|
Posts:
6,921
From:
Billings MT.
Registered:
2/11/03
|
|
(16 of 78)
Stalin had a well thumbed...
Jun 7, 2009 9:28 PM
|
copy of Mein Kampf, complete with blue pencil under-lining of Hitler's version of Karl Haushofer's geopolitical "Lebensraum".
However, Stalin (knowing Hitler's eventual intent) really believe that Hitler would never be so reckless as to launch a second front offensive without completely defeating and/or making peace with his western front 's(Britain) only opponent.
Anyone who watched Hitler as he came to power (not elected, but appointed legally), and had read his tome of hate Mein Kampf was not surprised exactly. Perhaps amazed that he actually applied his bizarre ideas only.
--
Happy Trails,
Clint
|
|
|
Posts:
341
From:
Cola SC
Registered:
8/1/08
|
|
(17 of 78)
Re: Summer reading suggestion - Mein Kampf
Jun 8, 2009 12:18 AM
|
you can dowload the pdf onto your pc, if you want. A lot of Mein Kampf is boring. So I skimmed to the sections that were a little more interesting.
--
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
Tony
|
|
|
Posts:
859
Registered:
2/25/04
|
|
(18 of 78)
Re: Summer reading suggestion - Mein Kampf
Jun 8, 2009 2:58 AM
|
To be honest, the majority is ill-written, a mixture of wandering thoughts - some have said the lunatic ravings of a psychopath - that show no great insight or talent other than maybe a peculiarly twisted logic. If people do read the book it is not easy to say that Hitler did not intend being rather unpleasant to the Jews, or that he did not intend to invade Russia.
Purely from a literary point of view this book is truly dreadful. It is even less coherent than the post-structuralism of Ulysses by James Joyce. But at least the latter was chaotic by design. Even the casual reader hoping to find juicy titbits will scan the pages in vain. The only section of the book I remember is Hitler's macabre vision of the German dead of WWI rising from their graves to exact vengeance. Other than that extract there is nothing lurid or sensational to attract the morbid reader, and nothing of interest for anyone else. It is an astonishingly dull and badly written text.
|
|
|
Posts:
6,909
Registered:
8/16/00
|
|
(19 of 78)
Re: Summer reading suggestion - Mein Kampf
Jun 8, 2009 6:09 AM
|
|
Why not Koran? It is more relevant book.
|
|
|
Posts:
84
From:
Harbor Springs, Michigan
Registered:
4/15/09
|
|
(20 of 78)
Re: Summer reading suggestion - Mein Kampf
Jun 8, 2009 11:57 AM
|
> Why not Koran? It is more relevant book.
Must confess I've never read it. Any particular tie-in with WWII you're suggesting?
|
|
|
Posts:
372
From:
CA
Registered:
9/2/07
|
|
(21 of 78)
Re: Summer reading suggestion - Mein Kampf
Jun 9, 2009 6:25 AM
|
In Ch. 3 Hitler discusses his political philosophy, stating that a politician should not enter the public arena till he is 30 and has fully thought things out. Then, if he subsequently finds that he has made a mistake in his analysis, he should resign.
In Ch.4 Hitler reveals that the German population is increasing by 900,000 per year, and that there are three possible responses,
1. internal colonization, I'm not quite sure what he means but he rejects this alternative
2. expansion to the east, in alliance with Britain, giving Germany+Britain vs. Russia
3. colonial expansion outside Europe in alliance with Russia, giving Russia+Germany vs. Britain
Hitler favors plan 2. Now, if he had taken his own advice given in Ch. 3, he would have stayed with plan 2 or 3, and when it was clear that the actual war would be Germany vs. Britain + Russia, he would have realized his error and resigned.
On to WW I.
