Day 47 – 52 Books in 52 Weeks

Chapter two of the second volume of Mein Kampf is about “The State.” Hitler goes through and talks about what he thinks the state should be, how it should be run and all that other fun stuff. The first part goes through what he believes a state should be… which is everything the state is not, and he goes through great lengths to make his point.

The next part isn’t nearly as boring. Nearly. Herman and Sherman are playing ping-pong, they still aren’t particularly interested.

Hitler discusses how a state should be evaluated: is it successful or not? Obviously, the state isn’t successful and he points out why. His main point for the failure is that the Aryan race is no longer pure. Oh for shame!

He says on page 396, “In peaceful periods it (hyper-individualism) may sometimes do good services, but taking all things together it has robbed us of world domination.”

“…robbed us of world domination.” There it is. Did anyone not see his goals way back then? He certainly wasn’t subtly inserting his ideas into his writings. It’s kinda right there – in your face. Maybe it was a typo.

Anyway, he somehow turns everything back to the “problem” of racial mixing and how any un-Aryan race is actually a “lower” race and they should strive to make sure that mating only happens between equals. Of course, the state should control all of this and go so far as to “declare unfit for propagation all who are in any way visibly sick or who have inherited a disease and can therefore pass it on” (page 404). Can we say “eugenics”?

Next comes the really fun part. State-controlled education. Seriously, this was actually kinda funny. He goes on for pages (and pages and pages) about how physical education should be the primary function of the school system… because healthy minds couldn’t possibly exist in unhealthy bodies. This caught Herman and Sherman’s attention. They’ve moved on from ping-pong to weight lifting.

Then we get nearly 3/4 of a page of why boxing needs to be taught… “It is not less noble if a man who has been attacked defends himself against his assailant with his fists, instead of running away and yelling for a policeman” (page 410).

All of this physical training is to give the youth the “conviction that he is absolutely superior to others” (page 411).

After Hitler finishes (sort of) his stint on the supreme importance of physical education, he goes on to building the character of the youth. He has particularly harsh words for snitches. I laughed out loud when I read this, “A boy who snitches on his comrade practices treason and thus betrays a mentality which, harshly expressed and enlarged, is the exact equivalent of treason to one’s country” (page 415). Wow. I wonder what Freud would say.

Finally we get to what is last on his list of education: scientific learning. I love it. He says on page 418, “… the material to be learned in the various subjects is so swollen that only a fraction of it remains in the head of the individual pupil, and only a fraction of this abundance can find application…” Yup, let’s not stress that brain too much.

He goes on to explain how pointless it is to force the children to learn French, but it would be more logical to teach them Latin (but only in general outlines) since it “implies a training in sharp, logical thinking.”

Then he complains about how history is taught: just dates and names – not the more important information such as the inner motives of the individual (I wonder how he’d view how his life is taught in schools).

His point through all of this is that physical education is of primary importance and everything else should just be taught in abbreviated forms… just get the essentials and worry about the rest later in life (after military training, of course).

He sums all of this up on page 427, “No boy and no girl must leave school without having been led to an ultimate realization of the necessity and essence of blood purity.”

Onto the fun world of “Subjects and Citizens” in chapter three!

Apparently, during the 19-teens and 20’s, there were two “varieties” of people in Germany: citizens and foreigners. Citizens could either be those born in Germany or born elsewhere then go through a naturalization process.

Hitler doesn’t like this set up (go figure). One of his more eloquent insults is found on page 439, “…anything more thoughtless, more hare-brained than our present-day citizenship laws scarcely exists.”

Herman volunteered to be the “more thoughtless” and Sherman begged to be the “more hare-brained.” They are happy.

Hitler believed that there should be three classes of inhabitants: citizens, subjects and foreigners. Oddly enough, he only gives a one page explanation on how these three are distinguished from each other. Apparently he didn’t think it that important.

Of course, girls are only subjects; they can only become a citizen if they marry or are active in the German economic life.

It was a nice, short chapter and Herman and Sherman got something new to play with. Chapter four was also pretty short. It actually worries me that Hitler isn’t ranting on and on as he’s done throughout the book. Anyway, chapter four of Volume 2 is entitled, “Personality and the Conception of the Folkish State.”

Herman wants it noted that he has found no “personality” thus far of which he approves of in this book. Sherman just pointed at Herman and called him stupid.

Meanwhile Hitler goes on about the chief task of his party is in “educating and preserving the bearer of the state.” Again, this is all dependent on the purity of one’s blood… which gives rise to more of his hate spewing speech against the Jewish people. Then he goes on to explain why Marxism and the parliamentary rule just won’t work (as if he hadn’t already gone on about that enough in Volume 1).

On page 449, he sums up his belief thusly, “From the smallest community cell to the highest leadership of the entire Reich, the state must have the personality principle anchored in its organization. There must be no majority decisions, but only responsible persons, and the word ‘council’ must be restored to its original meaning. Surely every man will have advisers by his side, but the decision will be made by one man.”

I’m just guessing here but I think Hitler is referring to himself as that one man to make all of the decisions.

Herman thinks that’s being terribly thoughtless of Hitler. Sherman thinks it’s just hare-brained.

Happy reading.