Line #0 YMMV/MeinKampf


1	* BrokenBase: Regarding the newer edition commentary. Some say it veers into ViewersAreMorons territory; others believe it is necessary, especially to keep from losing context on the era and situation of the time.
2	* FirstInstallmentWins: ''Mein Kampf'' is way better known than its sequel ''Zweites Buch'', but that's because the latter did not get published during Hitler's lifetime, while the former became a bestseller when Hitler came to power and everyone wanted to know what he thought. After the war ''many'' Germans said things to the effect of "Of course we ''owned'' a copy -- you could hardly avoid that. But I never actually ''read'' that dreck". Whether that is true in either the individual case or the aggregate (the book has been called the "most widely unread bestseller of the modern era") is now impossible to verify or falsify, given that most of the people in question are long dead.
3	* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: ''Mein Kampf'' has a following in [[https://www.jpost.com/international/jewish-rights-group-decries-sale-of-nazi-books-at-saudi-book-fair-585431 Saudi Arabia]] and [[https://www.mic.com/articles/120411/how-hitler-s-mein-kampf-became-a-bestseller-in-india India]], as well as other countries with high rates of antisemitism.
4	* HarsherInHindsight: To a reader in the 1920s (even other fascists like UsefulNotes/BenitoMussolini), the book would come off as the hilarious ramblings of a madman. Today, it's a grim historical document, especially with his hostile tirades against Jews.
5	* MisaimedFandom: It's not surprising that anti-Semites love this book. It is somewhat more surprising that anti-Semites who belong to other groups of people Hitler hated would. Summing up Hitler's writing in ''The Infernal Library'', a book about books by dictators, author Daniel Kalder observes that "Such is the book's power that its readers overlook the obvious implications for their races and extract from it what they want."
6	* NarmCharm: In a really, ''really'' dark way, Hitler's teachings are maniacal and incoherent...but many readers find the harsh and furious manner he used to describe them attractive.
7	* NightmareFuel: Underneath the poor writing, one can find the mindset of a man who would kill millions of people because of their ethnicity. Quite a few statements can chill the bones of those who read it.
8	-->If at the beginning of the war and during the war twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the nation had been subjected to poison gas, such as had to be endured in the field by hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers of all classes and professions, then the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.
9	%%Overshadowed By Controversy cut per Cleanup thread. The book, by its very nature as a book by Adolf Hitler, is nothing but controversy, and thus there is not much else but controversy to discuss.
10	%%Link: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=15417159170A60176600&page=98#comment-2441
11	* ValuesDissonance: It's hardly surprising that a prominent work written by UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler, espousing his ideas and containing many prejudices that are not only outdated but extreme even for the time, would be this for modern-day people.
12	* {{Wangst}}: Hitler spends the entire book complaining about the world; it ends up reading like a whiny Website/MySpace page. However, Creator/GeorgeOrwell thought this was [[TropesAreTools why]] ''[[TropesAreTools Mein Kampf]]'' [[TropesAreTools appealed to so many people]].
13	-->'''George Orwell''': The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. One feels it again when one sees his photographs—and I recommend especially the photograph at the beginning of Hurst and Blackett’s edition, which shows Hitler in his early Brownshirt days. It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself. The initial, personal cause of his grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is here. He is the martyr, the victim, [[Myth/GreekMythology Prometheus chained to the rock]], the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with UsefulNotes/{{Napoleon\|Bonaparte}}, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can’t win, and yet that he somehow deserves to. The attraction of such a pose is of course enormous; half the films that one sees turn upon some such theme.

Context YMMV / MeinKampf