The book gives you insights, both good and awful, as to what made Nazi Germany tick (and not tick). Firstly, the fact that Hitler gassed on and on about topics that often only tangentially related to the war gives you the notion that (luckily for us) he only had half his mind on the war. Secondly, a number of the observations are at best arguable, often repetitive, and very often banal. Thirdly, some are outright self-delusion (like how gently he treated Thalmann, the Communist leader -- who was shot on Hitler's orders in 1944). Fourthly, how very often wrong Hitler was in his judgements. Obsessions with hatred of the Catholic Church (one wonders the believers in the Hitler's Pope theory have read this), Jews, resettling Russia and so forth "shine" through. Appalling, but if you want an insight into the man, probably must reading. ( )

I don't know how to rank this book. It's awful to read, in that it makes clear that Hitler was a second-rate intellect, given to contradictory blathering, but that's sort of fascinating. It's a really good book for anyone to read who buys into the Hitler myth of the evil genius.

A collection of dialogues between Hitler and his dinner guests, taken down shorthand and transcribed between 1941 and 1944, with the intention of being later read by historians after the Third Reich had triumphed over the world. I think Hitler meant for this to be read as a guide like his first work "Mein Kampf".

To me, most of the dialogues were rather boring due to his long monologues on politics, but everything else was rather interesting. It shows a glimpse into a man who had a plan, albeit a very blunt, black-and-white, zealously ultra-organized, and ultimately flawed plan, but an very thought-out one. He comes off as a man who truly believes that he's a genius and who's opinion on anything, no matter what it is, is right and that's the way it is. Period. He may have actually been a bit of a genius, in his organization and his tantalizing and dominating willpower he exerted over everyone around him.

He seemed to know a bit about everything, or he thought he did, but only superficially, and from this superficial knowledge he spoke as if he was the foremost authority on the subject. He KNEW he was right. Like the introduction of the book stated, there was very little to him, as if he were hollow. He was all ideology and wanted to shape the world to his perfect mold.

I think this book, or parts of it, should be used when studying World War 2. Just to see what kind of man Hitler was, and what type of mindset it took to do all the things he did. This was a man who sanctioned some of the most horrible things done in human history and nearly succeeded in conquering the world. We need to learn to never let what happened ever happen again. ( )

These are a series of conversations mostly transcribed in the evenings between July 1941 and November 1944 (the greater part to September 1942) taking place while Hitler controlled the German invasion of Russia (Operation Barbarossa).

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 and pre-prepared speeches and (in the opinion of this reviewer) they give the best available record of his world view especially as the main themes tend to regularly reappear.

Probably the best way to approach the book 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. (24) “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 – (617) “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.”

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. ( )