The previously linked online copy gets very bad in Ch. 4 with lots of run ons ... there is a better version at ...
http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch05.html
|
|
|
Posts:
5,015
From:
Seattle Area
Registered:
5/6/03
|
|
(22 of 78)
Re: Summer reading suggestion - Mein Kampf
Jun 9, 2009 7:42 AM
|
The fact is, everything about Hitler's early life shows him to be too lazy to have been a day laborer. He had a pension from his father (Clint's posted the details). Although he might have had to been carefull about spending his money, which might have been a bit of a revelation to a rather spoiled young man from the upper-middle class of Australian society, he never starved or resorted to manual labor. If he did do any manual day labor, he probably did it only for a day or so, which in his mind was probably enough to make him feel like he had some special insight into it.
I think the day-labor claim by Hitler was a convenient one, in that it was virtually impossible to verify or deny as no records would be available to contradict him. It allows him to fill a gap in time where it would be really inconvenient for him to admit he was the equivilent of a "trust fund heir", sleeping late and dabbling in painting.
|
|
|
Posts:
372
From:
CA
Registered:
9/2/07
|
|
(23 of 78)
Re: Summer reading suggestion - Mein Kampf
Jun 10, 2009 6:21 AM
|
Ch. 5, The World War, begins with Hitler preparing for war. His state of mind is what must have been a universal one up to that time, but is hard to imagine today .... he describes his reaction...
"overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time."
Hitler thought the circumstances of the war were very favorable, and immediately enlisted, his only worry that he wouldn't get to the front in time to fight.
The war drug on and Hitler's description of how it affected him is worth reading I think.
Finally, he discusses the situation in Germary regarding the Marxists, and the government to combat them. He is not equivocal,
"If the best men were dying at the front, the least we could do was to wipe out the vermin."
But he realizes ..
"One question came to the fore, however: can spiritual ideas be exterminated by the sword? Can 'philosophies' be combated by the use of brute force?"
He concludes...
"Any attempt to combat a philosophy with methods of violence will fail in the end, unless the fight takes the form of attack for a new spiritual attitude. Only in the struggle between two philosophies can the weapon of brutal force, persistently and ruthlessly applied lead to a decision for the side it supports.
This remained the reason for the failure of the struggle against Marxism."
|
|
|
Posts:
372
From:
CA
Registered:
9/2/07
|
|
(24 of 78)
Re: Summer reading suggestion - Mein Kampf
Jun 10, 2009 6:28 AM
|
Ch. 5, The World War, begins with Hitler preparing for war. His state of mind is what must have been a universal one up to that time, but is hard to imagine today .... he describes his reaction...
"overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time."
Hitler thought the circumstances of the war were very favorable, and immediately enlisted, his only worry that he wouldn't get to the front in time to fight.
The war drug on and Hitler's description of how it affected him is worth reading I think.
Finally, he discusses the situation in Germary regarding the Marxists, and the government to combat them. He is not equivocal,
"If the best men were dying at the front, the least we could do was to wipe out the vermin."
But he realizes ..
"One question came to the fore, however: can spiritual ideas be exterminated by the sword? Can 'philosophies' be combated by the use of brute force?"
He concludes...
"Any attempt to combat a philosophy with methods of violence will fail in the end, unless the fight takes the form of attack for a new spiritual attitude. Only in the struggle between two philosophies can the weapon of brutal force, persistently and ruthlessly applied lead to a decision for the side it supports.
This remained the reason for the failure of the struggle against Marxism."
|
|
|
Posts:
3,025
From:
Britain
Registered:
9/18/07
|
|
(25 of 78)
Re: Summer reading suggestion - Mein Kampf
Jun 10, 2009 9:27 AM
|
Finally, he discusses the situation in Germary regarding the Marxists, and the government to combat them. He is not equivocal,
"If the best men were dying at the front, the least we could do was to wipe out the vermin."
There are claims subject to investigation again at the moment that Hitler joined a Marxist group right after the war. This is not as odd as it sounds, as I know many people now on the extreme right or left of politics who started off in their youth on the opposite extreme.
