posted
I must confess, that I'm rather interested in reading this. It's available to buy, and I have to say that I'm tempted.
There's a few reasons that I'm hesitant. I'm sure you can guess them. First, I'd feel incredibly dirty, and I'm not sure that I want it in my house. Secondly, it'll be a weird one to explain to guests. Especially those who notice it, then won't say anything, but just leave having formed their own opinions.
However, it also seems to me to be an essential thing to read/own for anyone who wants to really understand the second world war and the holocaust.
So, has anyone actally read it? If so, what do you think?
-------------------- seriously , everyone on here , just trys to give someone crap about something they do !! , its shitting me to tears. Posts: 16061 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
I tried to read it once, and I found it terribly disjointed, difficult to follow, and needlessly verbose.
-------------------- "When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty."--George Bernard Shaw Posts: 19266 | From: Nashville, TN | Registered: Jun 2002
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posted
Is it available in English? If so, what you said pretty much goes for me too. If I could buy it with a plain brown wrapper, I probably would. I'd also probably put a "Catcher in the Rye" dustjacket on it.
Posts: 2079 | From: California | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
The book is often built up much larger than its contents allow for (obviously, the reason being that Hitler is the author). If you read it, I think you'd concur that 2/3 are just...well, rambling. Even if you ignore Hitler's ridiculous premises and false histories, he rarely makes any of the points he sets out to. No design, no system to his madness.
The book certainly does sell, though (I'm curious how many kids actually read the massive text after purchasing it, though). Slightly OT: I used to work for Borders' Corporate offices. Mein Kampf is actually included in a list of approximately 200 titles that are required to be stocked in every store. A Jewish conspiracy, no doubt!
-------------------- The salty fragrance of L’EauD’I’mNotDedalus - made entirely of and entirely for sea turtles. Posts: 1983 | From: Chicagoland, IL | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by BoKu: Is it available in English? If so, what you said pretty much goes for me too. If I could buy it with a plain brown wrapper, I probably would. I'd also probably put a "Catcher in the Rye" dustjacket on it.
The two most popular English translations are those by Murphy and Manaheim. Ha! A Catcher veil! The secret 700-page edition of Holden's struggles.
-------------------- The salty fragrance of L’EauD’I’mNotDedalus - made entirely of and entirely for sea turtles. Posts: 1983 | From: Chicagoland, IL | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Troodon: You can read it in full on the internet.
Really? Do you have a link?
Not that I probably will, mind you. A real book is much easier on the eyes, and it's harder to get distracted by all sorts of stuff.
I've heard a lot about the rambling nature of the book, but I think that that is part of the appeal to me. It is, after all, a direct insight into the mind of the largest mass-murderer of the last century.
-------------------- seriously , everyone on here , just trys to give someone crap about something they do !! , its shitting me to tears. Posts: 16061 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
The Wikipedia page on "Mein Kampf" has links to several online versions near the bottom. I tried reading one of them, but I only got several pages into it because it was really boring.
-------------------- Fools! You've over-estimated me! Posts: 3745 | From: New York City | Registered: Jan 2004
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Hitler doesn't really give many personal thoughts that are too indicative of how we think of "murderers," though. The bulk (primarily Volume II) is more a political diatribe than a tome for anti-Semitism.
-------------------- The salty fragrance of L’EauD’I’mNotDedalus - made entirely of and entirely for sea turtles. Posts: 1983 | From: Chicagoland, IL | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
I tried to read it in my late teens for some reason that escapes me now... ah wait a minute now I remember it was to impress a chap I fancied who was studying modern history and philosophy. As my motivation was shallow to say the least I gave up half way through the first chapter, around about the time I started going out with the aforementioned fellow.
In more recent times a friend who has not quite worked out if he is a socialist or a fascist tried to make me read it so that we could have heated political debates. I read a couple of chapters at his house one evening but found it deeply frustrating as there are so many contradictions it makes it difficult to follow.
I don't see any reason why you shouldn't read it if you have an interest in understanding the second world war Trollface. After all I don't imagine you are going to be using it as an instruction manual for world domination Posts: 589 | From: Oxfordshire, UK | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
I've read it, and frankly, unless you are interested in the ravings of an obvious sociopath who isn't actually a very good writer, it's not worth bothering with.
There really isn't anything in there you wouldn't expect to be in there. Hitler pretty much distilled the thoughts of the book into his actions, so you aren't going to discover any surprises. What you will find is someone who seems to be absolutely in love with the sound of his own words, and probably shouldn't be. It's needlessly verbose, pendantic, and condescending to the reader, and it isn't really that interesting in the first place.
