Why I'm Reading "Mein Kampf"

I am reading "Mein Kampf," Adolph Hitler's autobiography and statement of purpose.  Why, is it because I'm a budding Nazi?  Are my secret, repressed proclivities finally surfacing?  Am I practicing goose-stepping around the house with a pot on my head?

Well no.

I just want to know what this man thought and why.  I found a free pdf copy of the book by searching the web, but I bought a Kindle copy of it from Amazon.  The Kindle copy automatically takes you to the last page you were reading when you quit, and that alone was worth the price.

Today antisemitism seems to making a comeback in a big way.  Perhaps this has something to do with the left's embrace of Islam, their fellow hate-America ideologues, the only religion to make Jew hatred and murder official and integral parts of its doctrine.

I became interested in reading Hitler's point of view when I started reading "Berlin Diary" by William L. Shirer. Shirer's book is quite compelling -- through his eyes one can see the Nazi movement in its early days, see Hitler as if he were still alive and making speeches.  It is scary being in Berlin in the late 1930's, seeing the rising peril, the elevation of a madman to the pinnacle of power in Germany.  Everywhere is the tramp of marching, boot-clad feet, Hitler's angry rants echoing over loud-speakers, men and boys in gray and brown uniforms, crowds of people with their arms raised in unison and shouting "Sieg Heil!"

The Nazis were Group-Think in its most extreme and dangerous form.  Now let's see what else I can learn from Mr. Hitler.

Update:  D. Charles, one of the most extreme Islamic apologists I have yet encountered, is ticked because I wouldn't post his last comment in which he calls me a bigot and says I have "lost the argument" (over the innate evil of Islam itself as opposed to extremists misinterpreting Islam).  He says I lost the argument because I have never visited an Islamic country.  This is a total non-sequitur.

Well DC, I have never visited Germany or Japan, but I still hold informed opinions as to the evil of the fascism that once dwelled there; I have never visited North Korea but hold an informed opinion that its government is genocidal and tyrannical.  I can read news reports, see films and videos, read published histories, and listen to eye-witness accounts -- and also read Islam's holy texts and written histories of Muhammad and his deeds.  I do not have to contract cancer to know that it is a horrible and often fatal disease.  Likewise, I do not need direct experience of Islamic evil to know the religion is evil and worthless to humanity.   Your argument and the premise it is built on are extremely weak.

Jew hatred is an intricate, innate part of the religion of Islam.  Quoting a reader at View From the Right:

While looking at the website of the Jewish Virtual Library, I came across the following chilling quote from Ibn Saud, the first king of Saudi Arabia, in 1937.

While speaking to a British colonel, H.R.P. Dickson, he said, "Our hatred for the Jews dates from God's condemnation of them for their persecution and rejection of Isa (Jesus) and their subsequent rejection of His chosen Prophet." He added, "that for a Muslim to kill a Jew, or for him to be killed by a Jew, ensures him an immediate entry into Heaven and into the august presence of God Almighty."

[Auster responds]:   This statement by Ibn Saud shows that it is not "radicals" alone who hate us "infidels" and want to conquer us. It is mainstream Muslims. And it did not start with the establishment of Israel in 1948, or Khomeini taking over Iran in 1979, or the U.S. keeping troops in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s to ward off a possible invasion by Saddam Hussein, or the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It started with Muhammad, and it is mainstream and universal among Muslims.

Oh, and one more thing, D.Charles: I kicked your butt like a soccer ball and we both know it.

William L Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" Reissued

William L. Shirer was an American journalist in Berlin from 1933 to 1941.  He witnessed first hand the arise of Nazism in Germany and reported on it.  The website Traces describes him this way:

One of the most recognized U.S. Americans to visit Nazi Germany, William Shirer perhaps shed more light on the events that led to Hitler’s ascendancy and German involvement in World War II than anyone else from the United States. Although closely watched in Germany, Shirer managed to convey much in his reporting by using subtle phrasing, suggestive tones of voice or U.S. slang unfamiliar to German censors trained only in formal British English. Having lived in Paris and familiar with Central Europe from his days with the Chicago Tribune, Shirer became one of the most respected U.S. journalists in wartime Europe.

