Mein Kampf. Translated by Ralf Manheim

I read this in 1945, when I was 16. On May 25, 1945, I said: "I am reading Mein Kampf. It's quite a book.The clumsy sentence structure (because of translation) and queer way putting over his ideas make the book hard reading. The thing is sprawling, and, of, course, some things are amusing or

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maddening. But, the old fool is down now." On June 4, 1945, I said:: "Finished Mein Kampf. I really didn't get so much out of the book--just the idea of Hitler's general principle. Why, there are a 1000 pages and I don't feel at all as if I had a knowledge of 1000 pages. O, well, I read the old dribble. That's all the book is anyway--unadulterated ideas to be hated or laughed at. Germans were dupes to be taken in by it."

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One is wary of reading a work by a person truly deserving of the word evil. Why? In his majestic biography of Hitler Ian Kershaw noted in his introduction that in writing a biographic work one may feel sympathy, even admiration for the subject. (Of course Kershaw did not have such sentiments and

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wrote a dispassionate, thorough analysis of the man)
I had similar thoughts about reading Mein Kampf. All my life I been against fascism and racism and anti-semitism. What if reading this book I suddenly have a Archimedes moment and realise i have discovered what I have always been searching for. Down the toilet goes my socialism and anti-fascist thinking!
Ah - I need not have feared this. This book is rambling, poorly written and strewn with unsophiscated anti-semitism. The introduction of this edition by D C Watt does state that if one was expecting some kind of political pornography one would be disappointed. Watt's introduction is the only decent thing of this book. He also annotated and points to the false statements Hitler wrote in the biographical sections of Mein Kampf. The work itself deserves no rating although it should be of interest to historians.

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Of course it is an influential book, yes, and if I rated it solely on that, it would easily rate five stars.

My rating is solely on literary merit, and Hitler is not Goethe. His writing is dry and wanders from topic to topic.

Nevertheless, it is a terrifying read.

Rambling and insane. Spiteful and full of hate. Hitler argues the politics of his day and at the same time exposes his own inner fears and inadequacies by challenging the German nation to sink into his habit of always blaming others. This is not an easy read, and modern readers will not care about

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his fatuous biography or the early years of the National Socialist movement. It is history though, and we should learn lessons from it.

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I am not against Judaism and I am definitely not deaf to what happened to the Jews in the holocaust but certainly one has to understand Hitler's thinking. Look at today, the Jews are influential everywhere, most of America's Wall Street is run by Jews. Hitler must have experienced the same thing in

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his time. Certainly the Jews were powerful, but they did not deserved to be killed.

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This must be one of the most boring books in history. In the Introduction to the translation, even he said it was boring - and it is. I got about two pages in and I became bored.

I have no affiliation whatsoever with nazism, but I feel books should never be forbidden or banned. That's why I own a photocopy, downlaoded form the internet, to add it to my library. It's one of the most influencial works from the 20st century though. From what i've read, it's a disorderly text,

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badly written.

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A steaming pile of dogturds pretending to be philosophy.

This book is very insightful. Many might find it boring at first but, if you complete it, you will find some interesting conclusions. Everyone has an opinion of it`s other; few know his real impetus. It`s well known the victors write the history books. Here is a rare chance to read about the other

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side of the story. Deutschland über alles!

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The edition of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf I read was the pre World War 2 english translation by James Murphy (who worked in Goebbels's Ministry of Propaganda from 1934 to 1938), it contains both Volume 1: A Retrospect & Volume 2: The national Socialist Movement. It is fully unexpurgated.

Below I

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intend to both discuss the book and provide reasoning for the rating of 4 stars. If you disagree with such a rating, the work itself or my review and wish to discuss such, please comment below after reading this.

Onto the review:

To properly appreciate the insight, philosophy and madness that is laid out in Mein Kampf one needs to have a reasonable understanding of Germany & Europe in the 1820-1930 era otherwise you will come away with a flawed viewpoint (as is often the risk with autobiographical works). Today the common misconception is that Hitler's anti-Jewish sentiment was unique and hitherto unknown, however this certainly is not the case. Throughout Europe the Jewish population were not given full rights and faced routine discrimination (such as Prussia's laws against Jewish residents holding certain professions); such discrimination slowly began to be overturned throughout the mid to late 1800s. This led to Jewish residents moving to new towns and into new professions. As a result, natural citizens began to see Jews in areas they previously did not reside, and the successful career opportunities of the assimated Jews saw envy and resentment bubble beneath the surface of society.

