Line #39 Literature/MeinKampf


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mein_kampf_9518.jpeg]]
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3	->''"Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live."''
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5	''Mein Kampf'' is UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler's infamous autobiography combined with a manifesto of his political ideology. Originally entitled ''Viereinhalb Jahre (des Kampfes) gegen Lüge, Dummheit und Feigheit'', or ''Four and a Half Years (of Struggle) Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice'', the book was written during Hitler's imprisonment after the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, and published with the more concise name ''Mein Kampf'' (''My Struggle'') in two volumes, the first being published in 1925 and the other in 1926, prior to his rise to power in 1933.
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7	In the first volume, Hitler wrote of his early years and his family life, his life in UsefulNotes/{{Vienna}} and his involvement in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, his political activity following the war, and the initial formation of the ideas that would ten years later become the core of the [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany National Socialist movement in Germany]], interspersed with his rambling about his hatred for [[UsefulNotes/{{Judaism}} the Jewish people]] and [[TheScapegoat his blame of them]] for [[UsefulNotes/WeimarRepublic the state that Germany was in after the war]], drawing primary inspiration from the infamous antisemitic text ''Literature/TheProtocolsOfTheEldersOfZion''.
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9	The second volume details the Nazi movement itself at some length, going over everything from philosophy, ideology, organization and other topics, including trade unions, the Russians, the Stormtroopers, the use of propaganda and other factors which would come to be implemented during Hitler's rise to power.
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11	In the wake of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, ''Mein Kampf'' has become one of the best-selling and most banned books in the modern era.
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13	A sequel known only as ''Zweites Buch'' (''Second Book'') was dictated and written but never published within his lifetime. It delves more into Hitler's ambition to TakeOverTheWorld, which he believed required an eventual military confrontation with the UsefulNotes/UnitedStates, following the defeat of [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn the Soviet Union]], and finally a massive race war in East Asia (indicating that he was fully prepared to betray Germany's alliance with UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan eventually).
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15	The book is not recommended for reading unless you are a history major -- besides the obvious reasons, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Hitler was a]] ''[[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking terrible]]'' [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking writer]]. If you speak sufficient German, Creator/SerdarSomuncu has done a DramaticReading of the book [[AdolfHitlarious as a comedy act]], which works amazingly well, making the dreck Hitler wrote entertaining ''and'' scary.
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17	!!Tropes:
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19	* AbusiveParents: Hitler describes his father as having been a tyrannical, violent man who subjected him to severe punishments. He implies that he turned to pan-German nationalism partly to reject his father's pro-[[UsefulNotes/TheSoundOfMartialMusic Habsburg]] political views.
20	* AllThereInTheManual: Close examination of events as they actually played out reveals this as a ZigZaggingTrope. Hitler was very reluctant to annex his neighbours (initially, and only because he feared losing) and was annoyed that his followers kept pestering him to live up to his promises, saying that when he wrote it he never expected to become dictator of Germany and he wouldn't have written the book if he had. He seemed to regard it as a "get-rich-quick" scheme to cash in on his post-trial popularity and hoped to use the royalties to pay off his legal debts[[note]]Which he very much did not earn at the outset -- its sales only just outpaced its critical esteem and, indeed, slipped with successive printings despite the growth in Nazi Party membership.[[/note]] and to inspire German far-rightists. When it came down to it, UsefulNotes/HermannGoring spearheaded the invasions of both UsefulNotes/{{Austria}} and the Sudetenland, largely because Germany's economic policies (i.e., rapid remilitarization) meant it was running on heavy deficit spending, and conquering her neighbours was the only way to balance her budget via rampant looting and theft (including from Jews), and seizing control of the industries and gold reserves of half of Europe. It was only after other countries let Germany get away with this (and around the time he got hooked on amphetamines, which boosted his adrenaline and made him more reckless) that Hitler started getting more ambitious and taking his imperialist "promises" seriously, and masterminded the invasions of Czechoslovakia and UsefulNotes/{{Poland}} (both over the protest of Göring and others, though the likes of Joachim von Ribbentrop and Heinrich Himmler egged him on), and later the Soviet Union (again, over the protest of [[PragmaticVillainy saner, if not exactly kinder]], minds). In general there is ''much'' debate about how much of the 1933–1945 timespan played out all as Hitler had planned it long before or whether he was taking the opportunities offered to him one at a time, never planning far ahead. There is evidence for both.
