John Toland's "Adolf Hitler"...

Much has been said in many books and articles concerning the time between Adolf Hitler's birth and his death at the end of a war largely caused through his totalitarian rule of Germany...But it's likely that no author has said as much in more words, and in greater detail than John Toland in his two-volume biography, "Adolf Hitler"...Forty years after its initial publication, it may seem to be aging, but it is aging well indeed...

It was the first serious study of Hitler's life that I read upon becoming more than casually interested in the causes and effects of the European war...Certainly not his first book, nor his only analysis of mid-twentieth century conflict, Toland demonstrated to this reader that few details, if any, could ever escape his attention...Toland's pictorial documentary published two years after the text adds life to the telling, and contains photos I've seen nowhere else...

Exposing the maleficence that made up the persona that was Hitler was never Toland's goal, as millions of words had already reached print demonstrating that Der Fuehrer was the custodian of one of the most evil souls housed in a human being in this millenium...The author stated clearly in his prologue that he began the project with no preconceived notions, and no preformed opinions, wanting only to present the evidence and testimony of others, allowing the reader to draw his own conclusions...

I applaud Toland on this ability, and in re-reading some of my own articles, I know my lack of objectivity would prevent my ever becoming a seriously considered historian...He drew not only on established sources representing the viewpoints and opinions of other researchers, but also conducted hundreds of personal interviews with surviving contemporaries, both those he admired, those he antagonized, and those who worked in close proximity with him...Before publication, he contacted each of the interviewees again with a copy of what he had written for verification and corrections...

He uncovered documents and dossiers all but forgotten and gained access to previously classified intelligence...He read unpublished foreign government files stored and forgotten in dusty boxes...His research found undiscovered letters, diaries, memoirs and notes, even receipts that yielded valuable information...

As a dedicated historian, Toland knew his research would outlive him, and arranged for its storage in the Library of Congress for use by investigators who would follow after him...His dedication to the truth, no matter where it took him, is one of the hallmarks of a true historian...He knew that analysis is merely the opinion of others, and he arranged his writing in a manner that is not only very readable, but is uncluttered with misleading distractions...For his allegiance to accuracy, both serious students and casual observers such as myself will always be grateful...

Published in two volumes to make its thousand-plus pages more manageable, it begins long before the dictator's birth, covering generations and naming likely suspects in the doubtful parentage of Hitler's father...I find documented information such as this valuable for another article in composition now concerning Herr Hitler's bloodline...As usual in his style, Toland goes into exacting detail, allowing this reader to imagine I am there as a witness to some of the research...

The rarely spoken of periods in Hitler's early growth come to life as the author painstakingly assembles the bits and pieces of testimony from those who witnessed his initial development...Toland offers a timeline in this history almost unbroken as he finds obscure passers-through in Hitler's life who left behind some documentation of the events which affected his psyche...

I will not attempt to detail the contents of the book any further, as it will speak for itself to any reader...Having read, and re-read it several times, I always come away with new insight on other volumes I've read, as well as renewed information on Adolf Hitler himself...

Any bookshelf within reach of any student of twentieth century history, regardless of the level of serious interest, is incomplete without a well-thumbed copy of John Toland's master thesis, "Adolf Hitler"...And no, my first editions are not for sale...

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Taking a bullet...Conclusions drawn...

Click here for Part I...

Click here for Part II...

I originally planned this review of Mein Kampf as reaffirmation of what I already believed about Hitler, and in that I have succeeded...Slogging through the filth that congested his tortured mind was depressing enough to cause me to think reading other translations for tiny differences would not alter my perspective...

In re-reading what I have written in my review, I notice much of the same randomly digressive pattern as that which the author displayed in his book...I can only hope mine is the result of the linear route I took as I read through Hitler's rants one by one compiling my thoughts, and not a sudden infestation of the same pathless mind-crickets that stirred aimlessly in his head...

I find myself in agreement with Hitler's kindred spirit, Benito Mussolini, who called the book "unreadable"...And Mussolini had the advantage over me by being fluent in not only Italian, but German, French and English...He could have read several translations plus the original to ensure his review wasn't tainted by the opinions of others...

My readers may also take note as I remind them that the book I have reviewed is but one translation into English of Mr. Hitler's call to madness, along with its attending pre-determined views by the translation team...If I should live long enough to wash the foul taste of Der Fuehrer's scattergun hatred out of my mouth, I may take it upon myself to review another version taken from a differing standpoint, perhaps the James Murphy translation...

Seen from a different continent, and another era in time, and with my advantage of a historical viewpoint, Hitler's arguments against Jews as the root cause of all German problems seem so flimsy and transparently false, it makes the people of that time seem like gullible buffoons to have taken it all seriously...Even a random passage from one of his rants concerning his fear of the Jewish plan to infect "Aryan blood", such as this one:

"According to this plan, these negroid parasites of nations rape our innocent young blond [sic] girls and destroy something in this world that can never be replaced."

...should have been the tipoff that a deranged personality was on the loose, and attempting to gain control of an unsuspecting world...But that world had other priorities in its struggle to recover from an economic depression, and rebuild after a devastating war...Those who actually read the words may have dismissed them as only rhetoric in a debate...

Yet I understand that the world leaders of the time faced their own set of problems, and though they saw the danger represented in the Nazis' hunger for conquest, they prioritized it as less important than the other demands placed on them domestically...The same might be said of the German people as they struggled with their own problems, thinking they could undo the wrongs they undoubtedly witnessed as soon as their own house was more orderly...

Both those within Germany, and those watching from outside its borders all had the opportunity to read Hitler's own plan in his own words as he detailed the steps he would take if given his chance...The German people had the best opportunity as the book was a mandatory adornment in each home...But even with this close proximity, most ignored the warnings found within...

Taken strictly for its literary value, Mein Kampf is mind-numbingly dull reading...Hitler trots the same tired ponies around the worn, dusty track inside his head, revisits the same overworked misconceptions, ad infinitum, in his belief he is imparting the wisdom of the ages, when all he has produced is an eyewitness account of the splintering away of his decaying soul...

I think I'm a bit closer to understanding an unlikely rise to power under the right breeding circumstances, even with a record as a convicted criminal, such as the one attached to Adolf Hitler...I briefly note two others who became leaders of their own countries' governments both having been imprisoned after convictions of crimes, yet each leaving different legacies following their deaths, Joseph Stalin and Nelson Mandela...

The careers of all three were products of the same century, although on different continents...All three were revolutionaries, but for different causes...All three were nominated for the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize under varying circumstances, but only one was awarded...Today only one is remembered with any feelings warmer than bitterness...

My apologies to my readers for the length of this review...When I began, I had no idea I would have this much to say about a book composed in a prison cell by a convicted traitor, dictated to a submissive groupie who assembled it on a borrowed typewriter...He then allowed another adulator to revise it into something slightly more intelligible before unleashing it on a yawning, but complacent public...

For their part in bringing Herr Hitler's enmity for the human race to the printed page, both men were suitably punished...Hess rotted in a Russian controlled prison until he was in his nineties, at which time he was found dead of asphyxiation from strangulation with an extension cord (ruled a suicide, but more likely a murder)...Father Stempfle was murdered on orders from Hitler during the Night of the Long Knives, simply because the Jesuit priest knew too much about Hitler's incestuous and fatal affair with his niece, Geli Raubal...

The Bavarian government, which became the de facto executor of Adolf Hitler's estate, was right to withhold publication of the book following the war, preventing the opening of unhealed wounds...They were also right in allowing limited publishing after the expiration of Hitler's copyright...It has allowed bona fide historians, and interested amateurs such as myself, to explore and postulate the causes, and more importantly, the prevention of calamities such as that which he initiated...

The odds against another venomous bringer of malfortune being elevated to a position of such power in the same nurturing environment must be astronomical indeed, but if it happened once, then the stage is already set for another, unless the memory of such costly lessons is forever kept in the forefront of the world's collective mind...

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An Extra Added Convenience...

Always searching for new ways to enrich the lives of his readers, Truckman has made note of the growing number of articles published here which have become part of a series...Previously he added links to the bottom of each article for the convenience of those wishing to read more on similar subjects, and this feature will continue...