This resentment took the form of numerous anti-Jewish newspapers, political parties and a shift in anti-semitism. The focus of anti-semitism went from the Jewish religion to the Jewish race as people began to define themselves by their shared cultural background as opposed to their religions (many European Jews had converted to Christianity).

It is within this background of rising anti-semitism a young Adolf Hitler is educated. In Mein Kampf he relays on the struggles and self-sabotage of his early life: the rejection from art-school with a recommendation to undertake artitecture, however he is unable to due so due to purposely failing classes in order to follow his painting aspirations.

As volume 1 continues, Hitler lays out a rather astute insight into the causes of Germany's loss in world war 1 and a history of the destabilisation of the German nation is covered in both volumes; the first volume being a general history, the second volume being how events lead to policies of the National Socialist Movement.

This first volume is where most hatred of the book generally stems from, but despite being so well known for it's anti-semitism it's religious content is comparatively foreign to most people today. Early on Hitler lays out that he is essentially on a mission from God to kill all the Jews, in his own words: "[The Jews] very existence is an incarnate denial of the beauty of God's image in His creation".

One could mistake such for merely an overly dramatic use of language, however, there are many pages spent on the decay of Christianity due to the rise of European Judaism including the following: "if for reasons of indolence or cowardice this fight is not fought to a finish we may imagine what conditions will be like 500 years hence. Little of God's image will be left in human nature except to mock the Creator". It's rather chilling knowing Hitler was openly advertising his desires to wipe out the Jewish population of Germany as far back as 1920, and yet such a warning was not heeded.

Taking the historical context into account it leaves one wondering if Hitler was a madman by nature or by nuture - merely a product of his environment. Having been rampantly told again and again that Jews were the problem by his Church, his understanding of Christianity, newspapers, intellectuals (such as Arthur De Goineau), society in general and his flawed logical reasoning on racial purity (which was not corrected by a proper education), is it any wonder he sought to go about "solving" the Jewish problem? He even remarks in Mein Kampf how he admires Otto von Bismarck who despite his many positive attributes was also anti-Jewish.

If it were only such flawed logic entailed in Mein Kampf it would be hardly worthy of attention beyond historical value, however such content is not the entire book. Some of its content would probably be supported by most of society today, such as the negative disposition toward sexualised advertising and Hitler's anti-prostitution/pro-marriage stance.

I also found it rather interesting that in light of history, Hitler lays out his belief that disabled and genetically ill people should not be looked upon as a disgrace by society but that their disability/illness is an accident and beyond their control. Yet, he also continues that in order to save future Germans from such accidents the genetically inferior should be sterilised, yet allowed to live a normal life nonetheless.

In addition to such there are also some rather interesting concepts such as Hitler's philosophical thoughts on why society was in a downward spiral: "towns and cities began more and more to lose their character as centres of civilisation and became more and more centres of habitation". That education should be for all citizens and not just the wealthy, that society needs to be corrected from looking down upon physical labour.

One paragraph I found particularly poignant in relation to today's lazy and indifferent societies was: "the state teaches our young men democratic and pacifist ideas and thus deprives millions and millions of their national instincts, poisons their logical sense of patriotism and gradually turns them into a herd of sheep who will patiently follow any arbitrary command". It is rather true, today being patriotic or embracing nationalism is often associated with being racist or somehow close-minded.

Overall, despite the anti-semitism and the rather one sided view of certain events, it is quite an interesting book. If you have a reasonable understanding of European history you will get more from the book and have more enjoyment analysing Hitler's motivations. It's not a wonderous peace-loving book and in some cases is downright chilling, yet it also contains quite a bit of philosophy that is relevant across all walks of life today.

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This is a great historical book to read. It definitely lets the reader into the mind of Adolf Hitler and his life prior to when he became the Hitler we all know. After reading this, it is suprising anyone allowed him to get so powerful (remember, he became dictator legally in Germany). This is a

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LONG and dense book filled with hate but it's a book that must be read if one wants to understand the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler, and World War II. Any historian should definitely read this, as well as history buffs.