Shirer later wrote a book, "Berlin Diary" in which he described prewar events in Germany and his visceral reactions to them.  Attending the Nuremberg rally (see above photo), Shirer described it this way:

Hitler shouted at them through the microphone, his words echoing across the hushed field from the loud-speakers. And there, in the flood-lit night, jammed together like sardines, in one mass formation, the little men of Germany who have made Nazism possible achieved the highest state of being the Germanic man knows: the shedding of their individual souls and minds—with the personal responsibilities and doubts and problems—until under the mystic lights and at the sound of the magic words of the Austrian they were merged completely in the Germanic herd.

Later, in 1960, he wrote his life's work, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich."  This latter book is considered one of the most important histories of Nazi Germany, of what happened there and why.   Smithsonian Magazine sets the stage:

Why had Germany, long one of the most ostensibly civilized, highly educated societies on earth, transformed itself into an instrument that turned a continent into a charnel house? Why had Germany delivered itself over to the raving exterminationist dictates of one man, the man Shirer refers to disdainfully as a “vagabond”? Why did the world allow a “tramp,” a Chaplinesque figure whose 1923 beer hall putsch was a comic fiasco, to become a genocidal Führer whose rule spanned a continent and threatened to last a thousand years?

Why? William Shirer offered a 1,250-page answer.

When I was a freshman in college in the early 1960's, "Rise and Fall" was highly touted by scholars and college professors, and was recommended reading.  I took a look at it, decided it was way too thick to hold my attention, and quickly returned it to its shelf in the bookstore of San Jose City College.

Now, years later, I get to rectify my mistake.  The book has been reissued, and I have purchased the Kindle edition of both "Rise and Fall" and "Berlin  Diary" from Amazon.com, and plan to read both books, beginning with the latter.  Why these books are important in the 21st century is explained in Smithsonian Magazine:

In Shirer one can see an evolution: If in Berlin Diary his emphasis on the Germanic character is visceral, in The Rise and Fall his critique is ideological. Other authors have sought to chronicle the war or to explain Hitler, but Shirer made it his mission to take on the entire might and scope of the Reich, the fusion of people and state that Hitler forged. In The Rise and Fall he searches for a deeper “why”: Was the Third Reich a unique, one-time phenomenon, or do humans possess some ever-present receptivity to the appeal of primal, herd-like hatred?

The herd-like instinct was clearly not a one-time phenomenon.  We have seen it before Hitler (the Jacobins of the French Revolution) and we have seen it afterwards (in Mao's Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution, and even the current "Occupy Wall Street" goons who seem incapable of rational thought).

Group-think almost always leads to disaster, particularly in politics.

Hitler Youth: "Tomorrow Belongs to Me"

On our second date I took the future Mrs. Chomper to see "Cabaret" starring Lisa Minelli and Michael York.

The one scene that I found chilling was at an outdoor cafe in Germany. A member of the Hitler Youth begins singing a song, "Tomorrow Belongs to Me." At first no one says a word. Then a girl joins in. Then others rise to their feet and begin singing too. Finally the crowd is standing and singing at the top of their lungs.

The people had become caught up in the Nazi movement and the rest is bloody history.  Giving up our freedoms is easy.  Getting them back is hard.

Darwinism and Hitler: Is There a Connection?

The leftwing Anti-Defamation League recently denounced Ben Stein's movie Expelled - No Intelligence Allowed as having "misappropriated the Holocaust." In the film Stein spends about 10 minutes showing how Darwin's theories were used by Hitler to justify his policies of eugenics, euthanasia and extermination of "lesser" races.

Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs agrees with the ADL. See his comments at this link.
However, the ADL arguments are disingenuous and Charles Johnson is wrong to adopt them as his own.

A recent article in National Review shows that Ben Stein was right and his assertions were based on "impeccable scholarship." The article by David Klinghoffer states that the Darwin-Hitler connection is not a new concept, and he quotes a number of scholars who have written about it. Nevertheless, writes Klinghoffer:

Reviewers in Time, Scientific American, Variety, Fox News, and elsewhere
have denounced the filmmakers for suggesting that Hitlerism without the
contribution of Darwinism would be hard to imagine...Expelled touches on Darwinism’s historical social costs, notably the unintended contribution to Nazi racial theories. That part packs an emotional wallop. It also happens to be based on impeccable scholarship.

Read the whole thing. If there's one thing Charles Johnson should remember, it is this: don't adopt leftist arguments uncritically without some research to see if they are justified.