Hitler's secret book (1925–1928). "Mein Kampf" - the most dangerous book in the world? Mein Kampf name translation
"They wanted to replace the Bible" - this muffled whisper sounds in one of the halls of the Bavarian State Library. Rare books expert Stefan Kellner describes how the Nazis turned a rambling, largely unreadable manuscript - part memoir, part propaganda - into the centerpiece of the Third Reich's ideology.
Why is the book dangerous?
According to the producer of Publish or Burn, which first appeared on screen in January 2015, this text remains quite dangerous. Hitler's story is proof that he was underestimated in his time. Now people underestimate his book.
There is good reason to take this book seriously, as it is open to misinterpretation. Despite the fact that Hitler wrote it in the 20s of the 20th century, he fulfilled much of what it says. If more attention had been paid to him at that time, it is quite possible that they would have been able to consider the threat.
Hitler wrote Mein Kampf while in prison, where he was sent for treason after the failed Beer Putsch. The book outlines his racist and anti-Semitic views. When he came to power 10 years later, the book became one of the key Nazi texts. It was even given to newlyweds from the state, and gilded editions were kept in the homes of senior officials.
Publication rights
At the end of World War II, when the US Army took over the Echer Verlag publishing house, the rights to publish the book were transferred to the Bavarian authorities. They ensured that the book could only be republished in Germany and under special circumstances. However, the expiration of copyright at the end of December last year caused a fierce debate about whether the publication can be left free for everyone. 
The Bavarians used copyright to control the reprinting of Mein Kampf. But what happens next? This book is still dangerous. The problem with neo-Nazis has not gone away, and there is a danger that the book will be distorted if used in context.
The question is whether anyone would like to publish it. Hitler's work is full of grandiloquent, difficult-to-construct sentences, historical minutiae, and convoluted ideological currents that both neo-Nazis and serious historians try to avoid.
However, the book has become very popular in India among politicians who have Hindu nationalist leanings. It is considered a very important book for self-development. If you miss the moment of anti-Semitism, then it is about a little man who, while in prison, dreamed of conquering the world.
Will the comments help?
The result of the first publication of this book was that millions of people were killed, millions were abused, and entire countries were engulfed in war. It is important to keep this in mind if you are reading short passages with appropriate critical historical commentary. 
Since the copyright has expired, the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich is about to issue a new edition that will contain the original text and current comments pointing to omissions and distortions of the truth. Orders for 15,000 copies have already been received, although the circulation was supposed to be only 4,000 copies. New edition exposes Hitler's false claims. Some victims of the Nazis oppose this approach, so the Bavarian government withdrew its support for the project after criticism from Holocaust survivors.
Do you need a post ban?
However, banning the book may not be the best tactic. To vaccinate the youth against the Nazi bacillus, one must use open confrontation with Hitler's words, instead of trying to declare the book illegal. In addition, it is not only a historical source, but also a symbol that is important to dismantle.
In any case, a global ban on the book is not possible. Therefore, it is important to develop a position, and not try to control its spread. Indeed, in the modern world, nothing will prevent people from gaining access to it.
The state plans to prosecute and use the law against incitement to racial hatred. Hitler's ideology falls under the definition of incitement. Definitely a dangerous book in the wrong hands.
Exactly 90 years ago, on July 18, 1925, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf was first published. We offer some interesting facts about the "Nazi bible".
1) Hitler wanted to title his book "Four and a half years of fighting lies, stupidity and cowardice", but Max Amann, the practical director of the Nazi publishing house that was supposed to publish it, objected to such a heavy and unattractive title and cut it. The book was called "My Struggle" ("Mein Kampf").
2) With the exception of the Bible, no book was sold in such quantities during the period of Nazi rule, when few families felt safe without putting a book in a place of honor in their home. It was considered almost obligatory - and, of course, reasonable - to give "Mein Kampf" to the bride and groom for the wedding, and to the schoolboy after graduation from any school. By 1940, a year after the outbreak of World War II, Germany had sold
6 million copies of this book.
3) According to some reports, Hitler refused to pay him remuneration for the sale of the book in full. According to other sources, he made a fortune on the book.
4) In the USSR, a translation of Grigory Zinoviev's book was published in 1933 in a limited edition for study by party workers.
5) Hitler wrote the following about Russia: “Russia lived at the expense of the German core in its upper strata of the population. Now this core has been completely and completely exterminated. The place of the Germans was taken by the Jews. Jews alone are not able to keep this vast state in their subordination for a long time. "
6) Hitler wrote that the policy of conquering new lands by Germany is possible only with an alliance with England, Italy and Japan.
7) In some countries, the sale of this book is prohibited (for example, in Germany and Russia), and in some countries Mein Kampf can be sold legally.
8) Who gets the royalties from the sale of Mein Kampf? No - not at all to Hitler's relatives. The copyright for Mein Kampf belongs to Bavaria, namely to its Ministry of Finance, which forbids the sale of the book in Germany and tries to do the same in other countries. The rights to the book from Bavaria expire on January 1, 2016, 70 years after the death of the author. The book will then be in the public domain.
