Hitler was a racist son of a bitch but man he made a lot of interesting observations regarding human nature, power politics, geopolitics, war, and the art of ruling in general. He was no dummy, that's for sure. There's a lot of wisdom to be mined.
Below are excerpts from, "Hitler's Table Talk" Enigma Books, 2000.
On Ukraine. Pg. 623-24:
There are here a million tons of wheat in reserve from last year's harvest. Just think what it will be like when we get things properly organised, and the oil-wells are in our possession! This Ukraine produces thirteen or fourteen million tons a year. Even if we show ourselves to be half as successful as organisers as the Russians—there's a cool six million for us ! Next year, after the next harvest, we must organise thoroughly and work at full speed ! One thing which we have so far not taken into account is the fact that every three days there is a thunderstorm. This country is a regular forcing-house; fifty degrees of heat one moment, then a torrent of rain, and then the heat again ! Had it not been for the mud and rain last October, we should have been in Moscow in no time. We have now learnt that the moment the rain comes, we must stop everything.
When the war ends, the German people need not bother its head about what it is going to do during the next fifty years ! We shall become the most self-supporting State, in every respect, including cotton, in the world. The only thing we shall not have will be a coffee plantation—but we'll find a coffee growing colony somewhere or other! Timber we shall have in abundance, iron in limitless quantity, the greatest manganeseore mines in the world, oil—we shall swim in it! And to handle it all, the whole strength of the entire German man-power! By God ! how right the peasant is to put his trust solely in the earth ! What's the use of talking about scenic beauty, when the earth is oozing with wealth ! In the future, it will be a pleasure to work ! Stalin is half beast, half giant. To the social side of life he is utterly indifferent. The people can rot, for all he cares. If we had given him another ten years, Europe would have been swept away, as it was at the time of the Huns. Without the German Wehrmacht, it would have been all up with Europe even now. The doors of the Continent would have been flung open for him by the idiocy of the masses. The worst of our winters is now behind us. In a hundred years' time there will be millions of German peasants living here.
On Stalin. Pg. 657:
Had he been given the time, Stalin would have made of Russia a super-industrialised monster, completely contrary to the interests of the masses, but justified by demagogic pedantry and designed to raise the standard of life for his own particular partisans. His final objective would have been the absorbing of the whole of Europe into the Bolshevik ring. He is a beast, but he's a beast on the grand scale. He made use of the Jews to eliminate the intelligentsia of the Ukraine, and then exported the Jews by trainloads to Siberia. I think it quite possible that he will go off to China, when he sees no other way of escape open to him.
On war killing off the best of every generation. Pg. 639:
Every war gives rise to a species of selectivity in reverse; the finest and fittest perish by the thousand. Even among the brave the choice of arm of the services constitutes a sort of super-selective process, the bravest of the brave going for Air Force and the submarine service. And then, in all branches of the service the call is continual: "Who volunteers for . . .?" and always gallant men come forward—and die. In time, then, there remains only the rascal living in peace and security. The man who is sent to prison has the certainty that nothing further can befall him. If this process is allowed to continue for three or four years, it will upset the whole equilibrium of the nation.
Prison is no longer a hardship ; on the Volkhov front men lie not on a bunk as in prison, but in the icy water, exposed to the winds, sleepless, often without food or hope of relief.
A people, taken en masse, is neither wholly good nor wholly bad. It possesses neither the courage to be wholly admirable nor the 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.
On aliens landing in America. Pg. 646:
It makes me laugh when I think what consternation would be caused among us humans if the news suddenly announced that an inter-planetary ship had landed in America ! All our earthly little wars would stop immediately!