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I own a copy in German that belonged to my father from when he was in the Hitler Jugend. I've read a number of English translations but reading it in the original language, the actual words of Hitler as he wrote them, gives me chills. None of the translations do it justice. It has to be read in

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German to fully appreciate and understand it.

The book is written much like he speaks: flowery, rambling, attempting to appeal to the reader's emotions. In a way, a lot of the chapters reads like one of his speeches. I can just see him gesturing like he does delivering a speech as he dictated the book to Heß.

Placing the book in its historical context, knowing the man, his strengths and weaknesses, and what he had accomplished, both for good and for ill, makes it a fascinating read.

Assessing the book on its own, I was rather bored by it. I doubt that many of Hitler's contemporaries were convinced by it and 21st century neo-Nazis would do well to abandon most of the ideas found therein if they wish to have any real future success. Today's Nazis would do well to follow Ernst Röhm view of National Socialism rather than Hitler's.

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My God, some of the most turgid, incomprehensible prose you're ever likely to encounter. I don't envy the translator. How the hell anyone can make any sense out of this regurgitated slop is beyond me, and I've read a lot of history.

I voted for Hillary in 2016.

That said, although some of it is like what you might expect, some of it is quite surprising if all you are familiar with is the sensationalism of the speeches.

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Racism is wrong, but we do not need a villain to blame for racism.

If you need someone to

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blame, someone to judge, even if it’s someone who did something wrong, you are displaying a need, a weakness, within yourself.

Hitler spoke of the races being essentially different, (essentialism), because that is how it seemed to him. This fault is a weakness within his thinking, a sort of poverty, but do you have to resent another’s poverty?

But he was by no means a stupid man, and his various asides about various topics are by no means all wrong. Hitler on the value of opera or the art of reading is fascinating stuff—just don’t identify the source, heh.

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That said, it is a long book, and there will be times when you wish that he wouldn’t get angry and label everything, decide that everybody else is a Marxist, organize people along racial lines, etc.

You just don’t have to throw the pencil at him.

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He kinda had this knack for working out, say, the Catholic/Protestant question in the way that was best for German nationalism, for him and his, without really caring honestly about the moral issues involved. Whatever, whatever: somebody get these people to line up.

He wasn’t stupid, but he did have a certain contempt for theory. Like he could have, but he wouldn’t.

Which I qualify by saying that he obviously has these flaws, but no one thing made him the guy that people talk about.

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Hitler’s fascism was pretty personal; it wasn’t really about being able to define what being German meant in terms of theory or ethic—it was the result of experience. (And a lot of his experience was rooted in paranoia.) At the same time for Hitler the personal is entirely swallowed up by the political and the collective; one doesn’t get a sense of him wasting time drinking and having fun like a common lout; he was uncommonly serious.

Many of Hitler’s opinions are indeed wrong. But one has to consider them fairly, without immediately discarding them because they are Hitler’s and therefore infamous, or else you must condemn any art or anything else he happened to like and find “German” enough, or else condemn all seriousness because he was serious, or all experentialness because he was experiential, etc.

.... According to H.G. Bieler, a nutritionist, disease comes from toxins in the diet. According to the theory, you consume toxins in food, and then the body cannot cleanse itself of all of them through the liver and other organs designed to do this, so it substitutes other organs for the liver; e.g. toxins are pushed into the skin to cleanse the blood, and this irritates and infects the skin, or another organ similarly. My point is that perhaps Hitler was like this; in the body, the toxins do not originate in the skin but end up in the skin; in Hitler's day, he did not originate the habit of anti-Semitism or corrosive nationalism and other diseases of the brain, but when a serious young man of that day encountered the social problem and sought to solve it, without the benefit of mature religion or a sane world, he encountered these toxins and expressed them. The skin expresses the toxins, which it did not eat. Hitler also expressed toxins, which he, I suppose you could say, adopted rather than fathered.

And that is why you should pity Hitler, instead of hating him.

