Hitler's Table Talk - Essay Example

What I noticed is that the so-called words of Hitler are filled with self-centered ideas and hatred for almost everyone. His perspective on people, nations and resources is organized around the question of how they are potentially useful and controllable by him. It is the aim of this paper to demonstrate this, based on the alleged attitudes of Hitler, as found in Hitler’s Table Talk. I will argue that the controversy about whether or not he said particular phrases or words about Christianity is a distraction from the much more important issue of the hatred in his heart, and the hatred with which he chose to surround himself.

This is what I see as the main message of Hitler’s Table Talk. The controversy about whether Hitler was a Christian has exposed some information about Hitler’s Table Talk. There were only two copies of his talks and they were both edited by a man named Martin Bormann. Bormann was an active anti-Catholic, and much of his activism was behind Hitler’s back (Walker). Since the strong anti-Christian attitudes expressed in Hitler’s Table Talk are not found in any other examples of Hitler’s speeches and writings, and since Luther was one of Hitler’s most respected role models, it is probable that Bormann’s editing reflected Bormann’s own anti-Catholic bias (Walker).

Other contamination of Hitler’s Table Talk came from translation. The English translation is based on the French translation, by Geroud (Walker). Geroud put a lot of things into the translation that were not in the original manuscript. An historian, named |David Irving, examined a copy of the complete manuscript of another document, Hitler’s Last Testament, which was said to be a part of the table-talk. Irving saw it was typed, and found out that someone had added a whole lot of things in handwriting.

When confronted by Irving, Geroud confessed that the handwriting was his and that the typescript was also his own invention. Geroud told