Now with the growing number of serialized articles and stories, Truckman has taken it upon himself to add links at the beginning of such articles for those readers who find themselves in the middle of a discussion, and wish to either start at the beginning, or continue directly to the next chapter...

This particular series will be the only exception as all others in this sequence are linked at the bottom...As always, there is no additional charge for this valuable service, as Truckman feels it is just another way to say "thank you" to his valued readership...You're welcome...

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Taking a bullet for my readers...Part II...

Click here for Part I...

Click here for Conclusions...

The second part of Mr. Hitler's outline of his poison dart in the heart of humanity delves more into the politics involved in his plot...His intended divisiveness is exemplified as he continues his belief that the large scale hatred displayed against his party was good as a sign of recognition, saying indifference to their cause was its reason for its slow start under the direction of a more timid leadership...

My theory is that the violence and vitriol his fledgling party caught was thrown as a general display of the unhappiness felt by so many Germans who expected victory in the recent war, and would have felt some relief no matter who caught the mud bouquets...As evidence I offer the constantly changing tide of political current as Germans switched parties and directions in their attraction to the loudest jeering voices in the years following their military defeat in the First World War...

Hitler demonstrated his own theory of lumping his adversaries together to appear as one by calling communism a tool of the Jews hoping to incite the "masses" that hated one or the other to think of them as inseparable...It is supposed that he thought of the generic "masses" as being formless and having no direction, waiting only to be led to a vague promised land...

Hitler talked of the various meetings in the beer halls of Munich where politicians of every stripe vied for the attention of the miserable mobs looking to be led from their deep forest of blue funk...He added literary dramatic effect to one gathering in particular in February 1920 at the Hofbrauhaus, where the Nazi Party's Twenty Five Points were read to the crowd...Politics were not unknown here as The Communist Party was headquartered in the building, and Vladimir Lenin made regular visits during his residency in Munich...

Hitler had previously penned at the end of his Part I dissertation that he had insisted the party's meager treasury be emptied and spent on flyers and posters advertising the meeting because of his pre-destined vision of making a great impact with his oratory...They did pick up considerable steam afterward, the credit to which I imagine Hitler in his retrospect attached his own vision and powers of speech...It didn't hurt that the gang of low-brow goons which would soon form the Sturmabteilung, or SA, used their highly effective rubber club methods to quiet the outcry of dissenters who disagreed with the presentation...

I feel sure that the subject matter of the 25 Points appealed to the vocal remainder of the crowd who had not joined those who had been stunned into silence...The largely anti-Semitic portion of the beer hall gathering was certainly encouraged by the specific exclusion of Jews in what was described as "the race," the only ones fit to exist in their Nazified world...

This surely came as no surprise to anyone who had followed his ever-broadening target of race as his recipient of blame for the ills of the world...As early as 1919, he had committed to paper in a military report to his Army unit commander concerning his characterization of the "Jewish menace," that all legal means should be exhausted in depriving Jewish people of a place in German society, "but the final aim must unquestionably be the irrevocable Entfernung of the Jews"...John Toland, in his thoroughly researched and extensively annotated biography, "Adolf Hitler," explained that "entfernung" has more than one meaning in the German language, but that Hitler likely meant "amputation" in this reference...

As the author gets down to his perception of the state's role in the governance of people, he is emphatic that its main focus and almost its only reason for existence is in the preservation of racial purity...It is left for supposition that he expected other nations to wait patiently by for their inferior races to be overrun and plundered for whatever items of value could be taken by the "superior Aryans"...

His likening of the state as a bottle sealing its contents, "the race," from the rest of the world could be extended to its utilization as a Molotov Cocktail thrown against the wall of resistance of the "inferior" remainder of the world...In this allegory the energy contained by his master race is spent without gain on an enemy which kept the scar as a lasting warning against another rise of similar danger...

Deeper into his treatise on his perfect "state," he proposes controls over families and education, all harkening back to his familiar rant on racial construction...Here he introduces his state-imposed restrictions on marriage:

"A race-based nationalist state, will, therefore, have to first raise marriage from the level of constant racial contamination and to bless it as an institution that is appointed to reproduce mankind in the image of the Lord, not monsters that are half man and half ape."

A bare decade later the Nazi's Nuremburg Laws took effect as Hitler's ideal society began to take form...But not content with dictating who might be permitted to marry whom, in the next pages he outlined what he deemed as necessary for the proper education of the healthy children produced by these favored marriages...

I specified "healthy" as Hitler did not believe educational resources should be wasted on those children unfortunate enough to be born in a sickly body:

"A decayed body is not made even a tiny bit more beautiful by a brilliant mind. In fact, the highest intellectual training could not be justified at all if it were possessed by one who was physically degenerate and crippled, weak-willed, indecisive, and cowardly in character."

Given those limitations, Hitler himself and his later devoted lackey, Joseph Goebbels, would both be denied an education...Again using John Toland for reference, young Adolf (registered in the church's baptismal ledger as Adolfus Hitler) was a sickly child from birth, and in his own regime of later years would likely have been euthanized by nurses...He would probably have been denied even a primary education, at which his marks were graded as "excellent"...

Joseph Goebbels, as another example, suffered from inflamed lungs as a small child, and walked with a permanent limp from a clubbed left foot, the result of a congenital birth defect...Rejected for military service for his physical deformity, he never grew taller than five feet, five inches...Under his Fuehrer's guidelines, such a child would never have received his advanced university education, and might have even been euthanized as an infant...

Never an athlete himself, although he enjoyed outdoor activities, whether with other children or by himself, Hitler dedicated quite a few words in this chapter in the encouragement of boxing as a school sport...He seemed almost gleeful in his thoughts of two young men duking it out to settle a difference, and rather disparaging of those he termed as "intellectual" who might see the violence as unnecessary...

Eventually he boiled down his proposed changes in the German educational system to these three:

• His belief that young heads were being filled with more information than they could ever process or retain, he proposed only a generic "basic overview" of scholastic subjects with more attention on physical training and idealism...
• He urged less coverage of "pure science" and foreign languages, saying the subjects were too specialized to be absorbed by students of whom a large percentage would never need the subject matter in their future worklives...
• His belief that great achievers were only great because of their association with their national identity led to his recommendation that only significant developments by German nationalists be given study priority...

It seems then that his ideal school would discuss the history of only the more meaningful and successful Germanic inventors, statesmen and generals, plus German grammar in the mornings...The afternoons would then be devoted to sports and physical exercise as the students were reminded that they should devote all their energies toward building a stronger state, and destroying the lesser nations...

As for expending any resources on educating those who are not of "Aryan blood," he equated such a feat to training a dog to jump through a hoop, admitting that it can be done, but the exercise was pointless and without benefit...He exemplified his belief in the following quote:

"It is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator to let hundreds and thousands of His most gifted creatures decay in the modern worker-laborer swamp while Hottentots and Zulus are being tamed for intellectual professions. As with the poodle, it is just animal training and not scholastic education."

Overlooking the obvious inaccuracies in his words, I'm reminded of his own history in Vienna in which he was twice denied entrance to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, and forced to prevent starvation by accepting work as a day laborer...The taste of sour grapes must have been strong in his mouth as he dictated his resentment to his fawning stooge, Rudolf Hess...He may have been composing these words in his short-circuited mind since his supposed unfair rejection...

He followed his dream of the future state with his depiction of its inhabitants...This short, confusing chapter proposes conferring citizenship upon native German men following successful schooling and completion of military service...Females would be eligible for citizenship only through marriage (to a citizen presumably), or by way of an essential career...All other inhabitants were to be accorded the title of "subject" having no political status, and none of the privileges of citizenship...

Given these narrow (and understandably tentative at that early date) confines, it is unclear whether future henchmen Joseph Goebbels and Albert Speer would have been eligible for citizenship since neither served in the military, Goebbels having been rejected as unsuitable and Speer neither being drafted nor volunteering...Equally unclear is the possibility of potential citizenship for future SD commandant Reinhard Heydrich who was forced to leave his naval career in the Reichsmarine in disgrace...

