Before writing anything, I would just like to preface this by saying that I read the first four chapters, then skipped to the beginning of chapter ten, and then just skimmed random passages. I did this because I didn’t want to spend too much time on Hitler’s experience in the war and how he got into politics – although this information might be important to a biographer or a historian studying the path Hitler took to become the Fuhrer, I didn’t feel it was necessary for me to read and I wanted instead to read the sections where he talks more specifically about his beliefs on the subjects of race and religion.
One of the aspects of Mein Kampf that stood out to me the most were how often Hitler referred to “Fate” and “Nature” as being powerful forces in the world. For someone who was really far from being religious, believed so strongly in self-determination, and was so determined to make his way in the world, Hitler put a lot of faith into fate and nature. It was almost strange to me that he would rely so much on fate to control his destiny, as he doesn’t exactly seem like the type to just “go with the flow.”
To be completely honest, I though the first four chapters were pretty boring. I knew that this wouldn’t be as violent and hard to read as most people assume it is, especially since it was only published in 1925 and Hitler had not come up with the “final solution” yet. Hitler rarely goes into detail about Jews and usually sticks to making general statements about Jews and Marxism. This is also one of the reasons why I skipped to chapter 10 in order to get away from the autobiographical and economic sections of the book.
Finally, the last point I want to make is that I didn’t disagree with everything Hitler said. Although this may seem ridiculous, there were a couple of occasions where I actually agreed with his point of view. Specifically, I agreed with him on the purpose of studying history – that it is meaningless to study random facts and dates without actually applying any of the knowledge to problems occurring in the world at present. Additionally, I agreed with Hitler when he said that there are 3 types of newspaper readers (although nowadays this would be corrected to just be news readers) – those who believe everything they read, those who believe nothing they read, and those who critically analyze and examine what they’re reading. Hitler obviously places himself in the third category, as do I. I do believe it’s important to read the news critically, but Hitler obviously took it too far when he assumed that all the major press outlets in Vienna were run by Jews and were therefore unworthy of reading.