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It’s certainly not always what you expect. We think of Hitler a certain way, so it’s counterintuitive that Hitler didn’t really accept his roots. He was born an Austrian, but had the most open disdain for that state. Germany was the ideal, like somewhere in Europe, perhaps, to the ethnic white American; it was a place he had to travel to get to, the fantastic ethnic-identity state. Where he was actually born, though, Austria, didn’t fit the ideal. Too many other races in the pre-1918 borders; the Austro-Hungarian Empire tried to accomodate everybody, and in so doing “oppressed” or tried to “eliminate” the “German element”. This meant they were antithetical to Hitler’s ideal, and they “should” have paid a high price for it. Hitler had no time for the traditional Habsburg monarchy (and the status quo) at all, and had he been running the show at that early date, would have thrown Austria to the wolves and gotten stronger allies (if any at all?) rather than fight WWI out of loyalty to them. Of course as it turned out he annexed the 1938 version of Austria, the “German element”, because it was easy to take the whole thing over and cannibalize it and turn the whole thing into Germany, not unlike how Hitler himself had started out in one, status-quo, kind of state—kind of privileged, but not *entirely* so— and ended up in a more fantastic, homogeneous ethnic-fantasy kind of state. So it was really all about the racial revolution, not about roots at all. He had a rather cynical attitude to the place he grew up.

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“If you can draw a crowd and keep your virtue....”

He seems to have thought that the leader should shape himself to be what the masses were willing to accept. He had a lot of potential to be a better man— if only he wouldn’t worry about what other people thought of him. And look how that worked out.

And of course he had that little prejudice against the Jews. He seemed to think that they were inherently, racially, smarmy journalists without folksy roots. (I suppose everyone knows that he thought that.) Basically the opposite of everything that the Zionists wanted to prove with Israel; a real Jewish folk, with prisons and everything, ‘Jewish prisoners guarded by Jewish guards’, I think one of them said.

But anyway, I do think that it is possible that Hitler’s ideas have some slight merit, not constitutionally and inherently evil in all their main outlines. I mean, he seems to have had very little religion and to have used opera as an ersatz substitute. All the stuff about paganistically using the nation as a substitute for God is quite limiting, as limiting and indeed somewhat similar (Germany hearts Luther) as the conventional religion of his day was. But he was right about Marxism being wrong, about the suffering masses’ instinct to destroy everything out of their pain and to piss on all culture and such, as wrong. (In much the same way that, say, Stalin, was right about the National Socialist desire to piss on the other races as a way to Solve Modern Civilization being wrong.) And Hitler was right that the masses were going to need something in return for their allegiance to the nation, something for “the social problem”, and not just giving the people who had already made it some museum government, run by Frederick the Great Junior’s Living Bones. Actually a lot of Germans would probably like it if their country was run like a museum, but, you know, something else is required, to be perfectly honest.

But if you’re going to draw a crowd, you’d better understand what’s going to happen, otherwise what happens, you might not like.

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“If only we had had more propaganda we would have won.” More advertising, or more ruthlessness: more anger, more more more. But he got his chance to try all that.

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But I have to admit, he has more class than Luther (“On the Jews & Their Lies”). Calling your book “My Struggle” has at least a fallacious kind of excellence to it.

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An almost animal desire for order.

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This book is extremely, EXTREMELY rambly and I must admit that I only lasted about a quarter of the way through because I kept losing track of his points (if indeed there were any).

I never attack authors, but after the new police-state rules in GR, the rebel in me wants to bad-mouth an author, just to cock my snook at authority.

So, here goes...

The author of this book was one of the vilest human beings who ever lived. I believe he should be hunted down, tortured to death, cut

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into little pieces, and the remains should be danced on with hob-nailed boots (to borrow from Wodehouse). Unfortunately, he is dead - but I prefer to believe the conspiracy theorists who say he is still alive, so that I can fantasise about trashing him.

And I did not finish this book before reviewing.

So, go on! Flag me!!!

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A lot of repetitive, racist political doublespeak but gives an interesting extra insight into the world of Germany in the 1920s all the same. This reveals an actual programme for Nazi Europe that clearly includes some form of extirpation or extermination of the Jews (to any Holocaust denier reading

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this) and he carried out the rest of the programme so why not that part? It wasn't completely without charm but it certainly mostly was.