But that's mere speculation on this reviewer's part as I feel confident that Herr Hitler would have found some pathway to citizenship for such talented individuals...He also proposed taking away the status of citizenship from convicted criminals, although he may have planned special exemptions for those convicted of crimes such as murder or treason as in the cases of Martin Bormann, Rudolf Hess and, of course, himself...

Moving on to his discussion of state governing concepts, Mein Kampf's author returns again to one of his central themes, in which a majority of voting citizens can't rule as efficiently as one brilliant mind possessing a driving will to accomplish a preset goal...He suggests here that his upstart political organization become accustomed to such one-man-rule by adopting the principle to its own leadership...We are left to speculate that he intended the position of supreme leader for himself...

His concept of a "World-Concept" may have been crystal clear somewhere in the whirling thoughts racing around and around in Herr Hitler's brain, but he had a serious problem transferring it to paper to share with the waiting world...Although titled "World-Concept and Organization" in the Ford translation, I found little in this chapter resembling organization, and I'm still struggling for a clear picture of his world concept...Another source (claiming to be unbiased), which does not identify its translator, titles this chapter "Philosophy and Organization"...I do not know which version is clearer to a mind born to the English language, but in either case the chapter may have been more aptly titled "World Subjugation and Organization"...

In his stated attempt here to separate the ideas of world concept and political party, Hitler has again erroneously lumped his opponents into a single target zone, saying that Social Democracy (one of the Nazis' main antagonists in the battle for control of the Reichstag), Marxism and Jewry are all one and the same...The goal of his pursuit in this chapter seems to aim for swaying his readers into thinking of Nazi idealism in grander terms as a "World-Concept," and less as just another political manifesto...

In this effort, he eventually drags out his previously mentioned 25 Points as a summation of guiding principles calculated to lure the large German working class into his net as a basis for his organization...He stated correctly that an army of generals is useless in battle, as the foot soldiers must fight, kill and die before any general can take credit...It is also clear that he believed in only one real general, and the remainder of the army were only in place to follow his orders...

Hitler's discussion on the power of speech left me scratching my head until I remembered the time-frame in which he wrote his thesis...His loud, vindictive harangues were part of the vehicle which landed him in prison where these writings were assembled...His chapter detailing the strength of the spoken word over the weakness of the printed media would not become a moot point until his regime's takeover when dissenting newspapers, writers and publishers were liquidated, and his were the only words dared spoken aloud...

He wrote here of the usual Jew/Marxist/Capitalist controlled newspapers whose lies were shattered by the richly intoned truth when he began to speak (pardon my sarcasm)...He also mentioned in passing that the best time to force his hate message into the empty heads in the beer halls was after dark, when the mouth-breathers were well lubricated with the local Bavarian joy juice...He said that the same word-for-word speeches he used in mid-morning or afternoons were met by cold silence from the mostly sober ditch-digging crowds...

He attributed his more favorable evening reception by the masses in this way:

"A man of dominating force, a man who has the character of an apostle, and a man who is an outstanding speaker will be the one who succeeds in winning over men whose resistance has already been weakened. Their resistance is more easily overcome than those who are still in full possession of their force of will and their intellectual strength."

What he neglected to mention was the fact that the "outstanding speaker" was still cold sober (Hitler did not drink), and the men in the audience, having traded in their pay envelopes for an equal amount of alcohol were ready to agree with anyone promising more freedom, more money and mostly more beer...The next morning as the antagonist newspapers printed their opposing opinions, his listeners of the previous evening were too hungover and bleary-eyed to suffer through reading it...

Naturally after he assumed his totalitarian power, his voice and the mimicry of his stooges became the only voices heard as German citizens began to notice that those who spoke up in opposition were suddenly carted away to the concentration camps for "re-education"...And formerly busy newspaper publishers printing alternate views were reduced to smoldering ashes...

However, Hitler's point in this chapter was in representing how he best got his opinions out to the people whose support he sought...He wanted massive backing by large numbers of souls...To do this, he had to know his audience, and talk at their level on subjects of primary interest to them...In this aspect he was successful, and he knew why and how to expand that success...

After his assumption of total power in Germany, he also knew that he was not the only forceful speaker with powers of persuasion...Since keeping power is often much harder than acquiring it, he began in 1933 to eliminate not only the freedom of speech in Germany, but the freedom to listen to foreign broadcasts and read foreign news reports, or any other sources which were contradictory to his goals...

In the few years prior to Hitler's imprisonment resulting from his failed Beer Hall Putsch, the Weimar Republic was splintered politically by several parties all wanting dominance, but none having the majority needed to gain control...The largest were the democracy and religion based parties which usually formed a coalition to push through their own agendas...The loudest, and most boisterous were the Communists and the National Socialists, or Nazis, who each saw the other as their biggest threat to attaining more power...

The author's discussion of struggle against the "Red Front" is more a how-to article in either attaining or defeating control of a scheduled rally or meeting...He talked of attending meetings of the mainstream "privileged class" parties and dismissing them as incapable of stirring enough emotion to increase or even keep their own numbers...

But one thing did impress him, and that was the symbolism used by the Communists in their red flags, red armbands and red flowers displayed as they marched and demonstrated in the streets...He saw how this could draw the curious into the crowds, who saw it as a sign of power...He also noted that the more mainstream parties had no symbolic flag, and therefore no rallying point for new converts...

He noted there were several submissions for his party's own flag, but there were no designs which pleased him...He then designed his own black, white and red banner complete with swastika, which he ramrodded through to acceptance...He said it was an instant success as female party members began sewing flags together, and he ordered armbands for everyone...

At this point he began waxing nostalgic as he recalled the head-cracking good times at the meetings where a few dozen of his storm troop goons held off several hundred Marxists...He fondly recalled both Emil Maurice, who served as the first SA commander, and Rudolf Hess, his prison secretary and later Deputy Fuehrer, both of whom were instrumental in maintaining order...[It is thought by this reviewer that his memory of the huge numerical odds of storm troops vs. Marxists may have been slightly skewed to make his boys appear more fearsome than they actually were]...

Also at this early date, despite his self-assumed clairvoyant powers, he did not yet know of his future betrayal by the single-browed Hess after the outbreak of WWII, in which he flew to Scotland in one of the Luftwaffe fighters with an unauthorized peace plea, nor of Maurice's future romantic entanglements with Hitler's niece/ersatz paramour, Geli Raubal...Perhaps at this point his foresight was more closely concentrated on political events, rather than personal duplicities...

To digress for just a paragraph, little hard evidence exists even 80 years after Geli Raubal's death, but much speculation has been written of surrounding her alleged suicide...Today historians almost universally believe that Hitler, if he did not participate personally in her death, almost certainly agreed to its necessity...Heinrich Muller, later Chief of the Gestapo, was said to have been the first Munich policeman at the scene of her death...Key witnesses were conveniently eliminated during the Night of the Long Knives...

Herr Hitler has referred several times in this book to the importance of a great cause being directed by just one man, and not a committee, certainly not a democracy...In his next chapter he outlines his reasons why Germany can only move forward with one man in control, presumably himself...He illustrates in this quote:

"However, the best proof of a people's strength and of its being fated to survive is the fact that one day, Fate grants it the brilliant man who can fulfill their long held desire. It may be the release from some long held oppression, elimination of bitter distress, or contentment of the people's soul which has become restless from their insecurity."

...or, if this reviewer may add from retrospect, it may signal the beginning of a calamity of incalculable harm to nations and humanity, and can only be seen as a weakness in that people which allowed it...In such a case, Fate didn't take a liking to that nation at all...

Hitler's strong belief in fate and destiny is seen throughout this chapter as he talks of a leader being selected by unseen forces to bring Germany to the forefront of nations...He speaks constantly in the third person of the strong, brilliant man whose divinely-inspired will must rise to guide his "race" to the victory of which it was robbed in the previous war...Naturally that one man can only be him...

He spoke of the many various groups and movements started in Germany with the same vague goal in mind, and told of his belief that combining them in the quest for strength only weakens them as they have no common leader...He talked of Nature pitting these groups against one another, while favoring the one on the surest path to victory...It's clear he inferred that the favored one was Nazism and Adolf Hitler...

