Table Talk by Hitler - Term Paper Example

The book Hitler’s Table Talk exists in various versions, written by different (among the most well-known of such table talks are HughTrevor-Roper, Hermann Rauschning and Henry Picker) and is a well-known source of disagreements. The text is so shocking that many historians and common readers question its authenticity. If the writings of Trevor-Roper were clearly branded by many European historians as a fake almost immediately after publication, the situation with the other two is more complicated. The other two authors, in contrast to Trevor-Roper, directly communicated with Hitler and very often were among his guests at described late dinners. Moreover, the conceptual accuracy of the statements in Picker’s book was notarized by Hitler’s personal aides, who witnessed most of the talks. Still, dubiousness to the book is given by the fact that the basic notes had been “finalized” by Henry Picker after the war, when he was captured by the British military forces. It is not impossible that the notes were entirely recomposed after the war and there is not doubt that such “revisions” were carried out under the order of British intelligence. The book still is in the middle of a fierce historical discussion. But no one denies that the book has a rational kernel, a grain of historical truth and is more than just the interesting fiction reading. A reader can notice immediately after reading that the book contains no answer to the most important question: How did it happen that the son of a petty official from the Austrian hinterland, poorly educated, with uncertain social background, inept and helpless, mastered all the dark forces and controlling them almost conquered the whole world? But the book is interesting in other ways. In the monologues, written in an informal setting, the leader of the Nazis is seen by the readers not only as a crazy dictator obsessed with mass murders, but quite often as a forehanded politician, understanding many areas of life, including individual and mass psychology. The book is nothing but the impressive collection of monologues and statements of Hitler, delivered in the most intimate circle, in the most private setting - during casual meals (lunch and dinners, but most often - the second dinners late after midnight) during the period 1941-1944. What is interesting in all this? The author clearly tries to study the development of Hitler’s thinking. This point is usually ignored by historians which is totally wrong. Personality of Hitler is revealed through these conversations in all its unpleasant glory. Hitler is certainly a monster, but is very far from the stereotypes created mainly by the Germans. Until 1941, Hitler refused to have his monologues and speeches written in shorthand during informal meetings. Needless to say, that such party lunches and dinners were not just meals but also the nice “testing site” of ideological rhetoric. During such meals Hitler perfected his oratory skills, but at the same time he could afford himself to be open and honest, which is sometimes unacceptable during official statements. Proposals to write down everything what Hitler says in private, so to say, for history, always came from the main Fuhrer’s trustee - Martin Bormann. And in 1941, Hitler unexpectedly agreed. During such meals and conversations an unnoticeable man, sitting somewhere back behind, made notes. Then he dictated the transcript to a stenographer and later on the transcript was edited by Bormann, thoroughly and in detail. We can even say that Bormann was Hitler‘s “political proofreader”, the interpreter of thoughts and ideas of the leader. Hitler did not mind. The most interesting notes are dated back to 1941-1942. At that time Hitler was on the top of the world and declaimed with a special inspiration. Everything changed after Stalingrad. It all ended when the Fuhrer, hiding deep in his bunker, increasingly oratorized just for some sleepy secretaries, his adjutant and doctor ... Topics of such conversations very various, except the most urgent and pressing – military ones. Hitler’s Table Talk can stun at first. The monologues, if we talk about the first impressions, shock by their encyclopedic, universal deepness, wide coverage of topics and areas of knowledge. With the peremptory assurance Hitler preaches his ideas about religion and science and the future of the railways; the Renaissance and Baroque and energy resources of the future; the future of opera and symphony conductors and the constitution of the medieval Venetian Republic; the historical evils of Christianity and forests in Italy, which would inevitably lead to Italian-German war in 100 years; Archaeology and Anthropology and the Czechs, whose mustaches, growing downward, betray their Mongoloid origin; about the genius of Stalin and nettle, which should be cultivated on the fertile black earth of Ukraine, as nettle is an excellent material (much better than cotton) for textile and paper industries; about radical changes in the principles of construction and design of ships and the ancient world, which was the prototype of the National - Socialist State; about town planning, dancing, astrology and horoscopes, dialects and literary languages, cosmogony, Pan-Slavism, Eastern religions; about Dante, Charlemagne, Peter I, Joan of Arc, Schopenhauer, Schiller, and much, much, much more. Such Hitler’s ability to think deep sharply distinguished him from the other, frankly ignorant (with the possible exception of Goebbels) Nazi Fuhrers. Especially significant is that reading this all, you begin to understand better the psychological mechanisms of the principle of Revaluation of Values, the principle no one dared to offer before Nietzsche. It is very interesting how Hitler thought, reasoned himself and his empire, how he became a “practicing politician and political philosopher in one person”, Spengler and Napoleon