21	* AuthorFilibuster: Not a very well-written or inspiring work of literature.
22	* AuthorTract: Let's get a brief list going:
23	** AntiIntellectualism: Hitler believed that the German people became great due to national pride and physical strength, not "the inculcation of mere knowledge". He called for remodelling the nation's education system in accord, with special denigration for [[ScienceIsBad all forms of]] [[ScienceIsUseless hard science]].
24	** BlackAndWhiteMorality: Of course, [[AccidentalPun White people were "white"]] in Hitler's paradigm (and especially Germans, then other "Aryans"), while Jewish people were "black."
25	** DemocracyIsBad: Like other fascists, Hitler did not believe in democracy, considering it weak and ineffectual.
26	** GreedyJew: Hitler characterized the Jewish people as greedy, among many other vices that he attributed to them.
27	** MasterRace: Hitler, above everything else, believed in the idea of a "master race" that was "superior" in [[TakeOurWordForIt some vague way he failed to define]] and who would rule over all others, taking primary inspiration from the then-popular Aryan legend.
28	** PatrioticFervor: Like other fascists, Hitler was very nationalistic, believing Germany had the greatest race and culture of all people.
29	** RedScare: Hitler '''hated''' communists with a passion, believing them to be [[ConspiracyTheorist an extension of the Jews]].
30	** TheSocialDarwinist: Hitler held an extremely cynical worldview: [[ForeverWar perpetual struggle and conflict]] define the world, in which all people and all races compete against each other for survival and supremacy. The strong becomes the MasterRace, while the weak are annihilated or become subversive parasites (which he saw the Jews as being). Critics called him a StrawNihilist for this.
31	** {{Ubermensch}}: Hitler was inspired by a misinterpretation of the philosophy of Creator/FriedrichNietzsche, particularly things like the overman and the "Will to Power".
32	* {{Bowdlerise}}:
33	** The first English translation removed some of the more anti-Jewish and militaristic statements. A more faithful one was released later, but it lost a copyright lawsuit.
34	** The first French translation censored the most explicitly anti-French passages.
35	* CanonDiscontinuity: Between ''Mein Kampf'' and its sequel, ''Zweites Buch'':
36	** The first book contained some foreign policy prescriptions, but was very light on the subject. The second book's main focus was on foreign policy;
37	** The first book had a three-stage plan for Hitler's foreign policy (1. massive military build-up + terminating the Treaty of Versailles + forming alliances with the UsefulNotes/{{Ital\|y}}ian and [[UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire British Empires]]; 2. ''blitzkrieg'' with Italy and [[UsefulNotes/UnitedKingdom Britain]] against UsefulNotes/{{France}} and her Eastern European allies, such as Czechoslovakia, Poland, UsefulNotes/{{Romania}} and UsefulNotes/{{Yugoslavia}}; 3. war to obliterate the "Judeo-Bolshevik" Soviet Union). In the second book he added a fourth stage, to take place far in the future (4. alliance between European states with high national value + struggle with the United States for world domination);
38	** Related to the latter is Hitler's shifted view towards the United States. In ''Mein Kampf'' he mentions the country only occasionally and with contempt, as a "racially degenerate" society that will continue to see its demise; in ''Zweites Buch'' he refers to the US as a dynamic and "racially successful" society that has eugenics, racial segregation practices, and an exemplary immigration policy at the expense of "inferior" immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe.
39	** Also related to two paragraphs back was his shifted view towards the Soviet Union. In book one, he presented it as Germany's most dangerous opponent; in book two, he continued to do so, but only on the short term -- the long-term most dangerous opponent was now the United States.