Hitler also describes in this chapter a personality which he says often leads the unsuccessful movements to their own failures:

"It originates in the sorry mixture of envy, jealousy, ambition and a desire to take what belongs to others. This kind of ambition is unfortunately often found in individual members of the human race"

If the German Workers Party and the German nation had been able to recognize the above traits in Hitler, they and the world around them might have been spared the misery and destruction which befell them...Instead he drew in others of his ilk, such as the sexual pervert and anti-Semitic publisher, Julius Streicher, along with the membership of Streicher's German Socialist Party, saying this was the honorable way for Streicher to dissolve his party...

The other "racialist" parties which refused to capitulate to the Nazis were accused here by Hitler of stealing his platforms and policies, and using them as their own...But he said the resulting worker party coalitions failed to make the weaker parties stronger, only draining the existing strength from the stronger ones, while his retained its strength by staying pure...The author arrogantly closed his chapter championing self-sufficiency with this quote:

"Above all, the new race-based state will never be created by the compromising indecisiveness of a racialist worker-coalition, but only by the iron will of a single movement that has fought its way through all that opposed it"

I'm reminded here that Hitler wrote these words from his prison cell following the failure of his party's coup against the Weimar Republic...After his capture by authorities he was imprisoned  along with his iron will and those stalwart souls who stood with him in unity...

In another chapter, this one titled to lure the reader into thinking it a dissertation on the need and assembly of his corps of bodyguards, Hitler spends pages of brain-wearying words explaining how the Jew/Bolshevik/privileged-class member created the 1918 Revolution, then couldn't hold it against the returning army veterans without a plan of deceit...His twisted mind then linked the formation of the Weimar Reichswehr into being the creation of the Jews who turned it against his own Storm Troops, as he had begun to refer to his bodyguards...

He noted that other political entities had begun to recruit their own paramilitary divisions from what was known then as the Freicorps, largely drawn from restless, unemployed war veterans...Most of these were somewhat understandably disheartened to come home in defeat to find only unemployment and frustrated anger...Some even felt entitled to engage freely in violence and criminal behavior...

Seizing on this the Nazis and other political factions began recruiting them as enforcers of their particular governing tenets...In defense of his own hooligans, Hitler said they were a cut above the other thugs opposed to them, since they were thoroughly indoctrinated with Nazi idealism, and adhered to their code of ethics...To be sure, they were devoted little ruffians, willing to rough up anyone who did not agree with their adored leader...

Both Hitler and his followers found the true worth of each other's value when all bets were finally down and the cards were on the table the evening of November 8, 1923...The archives of a British newspaper, The Guardian, reported that Hitler, along with General Ludendorff and the Nazi faithful, marched in on a meeting in Munich's Burgerbrau Keller and announced:

"Today begins the national revolution, which is solely directed against the Berlin Jewish Government." 

After firing his revolver into the ceiling for attention, and nominating himself as the head of a provisional government, he continued:

"The task of the Provisional Government is to begin the march against the den of iniquity in Berlin. Tomorrow there will either be a National Government in Germany or we shall be dead."

As it turned out, when tomorrow dawned, sixteen of his faithful followers were dead, and an injured Hitler was on the run just like any other criminal...William Shirer, telling of the event in his book, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," reported that the origin of the first shot, whether from one of Hitler's band or a policeman in the opposing force, was never determined, but the very first to rise and run, before the smoke or noise had dissipated, was Adolf Hitler...

It was reported later he was wounded, and feeling this added to his persona as a revolutionary, he did not make it public that he had only dislocated a shoulder when diving for the ground in fear of being shot...His route to safety led him to the home of the ridiculously named and self-important socialite, Putzi Hanfstaengl, where, two days later, hiding behind Hanfstaengl's wife and sister, Hitler surrendered to arrest...

The only members of the rebellious group who did not duck for cover or run away turned out to be the only professional soldiers present, General Erich Ludendorff, and his adjutant, Major Streck...Shirer reported that both remained calm, marching with heads erect straight into the line of firing policemen, where they turned to find themselves alone and unharmed by the gunfire...Both were arrested, and after their acquittal at trial, Ludendorff condemned the empty courage of both the Nazis and the Army for not following his leadership...He vowed he would never again recognize a German officer, nor wear an officer's uniform...

Hitler's memory was apparently affected by the traumatic events as his recollections did not match those of reporters, nor of eyewitnesses, including members of his Nazi cohorts who were present with him at the time of the incident...

Discussing the unique appearance and training of the SA, and its readiness as a military arm, may have been the kernel of the ill-fated Ernst Rohm's idea to take over as commander of the Reichswehr by integrating it with his brown-shirted SA...In his discussion thereof, Hitler said in his description of the SA:

"If the German nation is given six million athletically-trained bodies, all of which are excited with a fanatical love for their country and all of them trained to the highest pitch of aggressive spirit, then a national state will have the ability to create an army in less than two years if necessary"

In Rohm's defense, it might be said that the homosexual thug may have become enraptured reading of the "athletically-trained bodies" "excited with a fanatical love," and misinterpreted Hitler's intention...But, no matter, as it became a moot point in 1934 when Rohm was executed on the order of his friend, Adolf Hitler, to whom he was loyal to his dying breath...Left to speculation is the question of whether Hitler would have also consigned his idol, Frederick the Great, to the same fate as punishment for the same crime...

Hitler waxed poetic at describing the effectiveness of the training of his storm troops, telling of the Reds being "scattered with bloody heads" during parades in Munich and Coburg...But he was saddened by the fact his beloved SA was disbanded, and his party forced into dissolution after his conviction for treason...He ended this chapter trying to see the bright side of his failed coup by saying it put his movement on a different path to the same goal...

Again, in a new chapter, Hitler let his old paranoia run unfettered as he accused his favorite nemesis of orchestrating a plot during the First World War to set the Prussians of Northern Germany against the Bavarians of Southern Germany...He accused the Jews of stirring up thoughts of Federalism, and separating the states by planting the seeds of rumor in Bavaria that the Prussians in Berlin were responsible for the capitulation of Germany in the war, and the resulting formation of the Weimar Republic...

Of course the ever elusive Jews were always just out of reach as they gleefully gobbled up the profits from an unjust war forced upon the German people, and its bloody aftermath in the hated Weimar Republic...It has always amazed me how, if Hitler could know of these dastardly plans, he could never call any of the culprits by name, or provide any specific evidentiary trail...It was always a vague shadow group who, in his studied opinion, just had to be Jewish...

He drew others into his imaginary cabal as he further accused the Jews of taking the heat off themselves by somehow convincing the Catholics to raise the public specter of Ultramontanism, thus alarming the Protestants that their influence would dwindle...To give credit where due, Hitler showed some scholastic ability when he described the state/nation relationship as it applies to federalism, centralized republics and monarchies, but that could be the subject of a separate article...

However, all Hitler's arguments become lost in the darkness as he reveals the aim of National Socialism to create a totalitarian state...In 1934 new law abolished the existence of the sovereign states he once championed, and replaced them with administrative districts (Gaue) governed by mini-dictators (Gauleiters) responsible only to him...He even admits that individual liberties and states' rights will be taken away, but justifies this with the thought that all citizens will see this as necessary in making a greater nation...

In this same paragraph, I also note what I believe to be a Freudian slip as he refers to the resulting state as an "Empire," twice...Sigmund Freud, born into a Jewish family in Austria, would have almost certainly delighted in a chance to psychoanalyze Hitler's empirical dreams, especially in regard to Freud's studies of the death drive, but wisely fled the regime before making that first appointment...

Hitler next took another dip in the propaganda pool, this time in comparison with recruitment of new converts...He claimed personal responsibility for all party propaganda from the time of his initial membership, and of course claimed credit for any success in adding new members...In this chapter his focus is on the effectiveness of propaganda as a tool in attracting followers...