9) A few years ago, the British were shocked to find a book by Mein Kampf on the shelf "The Best Gifts for Christmas" in one of the largest chain bookstores in the country. And the book was not there by accident. The owners of the network were sued.
10) It is not at all necessary that every German who has bought Mein Kampf has read it. One could hear from many convinced Nazis that it was difficult for them to read this book, and not so few Germans admitted that they could not master the pompous opus of 782 pages to the end. It can, in all likelihood, be argued that if more Germans who were not members of the Nazi Party had read this book before 1933, and if the statesmen of various countries had carefully studied it before it was too late, then both Germany and the whole world could have been saved from disaster.
("Mein Kampf" - "My Struggle"), Hitler's book in which he detailed his political program. In Nazi Germany, Mein Kampf was considered the bible of National Socialism, it gained fame even before its publication, and many Germans believed that the Nazi leader was able to bring to life everything that he outlined on the pages of his book. Hitler wrote the first part of Mein Kampf in Landsberg Prison, where he was serving time for an attempted coup d'état (see The Beer Putsch of 1923). Many of his associates, including Goebbels, Gottfried Feder and Alfred Rosenberg, had already published pamphlets or books, and Hitler was eager to prove that, despite his insufficient education, he was also capable of contributing to political philosophy. Since the stay of almost 40 Nazis in prison was easy and comfortable, Hitler spent many hours dictating the first part of the book to Emil Maurice and Rudolf Hess. The second part was written by him in 1925-27, after the re-establishment of the Nazi Party.
Hitler originally titled his book Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice. However, the publisher Max Amann, not satisfied with such a long title, shortened it to "My Struggle". Loud, raw, pompous in style, the first draft of the book was oversaturated with length, verbosity, indigestible turns, constant repetitions, which betrayed a half-educated person in Hitler. The German writer Lion Feuchtwanger noted thousands of grammatical errors in the original edition. Although many stylistic corrections were made in subsequent editions, the overall picture remained the same. Nevertheless, the book was a huge success and turned out to be very profitable. By 1932, 5.2 million copies had been sold; it has been translated into 11 languages. When registering a marriage, all newlyweds in Germany were forced to buy one copy of Mein Kampf. Huge circulations made Hitler a millionaire.
The main theme of the book was Hitler's racial doctrine. The Germans, he wrote, must be aware of the superiority of the Aryan race and preserve racial purity. Their duty is to increase the size of the nation in order to fulfill their destiny - to achieve world domination. Despite the defeat in the 1st World War, it is necessary to regain strength. Only in this way can the German nation in the future take its place as the leader of mankind.
Hitler described the Weimar Republic as "the greatest mistake of the 20th century", "the ugliness of the life order". He outlined three basic ideas about the state structure. First of all, these are those who understand the state as simply, to one degree or another, a voluntary community of people headed by the government. This notion comes from the largest group - the "crazy" who personify the "state power" (StaatsautoritIt) and force the people to serve them, instead of serving the people themselves. An example is the Bavarian People's Party. The second, less numerous group recognizes state power subject to certain conditions, such as "freedom", "independence" and other human rights. These people expect that such a state will be able to function in such a way that everyone's wallet will be filled to capacity. This group is replenished mainly from among the German bourgeoisie, from the liberal democrats. The third, weakest group places their hopes on the unity of all people who speak the same language. They hope to achieve national unity through language. The position of this group, controlled by the Nationalist Party, is the most precarious due to the obvious deceitful fraud. Some peoples in Austria, for example, will never be able to be Germanized. A Negro or a Chinese can never become a German just because he speaks German fluently. "Germanization can only happen on land, not in language." Nationality and race, continued Hitler, are in the blood, not in the language. The mixing of blood in the German state can be stopped only by removing from it everything that is defective. Nothing good happened in the eastern regions of Germany, where the Polish elements, as a result of mixing, defiled the German blood. Germany was in a foolish position when it was widely believed in America that immigrants from Germany were all Germans. In fact, it was a "Jewish counterfeit of the Germans." Title of the original edition of Hitler's book submitted to Echer under the title "Four and a half years of struggle against lies, stupidity and cowardice" Title of the original edition of Hitler's book submitted to Echer under the title "Four and a half years of struggle against lies, stupidity and cowardice"
All three of these views of government are basically false, wrote Hitler. They do not recognize the key factor, which is that the artificially created state power is based ultimately on racial foundations. The first duty of the state is to preserve and maintain its racial foundations. “The fundamental concept is that the State has no boundaries, but implies them. This is precisely the prerequisite for the development of a higher Kultur, but not the reason for it.
The reason lies solely in the existence of a race capable of perfecting its own Kultur. Hitler formulated seven points of the "duties of the state": 1. The concept of "race" must be put in the center of attention. 2. It is necessary to maintain racial purity. 3. As a matter of priority, introduce the practice of modern birth control. The sick or the weak should be forbidden to have children. The German nation must be prepared for future leadership. 4. It is necessary to encourage sports among young people to an unprecedented level of fitness. 5. It is necessary to make the army service the final and highest school. 6. Particular importance should be given to the study of race in schools. 7. It is necessary to awaken patriotism and national pride among citizens.