We read in in my Deviant Psychology class at university. I was surprised to discover that the best word to describe it is "boring."
-------------------- "I will tell you in another life, when we are both cats." Posts: 308 | From: Cleveland | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I took a Holocaust Literature class once. We didn't read the book for the class, but it was important to know some of the basic notions. Anyway I don't see any reason to feel bad about reading it. Historically it's important, that doesn't mean you support it or Hitler.
Posts: 27 | From: Waco, Texas | Registered: Dec 2005
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posted
Interesting that you would feel the need to conceal it on your bookshelves. I know people who bought it just for display purposes, the way they buy Che Guevara T-shirts and posters featuring obscure alt-punk-metal bands--to show how radical and counter-culture they are. Why, at the college I attended, you weren't enough of an outcast to fit in unless you had well-traveled, tattered copies of Mein Kampf, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Fast Food Nation, Lies My Teacher Told Me, and everything ever written by David Sedaris. Bonus points if you sandwiched these literary works between the Bible and the Kama Sutra to make a point.
Esprise "Everything except Mein Kampf" Me
-------------------- "If God wrote it, the grammar must be infallible. Perhaps it is we who are mistaken." -MapleLeaf Posts: 977 | From: Boston, MA | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
I bought a copy at the local library a few years ago that I never cracked open until a few months ago. Turns out, it was printed before the start of World War 2. Kind of neat to see what people had to say about Hitler at that point in history.
I read part of the chapter on propaganda. He bitches about the poor quality of German propaganda in World War I and says that people are stupid and can't be trusted to form the "correct" opinion when given just the facts; that propaganda should be as irrationally biased as possible, offering not even "a glimmer of right on the other side." It sort of creeped me out a little the way some of his words seemed to reflect what you sometimes see in the strategies of modern political advertisements. (To an extent the aforementioned deliberate unfairness, but also when he talks about how in his not-so-humble-opinion successful politicians rely on appeal to emotion, and the way that it seems that politicians actually do use that strategy.) It got me thinking about whether the unadorned truth can survive in a heated political arena where everybody's trying to twist the facts in their favor, and nobody knows what the real story is, kind of like in the movie Rashomon. It also got me thinking that Hitler was a bit crazy.
ETA: Also, I found myself wondering how people didn't see what was coming from Hitler when this book was printed. How did the Russians really think they could make a deal with Hitler when he was talking about Marxists almost as venemously as he was talking about Jews?
-------------------- "For the U.S. to get involved militarily in determining the outcome of the struggle over who's going to govern Iraq strikes me as a classic definition of a quagmire." ~Dick Cheney. Posts: 747 | From: Kansas | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Mr. Billion: I bought a copy at the local library a few years ago that I never cracked open until a few months ago. Turns out, it was printed before the start of World War 2. Kind of neat to see what people had to say about Hitler at that point in history.
I've seen an edition from approx. 1935. While the foreword isn't quite saying he's wonderful it does say something like "his ideas should be read as he is quite significant".
-------------------- I shall baffle you with cabbages and rhinoceroses in the kitchen and incessant quotations from "Now We Are Six" through the mouthpiece of Lord Snooty's giant poisoned electric head. So there! Posts: 802 | From: London, UK | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by I'mNotDedalus: Hitler doesn't really give many personal thoughts that are too indicative of how we think of "murderers," though. The bulk (primarily Volume II) is more a political diatribe than a tome for anti-Semitism.
Well, partly, I'm not interested in the image that we have of such people, I'm more interested in the truth of the matter. And I'm also interested in the politics of it - not just the racism issue.
quote:Phaedra said: After all I don't imagine you are going to be using it as an instruction manual for world domination
You say that now...
quote:Sandman said: I've read it, and frankly, unless you are interested in the ravings of an obvious sociopath who isn't actually a very good writer, it's not worth bothering with.
Actually, I am. I might change my mind once I start reading it, of course, but at the moment, it's a "yes".
quote:Esprise Me said: Interesting that you would feel the need to conceal it on your bookshelves. I know people who bought it just for display purposes, the way they buy Che Guevara T-shirts and posters featuring obscure alt-punk-metal bands--to show how radical and counter-culture they are.
That is so not me. I don't have anything for the sake of having it, and I certainly don't try to show off to people how "cool" or "radical" or whatever I am. That's for tarts and poseurs.
-------------------- seriously , everyone on here , just trys to give someone crap about something they do !! , its shitting me to tears. Posts: 16061 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2000
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Mr. Furious
Ding Dong! Merrily on High Definition TV
posted
I own it. I've read it in full once, and I pick it up to read bits of it now and then. It's really, really difficult to slog through.
