Category: Mein Kampf

Hitler’s views at first seemed like they were consistent and then suddenly switched up into a totally different viewpoint. 

There were so many instances where he was so close to becoming a socialist or even a communist because of his experiences with being poor and struggling to find a job.There were also moments where he would notice the extreme wealth disparities in Vienna. He also noticed no matter how good of a skilled worker you were, there was still a chance for you to fall to rock bottom and fall back into poverty. This would have been the driving force if his hatred for Jewish people wasn’t to the extreme and reinforced by society. Considering how many people today see his views as extreme it was surprising to see how he thought the terms: seizing the means of production and wage theft were too extreme for him. At first he tried to stay away from politics and had centrist ideas. Slowly became more and more reactionary due to him being able to be easily influenced by these ideals. 

Around page 37, he describes arguing with his construction colleagues about what his stances were. In the footnotes, they also mention how he most likely wasn’t working in construction to begin with. He was talking about how their ideas were too radical when mentioning that they need to seize the means of production. The only thing that they did was talk about how the structures put in place, the ones that he already had a personal gripe with, into terms of how to solve some of those issues. 

He also says how he is against hierarchies (class ones) because of how differently they were treated. Then he decides it is better to create a class system involving how pure of German he thought they were.

One of the first things I noticed while reading chapter 6 was how similar the points of spreading propaganda were to how to pick a topic for a paper. The main point being how the topic needs to be specific enough to be unique but have a broad application. This makes the message memorable but in Hitler’s point, it slowly turns into insanity and relies on the people being in a vulnerable state. For both points to work, they need to reflect back on the original message.

Another thing that was surprising to me was how “leftist” his ideas sounded at first. He would dictate his experiences with poverty and notice the extreme wealth disparities in Vienna. The problem started the moment he decided not everyone should be included in his better society for Germany. Regardless of whether he was implementing leftist ideals, if it doesn’t include everyone, then the movement isn’t leftist.

In the introduction of the book, around page xxxiv, he lists 4 ways of dealing with the increment of the German population: abolish birth control, internal colonisation, acquisition of new territory, and expanding industry and commerce to buy food from abroad. This sentence looked like something I could expand on but with the phrasing and the wording, it was hard for me to understand.

One of the phrases I did understand was a quote from page 29, “Let us not try to condone this by saying that it is no better in other countries.” This sounds like a rebuttal to a common phrase said in the US, “If you don’t like it here then why don’t you leave?” Accepting the bare minimum from what a government should be doing isn’t gonna do it anymore. Critiquing systems put into place to oppress minorities should be expected and not seen as treacherous to want to find ways to improve the conditions of everyone.