Hitler did not tire of preaching his ideology of racial nationalism. Echoing Houston Chamberlain, he wrote that the Aryan or Indo-European race, and, above all, the Germanic or Teutonic, is precisely the "chosen people" that the Jews spoke of, and on which the very existence of man on the planet depends. “Everything that we admire on this earth, whether it be achievements in the field of science or technology, is the creation of the hands of a few nations and, probably, most likely, of one single race. All the achievements of our Kultur are the merit of this nation.” In his opinion, this only race is the Aryan. “History makes it very clear that any mixing of Aryan blood with the blood of lower races leads to the degradation of the Kultur bearer. North America, whose vast population is made up of Germanic elements, and which has mixed only to a small extent with the lower, colored races, represents a model of civilization and Kultur, in contrast to Central or South America, where the Romance immigrants were largely assimilated into the local population. Germanized North America, by contrast, managed to remain "racially pure and unmixed." Some country boy who can't understand racial laws can get himself in trouble. Hitler urged the Germans to join the victory parade (Siegeszug) of the "chosen races". It is enough to destroy the Aryan race on earth, and humanity will plunge into a gaping darkness comparable to the Middle Ages.
Hitler divided all mankind into three categories: the creators of civilization (Kulturbegrönder), the bearers of civilization (KulturtrIger) and the destroyers of civilization (Kulturzerstirrer). To the first group he attributed the Aryan race, that is, the Germanic and North American civilizations, as being of paramount importance. The gradual worldwide spread of the Aryan civilization up to the Japanese and other "morally dependent races" led to the creation of the second category - the bearers of civilization. To this group, Hitler ranked mainly the peoples of the East. Only in appearance the Japanese and other carriers of civilization remain Asians; in essence they are Aryans. To the third category of destroyers of civilization - Hitler carried the Jews.
Hitler again repeated that as soon as geniuses appear in the world, humanity will immediately rank among them the "race of geniuses" - the Aryans. Genius is an innate quality, because "it originates in the brain of a child." Coming into contact with the lower races, the Aryan subordinates them to his will. However, instead of keeping his blood pure, he began to mix with the natives, until he began to take on the spiritual and physical qualities of an inferior race. The continuation of this blood-mixing would mean the destruction of the old civilization and the loss of the will to resist (Widerstandskraft), which belongs exclusively to the bearers of pure blood. The Aryan race occupied its high place in civilization because it was aware of its destiny; the Aryan was always ready to sacrifice his life for the sake of other people. This fact shows who is the crown of the future of mankind and what is the "essence of sacrifice."
Many pages of the book are devoted to Hitler's contemptuous attitude towards the Jews. “The sharp opposite of the Aryan is the Jew. Hardly any nation on earth possessed the instinct of self-preservation to the extent that it was developed by the so-called. "chosen people". The Jews never had their own Kultur, they always borrowed it from others and developed their intellect by coming into contact with other nations. Unlike the Aryans, the Jewish desire for self-preservation does not go beyond the personal. The Jewish sense of "participation" (Zusammengehirigkeitsgef?hl) is based on "a very primitive herd instinct." The Jewish race was "overtly selfish" and possessed only an imaginary Kultur. You don't have to be an idealist to be convinced of this. The Jews were not even a race of nomads, because the nomads at least had an idea of the word "work".
In addition to hatred of the Jews, Hitler did not bypass Marxism. He blamed the Marxists for the ongoing corruption of national blood and the loss of national ideals in Germany. Marxism will suppress German nationalism until he, Hitler, assumes the role of savior.
Hitler attributed the diabolical influence of Marxism to the Jews, who would like to uproot "the carriers of the national intellect and make them slaves in their own country." The most horrific example of such an effort is Russia, where, as Hitler wrote, "thirty million were allowed to starve to death in terrible agony, while educated Jews and crooks from the stock market sought dominion over a great people."
A racially pure people, Hitler wrote, could never be enslaved by the Jews. Everything on earth can be corrected, any defeat can be turned into victory in the future. The revival of the German spirit will come if the blood of the German people is kept pure. Hitler attributed the defeat of Germany in 1918 to racial reasons: 1914 was the last attempt by those interested in national preservation of forces to resist the impending pacifist-Marxist mutilation of the nation-state. What Germany needed was a "Teutonic state of the German nation."