He defines a "follower" as one who accepts the party doctrine and its principles...A "member" is defined as someone who will actively work to spread that doctrine as gospel, without becoming a hindrance to the party...He describes the "propagandist" as one who must try to compel all people to accept the doctrine, while the "organizer" selects the best (read as "most rabidly convinced") from the followers to become members...

At the time of his writing, Hitler's plans call for a small organization, only large enough to execute the movement's plan...This is in direct contradiction to the later events in which a very large bureaucracy was employed to carry out his orders...This bloated government, the increase in size of the military and paramilitary organizations, all added to the burgeoning re-armament program resulted in an artificial reduction in unemployment figures from 6 million in January 1933 to 302,000 in 1939 out of a population of 70 million...

All this was paid for from confiscated property and businesses, deficit spending and outright theft from victims of pogroms launched against Jews...The Reich Minister of Economics, Hjalmar Schracht, introduced Mefo Bills, a form of government sponsored fraud, as payment to business owners who gave up control of their companies under the Nazi-administered Four Year Plan...

Equally contradictory is his statement that the party must limit membership to only essential numbers after achieving success...In later years, almost every German citizen felt compelled to become a badge-carrying (and dues paying) member for fear of criticism and persecution for non-membership...

As Hitler addresses the issue of trade unions in a new chapter, he begins on a note of sympathy and solidarity with the working man, saying he understands the need of the fight for living wages...In his attempt to define a role for trade unions in his Nazi utopia, he says unions do not represent a class of people, but only identify different occupations...He adds that his movement seeks a "class-free society" only recognizing two groups - citizens and subjects...

Since his "class-free society" seems taken directly from the Marxist mantra, he attempts to polarize them by saying the Marxists use the unions as a tool by organizing workers to fight against all other forms of government...Predictably, he goes on to say their true goal is to enslave free nations in a Jewish super-state...

He then points out that unions organized under the National Socialist banner would only work to increase the safety of the national economy, thereby increasing its power...He points out that employees and employers alike would be trustees of the national economy...In my own view, this points to his demand that business owners and workers must yield to his authority, having no other purpose than to serve the state...

At this point, Hitler recognized that his party did not have the funds to openly compete with established unions, and he knew of no one with the talents necessary to build a new union which could challenge the others for members and power...He recommended at that time that a wait-and-see strategy was best, hoping for a rising star to present himself for the role...

After assumption of power in 1933, such an opportunity arose with the formation of the German Labor Front under the direction of the fanatical and alcoholic Nazi, Robert Ley...The German Labor Front, or DAF, abolished all other trade unions and worker representatives, making itself responsible for all labor needed in the Reich, including slave labor...

Ley's increasing public drunkenness and outrageous outbursts embarrassed the Nazi government, and he was eventually removed from authority, his offices being absorbed by Armaments Minister, Fritz Todt, then Albert Speer...After the end of WWII, Ley strangled himself to death in his cell while awaiting trial in an Allied prison on four counts of war crimes...

Hitler's treatise on foreign policy boils down to one thing - foreign countries only exist to be conquered and plundered...If the strength isn't sufficient to do so, then make an alliance with another country and double-team them...He had previously said his first choice would be an alliance with Great Britain against the Soviet Union...Failing that, he could accept Russia as a partner against England...

In his chapter covering alliances, he underscores those same choices again...Joe Stalin took the bait in 1939, and paid the price...Neville Chamberlain lost his bet with Der Fuehrer also, and was replaced by the one man in England who had consistently opposed the appeasement of the Nazi war lord, Winston Churchill, taking the job scant hours before the invasion of France...

Hitler claims to have analyzed the world situation from his prison cell, and determined that Germany's best bets for an alliance aimed at increasing territory were England and Italy...But he offered no empirical data to support his position, leaving this reviewer to suggest his "analysis" was mostly guesswork based on his long-standing admiration of British success in foreign relations, and his swelling affection for Benito Mussolini and his Fascist advances...

From here his arguments deteriorate into the customary indictments against the Jews who, as usual, work behind the scenes to distract the German people, and drive a wedge between Germany and its potential allies...The remainder of this chapter deals with breaking the supposed bondage in which the Jews hold the British will hostage...

In his next to last chapter, Hitler exposes his own plan for the expansion of German territory at the expense of his largest rival...Knowing the fight he would have invading in any direction, he chose the east believing the land was not only more fertile and rich with minerals, but that the Slavic people would be easier to kill, and less mourned by a shocked watching world...

He states flatly that the Soviet Union was doomed the moment it allowed a takeover by Bolsheviks, ousting the upper ruling classes which he said stemmed from a Germanic nucleus...His belief was that the Russian monarchist state only existed so long by the intelligent leadership from the Romanovs, and their successors, the Holstein-Gottorps...

His conclusion that communism, or bolshevism as he termed it, was a Jewish scheme likely originated from the knowledge that Karl Marx had Jewish ancestors even though he was an ethnic German, born in Trier, a pleasant city in the Moselle Valley where this reviewer spent many off-duty hours while stationed there with the USAF...His thought at that time was that slow-witted Russians would welcome his assistance in shedding the yoke of Marxism, after which the Germans could easily take the resources-rich lands they coveted...

In his few coherent moments, Hitler did manage to analyze a possible Germany/Russia alliance, saying it would likely touch off another world war...His fears were that any retaliation from other powers, no matter which way Germans led an attack, would come against Germany first as Russia is already insulated against attack by climate and great distances...He would have been wise to remember that as later events unfolded...

He also correctly foresaw that Russia did not have the manufacturing capacity to quickly gear up in war production...But he was mistaken in thinking they could never manufacture anything more advanced than rudimentary automobiles...Their WWII tank and munitions production proved overwhelming to Axis forces in later years...

This quote:

"Even if a miracle should happen and combat under these conditions did not end with the utter destruction of Germany, the final result would still mean we had been bled white. Afterwards, Germany would be the same as she was before, and we would remain surrounded by large military states - there would have been absolutely no change in conditions at all."

...was chillingly accurate...As history shows, Germany's size after WWII remained roughly the same as when he took power, while its resources and humanity had indeed been "bled white"...It was not only surrounded by "large military states," it was occupied by them...For once, he should have listened to his own advice...

He also correctly explained that just because an alliance was forged between Germany and Russia, it does not mean there would be no war between the two...He warned that such a treaty would probably exist on paper only, a prediction which turned out to be deadly accurate as the Molotov/Ribbentrop Pact was quickly breached when German forces attacked Russia soon after decimating Poland at the outset of the Second World War...He further warned:

"An alliance that is not ultimately about war is foolish and worthless. Alliances are made for the purpose of battle. Even though the friction is not apparent when the alliance is formed, war is the fundamental motivation and the expected result."

I join the many other students of Nazi aggression who have said he wrote categorically of his war plans fifteen years before they were implemented only to have them ignored by a clueless world...Hitler went on to detail the reasons why a German/Russian treaty could never work; Stalin and Molotov would have been well advised to read a copy of the book before signing any contracts with him...

In his final chapter, Herr Hitler makes the attempt to justify his future aggression as self defense by invoking the words of Carl von Clausewitz, a prodigious military thinker whose works were often misinterpreted because of incomplete analysis...His praise for the towering thoughts of Clausewitz as he wrote of the high honor in dying for a cause, seems to underscore the later words of Captain B.H. Liddell Hart who warned against the literal metaphrasing of the abstract thoughts penned by Clausewitz...It is almost certain that Clausewitz would have approved of living to continue the fight for one's beliefs...

Hitler's aim in this final chapter was his call for aggression in the name of self defense against what he would always refer to as "the stab in the back," demanding revenge and reparations for Germany's loss of power and territory resulting from the Treaty of Versailles, the Ruhr Occupation and the Treaty of Locarno...He says the best chance for this occurred in the spring of 1923 when the French occupied the Ruhr Valley...

But Hitler only uses these references as reinforcement for his idea of re-fighting the First World War until it ends in a manner befitting his own ranking of Germany's place in the family of nations...Such a family could only find its destiny in a branchless tree as the last twig fell having no shelter from other branches...Adolf Hitler was a man born into the defeat of his own dysfunctional family, a man who lived his entire life in search of victory by gathering the other emotional cripples he found who sought to cure their ills by blaming a convenient grouping of commonly hated people...Victory stood before him his entire life beckoning him to build on its shoulders, but instead he chose to tear down what others had built in the hope that his view would improve when he could no longer see the happiness of others in the distance...

Truckman's conclusions from having read and reviewed Mein Kampf will be posted in a follow-up article...

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Taking a bullet for my readers...

Click here for Part II...

Click here for Conclusions...

The difference between insanity and criminal insanity lies in the ability of the criminally insane to disregard (consciously or not) the laws of humanity, and commit atrocious acts of violence and destruction...It has been known and hammered home to the surviving world that Adolf Hitler, the mad leader of Nazi Germany, was a transgressor against decency of the first order, but in attempting to understand and prevent future outbreaks of his particular psychosis, his own words must be read and analyzed...

Until recently his diatribe against the civilized world was held from publication by an ironic twist of law, in which the estate of this lawless leader was protected by international copyright from publication of "Mein Kampf"...Since 70 years have now passed since his  none-too-soon death, his estate can no longer lay claim to royalties as his printed ramblings have passed into the public domain...

Besides being a raving lunatic with sporadic moments of lucidity, he could never have risen to power and brought on a worldwide conflict if it weren't for the incredible ineptness of the other world leaders of his time added to the collusion of a gathering of evil souls, together with a docile populace willing to look the other way...I've made an informal study of Europe under Nazi influence for many years, and the chain of events that brought it all together is astounding...

I have a hard time believing that Hitler actually thought Jews could be associated as a group with both the capitalist and the Marxist concepts; the idea defies logic, but then his mind defied ratiocination as we know it...I think he instead used his vocal powers of persuasion to convince the German public that a commonly hated minority (practitioners of the Jewish religion) was somehow pulling the strings on the two economic theories (capitalism and communism) most in contention with his own brand of fascism (national socialism)...

He also learned by experience he could juggle the allegiances of opposing camps, convincing all that the gains of each were his primary interests...William Manchester illustrated this in his book chronicling the Krupp industrial dynasty as secret meetings were arranged with members of industrialist families including Krupp and Thyssen, the directorship of the IG Farben conglomerate plus more than a dozen others who pledged their political, and more importantly at the time, their financial support shortly after Hitler's appointment as Chancellor...

At the same time his later easily discarded stooges such as Gregor Strasser, Hjalmar Schacht and Franz von Papen manipulated other doubters of Hitler's sincerity from the financial sector and the various squabbling political entities of the time to give Hitler's regime a fair chance to prove itself...Even the working class including its communist element was mollified by the high-ranking presence of the homosexual, low-brow thug, Ernst Rohm, who was allowed to continue to espouse his beliefs in socialist principles until Hitler ordered his murder...

Hitler's talents included playing on the common threads binding all these polar opposites together, their greed for satisfaction of their own goals, added to their vanity in their belief that they could always out-think and out-muscle the Nazi machine...Even an otherwise knowing and ruthless politician like Joseph Stalin, and well-meaning but clueless leaders such as Neville Chamberlain were fooled into thinking Hitler's promises were legitimate as long as their own interests were served...

Looking back at the procession of events, Hitler's most glaring error was his hesitancy to remove, by force if necessary, members of the German military, many of whom secretly, or openly conspired to ignore, redirect, halt and even reverse his decisions made as self-appointed Commander-in-Chief...The highest ranking of these was Hermann Goering, who went from a ruthless henchman willing to join any criminal activity in support of Nazism, to a bloated, drug-addled, self-serving fop unable to direct the all important Luftwaffe at the war's most crucial point...

If Hitler had instilled the same fear in his own military that he managed to hatch in the German governing bodies in which members learned the concept of "working toward the Fuehrer" or else, he might have forestalled his failure a little longer at the expense of millions more lives...Instead he trusted their oath of obedience as soldiers, and more importantly to him personally, to maintain their unflagging loyalty to him while he was willing at any time to betray any of them...

And all the while, the evidence of Hitler's true aims were on display in his own words in his masterpiece of hate and deception, Mein Kampf...They had all certainly been made aware of Der Fuehrer's book, but it's doubtful whether any actually read and understood its meaning, and more likely dismissed it unread having heard of its disjointed ramblings and claims of unproven, illogical theories as truth...Hitler's ideological soulmate, Benito Mussolini, said that for him the book was unreadable, and a collection of "little more than commonplace clichés"...

Truckman, recognizing his benevolent duty to his loyal readership, and in his lifelong effort to understand how an entire nation could be persuaded to ignore logic and common sense long enough to allow an obvious lunatic and even convicted criminal to gain and maintain control of its soul, has taken it on himself to not only purchase, but actually read this putrid assemblage of hate, loathing, intolerance and fear...The attempt will now be made to bring some semblance of order to this prima facie evidence concerning the lunacy of the spawn of Herr Schicklgruber...

I chose the Michael Ford translation mostly because it is said to be unabridged, unlike other translations which remove objectionable words and phrases...I cannot attest to his accuracy due to my failure to take better linguistic advantage of my years spent in Germany, but regardless of my unfamiliarity with the Teutonic tongue I will take my shortcoming into account in my review...

Mr. Ford has taken great pains in his introductory statements to assure his readers that his is the most faithful and accurate of all translations, and his explanation of the process he and his team used in choices of words tells me he at least made the effort for exactitude in determining Hitler's true meaning...Naturally all translations, regardless of intent, can be colored by interpretation, and this will be kept in mind...

Hitler's opening words are an example of his unwillingness to bargain in reaching his goals...He stated immediately that he wanted a strong Germany, but for ethnic Germans only, excluding all "lesser" forms of life and underlining his contempt and disregard for any contribution to the human cause made by non-Germans...This unreasoning dismissal is another of the sure signs of insanity as logic plays no part in his acceptance of the validity of his own hatred of other ethnic groups simply because they are not "his people"...

He saw the interference of foreigners everywhere in what he believed an attempt to dilute Germanic blood...At this point, I understand the readers' common complaints of his rambling as he tries to connect one unfounded anecdote to the next to support his theories of conspiracy by a collusion of mysterious power figures and plot hatchers...His mind jumps from religion to politics to anarchists to the wealthy as he attempts to hold the thread of his thesis together...

However disconnected his thought processes were, I'm beginning to understand how he and his lackeys were drawn toward one another...The post-WWI era in Germany was rife with disgruntled, unhappy people (especially men) who thought their nation's blood had been sold too cheaply...Being unwilling to rebuild their economy based on successful models, they found it easier to name a fall guy and then just hope things fell into place...

All the unhappy souls needed was someone at the top to issue orders who could accept the shifting blame when this plan went awry...Someone longing to be looked up to in adulation...Someone whose initial success could be made to appear as genius even as its foundation crumbled...Someone willing to take the wealth of the freshly dead, and give it the appearance of newly minted coin...Someone like Adolf Hitler...

Hitler's only "genius" lay in his ability to consistently blame failure on convenient targets, telling wealthy businessmen he would protect their treasure from the greedy workers, convincing the Catholics their greatest enemies were the Protestants...He swore to the working class he would improve their lives at the expense of the wealthy...The Marxists and the Monarchists were promised equal voices in government, and when none of his vows were fulfilled, it was always the unvoiced Jews who took the blame...

But at the same time, he could take what he made to appear evil in the words of others, and make it look beneficial when he employed it as his own idea...This quote from his own words as he describes the Social Democrat strategy illustrates the point:

"They are successful in creating the impression that giving-in is the only way to win peace and quiet from them while they quietly, cautiously, but unerringly conquer one position after another, either by quiet extortion or by actual theft when the public attention is on other things. The public is distracted and either unwilling to be interrupted or they consider the situation too small to worry about and believe it is not worth provoking the angry foe again."

If this sounds familiar, it's because he used the exact method a decade later in expanding Germany's borders to reclaim the Saar basin and the Rhineland, followed by the annexation and occupation of Austria, the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia...Hitler also manages to blur the lines between distinct political entities, saying Social Democrats were the same as Marxists, as they demanded the "masses" read only "Red" pamphlets and books, and attend only "Red" meetings...