40	* ConspiracyTheorist: Among Hitler's sources of inspiration -- one of the few he acknowledged ''was'' an inspiration to him -- was the infamous ''Literature/TheProtocolsOfTheEldersOfZion'', a crowning work of conspiracy theory and antisemitism that has been widely proved a fraud. Heck, it had been proved such by 1921, before he even conceived of writing ''Mein Kampf''.
41	* FeelingOppressedByTheirExistence: Hitler finds the mere existence of groups like Jews and Slavs offensive to his very being and to blame for all the ills of the world.
42	* FinalSolution: In several passages, Hitler explicitly calls for the destruction of Jews.
43	* FreudianExcuse: Hitler admitted that he had a violent childhood wherein he always ended up fighting his (pro-Habsburg) father, who [[WebAnimation/OverSimplified punished him severely]]. His years in Vienna didn't help, as the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts refused to admit him, putting an end to his dream as an artist. After his mother died, Hitler lived a life of poverty, homelessness, friendlessness and depression.
44	* HijackedByGanon: [[ConspiracyKitchenSink Every bad thing that was, is, or will happen was, is, or will be a Jewish conspiracy.]] Defeat of Germany in UsefulNotes/WorldWarI? Jewish conspiracy. [[UsefulNotes/RedOctober The Bolshevik Revolution?]] Jewish conspiracy. UsefulNotes/EsperantoTheUniversalLanguage? Jewish Conspiracy. Modern art and [[ItsPersonal his own rejection from art school]]? Jewish conspiracy. Specifically, the idea was that Jews had been too weak to keep their own land and, after scattering throughout the world, became bitterly jealous of those ethnic groups/races that had managed to keep theirs, with "superior" cultures. Said cultures thrived because (in a bad interpretation of Nietzschean Master–slave morality) they held war, conquest, glory, elitism, purity, and similar things as ideals, so the Jews spread the "lies" of pacifism, humility, democracy, egalitarianism, etc., first through UsefulNotes/{{Christianity}} (which was sometimes held to be a Jewish corruption of [[JesusWasWayCool what Jesus actually taught]]--but since this was the only source of his teachings, they could reimagine him to be whatever they wanted, like a great Aryan warrior, which they believed because of dubious pseudoscience at the time), then through liberalism, socialism and communism. Believing in pacifism ''et al.'' made nations weak and corrupt and caused national disunity, which led to all the above as the "pawns" of the Jews (socialists, pacifists, liberals, etc.) turning against their leaders and their countries, with the end result being [[OneWorldOrder universalism]] where [[IfICantHaveYou like the Jews, nobody would have any land to call their own]]. [[SarcasmMode And of course, the Jews loathed Germany especially because Germany had the greatest race and culture of them all.]]
45	* InsaneTrollLogic: Despite admitting that reputable sources had questioned ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'', Hitler justifies it as telling a higher truth than a book focussed on factual correctness alone would.
46	* NaziProtagonist: Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, is the protagonist of his autobiography. While probably not the first appearance of this trope, this is the TropeMaker.
47	* ThePowerOfHate: What kept him going and alive despite being nearly on the brink of DespairEventHorizon while in Vienna. And of course, this hatred, his raison d'être, became focused on the people whom he believed was the source of all of Europe's ills, the defining hatred that made Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler: Jews.
48	* PurpleProse: Almost to WordSaladPhilosophy levels. Indeed, many history majors specializing in that area of history cite it as the most boring book they have to read. There's one exception: the chapter on propaganda is a clear and well-written, though astonishingly cynical, essay on mass psychology. Don't think, however, that this proves Hitler could actually write well when he wanted to: the entire chapter was [[MediaNotes/{{Plagiarism}} copied from an official German army manual]] that Hitler had been given some years previously. The parts written by Rudolf Hess are also decently written, since he had graduated from university and had been taught how to write well.
49	* SelfServingMemory: Among other glaring omissions, the "tortured idealist" image that Hitler used to market this {{doorstopper}} tended to omit conveniently that he was in a [[LuxuryPrisonSuite minimum-security rehabilitation institute]].
50	* SpaceFillingEmpire: Hitler talks about his desire for land that Germans could colonize to build a great empire.