Hitler's economic theories outlined in Mein Kampf completely repeat the doctrines of Gottfried Feder. National self-sufficiency and economic independence must replace international trade. The principle of autarchy was based on the assumption that the economic interests and activities of the leaders of the economy should be entirely subordinated to racial and national considerations. Every country in the world has been constantly raising tariff barriers to keep imports to a minimum. Hitler recommended much more drastic measures. Germany must cut itself off from the rest of Europe and achieve complete self-sufficiency. Sufficient for the existence of the Reich, the amount of food can be produced within its own borders or on the territory of the agricultural countries of Eastern Europe. Terrible economic upheavals would have occurred if Germany had not already been in a state of extreme tension and had not become accustomed to it. The struggle against international financial capital and credits became the highlight of the program for the independence and freedom of Germany. The hard line of the National Socialists eliminated the need for forced labor (Zinsknechtschaft). Peasants, workers, the bourgeoisie, big industrialists - the whole nation was dependent on foreign capital. It is necessary to free the state and the people from this dependence and create a national state capitalism. The Reichsbank must be placed under government control. Money for all government programs such as hydropower development and road construction must be raised through the issuance of government interest-free bonds (Staatskassengutscheine). It is necessary to create construction companies and industrial banks that will provide interest-free loans. Any wealth accumulated during the 1st World War should be considered criminally acquired. Profits received from military orders are subject to confiscation. Trade credits should be controlled by the government. The entire system of industrial enterprises must be reorganized in such a way as to ensure the participation of workers and employees in the profits.
It is necessary to introduce old-age pensions. Large department stores such as Tietz, Karstadt and Wertheim should be converted into cooperatives and leased out to small merchants.
On the whole, the arguments presented in Mein Kampf were of a negative nature and were intended for all discontented elements in Germany. Hitler's views were brightly nationalist, openly socialist and anti-democratic. In addition, he preached ardent anti-Semitism, attacked parliamentarism, Catholicism and Marxism.
Book writing history
The first volume of the book (“Eine Abrechnung”) was published on July 18. The second volume, “The National Socialist Movement” (“Die nationalsozialistische Bewegung”) - in the city. The book was originally called “4.5 years of struggle against lies, stupidity and deceit ". Publisher Max Amann, deeming the title too long, shortened it to "My Struggle".
Hitler dictated the text of the book to Emil Maurice during his imprisonment at Landsberg and, later in July, to Rudolf Hess.
Key ideas in the book
The book reflects the ideas that resulted in World War II. The author's anti-Semitism is clearly visible. For example, the international language Esperanto is claimed to be part of a Jewish conspiracy.
Hitler used the main theses of the ideology of the "Jewish threat" popular at that time, which spoke of the monopoly seizure of world power by the Jews.
Also from the book you can learn the details of Hitler's childhood and how his anti-Semitic and militaristic views were formed.
"My Struggle" clearly expresses a racist worldview that divides people by origin. Hitler claimed that the Aryan race with blond hair and blue eyes stood at the pinnacle of human development. (Hitler himself had dark hair and blue eyes.) Jews, blacks, and gypsies were classified as "inferior races." He called for the struggle for the purity of the Aryan race and discrimination against others.
Hitler speaks of the need to conquer "living space in the East":
We National Socialists quite consciously put an end to all pre-war German foreign policy. We want to return to the point where our old development stopped 600 years ago. We want to stop the eternal German drive to the south and west of Europe and definitely point the finger in the direction of the territories located in the east. We are finally breaking with the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-war period and are consciously moving on to a policy of conquering new lands in Europe. When we talk about the conquest of new lands in Europe, we can, of course, have in mind primarily only Russia and those border states that are subordinate to it. Fate itself points to us with a finger. By delivering Russia into the hands of Bolshevism, fate has deprived the Russian people of that intelligentsia on which its state existence has up to now rested and which alone served as a guarantee of a certain stability of the state. It was not the state gifts of the Slavs that gave strength and strength to the Russian state. Russia owed all this to the German elements - a most excellent example of the enormous state role that the German elements are capable of playing, acting within a lower race. This is how many powerful states on earth were created. More than once in history we have seen peoples of lower culture, led by the Germans as organizers, grow into powerful states and then stand firmly on their feet as long as the racial nucleus of the Germans remains. For centuries, Russia lived at the expense of the German core in its upper strata of the population. Now this nucleus has been completely and completely exterminated. The place of the Germans was taken by the Jews. But just as the Russians cannot throw off the yoke of the Jews on their own, so the Jews alone are not able to keep this vast state in their subordination for a long time. The Jews themselves are by no means an element of organization, but rather an enzyme of disorganization. This gigantic eastern state is inevitably doomed to destruction. All the prerequisites for this have already matured. The end of Jewish domination in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state. Fate destined us to witness such a catastrophe, which, better than anything else, will definitely confirm the correctness of our racial theory.Popularity before World War II
Edition of "My Struggle" in French, 1934
The first edition of the book in Russia was published by the T-Oko publishing house in 1992. The book has been published several times in recent years:
- My struggle Translation from German, 1992, T-OKO publishing house
- My struggle Translated from German, 1998, With commentary. editorial / Adolf Hitler, 590, p. 23 cm, Moscow, Vityaz.
- My struggle Translation from German, 2002, Russkaya Pravda publishing house.
- My struggle Translation from German, 2003, 464, Moscow, Social Movement.
