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Jan. 1, 2005 This Christmas I was given a copy of Hilter's Mein Kampf as a present. I'd heard of the book of course, but never read it. Or met anyone else who had. But Hitler was a major figure in the twentieth century, and I thought reading his only major work would give an insight into his thinking. My first discovery was that the book is BORING! It is badly written, repetitive, tedious, simple- minded, there was absolutely nothing to make you want to keep reading it. If it was not for Hitler's subsequent history, it would not have sold more than a few copies and would certainly not be available today. And then there was the content... Apart from his racist beliefs and extreme anti-Semitism, there was very little you could accept at face value. Nearly every fact stated raised questions in my mind as to how far he had coloured the truth. Well, well, thank God the guy has gone where he deserves to be and can't trouble Germany or the rest of us any more. All that aside, there were some little bits of meat in the soup, things that we can think about today. I found some interresting parallels with some of today's politicians. (I don't want to over-state these parallels. Hitler was, among other things, a psychopath. He had also been hardened by complete poverty followed by 4 years in the trenches of the first World War. These things sharpened his determination and made him very, very much more dangerous than our repsent crop of politicians. Thank God!) Hilter liked to talk. He had a salesman's charm and few people could resist him. People would sit at the dinner table with him and listen to the most extreme narrow-mindedness with contentment. Hitler did not like the written word half so well, because his ideas did not stand up well under close scrutiny. Charming, simple conversation, assuming but not explaining ideas, that was his forte. (Is this sounding familiar?) Hitler was not well educated. He appears to have been too lazy to study, and in later life felt his deficiency deeply. He reacted by dismissing all well-educated thinkers as irrelevant, and was always ready to discard difficult concepts in favour of old-fashioned common sense. He had an instinctive understanding of the effectiveness of slogans and propaganda. He is quite clear in his book that 'the masses' need strong leadership and that they should be won over by hammering away at a few simple ideas touching their basic instincts. His goal was power for the Nazi party with him at its head, and effective simple propaganda was essential to achieving it. He motives are transparent, as is his willingness to manipulate the masses to gain what he wants. Hitler had no use for freedom of expression in the press. He attacks the free German press (he calls it Jewish) for not falling into line behind his ideas. He bought his own newspaper to address the problem, and later on the German press was anything but free. He considered it a duty of the press to assist in his propagandising. Hitler had no respect at all for existing laws if they restrained his activities. He looked on them as fences to be broken down. He was adroit in gaining support for those parts of society that should have known better, to help him destroy the support of law. He was also violently opposed to parliaments, because they would restrict his plans for dictatorship, and the burning of the Reichstag is foreshadowed in the book. The clearest impression the book left with me is of a politician who describes situations or conditions of life in statements that are never analysed. It is so obvious that there is an international Jewish conspiracy that we don't need to examine the concept, merely attack the Jews. He just knows that anything German is superior, and assumes that you know it too. Mein Kampf was written in 1923, before his meteoric rise to national position. Without his demonic energy his ideas would have languished like those of an old Saturday night drunk with an obsession about something crazy. As things turned out he used them to bring death and ruin to millions. Perhaps we should all take warning and question more closely the beliefs and motives of our own politicians when they spread fear and hatred in an attempt to get elected. And we should certainly refuse to accept the jettisoning of ideas - like global warming - just because 'good ole common sense' finds them difficult to deal with. ------------ About the author: Eric lives in tropical Queensland and writes books - some naughty, some nice - that can be found through Renaissance eBooks (renebooks.com) He reads widely and when he is not thinking about lunch, worries about the state of the world. Email: ericge@westnet.com.au Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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