51	* UnPerson: Hitler pulled this on his own family, as he makes himself out to have had OnlyChildSyndrome when in fact he had a half-brother, a half-sister, and a full sister, as well as a couple of other siblings who died young. The most they get is a brief allusion when he talks about "our" father rather than "my" father. His full sister, Paula, in particular said that she would never forgive him for this.
52	* UnreliableNarrator: Hitler often embellishes his recollections to make himself look better. At least one translation uses footnotes to indicate when he is exaggerating or flat-out lying. Gregor Strasser, one of his former associates, referred to Hitler as a "congenital liar." (Hitler had Strasser murdered.)
53	* UntranslatedTitle: It's called ''Mein Kampf'' in several of the languages it was translated into.
54	* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Some digging into the archives revealed that Hitler... [[BlatantLies creatively remembered]] several events to make himself look better:
55	** He spent much of the war as a regimental runner, carrying messages between regimental headquarters and near the front lines and back (he is sometimes said to have been a ''Battalion'' runner, taking messages between parts of the front line; these were prime targets of snipers and the job was extremely dangerous; Hitler's job was not exactly safe, but it was far less dangerous than that). He often gives the impression that he spent most of that time fighting on the front lines, but in fact he usually spent days or even weeks sitting fairly comfortably in regimental command awaiting orders, passing the time by reading or painting. Regimental runners were generally in much less danger than Hitler made himself out to be in, and many of his fellow soldiers and even fellow runners sent him letters or wrote to newspapers saying as much (the Nazi Party sued them for defamation). He ''did'' win awards for bravery (though his closeness to regimental command almost certainly helped him[[note]]Ironically, the lieutenant who nominated him for the Iron Cross, First Class, Hugo Gutmann, was Jewish. Both men had previously received their Second Class Crosses on the same day![[/note]]) and did ''some'' combat, but much less than he made out.
56	** Hitler's fellow soldiers hated him too, calling him [[SoldiersAtTheRear "the pig from the back of the lines"]] and joking that he would probably starve to death in a tin factory since [[EpicFail he didn't know how to use a can opener properly.]]
57	** One of the more accurate (whilst still being readable) and few unabridged translations handily employs footnotes not only to explain hard-to-translate words or explain references that the reader might not understand at a remove of years and often miles from Hitler, but also to point out when Hitler is not being entirely truthful and what ACTUALLY happened, which happens quite often.
58	** Hitler is particularly vague and unreliable regarding his family and childhood in Austria. His lawyer Hans Frank, basically already facing the hangman's noose, speculated about Hitler suspecting Jewish ancestry and wishing to keep it hidden.[[note]]For what it's worth, the way Frank claimed Hitler's origins work is supported by little except his say-so. Not to mention that Frank, a vicious antisemite himself, would naturally use Hitler's supposed Jewish ancestry as a means to [[NeverMyFault rationalize the Third Reich's crimes]] as an elaborate Jewish conspiracy.[[/note]] A more likely answer is that the shallow gene pool ([[KissingCousins Hitler's parents were first cousins]]) and the provincial origins embarrassed him enough, so he wanted to seem vaguely "folksy" without coming across as a yokel. Hitler is also vague about just how much of a "strict disciplinarian" his father was. Attempts at having an [[AlcoholicParent alcoholic dad]] who [[AbusiveParents beat little Adolf]] be his FreudianExcuse abound in certain types of books about Hitler's childhood.
59	** Even if Hitler didn't have Jewish ancestry, at least one historian has claimed that he had Jewish friends and was a fan of Jewish creators, Music/FelixMendelssohn being a favourite composer of his, while he was a StarvingArtist before the First World War. Never mind that after the same war he worked for the short-lived communist government of Bavaria, and while of course he defected to the German Workers' Party, he didn't do so immediately, to say the least.
60	* WorthyOpponent: Hitler viewed Britain as this, calling it the only natural ally of a future Germany. Some members of UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill's cabinet would later cite this as proof that Hitler would probably honor a non-aggression pact if they made one, though Churchill himself refused the idea point-blank.

Context Literature / MeinKampf