In accordance with the Russian law on combating extremist activities, the distribution of extremist materials on the territory of the Russian Federation is prohibited (they also include the works of the leaders of the National Socialist Workers' Party of Germany - and hence Adolf Hitler's book "My Struggle"), as well as their production or storage for distribution purposes.
Footnotes and sources
Links
- "My struggle" in Russian
- "My Struggle" in Russian on the Internet Archive
| Adolf Gitler | |
|---|---|
| Policy | Political opinion Speeches My struggle · Second document Hitler's political testament |
| Events | Rise to power Third Reich Holocaust World War II Death |
| Personal life | Home Health Religious beliefs Sexuality Diet |
| Perception | Books · In popular culture · Faith Victory · Triumph of the will · empty mirror · Hitler: The Last Ten Days · Meaning of Hitler · Max · Hitler: The Rise of Evil · Bunker |
| Family | Eva Braun (wife) Alois (father) Clara (mother) Alois (half-brother) Angela (half-sister) Gustav (brother) Ida (sister) Otto (brother) Edmund (brother) Paula ( sister) William Patrick (nephew) Heinz (nephew) Geli (niece) Blondie (dog) |
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Two volumes and 500 pages of repetitive, pompous and primitive denunciations - that's what "Mein Kampf" is. However, the book has its own logic. The ideas - which initially served as campaign statements, and became a cold reality after Hitler came to power - were anti-Versailles, anti-Weimar, anti-Communist and anti-Semitic. In this article, we will look at such anti-ideas, as well as others, such as the "unity of the German people" and the idea of racial superiority.
Autobiography and Worldview
In addition to expressing the essence of Nazism, "Mein Kampf" contains interesting third-party statements and, thanks to the author's amazing frankness, sheds some light on the worldview of one of the most hated dictators of the twentieth century. Adolf of Austria had enough self-confidence to become the dictator of a neighboring country.
"Mein Kampf" shows the obvious arrogance of Hitler. He writes that during his school years he was an extraordinarily gifted boy, with "an inborn talent for oratory ...<и>obvious talent for drawing. Moreover, he “became a little leader. Classes at school were given<ему>very easy". However, the truth is that Hitler left school at 16 without a degree. And yet he showed some modesty when he declared that "every outstanding movement on this earth owes its rise to outstanding orators, and not at all to outstanding writers." Without a doubt, Hitler was not an outstanding writer.
How then did the book see the light of day? Hitler's coup attempt in November 1923 in Munich ended in failure and his imprisonment. Ironically, the Beer Putsch certainly played into the hands of the Nazi leader. Hitler became known as a man of action: the putsch brought him national fame and attracted the attention of the elites, who only slapped Hitler on the hands, sentencing him to five years in prison, of which he served only 9 months. Hitler's revolutionary efforts led him to become more and more the representative, rather even the spokesman, of Germany's political rights. Hitler undoubtedly became part of the conservative and nationalist hostility against the post-war Weimar Republic.
James Murphy, English translator of Mein Kampf, noted in a 1939 edition that Hitler "wrote under the emotional stress of the historical events of the time." Murphy is referring to the specific circumstances of 1923 that put Germany in a desperate situation - hyperinflation, difficult reparations, the Ruhr conflict and the desire of Bavaria to secede and form an independent Catholic state.
Despite the failure of the coup, imprisonment gave Hitler time and space to write down - or at least dictate - his ideas. Imprisonment allowed Hitler "to take up the book which many of my friends have long asked me to write and which I myself think is useful for our movement." It was Rudolf Hess, a party ally, also imprisoned in the Landsberg prison, who recorded Hitler's statements. How much he contributed to the writing of the book, no one knows. Hitler dedicated his book to 18 martyrs, the "fallen heroes" of the Beer Putsch; while the second volume (under the title "National Socialist Movement") was written in memory of his close friend Dietrich Eckhart.
"Mein Kampf" describes Hitler's early years in Lambach, his time in coffee houses in Vienna, and his participation in the First World War. Between 1907 and 1913 Hitler achieved nothing in Vienna, except to become a scathing political observer. During these six years, he watched the work of the Austrian parliament - the Reichsrath - criticized the deputies for the use of Slavic languages, criticized the apparent chaos, but most of all criticized "bargaining and deals around the appointment of heads of individual ministries."
Be that as it may, the great war filled his life with light. Indeed, he writes that when the war broke out: "I immediately applied to be accepted as a volunteer in one of the Bavarian regiments." Here, Hitler notes that he was going to serve Germany, and not the multinational, fragile Austrian empire in which he was born.
In addition to autobiographical information and obvious malice, Hitler demonstrates a certain sequence of thoughts and themes. First, “a person develops for himself, so to speak, a common platform from the point of view of which he can determine his attitude to this or that political problem. Only after a person has developed for himself the foundations of such a worldview and has acquired solid ground under his feet, can he more or less firmly take a position on topical issues. The search and expression of such a worldview became his main work - Mein Kampf. For his view of reality, Hitler turned to 19th-century ideas such as social Darwinism, eugenics, and anti-Semitism, a concept introduced by Wilhelm Marr to denote hatred of Jews.