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This is a commentary only on this particular edition: "Mein Kampf: The Ford Translation." This is a self-published translation by one Michael Ford, with a large number of errors of all sorts. If you want a translation, go with Ralph Manheim's. It's not perfect, but a lot better than this one.

Shocking. Repeatedly historians observe that Hitler laid out a plan in thie book and followed up on it. I think it should be more widely read, even required in high school history, for it shows the dictator's mind,much as present day dictators in the Middle East and Africa are acting. This is not

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literature, it is history,an historical artifact. I recently read Sinclair Lewis book published in 1935, just after Hitler took power. Could it happen here ? Read this and find out how it would be done. The chapter "Basic Ideas REgarding the Meaning and Organization of the SA", which provided the men who threatened the country and started the road to doom . He wrote
the SA of the NSDAP could have nothing in comon with amilitary organbization. It was an instreument for defense and education in the Nsational Socialist movenment". The organization needed 200,000 members. The enemy was the Marxists.

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Hitler's chapter on propaganda in the first "Volume" pretty much illustrates my opinion. When read in the context of the future, it is extremely ironic. I might have given it a higher rating based on its value as a resource document, but the translation made things difficult. Any serious student of

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WWII should with diligence endure their own struggle to complete this book.

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-Slow and rambling. Terrifying in its statements of wars of extermination and the force of propaganda.
-Excellent for understanding the psychology and neuroses of future dictators and megalomaniacs. For example: Hitler's interest in his 'method' of re

The following is the last paragraph for a book review I did on Mein Kampf for my Contemporary Europe class in Fall 2001:

Besides the thought provoking ideas on foreign policy, Mein Kampf is a terrible work in grammar, spelling, and editing. The hate that Hitler expresses through those flaws

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throughout it makes it hard to get through. In the end, Mein Kampf is the horribly written autobiography/political doctrine of a mad man whom thought himself a genius.

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No, I am not racist. And I did not like it as some would, but it is a good look into the mind of one of histories monsters.

This is a pretty historic book, and I only undertook its reading because it seemed like the universe was telling me to. I just finished reading The Book Thief (which I would recommend more than this), and Mein Kampf played a significant role in that story. Many other references to Hitler popped up

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in my daily life, to the extent that I couldn't get away from him. So I decided to his about 'his struggle.'

While reading the book, and writing this review, I know that I have the benefit of hindsight--I know what history has written about Hitler, and the many atrocities he committed. I am also not currently living in 1920s-era Germany in the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles.

I get it, I can't read it as if I would have read it at the time, and perhaps I should not judge it against what I presume I would have thought then. But I cannot travel back in time and be at the period, so I have to review it as a person looking back. Here goes:

This is a two-volume rant of the life and philosophy of Adolf Hitler. As a historical book I believe it fails--it is a selective history, and doesn't give facts so much as it gives his opinions, stated as facts but without being backed up. He makes bold statements, but never proves them or gives the reader the chance know from where he is getting his information. These statements are then carried to the extreme, and used in further examples....but they are all based on these opinions not supported by anything but his own feelings.

He also tends to contradict himself. For example, he will in one sentence mention how horrible Jews are, how they have an international plan to try to take over the world. A few pages later he will describe how unintelligent they are as a reason to rid them from Germany (at least). If they are smart enough to plot to take over the world...how dumb can they be? My point being that he contradicts himself repeatedly--not that anything he has said has any verity.

My biggest question in reading this book was if anyone had ever taken the time to fact-check it. He makes a lot of statements about all the work he did to create and build the National Socialist Party--I'm curious if his recollections are accurate. I think I was looking to understand more about him from this reading, but alas, am just as confused as I was before.

Later in the book he attacks Russia, France and the United States as being horrible nations. He attacks Italy, but praises Mussolini. He states that an alliance with England or Italy is the future of Germany. This is interesting, and I wish I knew more WW2 history. Was this book Hilter's way of pacifying England before the war? Perhaps. Based on the vile things he says about Russia, I am interested in what the facts behind his statements.

While overall I am more curious after reading this...I don't think I am ready to jump into more non-fiction reading on WW2 just yet. I may just retreat back into my love of fiction.

I also have to note the speed in which I read this: less than a week. It is a 700 page book, but I read it quickly because I was embarrassed to read it in public. I wanted to be done as quickly as possible.

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