That said, I consider it to be a fascinating work, and I'm glad I read it. It's on my bookshelf, and I'm not ashamed of that at all. I have a copy of Achtung - Panzer! up there, too. That doesn't make me a Panzer commander any more than having Mein Kampf makes me a neo-Nazi.
quote:Originally posted by Sandman: I've read it, and frankly, unless you are interested in the ravings of an obvious sociopath who isn't actually a very good writer, it's not worth bothering with.
If it was some random sociopath, I'd agree, but it's who the sociopath was (or, more accurately, who he became) that makes it interesting, at least for me. Hitler wasn't a particularly good artist or architect, but I also find his artwork and designs interesting (though not nearly as interesting as his writings or speeches) because they were done by him.
Keep in mind, though, that my minor had a concentration in military history, and my specialization was the European theater of World War II.
posted
Mein Kampf is banned in Germany, (classified as hate literature) and has survived banning attempts in several other countries like Sweden and Czech Rep. Personally I think this is a bad policy, it's better to show the world what a rambling idiot Hitler was. Interestingly, no-one has mentioned that other anti-semetic book "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion". Even though it has been proven a hoax it went a long way to providing anti jewish sentiment in the prewar years, and to a lesser extent still does today.
-------------------- I like free speech. It lets me know who the idiots are. Posts: 407 | From: Ireland | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I agree, skeptic. Banned books are so much more enticing. If they really want to keep people from reading it, they should assign it as homework in middle school.
-------------------- "If God wrote it, the grammar must be infallible. Perhaps it is we who are mistaken." -MapleLeaf Posts: 977 | From: Boston, MA | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
Same experience as most of the rest of you: I read it, but it was an ordeal, not because of the content, but because of the Crappy Writing! Themes just jackrabbited around, without any thematic coherence at all.
(But...then...I felt the same way about Aristotle's "Ethics.")
Silas
Posts: 16801 | From: San Diego, CA | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Esprise Me: I agree, skeptic. Banned books are so much more enticing. If they really want to keep people from reading it, they should assign it as homework in middle school.
And the opposite is true, too- I suggested to my English teacher during my senior year of HS that if she really wanted us to read something, she should either say it's banned or ban it from her classroom.
Posts: 885 | From: Florida | Registered: May 2004
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posted
Not read the book but read enough excerpts from it while reading history to think it would be a boring and tedious read.
Having said that, I think everyone should read something from all the worlds nutters just to challenge your own beliefs. The more I read about Hitler, Lenin, Mao, Mussolini together with all the worlds religious bigots, the more convinced I become that liberal democracy, for all its faults, is the only viable method of government.
To quote (misquote) Churchill - democracy is the worst form of government there is, apart from all the others.
-------------------- Churchill drank, smoked and was a successful amateur painter. Hitler was a teetotal, vegetarian, animal loving failed professional painter. Draw your own conclusions! Posts: 34 | From: Nottingham, England | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
I've read a couple of chapters online, and skimmed a lot more, and I have to say that I've found it utterly fascinating so far.
The only thing I've really had trouble with is the terrible formatting of the page that it's linked to. Having a real, paper version would sort that out. So, I might find myself buying it after all.
-------------------- seriously , everyone on here , just trys to give someone crap about something they do !! , its shitting me to tears. Posts: 16061 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:Originally posted by trollface: The only thing I've really had trouble with is the terrible formatting of the page that it's linked to. Having a real, paper version would sort that out. So, I might find myself buying it after all.
The paper Version doesn't nessesarily have to be easier.
There is a copy from my grandparents and it is written in old German letters.
-------------------- FAMILY(n): Where the term insane is a RELATIVE term //Threadkiller: Watch this line.....it might be the last on this topic........ Posts: 2146 | From: Austria | Registered: Oct 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Silas Sparkhammer: Same experience as most of the rest of you: I read it, but it was an ordeal, not because of the content, but because of the Crappy Writing! Themes just jackrabbited around, without any thematic coherence at all.
(But...then...I felt the same way about Aristotle's "Ethics.")
Silas
God, it's a relief to see someone else express that.
Posts: 1749 | From: -> Canberra <-/ Hong Kong / London | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Van Couver: The paper Version doesn't nessesarily have to be easier.
I'm just finding the lines too long to read across comfortably.
-------------------- seriously , everyone on here , just trys to give someone crap about something they do !! , its shitting me to tears. Posts: 16061 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
It might be easier to read if you're more relaxed. Have you tried this perky little red?
Yes, I did google "Wein Kampf", do you need to ask?
-------------------- Cogito ergo sum, non sum qualis eram. Putting Descartes before the Horace every time. Posts: 377 | From: East Anglia, UK | Registered: Dec 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Silas Sparkhammer: Themes just jackrabbited around, without any thematic coherence at all.
(But...then...I felt the same way about Aristotle's "Ethics.")
Difficult to blame Aristotle for the poor diction/syntax/cohesive quality of his works, as they generally aren't his failings: what we have are mostly lecture/student notes (the Nicomachean Ethics falling under such a category).
But that's neither here nor there.
quote:Originally posted by Esprise Me: I know people who bought it just for display purposes, the way they buy Che Guevara T-shirts and posters featuring obscure alt-punk-metal bands--to show how radical and counter-culture they are.
That's interesting. I've also detected a bit of a hint of chic-ness in people who automatically decry Mein Kampf as unreadable (excepting the intelligent crowd gathered in this thread). Sort of a "wizened reflex" to the mention of Hitler; one that may, indeed, be wise but, nevertheless, lack critical thought as a reflex.
So, what do you find interesting about the book so far, trollface?
-------------------- The salty fragrance of L’EauD’I’mNotDedalus - made entirely of and entirely for sea turtles. Posts: 1983 | From: Chicagoland, IL | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
Well, I've only properly read Chapter 2 of the first volume, and skimmed a few others. This is where he describes working in Vienna as a labourer and a painter, and he talks about how he comes to "realise" that Marxism is bad, and how he changes from being positive to neutral towards Jews to thinking of them as the greatest evil on the face of the planet.
I'm also finding it a bit strange to have to confront my own prejudices in this way (not that I think that being prejudiced against Hitler is a wrong thing to feel, I mean it in the sense of preconceieved notions). I have a tendency to think of racists and the like as stupid and uninformed, and it's clear that Hitler was neither. It's hard to tell how much of his talking about going away and learning about Marxism and Judaism is him puffing himself up, and how much is true, but I tend to believe him when he says that he became more informed than his co-workers and that they ended up unable to beat him in a rational argument, as they previously had.
Of course, he's wrong to judge a whole race/religion/philosophy on those people, as he seems to have done, but I'm sure we've all had first-hand experience with trying to have a resoned argument with people who aren't good at logical discourse, and who are less informed about the subject that they're trying to defend than you are, even though it's their cause. I can understand his frustration at the situation.
Ultimately, I think what I've found the most interesting so far and, maybe the most strangely, is that I can actually start to see Hitler in a way that I never had before - as a human being. I think it's understandably easy to demonise him, and to do less than demonise him is almost taboo in today's society. But this has brought home to me that he was actually a real person who was driven by much of the same desires as we all have and who probably really, genuinely thought that he was doing something that was laudable. It's done it in a way that no dramatisation of his life that I've ever seen has even come close to managing.
It's odd and even a little disturbing, to tell the truth, to see him not as an abstraction, or as a sort of figurehead for "evil", or even as a figure of fun. In a way, in this day and age, he's almost a pop culture icon. It's kind of like the Holocaust was a real and tragic event, and the second world war is something that happened a long time ago, long enough ago to be able to be thought of as dispassionately as the Boer war, and Hitler is a comedy mustache and haircut. Eddie Izzard does a Hitler routine, Jerry Seinfeld does a Hitler routine, there's things like this, and http://www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com/
It's just weird to be reminded that, actually, he's not an abstraction, he's not a symbol of anything, he was a real person who was born, and went to school, and grew up and went to work. He had thoughts and opinions, and he read and learnt and he thought his opinions through. He talks about how scared he was when he first started thinking anti-Semetic thoughts and when he first started to think that maybe anti-Semetic people had got it right. He talks about how much he hated the anti-Semetic stuff that was out when he was first exposed to it, because it was so illogical and badly thought out. And, I suppose, there was a part of me that always simply imagined that he either grew up as an anti-Semite, or that when he first was exposed to it that he fell for it hook, line and sinker. To discover that he was actually a deep thinker who liked to be informed about subjects just didn't fit in with my preconcieved notions. And, no matter how wrong he may have been, he wasn't an inhuman monster, or this weird amalgam of images and iconography that we have now, he was just a human being.
So, strange, interesting, and a little bit scary, so far.
-------------------- seriously , everyone on here , just trys to give someone crap about something they do !! , its shitting me to tears. Posts: 16061 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
I have just read Kubizek's book on his friendship with Hitler lasting from 1905 to 1909. They were friends in Linz and then lived together for a year in Vienna. Very interesting in giving a picture of Hitler.