Hitler, as a social Darwinist, regarded life (and the existence of a nation) as a struggle for survival. In contrast to his Marxist rivals, who focused on class struggle, Hitler focused on race conflict. He believed that peoples and races are in inevitable competition with each other and only the fittest could survive. Interestingly, he originally called his work "Four and a half years of struggle against lies, stupidity and cowardice." The person who suggested the much simpler title of Mein Kampf - "My Struggle" - was the publisher Max Amann, who was frustrated by the paucity of autobiographical details described by Hitler.
His book expresses a passionate and turbulent nationalism seeking to revive the ancient Germanic myths. Mein Kampf is the work of a staunch anti-Semite who managed to link Jew-hatred with his views on the 1919 Versailles Peace Treaty, the Weimar Republic and Marxism. In this sense, it can be said that Hitler's writing fueled, and perhaps shaped, the Nazis' main election pronouncements. In addition to conservative views, Hitler expressed his racial-nationalist beliefs.
Hitler's obsessive nationalism is confirmed by one of the most interesting passages in Mein Kampf, Hitler's incredible obsession with the anthem "Deutschland über Alles" (Germany above all else). He tells how he and his comrades sang this song loudly in the trenches, at party meetings, and at every opportunity to raise their spirits. Adolf undoubtedly sang the best: after all, he had been a church choirboy as a child.
Adolf not only played notes for a long time, he also harbored anger for a long time. The nationalists and many German soldiers returning from the war were convinced that the victory of the Entente was ensured by the strikes of the workers (during the revolutionary unrest in the autumn of 1918) and the surrendered government. "Mein Kampf" upholds this "Legend of the stab in the back", but also unwittingly demonstrates Hitler's ignorance of the scarcity and plight of Germany's wartime influenza ("Spanish flu") epidemic. It was impossible to continue to maintain military tension, besides, if the Weimar government had not capitulated, Germany was expected to be invaded and occupied.
Against the Treaty of Versailles
Mein Kampf focuses on the surrender of Germany and peace conditions. In the very first paragraph of the book, Hitler advocates the violation of the terms of Versailles and argues that the Anschluss (union) with Austria for the sake of Greater Germany is "a goal to be pursued by all means". Then he continues:
“Only after the German Empire includes the last German within its borders, only after it turns out that such a Germany is not able to adequately feed its entire population, does the need that arises give the people a moral right to acquire foreign lands. Then the sword begins play the role of a plow, then the bloody tears of war irrigate the land, which should provide the daily bread for future generations.
The book calls for the violation of international law, especially for overcoming the conditions of Versailles and the losses suffered by Germany. For this, Hitler is ready to defend the use of "the full power of the sword." However, it is not enough for Hitler to return to the previous position. First he wants the Anschluss, and then the "living space":
“In order to become a world power, Germany must certainly acquire those dimensions that alone can ensure her proper role under modern conditions and guarantee life to all inhabitants of Germany.”
Hitler believed that such security would have been ensured by the conditions reached by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. This treaty, concluded with a defeated Russia, cut off from it the western territories - from the Baltic to the Caucasus - which contained half of Russian industry and agricultural land.
In a strange way, Hitler considered the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk "incredibly humane" and the Treaty of Versailles "robbery in broad daylight." Undoubtedly, territorial losses, reparations and the responsibility for unleashing the war were a heavy burden, but the conditions of the German “peace” imposed on defeated Russia were no less difficult.
Hitler believed Germany was unacceptably small compared to Britain, Russia, China and America. "Mein Kampf" does not hide the military goals and gains that the Nazi leader aspired to. Moreover, he made his ambitions public. And such sincerity should have warned the Allies against appeasement in the 1930s.
Against the Weimar Republic
Post-war Germany was bound by a parliamentary constitution and a proportional electoral system. This was a complete break with Kaiser Germany. Hitler scorned this system: "The democracy that exists today in Western Europe is the harbinger of Marxism." Moreover, he did not particularly trust the voters: "The people are mostly stupid and forgetful."
He showed no less inclination when criticizing the Weimar Republic, calling the Reichstag a "puppet theater." Undoubtedly, the Weimar democracy had growth problems, and short-lived, fragile political coalitions did not strengthen this democracy at all. However, Hitler resented the democratic system itself: “Most<избирателей>are not only representatives of stupidity, but also representatives of cowardice.
Against communism
Fear of the chaos of the bloody Russian revolution of 1917 added another topic to the hatred list of Hitler, who became a staunch anti-communist and anti-socialist. Hitler lamented the fall of the tsarist regime, whose ruling elite he considered "Germanic". While the new Bolshevik system was just a manifestation and platform of Jewish aggression. He believed that the communists are “a human scum that took a huge state by surprise, carried out a wild massacre of millions of advanced intelligent people, actually exterminated the intelligentsia, and now, for almost ten years now, is carrying out the most cruel tyranny that has ever been known. story". Mindful of the unrest of the workers, whom Hitler blamed for the surrender of Germany in 1918, and further socialist unrest, he confidently believed that "Germany is the closest bait for Bolshevism at the present time."
