Hitler's Table Talk

"Hitler's Table Talk" (German: Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier, lit. 'Table Talks at the Führer's Headquarters') is the title given to a series of World War II monologues delivered by Adolf Hitler, which were transcribed from 1941 to 1944. Hitler's remarks were recorded by Heinrich Heim, Henry Picker, Hans Müller and Martin Bormann and later published by different editors under different titles in four languages.

Bormann, serving as Hitler's private secretary, persuaded Hitler to allow a team of specially picked officers to record in shorthand his private conversations for posterity. The first notes were taken by lawyer Heinrich Heim, starting from 5 July 1941 to mid-March 1942. Taking his place, Henry Picker took notes from 21 March 1942 until 2 August 1942, after which Heim and Bormann continued appending material off and on until 1944.

The talks were recorded at the Führer Headquarters in the company of Hitler's inner circle. The talks dwell on war and foreign affairs but also Hitler's attitudes on religion, culture, philosophy, his aspirations, and feelings towards his enemies and friends. Although the table talk monologues are considered to have originated from actual war time notes in some form, contentious issues remain over aspects of both the published works and the notes they are derived from.

The history of the document is relatively complex as numerous individuals were involved, working at different times, collating different parts of the work. This effort spawned two distinct notebooks, which were translated into multiple languages and covered in some instances non-overlapping time-frames due to ongoing legal and copyright issues.

All editions and translations are based on the two German notebooks (both no longer existing), one by Henry Picker and another based on a more complete notebook by Martin Bormann (which is often called the Bormann-Vermerke). Picker was the first to publish the table talk, doing so in 1951 in the original German. This was followed by the French translation in 1952 by François Genoud, a Swiss financier and a principal benefactor of the Nazi diaspora. The English edition came in 1953, which was translated by R. H. Stevens and Norman Cameron and published with an introduction by historian Hugh Trevor-Roper. Both the French and English translations were purportedly based on the Bormann-Vermerke manuscript while Picker's volume was based on his original notes as well as the notes he directly acquired from Heinrich Heim spanning from 5 July 1941 to March 1942. The original German content of the Bormann-Vermerke was not published until 1980 by historian Werner Jochmann. However Jochmann's edition is not complete as it lacks the 100 entries made by Picker between 12 March and 1 September 1942. Both Heim's and Picker's original manuscripts seem to have been lost and their whereabouts are unknown.

Mikael Nilsson has noted that Hitler's Table Talk were heavily edited notes often taken the next day by Bormann and his staff, and which were edited further post-war. Bormann would heavily revise the notes taken by the men to suit his views, and according to evidence was even willing to engage in an anti-Christian stance behind Hitler's back. The ones entrusted to writing the notes down were Henry Picker and Heinrich Heim. Picker even noted Bormann would make him insert statements he had not even heard, and Heim's processes was similar. Francois Genoud, who possessed most of the table talks (he claimed that he lost them), engaged in distorting the Table Talks further. He was found to have also forged “Hitler’s Political Testament” (not to be confused with the one within the Last will and testament of Adolf Hitler) where he was likely motivated to insert pro-Arab and anti-colonial statements as being Hitler's for his own agenda. Even the initial publishers of the Table Talks would make further distortions, such as deleting Hitler's use of the word “Crusade” to describe Operation Barbarossa.

Albert Speer, who was the Minister of Armaments for Germany, in his Spandau diaries, wrote that "Tischgesprache (Table Talk) published by Picker gives a good idea of Hitler's topics of conversation" Speer stated that Hitler often spoke at length about his favorite subjects while dinner guests were reduced to silent listeners. In the presence of his "superiors by birth and education" Hitler made a sincere effort to "present his thoughts in as impressive manner as possible". Speer noted that "we must remember that this collection includes only those passages in Hitler's monologues—they took up one to two hours every day—which struck Picker as significant. Complete transcripts would reinforce the sense of stifling boredom". However Speer's book gave a review of the Table Talks in 1960 where despite the general topics being accurate, it had been so heavily “edited” that Hitler was “unrecognizable” and that it gave the wrong impression, and that Hitler would never speak so freely under the circumstance. He noted Picker in particular stood out, instead of being unnoticed.

According to historian Max Domarus, Hitler insisted on absolute silence when he delivered his monologues. No one was allowed to interrupt or contradict him. Magda Goebbels reported to Galeazzo Ciano: "It is always Hitler who talks! He can be Führer as much as he likes, but he always repeats himself and bores his guests". Historian Ian Kershaw writes: