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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