that are indispensable to a unit. On the eve of our setting out for the battle of the Somme, we laughed and made jokes all night." (159) "I know three people who, when they're together, never stop laughing. They're Hoffmann, Amann and Göbbels. When Epp joins them, the whole thing becomes a madhouse. As a matter of fact Epp is not particularly quick. When the others are laughing at the third joke, Epp is beginning to catch on to the first, and starts to let out a huge laugh, which goes on and on."

OPERA - (157) "I was so poor, during the Viennese period of my life, that I had to restrict myself to seeing only the finest spectacles. Thus I heard Tristan thirty or forty times, and always from the best companies. I also heard some Verdi and other works - leaving out the small fry."

MODERN ART - (175) "On the subject of these daubs, people assert that it isn't easy to understand them and that, to penetrate their depth and significance, one must be able to immerse oneself entirely in the image represented - and other idiocies from the same mill."

NAPOLEON - (177) "What's tragic in Napoleon's case is that when he adopted the imperial title, formed a court and instituted a ceremonial, he didn't realize that, by making common cause with degenerates (royalty), he was putting himself on their level."

REPUBLIC OF VENICE - (177) "The fact that the Head of the Republic of Venice was chosen from amongst the families who composed the framework of the state (numbering between three hundred and five hundred) was not a bad thing. Thus power was allotted to the best man amongst the representatives of those families who were traditionally linked to the state. The difference between this system and that of hereditary monarchy is obvious. In the former, it was impossible for an imbecile or an urchin of twelve to come to power."

CHILDREN - (180) "Furthermore, the father who has a lot of money must take care to give the child as little as possible. The man who wishes to bring up his child rightly must not lose sight of the example of nature, which shows no particular tenderness."

BOURGEOISIE - He shares with the Communists the view that the bourgeoisie are politically useless although both National Socialist and Communist leaders personally lived very bourgeois lifestyles. (185) "since the beginning of my political activity, I have made it a rule not to curry favour with the bourgeoisie. The political attitude of that class is marked by the sign of cowardice.".... "the first years of my struggle were therefore concentrated on the object: win over the worker to the National Socialist Party."

PROFESSIONAL LOAFERS - (250) "The ten of fifteen thousand professional loafers who were lounging around Germany at the time of our assumption of power, and who showed no inclination to take a regular job when once German industry had started to function again, have been put into concentration camps."

BUILDING AUTOBAHNS - (261) "One day I explained to Lloyd George how I proposed to find this money; firstly, I intended to get my labour by mobilizing the unemployed and putting them to work, thus saving some six hundred million marks in dole payments, ...."

LAWYERS - (266) "How you can describe as honest a profession which, from its beginning to its end, is engaged in defending blackguards? And in which the fervour of their eloquence is in direct ratio to their client's capacity to pay."

STALIN - (267) "Stalin too must command our unconditional respect. In his own way he is a hell of a fellow! He knows his models, Genghis Khan and the others, very well, and the scope of his industrial planning is exceeded only by our own four Year Plan." (300) "If Stalin had been given another ten or fifteen years, Russia would have become the mightiest state in the world, and two or three centuries would have been required to bring about a change. It is a unique phenomenon! .....They have built factories where a couple of years ago only unknown villages existed - and factories, mark you, as big as the Hermann Göring Works."

IRAQ & OIL - (280) "We must at all costs advance into the plains of Mesopotamia and take the Mosul oilfields from the British. If we succeed here, the whole war will come to an end, as the British now only have Haifa as their sole loading port for oil."

MOSCOW & ST. PETERSBURG - (617) "The foundation of St. Petersburg by Peter the Great was a fatal event in the history of Europe; and St. Petersburg must therefore disappear utterly from the earth's surface. Moscow too. Then the Russians will retire to Siberia."

NEGOTIATIONS - (283) "I always send a representative, with precise instructions to stop as soon as difficulties arise and to come back and consult me. The Duce follows the same principle."

PEOPLE IN GENERAL - The decadence and special interest corruption of Weimar Germany is a constant theme. (293) "A people taken en masse, is neither wholly good nor wholly bad. It possesses neither the courage to be wholly admirable nor he wickedness to be wholly evil. It is the extremes at each end of the scale that decide the level of the average. If the good are decimated while the evil are preserved, then it is quite possible, as happened in Germany in 1918, for a handful of a few hundred evil vagabonds to do violence to a whole nation."

JUSTICE - (641) "The legislator cannot possibly catalogue and prescribe for every conceivable crime. When a crime is committed for which no provision in law exists, it is the duty of the judge to pass sentence on the merits of the case; for obviously the absence of a particular crime from the statute book does not presuppose that the legislation intended it to go unpunished. An efficient judge will find the means adequately to punish the criminal and safeguard the public interest."

REVOLUTIONARY OBJECTIVES - Basic Socialism in equality of opportunity for the benefit of Germany as a whole. (160) "A revolution has three main objectives. First of all it's a matter of breaking down the partitions between classes, to allow every man to rise. Secondly, it's a matter of creating a standard of living such that the poor will be assured of a decent existence. Finally, it's a matter of acting in such a way that the benefits of civilisation will become common property."

DEFEAT AT MOSCOW - (162) "Sunday will be the 1st March (1942). Boys, you can't imagine what that means to me - how much the last three months have worn out my strength, tested my nervous resistance. I can tell you that during the first two weeks of December, we lost a thousand tanks and had two thousand locomotives out of operation." .... "Now that January and February are past, our enemies can give up the hope of our suffering the fate of Napoleon."

WAR IN THE EAST - (300) "For us things are much more simple, for in most cases we have no choice. In the East if I don't attack, the Russians will gain the initiative. We have constantly faced the danger of being annihilated."

CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS - (235) "I contented myself with shooting one hundred and thirty of these self-styled Bible Students (Bibelforscher). Incidentally the execution of these one hundred and thirty cleared the air, just like a thunderstorm does. When news of the shootings was made public, many thousands of similarly minded people who proposed to avoid military service on the score of some religious scruple or other lost their courage and changed their minds."

LIFE'S WORK - (180) "As far as we're concerned, we've succeeded in chasing the Jews from our midst and excluding Christianity from our political life." (50) "If I try to gauge my work, I must consider, first of all, that I've contributed, in a world that has forgotten the notion, to the triumph of the idea of the primacy of race. Second I've given German supremacy a solid cultural foundation." ... "I believe blindly in my nation. If I lost that belief we would have nothing left to do but shut up shop."

This is a very long review but I suppose that most people will never read or hear about this book despite its strong historical interest, so maybe it's useful.

Europe under Stalin was bad but it would probably have been worse (at least the Eastern part of it) if Operation Barbarossa had succeeded.

17 people found this helpful

T. J. Jones

A great resource

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 18, 2003

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A valuable insight into Hitler's mind, the vast range of topics on which he expresses opinions, some banal, some brutal, some quite normal. Each opinion is presented as a monologue, and then a new topic is whimiscally selected, as the mood catches the after-dinner Fuhrer.
In content, largely consonant with the racist and violent message he is know for, "Hitler's Table Talk" is probably most useful for the proportion of time Hitler allocates to each of his many subjects, rather than for consistency of the opinions offered.

9 people found this helpful

Afonso

A++

Reviewed in Germany on October 22, 2019

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A++

bundesbahn

Hitler'sTable Talk

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 4, 2011

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This is a well known source of information and helpful for would-be scholars of the history of the Third Reich. The Trevor-Roper introduction is, itself, fairly well-known.

One person found this helpful

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Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944: His Private Conversations Hardcover – October 1, 2000

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