Month: September 2022

To start my blog post about this book, I will first write the things I found interesting about the introduction. It was shocking to see that a lot of Hitler’s speeches and writings were recorded and preserved. An interesting comparison is made: Hitlerism and Mein Kampf are said to be equal to christianity and the bible; both texts having beliefs that come from wildly misconstrued or out of context pieces of the work of their origin. I’d like to think this point is a good preface for the rest of the work; it allows the reader to better understand the differences between what is said in the book and the beliefs of the axis powers as a whole. It’s also quite interesting that it’s possible Hitler himself was partially jewish, but this is not known for certain. I had known that Hitler was a failed artist, but I didn’t know that he was homeless for a long period of time after failing to get into art school. Hitler came to hate his father, and in doing so, came to also hate the people he worked for: the Habsburgs. Hitler joined the army, and was recommended the Iron Cross by, ironically, a jew. Hitler was said to have been a natural orator. He was very convincing and was extremely good at demoralizing enemies and creating propaganda. Hitler soon took leadership of the Nazi party in Germany, and he bought the newspaper. Although briefly in jail, Hitler was able to use his position and beliefs to manipulate the judges into giving him a lighter sentence. Hitler also stirred up great animosity between the Weimar Republic and the German Government. Although bits and pieces of Hitler’s ideology can be traced to (possibly) certain people, there was no one man who “gave Hitler his ideas.” His political stance was unique to him.

Now, I will comment on chapter 4. He starts talking about Munich, a place where “one does not know German art if one has not seen Munich” (Hitler 116). He mentions the German alliance policy, mentioning that though he disagreed with it at the time, it was merely “self-deception.” He shows clear anger at the difference between the speeches of statesmen and the content of the press. He calls people stupid for thinking that Italy would stay on Austria’s side. He says that the only option for Italy was either to pretend to be allied with Austria to prepare for a war with them, or skip it and immediately go to war with them. Hitler then says that Germany is growing at an unsustainable rate, and that there are four key ways to stop this: birth control by humans/nature, internal colonization, acquiring of new land, or buying all needed supplies from other countries.

Next, chapter 5. The chapter begins with Hitler lamenting the period of time he was born in, wishing there was more violence and war. Hitler was eager to enlist when the war actually started. He mentions it’s unreasonable to “identify the German worker with Marxism” (Hitler 154). He continues, saying that one can’t be rid of people with certain ideologies by using brute force.

In chapter 6, Hitler talks about propaganda. He mentions that, on his side, the usage of propaganda was so unskillful that it had negative impacts. He takes on the “the ends justify the means” mindset. The target audience is the masses, rather than the educated few at the top. It must be simple.

In chapter 7, Hitler discusses the demoralization of troops at the front line over time. He discusses his time fighting the war. He describes the terrible conditions in Germany as a whole, especially Munich. He describes how “toxic” the Jewish people were to Germany at this time. He talks about the munitions strike. He talks about the vain sacrifices, and what motivates him to begin to get into politics.

Finally, in chapter 8, Hitler returns to the army after getting sick. He found himself unable to join existing political parties, but still wanted to arouse change in the nation. He listens to Feder’s lecture, and finds himself agreeing with all of his points. Hitler mentions that the most influential works of times always come in an era of misunderstanding and overlooking, which I find highly ironic.

There were a lot of unexpected things I encountered whilst reading Bambi. First, the Disney version of the text and the actual text are vastly different. The messages delivered by the Disney version are more to the theme of animal hunting being inhumane, whereas the novel itself is about the weak and powerless being hunted by others. The author himself had a forest under his name, and although he spent a lot of time in it peacefully, he also hunted animals there. The Disney film vastly misinterpreted the main point of the novel. It was shocking that the author only got $1,000 for the movie rights of Bambi, and never really made more off of the book. The Disney movie completely eradicated the characters of the old prince and Gobo, which is possibly why the meanings of the two are so different. As sad as the Disney movie is, I didn’t feel much emotion when reading the book. In retrospect, that’s probably due to the fact that I’m kind of resistant to that after reading 120 Days of Sodom. It was interesting how the author himself, though born jewish, didn’t see himself as a jew but rather an austrian. Despite this, he made the perfect book to represent the unlawful and unjust hunting of minority groups. I can kind of understand why this author wasn’t popular: not only did he argue a scarcely agreed upon subject, he also had little to no variation in his works. Almost all of his works were about animals, and I can understand how one would get tired of it.

Although I had taken a trip to the holocaust museum a few years ago, it was interesting to come back and see the new exhibit. I found the portion of the museum with the shoes of the slain Jewish populace especially impactful. The new exhibit, with the polls that you could physically flip over to see, was shocking. I figured that the decisions regarding the treatment of Jewish people were hated by people in other countries, and that the USA was eager to go to war against the axis powers. Unfortunately, I wasn’t feeling well on that particular day, so I spent a lot of my time there sitting down and didn’t go through the exhibits as thoroughly as I would have liked to.

It was fascinating to read such an extensive plan on world-domination. Even more shocking is that it was written for Jewish, by Jewish, to Jewish people. The work was very controversial and didn’t shy away from saying shocking things such as “WE SHALL DESTROY GOD” (Protocol No. 4, 3). One of the main themes in this work was that non-Jewish people are subservient to Jewish people, and that these non-Jewish people were born to serve as proletariats paid in breadcrumbs for hard, rigorous work. Alongside this, the work encourages the form of a secret government run by only Jewish people, that rules over pretty much all freedoms one can think of. Religion, press, authority, beliefs, what’s taught in schools, etc. There’s no shortage of outrageous phrases in this writing. It’s horrifying to think that this work isn’t fictional. When reading this work, I was struck by the minor comparison of this writing to The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli. Both share a central theme of preferring to be feared rather than loved, but this work specifically focuses more on where The Prince focuses on arousing only fear from the subjects. Although this book isn’t a solid justification for what happened against the Jewish people during the world wars, I can see where people would read this book and irrationally assume it to be fully truthful, and thus gain a fear of Jewish people. They have everything part of a plan to take over the world present in this work, even things less commonly thought about like the financial means in which to take over the world.

There are many things in this book that are considered controversial, both in the past and now. In the context of when the book was published, there were definitely more things considered taboo than there are today. For example, the act of anal sex (sodomy) was considered indecent and immoral back then, but is now commonplace and widely accepted. During the period this book was written, medical knowledge wasn’t as advanced as it is now. People didn’t know a lot of the things we know about medicine today, such as how germs spread. Looking at the vomit chapters now, one is greatly disgusted and concerned for the spread of disease from this activity, but back then they didn’t know that this is directly linked to an increased chance of illness and death. Also during this period was the peak of commonplace Christianity; almost all of Europe believed in God and were devout in their faith more than almost any time in history. That being said, that only makes the anti-Christianity themes of the book (and the upside down cross on the cover) more controversial and potentially upsetting to the masses.

Although I only read the introduction, I can already tell this book is going to be extremely problematic. There’s no shortage of incest, physical violence, rape, torture, and other morally wrong sorts of crime. It was extremely gross to have to read the graphic descriptions of the body parts of these characters, especially the older characters. There are a lot of aspects of this book that I don’t understand, especially the decision to include people who are either way too young or way too old to be normal. This book really isn’t something to be read while eating. I wish I had read more of it (to get it over with,) but I was busy with other homework and honestly lost track of time.