at the same time, who imagined himself the Roman emperor, entrusted with a sacred mission to conquer the Huns – the Soviet Russia and destroy Carthage - the Great Britain. Taking into account the fact that Hitler learned very badly in childhood, which was the reason for his strange pride later, such meditations seem more interesting. He received no formal education and had no school-leaving certificate. In principle, education could be done through self-learning, but ignorance of the elementary principles of science, combined with the wild prejudice of uneducated, but manically self-assured man and with his defiant contemptuous attitude for men of science - all this in no way contributed to expansion of his intellectual horizons and acquisition of genuine scientific knowledge. Hitler read a lot. It is true. Especially in Vienna years (1907-1913), but without a “compass”, he wandered among cheap pseudoscientific pamphlets with “sensational” theories. He was particularly attracted to all sorts of marginal “men of genius”, unacknowledged by official science “inventors”, all sorts of adventurers (in this sense, kindred souls to him). And all this mixture of amateurism and quackery is abundantly represented in the Talks. As I mentioned, the most of the notes were written in 1941-1942, when the field headquarters of Hitler, which had the code-name Wolfschanze (Wolfs Lair), from June 1941, i.e. since the German invasion of the Soviet Union, was in the East Prussia was near the town of Rustenburg. The headquarters moved ahead, in accordance with the progress of the hostilities, following the front line. From July 1942 the headquarters was moved to Ukraine, located near Vinnitsa and named Werewolf. All the war years the headquarters were the main residence of Hitler. Here were also concentrated the most important people of the two administrative apparatus, according to two hypostases of Hitler, military and civilian. Hitler was the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. The General Staff of Armed Forces was headed by General Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and Colonel General Alfred Jodl. It was the military part of the headquarters. But in addition, Hitler as the head of the state and Chancellor, who had unlimited civilian authority, kept in the headquarters a certain contingent of civil officials, representatives of ministries and agencies, etc. The first person among those men was Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, Hitler’s secretary and the head of the Party Chancellery, the second man after the Fuhrer, who also had practically limitless party and state power. All the mention men had no luck to become the constant guests of Hitler’s lunches and evening meals, which he invariably spent in the company of his closest associates and subordinates. Besides the permanent inhabitants of the headquarters, the frequent visitors at so-called private dinners often were such high-ranked partocrats as Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, Ley, Rosenberg, Gauleiters and ministers - the whole Nazi Olympus. Attractiveness (or, alternatively, painfulness) of such meals was that they did not look like ordinary lunches and dinners. Their menu did not please with any diversity: Hitler was a vegetarian and was oppressive in this passion (as well as in the others). However, one day a week, he allowed his guests to eat meat or fish dishes, but the food was accompanied by sarcastic comments about the “corpse-eaters“ who drink “corpse tea” (as he called any broth). When eels were served, he informed that they were caught on dead cats. He did not forget every time when crayfish was served to tell about a dead grandmother, who was thrown into a creek by grandchildren as bait. But the “most precious adornment” of Fuhrer’s private dinners was still not the menu but the speeches of the vegetarian entertainer. Hitler’s memoirs who were close to him, as Albert Speer, Otto Dietrich and others, unanimously describe the inherent, integral, almost pathological feature of Hitler - the “selfishness of speech” (Redeegoizmus). They wrote down that Hitler was tireless in his speeches: speaking was his way of existence, his element. His commitment to collective meals was the expression of his unquenchable thirst for forced preaching. Lunches at the headquarters lasted for one and a half hours and dinners usually dragged on for two hours or more. Hitler’s guests certainly did not experience a gastronomic satisfaction. Their stomachs were empty and head swollen from host’s speeches, often insane, maniacal. Gradually those private meals with Fuhrer came to an end. This was totally associated with the painful failure of the summer offensive campaign and in particular with the defeats suffered by the German troops in the Caucasus and Black Sea direction. A heated conflict appeared in the headquarters in September between Hitler and the generals, whom he blamed for all failures and inability to fulfill the ingenious course of their Supreme Commander. Halder and Liszt were kicked out and retired. Hitler stopped to shake hands with Keitel and Jodl. The era of joint meals and after-dinner monologues ended. From that moment until the end of the war Hitler ordered to lay the table in his bunker, where he occasionally invited some chosen, innumerous guests... The reason that he avoided the company of his officers was probably the fact that among them he was not a victor any more, but a bankrupt. And besides, the general ideas of his amateurish outlook, which he preached in this circle, had been exhausted already and he may have felt that his charm and magic is no longer working… References Rich, Norman. Hitler’s War Aims: Ideology, the Nazi State, and the Course of Expansion. New York: W. W. Norton, 1973. Trevor-Roper, Hugh, et al. Hitlers Table Talk, 1941-1944: His Private Conversations. New York: Enigma Books, 2000. Read More