Hitlers conclusions about the use of force - including the pasage where he uses the example of beating a Jew until he agrees with you, only for a day later for the same Jew to refuse to say he had agreed with you at all (showing how duplicitous the Jews were presumably?) - to confront ideas have been practised by several people over the last two or three thousand years, oddly enough without too much success unless a very sound long term basis for belief has been established - try 200 years, not 10 - and that the successful states tend to be ones where tolerance and compromise are possible.
Are you not finding the book hard to read? You seem to be getting though it quickly, I cannot say it had that effect on me, altohugh I was keen to see what was in it.
|
|
|
Posts:
372
From:
CA
Registered:
9/2/07
|
|
(26 of 78)
Re: Summer reading suggestion - Mein Kampf
Jun 10, 2009 9:49 AM
|
he uses the example of beating a Jew until he agrees with you,
You have mis-remembered, the 'beating' was verbal. The passage is thus ...
"But if you really struck one of these fellows so telling a blow that, observed by the audience, he couldn't help but agree, and if you believed that this had taken you at least one step forward, your amazement was great the next day. The Jew had not the slightest recollection of the day before, he rattled off his same old nonsense as though nothing at all had happened, and, if indignantly challenged, affected amazement; he couldn't remember a thing, except that he had proved the correctness of his assertions the previous day."
Anyone who has debated 'Zionists' online can only laugh at the perspicacity of the above! Better yet is the phrase that got me interested in the book, to wit ..
"The more I argued with them, the better I came to know their dialectic. First they counted on the stupidity of their adversary, and then, when there was no other way out, they themselves simply played stupid."
This is spot on for sure.
Are you not finding the book hard to read?
I'm doing a chapter per day. Most chapters are pretty short. Most of the writing I think is excellent and of interest, far better than what I would have guessed. The intricacies of the Hapsburgs and Austria were hard and in some cases impossible to follow, so I didn't try.
|
|
|
Posts:
3,025
From:
Britain
Registered:
9/18/07
|
|
(27 of 78)
Re: Summer reading suggestion - Mein Kampf
Jun 10, 2009 2:35 PM
|
Anyone who has debated 'Zionists' online can only laugh at the perspicacity of the above! Better yet is the phrase that got me interested in the book, to wit ..
"The more I argued with them, the better I came to know their dialectic. First they counted on the stupidity of their adversary, and then, when there was no other way out, they themselves simply played stupid."
This is spot on for sure.
I have seen similar tactics employed here when the nature and objectives of death camps or holocaust denial/revision are discussed. The problem is not limited to Zionists, or even those on thier side of a debate.
You have mis-remembered, the 'beating' was verbal.
I did not mean to imply it was a physical beating, I am not aware Hitler was ever specific when claims to his own role in any violence prior to coming to power? Trying to confuse someone with an arguement, asking them for an on the spot refutation and if not your point is proven is a long practiced debating tactic. Expecting them to agree with you afterwards is a little optimistic though. As a modern day illustration see the debates on Creationism vs Darwinism etc.
I'm doing a chapter per day. Most chapters are pretty short. Most of the writing I think is excellent and of interest, far better than what I would have guessed.
You are doing far better than I did, although as I came at the book with military/political history as a primary interest perhaps it was not quite what I had hoped. I did not find it gave any great insight into why what happened later did so.
|
|
|
Posts:
372
From:
CA
Registered:
9/2/07
|
|
(28 of 78)
Re: Summer reading suggestion - Mein Kampf
Jun 11, 2009 5:37 AM
|
I have seen similar tactics employed here when the nature and objectives of death camps or holocaust denial/revision are discussed.
Indeed. Like clockwork.
The problem is not limited to Zionists, or even those on thier side of a debate.
It most assuredly is limited to Zionists. I've never seen anything like it in my life. It's almost comical. But, sad to say, it is effective.
Ch. 6 - Propaganda, another short chapter.
Hitler contemplates the effects of wartime propaganda while on the front. What is striking is his explicit and implicit assumption that the masses are blockheads. Is he right? I think yes. What are the implications for 'democracy'? Ans: it is a joke.