He could be very hardworking when something interested him. Reading alot about Marxism and Jews would fit this bill. However much of what he read was only to confirm his existing prejudices.
In terms of being able to out-argue people, he never allowed anyone to out-argue him because his debates consisted of one-sided rants by himself. No one else ever got a word in edgeways.
His political views were largely self-taught because he felt he wouldn't put up with convential schooling. His father was a customs official and he despised the kind of work that that entailed and anything similar to it. Hence he ended up in poverty because he felt himself too important to get an ordinary job.
He comes across as a barrack room lawyer or the the local pub bore - think Cliff Clavin in Cheers only more aggressive.
-------------------- Churchill drank, smoked and was a successful amateur painter. Hitler was a teetotal, vegetarian, animal loving failed professional painter. Draw your own conclusions! Posts: 34 | From: Nottingham, England | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Originally posted by BoKu: Is it available in English? If so, what you said pretty much goes for me too. If I could buy it with a plain brown wrapper, I probably would. I'd also probably put a "Catcher in the Rye" dustjacket on it.
Frankly, if I had a copy of 'Catcher in the Rye', I'd put a 'Mein Kampf' dustjacket on it!
-------------------- "Ignore the shooty dog thing" Posts: 49 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Esprise Me: Why, at the college I attended, you weren't enough of an outcast to fit in unless you had well-traveled, tattered copies of Mein Kampf, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Fast Food Nation, Lies My Teacher Told Me, and everything ever written by David Sedaris. Bonus points if you sandwiched these literary works between the Bible and the Kama Sutra to make a point.
Esprise "Everything except Mein Kampf" Me
What's wrong with my Bible, Farenheit 451, 1984, and Kama Sutra?!
-------------------- Never eat anything given to you by a toddler. Posts: 258 | From: Rochester, NY | Registered: Aug 2006
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quote:Originally posted by trollface: It's odd and even a little disturbing, to tell the truth, to see him not as an abstraction, or as a sort of figurehead for "evil", or even as a figure of fun. In a way, in this day and age, he's almost a pop culture icon. It's kind of like the Holocaust was a real and tragic event, and the second world war is something that happened a long time ago
There is an interesting psychological and philosophical tension between the "ordinary people" interpretation and the "demonic" interpretation of the Nazi experience.
To view it as the actions of ordinary people helps put it into current perspective. We, ourselves, could be led into this kind of nightmare; we, ourselves, could *participate* in it. Yet this view also trivializes events, slightly, by making them a part of the tapestry of human activity.
The "demonic" view emphasizes the evil and the terror: it gives us graphic photographs of concentration camp victims, and focuses on the Nazi regalia, the ceremonial fixation on death, etc. But it has the danger (many feel) of removing the evil from the hands of ordinary men and women, and allowing us to attribute it to "others" -- people so exceptionally evil that they have little or nothing in common with us.
Both viewpoints have some validity, but neither should be relied upon to the exclusion of the other.
Silas
Posts: 16801 | From: San Diego, CA | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
I read the book about 9 years ago now, so I don't recall it in great detail. I read it as part of a piece of coursework I was doing at the time and I have to agree with those who simply called it boring. I found it badly written, rambling and incoherent in places. The early parts of the book I found more interesting and it's strange to view Hitler as a person rather than the Wests demonised view of him but ultimately it's a book I'm never going to revisit and it certainly didn't alter any of my beliefs.
Posts: 18 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2006
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posted
sounds like mein kampf might be the perfect subject for MS Word's autosummarise function! Download the online version, dump it into word, and then ask for a 20-30 page summary. Print that off and you'll succeed on all fronts:
1) you'll get your authentic taste of reading mein kampf 2) you'll avoid all the long, boring verbosity that others are complaining about 3) you'll have it in "book" form in your hot little hands to sit and read with a coffee in your favourite chair.
Either that, or see if someone has already edited a reader's digest style condensed version.
Meanwhile, the bulk of the great writings in my field were written in german, and while I've learned german I do most of my reading in english translations of the german. One thing I've noticed is that good german usually makes for long, disjointed, condescending english.
Hitler still could have been a really bad writer, you'd need someone more fluent in german to read the original to tell, but for what it's worth the fact that it is translation is surely skewing the results.
-------------------- a moment for old friends now estranged, victims of the flux of alliances and changing perceptions. There was something there once, and that something is worth honoring as well. - John Carroll Posts: 3375 | From: Ontario, Canada | Registered: Mar 2004
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