Adolf Hitler (1889–1945)

En la primera parte de este ensayo panfletario, Hitler comenta en forma extensa -y adaptada a lo que sería luego la propaganda oficial- su vida hasta entonces, desde su nacimiento, infancia y adolescencia en el pueblo austriaco de Braunau, pasando por sus años de “artista” y “sin techo” en Viena, su participación como soldado en la Primera Guerra Mundial, sus años de post-guerra y cómo llegó a formar parte y luego a liderizar el Partido Nacional Socialista de los Trabajadores Alemanes.
Explica como llegó a la conclusión personal de que los judíos constituían la “plaga moral” que enfermaba Alemania, que la democracia representativa es un error y que la propaganda es un elemento indispensable para conquistar a las masas y alcanzar el poder.
El movimiento nacionalsocialista, la segunda parte de Mi lucha, Hitler explica los postulados “ideológicos” sobre los que se sustenta el partido nazi, ya bajo su férreo control:
La existencia de una raza superior, la alemana, con derecho a dominar a las más débiles. En este sentido, la nacionalidad alemana no debe ser otorgada sino a quienes forman parte de la raza aria.
A su vez, el Estado no es otra cosa que un medio para alcanzar la felicidad de la raza, no un fin en sí mismo, y debe estar supeditado a este objetivo. Hace falta además un gobierno de mano férrea, a cuya cabeza debe estar un Führer (en alemán: [fy.ʁɐ] ) es una palabra alemana que significa "líder, jefe, caudillo, conductor".
La necesidad del pueblo alemán de ganar cada vez más espacio vital (Lebesraum), extendiéndose hacia el este y controlando los recursos humanos y materiales de estos nuevos territorios.
También es destacable el ataque al marxismo que se hace en Mi lucha, como uno de los mayores peligros para la consecución de los fines del nazismo. Adolfo Hitler consideraba que era la única ideología que en la práctica podría competir contra el nacionalsocialismo para ganarse el apoyo de la masa alemana.… (more)

"Jews here and Jews there and Jews everywhere." (pg. 410)

As a graduate of modern history and a World War Two buff, I've always felt I should read Mein Kampf – I've certainly read about its results. And as someone with an odd sense of humour, I've always sort of liked the idea of reading Mein Kampf ironically, and then writing a no doubt hilarious straight-faced review about how the source material doesn't match up to all the films based on it (Saving Private Ryan, etc.), let alone the live re-enactment.

The book's actually quite hard to get hold of nowadays for a decent price, considering it's in the public domain (I guess no one wants the copyright, and besides, they keep the price on academic editions artificially high to deter neo-Nazi looky-loos). Not that I wanted Mein Kampf for a coffee-table book, of course, but nor did I want to inadvertently bung money towards some far-right self-publisher on Amazon and end up on a government watchlist. But I still wanted a serviceable copy. I can't imagine anything worse than buying a used, well-thumbed edition of Mein Kampf – it'd be like buying second-hand underpants – so the edition I eventually chose was a Jaico edition from India; relatively cheap but brand new (the swastika has less stigma attached to it over there). This edition, however, proved to be chock full of typos, printing errors and misalignments. But then again, if there's one book you're probably allowed to treat shabbily, it's this one.

It's probably not a surprise to learn that a book by Adolf Hitler is awful; what's surprising is that it's even more awful than you imagine. Of course, there's all the stuff about the Jews and race and the cleansing power of war, which is more than a tad strong, but that's to be expected: it is Mein Kampf, after all. But you'd expect the book to have a certain raciness, a perverse entertainment factor at being so woefully inappropriate.

Unfortunately, this isn't the case: even read ironically, this is a terrible experience. It's absolute dreck: tedious, tautological rambling for six hundred (!) pages, lacking any lyrical or structural writing ability whatsoever. It has a handful of ideas which it then unpacks, repacks and unpacks and repacks and unpacks over and over again with complete ideological mercilessness. In reading this ironically, my commitment to the bit rather backfired, for the only book less appealing than Mein Kampf is Mein Kampf unabridged.

Another surprise is that, for the most part, the book is rather banal: it is My Struggle, a political memoir by an upstart radical politician talking with super-sincerity about his journey and his political 'awakening'. With its obsession with racial hierarchies and reinventing the political wheel, all in the name of the 'ordinary, hard-working folks', the book confirms what I have long suspected about political discourse, even (perhaps especially) in our current time: the extremists dominate the discussion because they have far more stamina for this tedious business than reasonable people do. Any sane person will find reading this book an arse-ache; but, by Christ, imagine writing it.

One unironical impression I got from the book saw me put my history graduate cap on: the extent to which Mein Kampf was a blueprint for all that came later. Some eminent historians, such as Ian Kershaw, have cited passages about 'extermination' of Jews as evidence the Holocaust was always intended. Personally, I didn't get this from the book: certainly, the Jews are repeatedly identified by Hitler as the ultimate and implacable enemy, but there's no grand plan offered here. As it stands, I'm of the mind that what eventually became the Holocaust was an escalation, exacerbated by the war. What is beyond doubt is that war and persecution was certainly intended: Hitler makes no bones about seeking 'lebensraum' in the East and in reversing the Versailles treaty: in his mind, the latter speaks to a wider trend of German disgrace and impurity, which can only be purged by a great blood-letting. When he writes of feeling "calm and cool" at the recognition there will have to be a war "by the whetted sword" (pg. 561), or that the "coming struggle" against Russia will be under conditions that "assume the character of sheer slaughter" (pg. 589), you can't help but feel disconcerted, knowing as we do what was to be initiated by this man.

That said, the book was published seven years before Hitler was elected and thirteen years before war broke out, so that's a long time for ideas and strategies to change. Hitler himself even said, to one of his cronies year later, that he would never have written Mein Kampf if he had known he was going to become chancellor of Germany. You can also see why, despite the fanaticism evident in the book, statesmen in the 1930s thought Hitler might be an ally, or at least harmless or controllable. He is resolutely anti-Marxist in these pages, as well as indulging in some of your meat-and-drink demagoguery and rah-rah trade unionism; what becomes clear is that he is very much a national socialist, even though not a Marxist, and many of his converts in the early years came from the left (those George Orwell later identified as communists "who will be fascists five years hence"). If you try to read the book from the perspective of 1926, rather than with the knowledge of what happened between 1939 and 1945, it's much harder to pin him down as such an apocalyptic threat – certainly by the mores of the time, with anti-Semitism a common prejudice, Marxism resurgent, and Germany paupered. From a historical perspective, such a dangerous knot of complacency and power is fascinating to try to assess.

And, taking my history-grad cap off again, it's much harder to pin him down when the book is so bloody tedious. Not an ounce of real personality comes through in six hundred pages. It says a lot that Hitler was later embarrassed by its publication; the man had one bollock, shit facial hair and chronic flatulence, to say nothing of being the berk who both started World War Two and lost it, so for Mein Kampf to be the one thing that left him rather sheepish only illustrates its abject awfulness. He should have at least included a few funny anecdotes.… (more)