Adolf Hitler was able to transform Germany into a military juggernaut and recover it from economic ruin in a short few years, earning him the devout love of the German people and converting the masses to his Nazi Party. In order to earn that power in the first place, he needed to gain support through his speeches and writing. I expected Mein Kampf to be eloquently written, expertly persuasive and dripping with all the charisma of perhaps the most horrific individual in human history. I can say that my expectations were thoroughly subverted. I felt that the book was poorly constructed, contradictory, and generally rambling. It relied on the passion and emotion of the reader to convince them of anything, and even if I agreed I could not call it a well-constructed piece. Hitler began chapters by proclaiming, quite uncharacteristically, that race does not matter as much as a person’s merits and then proceeded to end the chapter by concluding that race is the most important thing to account for in determining German citizenship. He praised the policies of the United States regarding citizenship and referenced multiple policies made in recent years, which were actually immigration policies caused by the increasingly popular sentiment that the United States should focus on caring for its own people in the wake of the Great War. The United States had the same policies of citizenship as Germany in every regard that Hitler claimed was so detrimental. The complete and utterly nonsensical passages were seemingly unlimited, and it actually frightens me that Hitler was able to so effectively influence the German people with such a low caliber of writing.