Hitler sees that the German propaganda, which characterizes the enemy as witless fools, is ineffective, as when the troops meet the enemy in the field they are sadly disillusioned and do not trust the propaganda from that point and become disheartened. Obviously false propaganda is counterproductive.
"By contrast, the war propaganda of the English and Americans was psychologically sound. " Propaganda must be very simple, extreme black and white, and repeated endlessly. "But the masses are slowmoving, and they always require a certain time before they are ready even to notice a thing, and only after the simplest ideas are repeated thousands of times will the masses finally remember them."
Hitler summarizes ....
"Here, too, the example of enemy war propaganda was typical; limited to a few points, devised exclusively for the masses, carried on with indefatigable persistence. Once the basic ideas and methods of execution were recognized as correct, they were applied throughout the whole War without the slightest change. At first the claims of the propaganda were so impudent that people thought it insane; later, it got on people's nerves; and in the end, it was believed. After four and a half years, a revolution broke out in Germany; and its slogans originated in the enemy's war propaganda.
And in England they understood one more thing: that this spiritual weapon can succeed only if it is applied on a tremendous scale, but that success amply covers all costs."
Next, the revolution.
|
|
|
Posts:
372
From:
CA
Registered:
9/2/07
|
|
(29 of 78)
Re: Summer reading suggestion - Mein Kampf
Jun 13, 2009 8:29 AM
|
Ch. 8, The Beginning of My Political Activity', is better even than Ch. 7.
Hitler begins by contrasting the role the of theoretician and the politician. Well, this is clear enough.
The theoretician that inspires Hitler is Gottfreid Feder, an economist. Read the following closely
"As I listened to Gottfried Feder's first lecture about the 'breaking of interest slavery,' I knew at once that this was a theoretical truth which would inevitably be of immense importance for the future of the German people. The sharp separation of stock exchange capital from the national economy offered the possibility of opposing the internationalization of the German economy without at the same time menacing the foundations of an independent national self-maintenance by a struggle against all capital. The development of Germany was much too clear in my eyes for me not to know that the hardest battle would have to be fought, not against hostile nations, but against international capital. In Feder's lecture I sensed a powerful slogan for this coming struggle.
And here again later developments proved how correct our sentiment of those days was. Today the know-it-alls among our bourgeois politicians no longer laugh at us: today even they, in so far as they are not conscious liars, see that international stock exchange capital was not only the greatest agitator for the War, but that especially, now that the fight is over, it spares no effort to turn the peace into a hell.
The fight against international finance and loan capital became the most important point in the program of the German nation's struggle for its economic independence and freedom."
Hitler goes on to describe the formation of a new political party dedicated to the Fatherland, and nothing else, and his introduction to public speaking.
|
|
|
Posts:
3,025
From:
Britain
Registered:
9/18/07
|
|
(30 of 78)
Re: Summer reading suggestion - Mein Kampf
Jun 13, 2009 7:10 PM
|
It most assuredly is limited to Zionists. I've never seen anything like it in my life. It's almost comical. But, sad to say, it is effective.
I have seen discussion stiffled by both sides refusing to consider the points put forward by the other and instead addressing the point they wish to claim is put forward, or simply raising other points of their own with no attempt to address the origninal point.
Hitler contemplates the effects of wartime propaganda while on the front. What is striking is his explicit and implicit assumption that the masses are blockheads. Is he right? I think yes. What are the implications for 'democracy'? Ans: it is a joke.
It has been said that 'If voting changed anything, they would have abolished it years ago" and there is a degree of truth in it. Similarly, for all its flaws, democracy is probably as good a system if not better than most others that have been seen so far.
The Nazi party employed propaganda and played the masses very well before coming to power, and indeed up until the war it still worked ok. Once the war started they began to fail though, not in too dissimilar ways to what had occurred in 1914-18. Certainly between about 1931 and 1938 the Nazi propaganda machine was amongst the best to be seen.
|
|
|
|
|