He looked on the "masses" as not much more than cattle, saying they are drawn to strength and security, not freedom...Hitler condemned Social Democracy's demands that only "Red" sources be used for educational enlightenment, calling it a "doctrine of intolerance," then employed the same approach through his Propaganda Ministry...

In the same manner in which he failed to include detailed recollections of his youth as we find in many autobiographies, he also described his feelings about his sudden realization that all the pimps, prostitutes and assorted flesh peddlers in Vienna's Leopoldstadt community were all Jews, in his mind the same as the Social Democrats...

The vagary of Hitler's complaints against society and its attending government stands out as he presents no substance to reinforce his rants...Any evidence offered by Hitler in support of his extremist views is subjective in nature, and anecdotal only...There is nothing of empirical data, nor anything with evidentiary value...

Readers wanting Hitler seen in a filtered light might even use his nebulous style to cast him as a seer into the future...Illustrating this point we can use his words here from his third chapter:

"In the course of a few weeks, the press could have conjured up names out of nothing and attach the incredible hopes of the public to them. Suddenly they would become more popular than a really important man may ever enjoy in a lifetime. These were names which no one had even heard of a month before."

A modern reader, searching for a way to attach some hidden ability to his persona, might see this as a prediction of the rise to power of Barack Obama...But this only indicates that in his abstract literary wanderings, he may seem to strike a nugget, when it was clearly posturing for his adoring audience, and not an omen of great foresight...

I'll cite one more instance of this, also from his third chapter, in which the reader can note the vagueness of his phrasing, and how it could be applied to many players in the world's dramas:

"No one who cannot learn from history should imagine himself as a political leader. He is actually a shallow and usually very conceited simpleton, and all the goodwill in the world does not excuse his deficiencies."

Hitler was no fortuneteller with mystic powers, and although the above paragraph might remind some readers of a media characterization of Donald Trump, later readers will certainly find similar comparisons with future newsmakers...Hitler was a man who, like previous forecaster Michel de Nostradame, used abstract phrases which can be interpreted later to fit a persona who rises to cast a shadow on history, including Hitler himself...

Hitler's idea of a strong, central dictatorship takes form in his third chapter as he condemns the Austrian Parliament for its desertion of responsibility in its own passage of self-serving laws...He foreshadows his own castration of the German Reichstag a decade later, by saying that a true statesman (himself, we suppose) must ignore the wishes of the citizens, and bring his own vision of what is right and proper to fruition...

I've found it written by many analysts of history (notably John Toland and William Shirer) that Hitler stated very clearly in his book what his intentions were as he gained power, and noted precisely the means by which he would realize his aims...I've found I concur with those writers as time and again Hitler has detailed not only his motives, but his plans...

Representing himself as a nationalist above all, he gave no credit for invention nor industrial expansion to individual or local initiative, stating in his fourth chapter that these successes only exist to further evidence of the strength of the state, and were never intended as economic incentive for any purpose...I also note that he assigned no blame to government policies for any failed projects, and in later life was quick to fault many individuals and groups for the failure of his directives...

He began to talk here of the "living space" (or lebensraum) needed by his envisioned expanding German population, saying it would never be had by "peaceful economic conquest," but instead must be taken from smaller, inferior nations who should be considered as targets of natural selection...He didn't propose colonization as a means of gaining territory, saying far-flung colonies are difficult in which to maintain order as well as possession...

His idea was to proceed directly east into Russia, and take the rich natural resources needed for Germany's future...He said an alliance with England would make such a conquest easier, but failing that, an alliance with Russia could facilitate taking England's colonies as an alternative...I further note his shortsightedness in not foreseeing that a third alliance could be made against Germany...

His strategic myopia did not extend to his domestic political enemies...He describes needing the support of the "masses," and suggests lumping all the other political entities as a single enemy to keep the attention of the people focused where he wanted it...He saw the German commoners as easily swayed against those who opposed him. and future events showed this theory correct, but without granting the public a voice in their own governance...

As Hitler moved on to his overview of the First World War, he speaks of the behind-the-scenes political intrigue as if he was aware of it as a soldier in the trenches...He tells of knowing the true origin of policy failure, and its inevitable effect on Germany's fate, without talking of the impossibility of such clear analysis by a corporal limited to a small corner of the war...Apparently his sycophant followers failed to see the incongruity of his statements...

They didn't even see the inconsistency between his outright lie concerning his entry into the Bavarian Infantry, and their own knowledge of the deliberateness of government agencies and its effect on speedy service...He mentioned petitioning Bavarian King Ludwig III with his request to join a Bavarian Infantry regiment...This was done through channels by mail, and not by direct contact with royalty...He said he received his answer in the mail the very next day...Even his simpering toadies might have questioned that one, knowing the inefficiencies inherent with a state-run mail delivery service...

The remainder of Hitler's babbling word-herding concerning his military service amounts to a boring rehash of his nonsensical telling of the secret Jewish plot to enslave the world...This extends through his chapters referring to War Propaganda and the 1918 German Revolution...However, two nuggets can be plucked from his mental wilderness at this time...

One, he describes how his own future holocaust in which he planned to rid the world (or at least the corner within his reach) of the "Jewish plague" could never be successful...He clearly stated that the beliefs of the persecuted can never be destroyed entirely, and predicted the persecuted would only gain strength and numbers in a protracted struggle...Naturally his narrow focus centered on suggesting his own movement as the "persecuted" since they had yet to gain significant power...

And two, his own assessment of propaganda was that its value only existed as a means, and never as a stand-alone end product...With this in mind, the Nazi propaganda machine was an abject failure as a means since the Jewish population has regenerated even with national prominence, the Soviet Union survived the Nazi killing machine (although it predictably fell victim to Capitalism), and those the Nazis deemed inferior and valueless such as East Europeans, homosexuals and the mentally and physically impaired, have gained independence, recognition and political power...The only end achieved by Nazi propaganda was the end of Hitler and the Nazis themselves, but not before the reptilian Joseph Goebbels built his own end product, the huge lie-dispensing Propaganda Ministry...[Note: Please read the previously linked article in the knowledge that it was written in 1934 by a Nazi radio broadcaster, and is itself exemplary of propaganda]...

In the chapters in which Hitler describes what he refers to as his "political awakening" and the formation of the fledgling German Workers Party, his writing begins to take on a little substance, naming people and events in place of abstract recitations of theories in which he always attempts to picture himself as the originator...Verifiable experiences are cited such as his being ordered to attend various political meetings, and to report his findings to his army regiment...

As he discusses "Causes of the Collapse," in which he refers only to the collapse of  German society between the demise of his revered hero, Frederick the Great, and his own as yet to be established dictatorship, his focus is again only the assignation of blame upon the Jewish people...In his bid to find some handle by which to grasp his hatred of Jews, he again misidentifies them as a "race," and not a religion...I believe he does this to justify their separation in his own mind from humans...

He attempts to exemplify this by his claim that the "warrior nobility," which he saw as so ably bringing together and holding the German nation, was taken over by the false "financial nobility," which bought its seats at the governing table through marriage, and its attending dowries...He equates these joinings of ruling families with prostitution as he leads into his theory of Jewish flesh peddlers being responsible for the plague of syphilis making its foothold in the German proletariat...

As he attempts to lead his bewildered readers through the fog of his mind, in which only he has the bearings to lead them to his goal, I began to see why he chose such a slow-witted dullard as Rudolf Hess as his stenographer in prison while he dictated his word jungle...Hess was a competent typist who looked on Hitler's dictation as a great revelation of truth, faithfully transcribing his words to paper in his belief he was being shown the secrets of the universe...The unibrowed Hess became one of Hitler's earliest converts to his gathering of toadies hypnotized by his black light...

Any other secretary taking down his dictation might have interrupted innumerable times calling for clarification of disconnected and unreasoned thoughts before committing them to paper...Even a fourteenth century brain such as the one rattling in Hess' head should have questioned whether Hitler's misogyny would have been palatable to readers whom he hoped to see gathered in his following herd...

