Hitler's autobiography, Mein Kampf, provides not only a personal account of his life, but also contains his political ideology mixed in. Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler essentially takes Mein Kampf as a reference, but it is through Hitler's own book that possess all the fervor that makes Hitler who he is. Each word on every page seems to be directed at someone or something.
Within these pages, Hitler's hatred really seeps through. He saw all the misery that fell upon Berlin, and he could only feel the "anger, discontent, cursing wherever [he] went" (193). He saw only the negative things when he came out of the hospital, and was relieved to go back to his regiment. He claimed that it was some kind of conspiracy conjured up by the Jewish people to take the heat off of themselves.
What was interesting was in Chapter XI, titled Nation and Race, where he presented a biological reasoning behind the Jewish race. He claimed that Nature did not intend for stronger individuals to mate with weaker individuals, and "even less does she desire the blending of a higher with a lower race, since, if she did, her whole work of higher breeding, over perhaps hundreds of thousand of years, might be ruined with one blow" (286). Obviously, by "lower race" and "weaker individuals", he referred to the Jewish population. It seemed that Hitler just wanted to find a reason, any reason, to justify his future actions.
Hitler made it seem like the existence of the Jewish people was contaminating mankind, that to mix with them would equate to our own so called "physical and intellectual regression". All these degrading ideas are, I believe, so cruel and unnecessary. But knowing Hitler as the person that he is, it is not surprising why he would say this.
I'd probably agree with you when you say Hitler was looking for any reason to justify his beliefs. But I'd also say that we all do a similar thing, although perhaps in different degrees.
ReplyDeleteI think Hitler was caught in a 'bubble' of the far-right. All he read were their publications, all he heard was their speeches. This kind of narrow-mindedness, it seems to be, is the basis of most conflict.
Yes, that's a hugely sweeping statement. What I mean is that the reason we are reading Mein Kampf is to try to understand his reasoning, analyse it, and add it to our library of thoughts. It's this act that differentiates us from him, or moderates from extremists, at least in general.
I would argue that this is the reasoning behind the whole liberal arts education. Give people a bit of knowledge from everywhere, make them well-rounded, and they won't be closed into these little thought communities like Hitler was, unable and unwilling to tolerate anything else.
You can see the same thing happening today, on the right and on the left, in churches and otherwise. To be on such a linear, closed path in any ideology is asking for trouble. To attempt to play the arbiter (I say attempt because I find myself believing some things and not others based on previous beliefs) in a marketplace of ideas is, I hope, what differentiates us all from people like Hitler.