Hitler hated draft dodgers, deserters, and scoundrels who had avoided the "battles on the fields of Flanders" and instead hastened the November Revolution of 1918. Spartacists) and effectively subjugated the Weimar Republic.
Hitler saw Russia not only as a hotbed of communism, he also saw it as a hotbed of powerful Jews and, most importantly, as a source of limitless resources and land. “When we talk about the conquest of new lands in Europe, we, of course, can have in mind in the first place only Russia and those border states that are subordinate to it.” And further: “Russia, having lost its upper German stratum, has thereby already ceased to have any significance as a possible ally of the German nation ... in order to conduct a successful struggle against Jewish attempts to Bolshevize the whole world, we must, first of all, take a clear position on relation to Soviet Russia. Total hostility! Nothing changed for Hitler from the moment he wrote Mein Kampf until the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Only sheer pragmatism made him sign a short-term and cynical non-aggression pact with the USSR on August 23, 1939.
National unity
In contrast to international Bolshevism, which appealed to the working class, Hitler advocated a nationalism that permeated all sections of society. The idea of popular unity (Volksgemeinschaft) was a logical continuation of that wartime unity, when the combat experience of the soldiers first reflected the cohesion of Germany. “We soldiers, at the front and in the trenches, did not ask a wounded comrade: “Are you a Bavarian or a Prussian? Catholic or Protestant? We felt the unity of the people in the trenches.”
Just as Italian soldiers were ready to put on their black fascist shirts against the corrupt post-war government, so German soldiers joined the ranks of the volunteer corps (Freikorps), and some were part of the assault squads (SA).
Strongly jealous of the ancient, fantastic-looking empires of Britain and France, the German nationalists decided to rely on their nineteenth-century philosophers, who brought back to life the heroic legends of the past. After all, Germany, one way or another, was a separate European community, and which had its own “special path” (Sonderweg). Hitler was certainly convinced of the inseparable connection of the German people with the Holy Roman Empire, Frederick the Great's Prussia and Bismarck's Germany. German individuality stood out clearly in the writings of Goethe, Hegel and Nietzsche. The identity of the Germans and their inherent introspection found their way into the music of Richard Wagner, whom Hitler adored.
The ideas of popular unity and German individuality were not so rare at that time. However, Hitler brought nationalism to its most radical form - the superiority of the Aryan race over all others. Hitler argued that Germany was an integral part of the supreme Aryan culture and race. This is how he thought during his imprisonment: "All that we now have in the sense of human culture, in the sense of the results of art, science and technology - all this is almost exclusively the product of the creativity of the Aryans." Noting such obvious qualities of the Aryans, he demanded their preservation: “The state is a means to an end,<которая>consists in preserving, first of all, only that core that really belongs to a given race and ensures its development of those forces that are inherent in this race.
Hitler advocated outdated anti-scientific ideas of racial purity. He was afraid of the dissolution of Aryan qualities among the Germans and drew parallels with the animal world: “Each animal mates only with its comrade in kind and kind. Titmouse goes to titmouse, chaffinch to chaffinch!” Hitler warned that the strength of France was being sacrificed by her colonial and social policies, which would sooner or later lead to the fact that "the last remnants of Frankish blood will disappear, dissolving into the new European-African mulatto state."
In Mein Kampf, Hitler pays tribute to another obvious racial quality: "The Greek ideal of beauty remained immortal because here we had an amazing combination of physical beauty with the nobility of the soul and the wide flight of the mind."
Hitler advocates daily two-hour physical education classes at school. “At the same time, in no case should one give up one important sport, which, unfortunately, in our own environment is sometimes looked down on - I'm talking about boxing ... We don't know any other sport that would develop to such an extent in a person the ability to attack, the ability to make decisions with lightning speed, and which in general would contribute to the hardening of the body to such an extent. Despite Hitler's admiration for boxing, the German world heavyweight champion of the early 1930s, Max Schmeling nevertheless neatly avoided joining the NSDAP and never became an Aryan icon. Instead, Schmeling continued to train under a Jewish coach, and later even harbored Jews.
It is clear that Hitler's racial nationalism and his passion for popular unity were superimposed on the false idea of Aryan superiority. Germany was to become a pure national community based on an idealized idea of the Aryans. It is in the interests of the nation, he writes, "that people with beautiful bodies enter into marriage, for only this can provide our people with truly beautiful offspring."
Later, Nazi politics and organizations such as the Hitler Youth and the KDF (Leisure Institute) promoted the image of blond, healthy children and their families. The Nazi system even proclaimed the idea of artificial selection: schoolchildren studied eugenics, and girls followed the Ten Commandments for choosing a groom. Healthy, unpartnered women were encouraged to use the Lebensborn ("source of life") clinics to produce the next generation of Aryans.
Against the Jews
Hitler's idealized ideas of Germanness and Aryanism are best understood against the backdrop of caricatured Jewry. Throughout the book, he repeatedly returns to the "Jewish question". He is practically obsessed with this topic.
