Day 42 – 52 Books in 52 Weeks

After all of the fun of reading Krakatoa, I’m back to the mind-blowing sensation of Mein Kampf. Okay, more like mind-numbing.

I worked my way through chapter ten: Causes of the Collapse. He’s referring to the collapse of German Reich, which he intends to rebuild. Of course, his first and foremost cause of the blame lies with the Jewish people. He believes that they control both the money and the press (and subsequently the government) – thus brainwashing the German people in one way or another.

His verbal attacks on them are vicious. It truly makes one wonder where such hatred came from. I need to find a good bio or two on the man to see what insights they have. Anyway, that’s another blog…

Once he lays down the broad blame on the Jewish people, he then specifies the areas in which they’ve corrupted the German people. First is through the educational system. Actually, he pretty much blames this on the monarchy and government. He says that the educational system has turned the children into “compliant walking encyclopedias” (page 237) – that they’d do whatever the monarchy asked of them without thinking. Then he says that to remedy this problem, the state much watch over the education of the children – and of course, exercise “strict control” over the press.

Hitler goes on a tirade of the journalism in Germany (remember, he thinks that the Jews control the press). He insists that not only is the press slanted, but that the broad masses can’t think for themselves and believe what is spoon-fed to them by this press, and that the government has done nothing about it! For shame!

In this chapter, more than any before it, Hitler begins to really use phrases that should throw up a red flag to anyone reading it. When admonishing the government for not doing anything to the press, he says, “No one had the courage to use thoroughgoing radical methods…” (page 243).

He doesn’t say exactly what those “thoroughgoing radical methods” are… but looking back on history, I’m sure we all have a pretty good idea by what he meant.

His next “cause” for the ruin of the Reich is the spread of syphilis. Of course, this again is blamed on the Jewish people for prostituting and poisoning the minds of young Germans. Fourteen out of sixty pages of this chapter deal with this. I’m not kidding – I just sat and counted them. Though, in all fairness, he is right about the moral decline of culture – it’s just that he’s put the blame on one group of people, which is entirely wrong.

On page 248 he begins suggesting the idea (not so subtly) that it is because there has been a “profanation of the blood and the race” and that the survival of the fittest will eventually win out (yes, he read Darwin).

He talks about “ruthless measures” that need to be taken in order to preserve the future of the German people – and that it needs to be the sole focus of the nation. He says on page 250, “Thus, by the use of all propagandist means, the question of combating syphilis should have been made to appear as the task of the nation. Not just one more task. To this end, its injurious effects should have been thoroughly hammered into people… until the entire nation arrived at the conviction that everything – future or ruin – depended upon the solution of this question.”

Five pages later come some of the most chilling remarks put on paper. In talking about the solution for the syphilis plague, he states, “… there must be no half-measures. the gravest and most ruthless decisions will have to be made. It is a half-measure to let incurably sick people steadily contaminate the remaining healthy ones. This is in keeping with the humanitarianism which, to avoid hurting one individual, lets a hundred others perish. The demand that defective people be prevented from propagating equally defective offspring is a demand of the clearest reason and if systematically executed represents the most humane act of mankind.”

Remember, he’s put the blame for this disease on the Jewish people, and now he’s saying that in order to save one more German from getting this disease, they must allow the unhealthy people (the Jews in his opinion) to perish. Terrifying. And to think that this book was released well before his rise in political power – and no one figured this out? Or, perhaps they were too blind to see it.

I digress…

Hitler continues his tirade on the absence of good German art and culture – how the big cities are filled with dirty tenements and so on. Then he begins to offer more suggestions for changing all of this – by territorial conquest. His belief is that the more land Germany owns, the more food can be produced, thereby the richer and better off the people will be.

Then he turns back to his old pal, propaganda, and on page 276 says, “The fact that by clever and persevering use of propaganda even heaven can be represented as hell to the people, and conversely the most wretched life as paradise…” Then he has to say that the German government was completely unaware of how to use propaganda to its fullest – that only the Jew knew how to properly utilize it.

Finally he ends this chapter by “applauding” three areas which weren’t half-hearted, weak or cowards. First was the monarchy and though by reading these couple of paragraphs, he really isn’t applauding it at all. The monarch had “grown alien to many” he says… and that it is not the monarchy itself, but the people that surrounded them and instructed them. Basically, he’s calling them idiots for not being able to think on their own.

He also applauds the old German Reich civil service – because they weren’t really part of the government. But his highest praise is for the German army that was devoted to the fatherland. He says on 280, “What the German people owes to the army can be briefly summed up in a single word, to wit: everything.”

Of course, Hitler was part of that army.

The last paragraph of the chapter ends much as it began: it’s all a matter of race. “The deepest and ultimate reason for the decline of the old Reich lay in its failure to recognize the racial problem and its importance for the historical development of peoples.”

The next chapter is entitled: Nation and Race.

I can only guess at where this is leading.

Happy reading!