Hitler and his God

Hitler Bares his Mind

William Shirer, the American journalist who has followed “the rise and fall of the Third Reich” from nearby, writes: “It might be argued that had more non-Nazi Germans read [Mein Kampf] before 1933 and had the foreign statesmen of the world perused it carefully while there was still time, both Germany and the world might have been saved from catastrophe. For whatever other accusations can be made against Adolf Hitler, no one can accuse him of not putting down in writing exactly the kind of Germany he intended to make if he ever came to power and the kind of world he meant to create by armed German conquest. The blueprint of the Third Reich and, what is more, of the barbaric New Order which Hitler inflicted on conquered Europe in the triumphant years between 1939 and 1945 is set down in all its appalling crudity at great length and in detail between the covers of this revealing book.” 253 We find Shirer’s opinion confirmed by Christian von Krockow, at present a popular author in Germany: “Actually one has to be astonished: what was said in Mein Kampf was exactly what Hitler afterwards did, but people had not read or not taken seriously what was written there.” 254 And Christian Zentner states simply: “The politics of the Third Reich cannot be understood without Mein Kampf.” 255

Yet the book is often considered a nutty curiosity. And it is believed by many that nobody in Nazi Germany read it. Eberhard Jäckel, for instance, writes that Mein Kampf “was hardly read and still less understood”. 256 Both parts of Jäckel’s statement should be qualified. As to the first part: some ten million copies of Mein Kampf were printed till 1945; all couples were presented with a copy by the mayor as part of their marriage ceremony (many such copies are still gathering dust in German garrets); copies of the book were kept in all places where Nazidom was thriving; Mein Kampf was prescribed study material in all educational institutions, and the German youth had to learn by heart whole passages from it.

Moreover, the German media studded their propaganda with quotations from the Führer’s book, which was revered as the Nazi bible. How literally one should take this is shown by the fact that a copy of Mein Kampf was to be present at the SS-ceremonies of baptism, initiation into the Order, marriage and death. We find another confirmation in the following articles of the National Reich Church: “… 14. The National Reich Church declares that to it, and therefore to the German nation, the Führer’s Mein Kampf is the greatest of all documents. It not only contains the greatest but it embodies the purest and truest ethics for the present and future life of our nation … 19. On the altars there must be nothing but Mein Kampf (to the German nation and therefore to God the most sacred book) and to the left of the altar a sword.” 257 And there were of course Hitler’s speeches, Mein Kampf in action, obligatorily listened to by every German in a non-solitary situation at the time of their delivery, and bellowed from specially installed loudspeakers in all public places. It may be supposed that few people read Mein Kampf from cover to cover, for it is heavy fare for any reader – and how many ever take up ideological literature anyway? But its most accessible ideas were spread, repeated and commented upon all the time and everywhere in Naziland, and served as the mental framework of the life and work of its citizens.

One can agree with the second part of the Jäckel statement, that Mein Kampf was not understood, if this lack of understanding, or misunderstanding, refers to Hitler’s vision as a whole. On this point hardly any of the learned commentators, even with the advantage of present hindsight, are agreed – as little as the top Nazis around Hitler were agreed on it among themselves. This is the fundamental paradox of this book, which confers to it a special place in history. “Rarely and probably never in history has a ruler, before he came to power, put down in writing, as Adolf Hitler did, what he subsequently carried out” writes Jäckel, and he quotes Hans Gisevius: “If one reads Mein Kampf post facto, then one finds there everthing, really everything, what this man has done to the world.” 258

Others speak of “an unreal candour”, which causes Zentner to label Mein Kampf a Bekenntnisbuch, a confession, which it was to the extent that Hitler in later years sometimes expressed regret of having written the book. Yet he gloated over the fact that most of his intimate thoughts were there for all to read, but – and this is the paradox – that hardly anybody understood or believed their meaning. One reason for the lack of understanding was that people in general are not capable of or interested in digesting theoretical, abstract thinking; another reason was that the book as a whole was the expression, albeit in a clumsy way, of a central vision in the author, the core of which he kept secret even from the people closest to him; and a third reason was that Mein Kampf, at the time it was written and read, aimed at the politically and ideologically impossible, and therefore not understandable, because incredible. If Mein Kampf is that important, then it is worth a closer look.