From one position, Hitler describes the Jews - the inhabitants of the Vienna slums: “These people do not particularly like to wash ... At least I often began to feel sick from the smell of these gentlemen in long caftans. Add to this the slovenliness of the costume and the little heroic appearance. From other positions, he notes the Jewishness of social democrats and journalists. Moreover, for him they were Marxists who wanted to destroy the national economy and tried to create for themselves "a certain independent base, not subject to any control of other states, so that from there it would be possible to continue the policy of world fraud even more freely."
Hitler's description of Jewish bankers and political leaders is even more unfortunate: both groups are striving for their goal - Zionism - the establishment of Jewish domination. From his social Darwinist point of view, Hitler considered a race war inevitable and looked for a way to stop the "conquest of the world by the Jews." That is, he attributed to the Jews his own base goals!
Ominously and prophetically, Hitler laments: “If at the beginning of the war we decided to strangle with poisonous gases 12-15 thousand of these Jewish leaders who are destroying our people ... then the millions of sacrifices we made on the battlefields would not have been in vain.” In such terms, Mein Kampf offers a possible solution to the "Jewish question".
Conclusion
Against the background of the majestic projects of conquest and theories of superiority presented in Mein Kampf, Hitler also included quite earthy details in his essay - in a sense, these are the most interesting places in the book. Hitler mentions dates, number of visitors, and even the weather during party meetings. He cites his successful arguments at large-scale meetings in coffee shops. He also talks about Nazi posters: “We chose the red color for our posters, of course, not by chance, but by mature reflection. We wanted to annoy the Reds as much as possible with this, to arouse their indignation and provoke them to come to our meetings.
However, in addition to its fundamental opposition to Versailles, Weimar, communism, the USSR and Jewry, Mein Kampf contains Nazi campaign statements (in such slogans as "Break the chains of Versailles" and "Down with the weak Weimar democracy") and predictions of the main directions of the internal and Hitler's foreign policy in the 1930s. Admittedly, he later tried to downplay the ideas revealed in Mein Kampf. As Reich Chancellor, he even insisted that his book reflected only "fantasies behind bars." In the same way, he tried to distance himself in the eyes of a foreign audience from his most radical and aggressive ideas: the non-aggression pacts with Poland (1934) and with the Soviet Union (1939) testify to this.
In 1939 Murphy's translator informed the English readers of Mein Kampf how Hitler had stated that his actions and public statements should be regarded as a partial revision of certain provisions of his book.
The problem with such an optimistic view was that by this time Hitler had already spurred the widespread use of concentration camps, approved the bloodshed during Kristallnacht, liquidated the demilitarization of the Rhineland, provided military assistance to the Nazis of General Franco, captured Austria and annexed the Sudetenland. Without any doubt, Hitler was preparing for a big war. In the words of historian Alan Bullock, "The goal of his foreign policy never changed, from the opening lines in Mein Kampf in the 1920s to the attack on the USSR in 1941: Germany must expand eastward."
"Mein Kampf" allowed Hitler's "drawing" of the Third Reich to become public. Shortly before his death, in his farewell political statement, Hitler was stuck on the same issues that he had expressed in 1924. In the ruined Berlin, Adolf wrote: "From the ashes of our cities and monuments, hatred will grow for international Jewry, which is most responsible for everything."
Hitler's main work did not die with him and did not lose its real meaning: as usual, evil outlives its parents for a long time. In modern times, Hitler's writing is banned in most of Europe, and perhaps that is why it has become an underground and illegal cult classic for all Nazis in modern Germany and Austria.
Britain has its homegrown racist John Tyndale inspired by Hitler's word. Tyndale was chairman of the National Front before the founding of the British National Party: without hesitation, he declared that "Mein Kampf is like a Bible to me." He advocated the expulsion of immigrants from Britain and demanded, in Nazi style, "racial laws to prohibit marriage between Britons and non-Aryans: medical measures should be taken to prevent the reproduction of those with hereditary diseases." Shortly before his death in July 2005, he was belatedly arrested on charges of racial hatred.
Anti-Israeli sentiment in the Arab world often turns to anti-Semitism; hence the popularity of Hitler's writing in this world. On the eve of 2005, 100,000 copies of Mein Kampf were sold in Turkey in two weeks. And in Palestine, denunciations of Hitler have long topped the best-seller list. Previously, Egyptian President Nasser, who was trying to lead the Arab world against Israel, found a great way to motivate army officers - to give them a pocket edition of the Arabic translation of Mein Kampf. Whether they read Hitler's pompous prose or not - that's the question!
In 1979, when the Tanzanian troops successfully repulsed the onslaught of the Ugandan army and in turn captured the enemy capital, a copy of Mein Kampf was found on the table in the office of the dictator Idi Amin. The notorious African troublemaker, the dictator of Uganda, was also a vocal critic of the British Empire. He even proclaimed himself King of Scotland! The impact that Hitler's writing had on a man like Idi Amin shows convincingly what the book is and who its readers are.
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