Hitler demonstrated in this chapter his belief that women only exist as pleasant adornment, and only serve to satisfy a man's lust when it inevitably surfaces...He claimed that man has a true nature in which his sexual desires must be dealt with occasionally, and a woman's role in this is only passive as she only serves to maintain an orderly home for the family...This was part of Hitler's argument for lowering the age of consent for marriage, so that men would have less need to visit prostitutes before marriage, thereby reducing their exposure to syphilis...

His rating of women's worth was later demonstrated when he condoned the encouragement of philandery among his SS stalwarts as they attempted to breed their way to victory by fathering as many children among their wives, mistresses and casual acquaintances as was humanly possible...Hitler, by adding prostitutes to his list of other destroyers of his perfect world such as the conniving financiers and the unknowing admissions boards of schools that failed to see his talent, seems to look at the fields he cannot conquer in romance, business and art as populated with demons bent on denying success to the truly deserving - such as himself...

Hitler's chapter titled "People and Race" launches into the subject his fevered mind has been straining to attack...And time after time he manages to disprove his own theories of superiority/inferiority as based on race...One paragraph:

"The great civilizations of the past have all been destroyed simply because the original creative race died out as a result of pollution of their blood lines."

...is disproven by Hitler himself in his own words...Assuming for a moment that his premise of a "superior race" has any validity at all, it falls apart when he mentions all the "great races" which disappeared as conquering people began to mix hereditarily with those whom they subjugated...He failed to realize that had there been a superior race, it would have strengthened the inferior rather than being destroyed by the lesser...

Even if his notional racial theory had any foundation, it would again be discredited by the very fact that his "pure Aryan race" was based on poor moral character which couldn't even identify and maintain its own "purity"...His "pure Aryan" would have been bred out of existence hundreds of generations ago...

Surely Hitler himself had none of the physical characteristics by which he identified his imaginary Aryans - the strong jawline, wavy blond hair, towering stature...He was short, stooped and with the straight dark hair seen in the Balkan, Slavic and Russian people he so despised...His chin was prominent and pointed, a feature he attempted to hide in photographs by clenching his jaw while casting his face downward and gazing upward with his sunken eyes...

His fantastic conjurings of "Jewry" as a race go so far as to accuse them of inventing their religion as a cover for their sinister plan of infiltrating other nations to strip them of their wealth...His awkward stance claims that "Jewry" is not rooted in religious belief, but rather in financial manipulation...

His final (thank God) chapter in Part 1 discusses his fledgling political party, and its ambitious route to power...Nine years before his ascension to the Teutonic throne, he foresaw that the compliant and willing German "masses" would be more responsive to fanaticism than reasoned thought...He referred to a fanatical standpoint as necessary to winning them over to a cause...

He also told of knowing the importance of a spokesman for a cause being able to speak on different levels to different audiences...This is something he learned well from his Jewish acting and voice coach who rehearsed him to perfection before his own murder at the hands of Hitler's henchmen...

Hitler also defined the role of his future propaganda campaign in this quote:

"We must never forget that the greatest idea which embodies a noble spirit and supreme worth can only be circulated to the public through the smallest of minds. The most important point is not what the inspired vision of the creator of an idea was when he set out to spread his message, but what the announcement of this idea to the masses translated into, how those who spread the message shape its meaning and how successful they are in leading the masses to accept the idea."

One interpretation of this quote could lead a reader into believing he eventually chose the perfect "smallest of minds" in Joseph Goebbels as his Propaganda Minister as few minds could be described as being that narrow...A more likely explanation of Hitler's meaning would factor in his disdain of the average member of the German "masses" and the likelihood of their being led by the nose to the loudest, simplest common denominator of their own unhappiness...By either latter-day analysis, Hitler and his Nazi machine succeeded on this one point...

Hitler again revealed his plan for the future, one he fulfilled a decade later, as he described his party as being strictly anti-parliamentary with only one supreme leader...This foretold of his assuming the powers of a dictator, and in one of his first moves, neutering the Reichstag...

His destruction of any remaining political entities after his successful grab for the reins was warned of here:

"The soul of the masses can be won only if those who lead the movement are determined not merely to carry through the side of our struggle for the good just to achieve their own aims, but they must also be absolutely determined to destroy the enemy that opposes them. When the people see brutal and unceasing attacks upon an opponent, they also see the truth behind their own just cause. If the attack fails to destroy the enemy, if the battle is ended early, before the aggressor has completely dominated the enemy, the people will see uncertainty in their own cause; they will see this incomplete vanquishing as a sign that their side may in fact be unjust."

This can be clearly seen now as his intention to remove beyond mention or memory any political party or cause which opposed his own...He did this by orchestrating the fortuitous timing of the Reichstag Building fire into passage of the Enabling Act which closely followed the last contested election during his regime...

But being unable to foretell his own future and subsequent end with accuracy, he confidently boasted of the presumed success of his party's vestment of concentrated power at the top:

"When dealing with the smallest and greatest of problems, the movement upholds the principle of absolute authority for the leader, who also carries the highest degree of responsibility."

...then after twelve years of his "absolute authority," in which his failure as a military strategist caused his nation to fall to its knees awaiting the final death blow, he shifted all blame to the German people, saying that it was they who had failed him...Finally, showing his abject cowardice in being unwilling to accept his responsibility for his own actions, he announced to those few left at his side that he would commit suicide rather than risk capture while fighting to the death...

The remainder of the first part is spent retelling how his party of neophyte politicians shaped their small gatherings into a growing and progressively more boisterous assemblage of unhappy souls...In his recitation, he was the guiding force that reshaped the group from merely dispirited and directionless wanderers in the political wilderness to a driving unit of political change of which he was the spearhead...

Uncharacteristically, compared to his previous chapters, he provided names and places that he remembered as having significance in this early forming of what would become the Nazi party...He recalled the party's leadership from its beginnings with some benevolence, but not praise as he told of their indecisiveness and complacence in the face of opposition...Founding members Drexler and Harrer are given passing mention as being grateful to Hitler for assuming the duties of leadership for which he says they were poorly equipped...

He also mentions Ernst Pöhner and Wilhelm Frick as having been instrumental in helping the Nazi cause by way of their positions as Munich's Chief of Police and Chief Bailiff respectively...Both were convicted on charges of treason along with Hitler and sentenced to prison...Pöhner later died under mysterious circumstances, and Frick was executed after WWII as a war criminal...

Hitler's often told recounting of being accepted as party member number seven is incorrect...His true member number was 55, but recorded as 555 as membership numbers were inflated in the attempt to gain the perception of a larger size...

It should probably be taken into consideration that the author composed this accounting of how and why his fog-bound mind reached this point as he languished in Landsberg Prison after being convicted of charges of treason...The same location would later hold at various times more than 1,500 convicted Nazi prisoners for their part in carrying out Hitler's murderous schemes...Nearly 300 of those would be put to death on the premises...

Prison can provide a variety of atmospheres for an author, some conducive to repentance and reconstruction of life, others for retribution against perceived transgressors...Hitler's relative comfort at Landsberg may have helped shape the defiant and arrogant tone displayed in his manifesto...His cell was equipped for his convenience with more than merely basic furnishings...It was roomy enough to receive his various visitors, and he was allowed a secretary to compile his thoughts on paper...

No work was required from him, and his health and hygiene needs were addressed...He was allowed a photographer at regular intervals, and a desk and bookshelf were provided for his typist and storage of his reference materials and literary output...These amenities may have helped convince him that his destiny lay not in being remembered as a traitorous prisoner, but as a leader of a political cause...I believe a more traditional and punitive prison experience may not have altered his mindset, but might have changed how he was viewed by his followers, perhaps more as a criminal than a rising and feared star...

Since the author/dictator chose to publish his manifesto in two parts, I think it will be beneficial to do the same with my review...It's not only already longer than any article I've written yet, but my brain hurts from trying to understand how even a rubber-room candidate like Adolf Hitler could find a sense of direction in the roadmap to Hell he drew up in Mein Kampf...

But then he found no shortage of volunteers to join him 90 years ago, and seems to still lure his share of lemmings even today...Part II to come...

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