Chapters 1-3 of Mein Kampf start out particularly strong. I imagine that this is due to the fact that the book is the size of a small jewelry box, and while I understand nationalism, I don’t think that there is anything in this world I love enough to sift through the entirety of a book THAT big. Comparatively, the Bible seems like a magazine.
The text starts out by annotating what most people already know about Hitler, that being, he is Austrian. This is both in the sense that he was born there, and strongly identifies himself with Austrian nationality. It does not take very long for him to get into the life of his father, which he considers an important backdrop to his childhood development. Something that may or may not come as a shock to you is that Hitler had daddy issues. There is no more dignified or proper of a way to put it other than that. He argued and disagreed extensively with his father over an issue that is also somewhat common knowledge. I believe it would be fair to assume that most people understand that Hitler wanted to become an artist, even from his youth. His father was a self made man, leaving home at a young age to score an apprenticeship, and put it to use. He eventually bought himself a farm, and while he lived a fulfilling life, his dream was always to be a civil serviceman. In a traditional fashion, his father pushed this dream upon his son, inadvertently causing world war two. Hitler didn’t want to be a civil serviceman, he wanted to be a painter, an artist. This is actually directly quoted within the text, with his father reacting in a way that seems as if it is straight out of a Disney film (Knowing Walt Disney, who knows.).
Obviously this disagreement led to Hitler becoming entombed in Austrian nationalism, because instead of pursuing creative arts on his own time, it only made logical sense to spend hours sifting through books on military strategy, in case he ever wanted to initiate a hostile military takeover of Poland. I would like to remind you that not only was he twelve when he started this particular interest in military strategy and soldiering, but that German was his weakest subject next to math, implying that he either simply did not exert himself in school at all, or much more likely, struggled intensely with it. Despite the latter assumption, he still deemed it integrally important to involve himself with this particular literature (And no other kind). It is noteworthy that his father was not particularly militant or nationalistic. After leaving the small village he was born in, upon returning he found that it seemed alien to him, and found more comfort in his accomplishments and goals than he did his home.
Hitler constantly claimed that his artistic abilities were profound, and that he was always the best in his class at drawing. In a twist of the fates, he actually decided to pursue formal academy to further his artistic abilities. While he wanted to be a painter, his ego-maniacal assumption that he was an amazing drawer was confirmed by someone who worked in the architectural department in the Vienna academic sect. Whether the fact that he was considered for this position instead of that of a painter due to the fact he was lacking in painting skills, or possessed exemplary drawing skills, we may never know.
Hitler lived in what could be considered a bohemian lifestyle. That was, he didn’t have a job. He was living off of his father’s estate (Who had died when he was 13), as well as a pension from the state for being an orphan once his mother died. This money dried up quickly, and it was at the point in which he had run out of it that he immediately began to detest and despise Marxist idealization and the Jews. There is almost no lead in to this, in the text (As described by him) it goes from him studying in Vienna with his inheritance money, running out of money, and then hating the Jews for two entire chapters.