A review of Adolf Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf (My Struggle).
Review Number: 4
Review Date: 5 November 2014
Title: Mein Kampf
Author: Adolf Hitler
Country: Germany
Publication Date: 1925-1926
Genres: Autobiography / Political Theory
“And so I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator. In standing guard against the Jew I am defending the handiwork of the Lord.”
A measure of sympathy was not something I expected to feel in the opening chapters of Adolf Hitler’s infamous Mein Kampf (My Struggle).
Hitler was only 13 when his father Alois died from a pleural haemorrhage in 1903. Four years later his mother Klara passed away from breast cancer.
Mortality rates in the early part of the 20th century would not have made this very uncommon, but it still can’t have been easy for a child to face the world alone.
As an orphan he drifted along in life and ended up in Linz, Austria, where hunger was a constant companion. He had few friends and few job prospects.
Tellingly, Hitler describes the loss of his parents in a perfunctory fashion. Mein Kampf is part autobiography, part political theory – but reveals no weakness or shred of humanity.
Of course, everybody knows what he believed and achieved – the Second World War and the genocide of the Jews. Any sympathy a reader may feel is fleeting.
Mein Kampf was composed while he was in prison for the failed ‘Putsch’ in Munich in November 1923. The Nazis attempted to seize power in the city, and Hitler received a five-year sentence for his efforts. In fact, he only served nine months and was released on 20 December 1924.
“The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature.”
The book was published in two volumes, released in 1925 and 1926, but overall it is a disappointing read.
Here was the opportunity to explain more about his early life and origins of the Nazi party. Sadly, there are only tantalisingly brief accounts of these moments.
Instead, vast swathes are devoted to his hatred of the Jews. Pages and pages of vile and insane rants.
He alleges that before moving to Vienna he liked the Jews. (A fact disputed by his former friend August Kubizek in his book The Young Hitler I Knew, 1955.) When Hitler did move to the city in 1905 it was the multicultural centre of the Hapsburg’s Austria and he loathed the decadence and cosmopolitan mix.
“The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.”
Religious prejudice and racism were rife among many of Vienna’s inhabitants and Hitler became radicalised. His virulent anti-Semitism stemmed from the erroneous view that Jews had stabbed the Germans in the back during the First World War and that they conspired to destroy the nation. It could be argued that Hitler was not untypical of his time.
Mein Kampf does declare his intentions for a Germany that can take on everyone after the humiliation of the First World War. These passages are the most fascinating.
Hitler may have been Austrian, but he considered his homeland to be part of a greater Germany, and this contributed to his vision of tomorrow.
He also believed that an ally for a future war had to be England or Italy. He was an obsessive anglophile and was keen for England to keep her colonies and pursue maritime operations, while Germany remained land-based and went east in search of “living space”.
He despised the Soviet Union and Marxism. An opinion strengthened in the turmoil of the 1920s as the Nazis battled the Marxists for political control of Germany.
This controversial and sinister book is banned in some countries, but for those of us who take great interest in the violent and formative days before the Second World War, it is an essential and occasionally insightful read.
Some historians argue that politicians in the 1930s should have read Mein Kampf to deal with the threat of Nazi Germany.
But they didn’t and humanity paid the price.
“The gigantic North American State, with the enormous resources of its virgin soil, is much more invulnerable than the encircled German Reich. Should a day come when the die which will finally decide the destinies of the nations will have to be cast in that country, England would be doomed if she stood alone.”
