How to Read Hitler

How to Read...

by Neil Gregor, Simon Critchley (Series Editor)

Granta's new How to Read series is based on a very simple, but novel, idea. Most beginners' guides to great thinkers and writers offer either potted biographies or condensed summaries of their major works. How to Read, by contrast, brings the reader face to face with the writing itself in the company of an expert guide. Its starting point is that in order to get close to what a writer is all about, you have to get close to the words they actually use and be shown how to read those words. authors have been asked to select ten or so short extracts from a writer's work and look at them in detail as a way of revealing their central ideas and thereby opening the doors onto a whole world of thought. The books will not be merely a compilation of a thinker's most famous passages, their 'greatest hits', but will rather offer a series of clues or keys that will enable to reader to go on and make discoveries of their own. In addition to the texts and readings, each book will provide a short biographical chronology and suggestions for further reading, internet resources and so on. The books in the How to Read don't claim to tell you all you need to know. Instead they offer a refreshing set of first-hand meetings with those minds. Our hope is that these books will instruct, intrigue, embolden, encourage and delight. the most notorious anti-Semite in history. He shows that for all Hitler's inadequacies as a writer, his texts do convey an implicitly genocidal message - if they do not necessarily announce mass murder as a stated ambition, they certainly contain it as a strong logical possibility. shows, in particular, how the radical nationalist and racist messages of Hitler's best known work, Mein Kampf, are contained not just in the author's own arguments but in the language and generic forms of the book itself. Extracts are taken from Mein Kampf and from the Second Book.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published February 7, 2005

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

A COMPLICATED PREAMBLE

It started with Manny’s review
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
which itself started as an experiment that had nothing to do with Hitler or Mein Kampf. Our mutual friend Lilo had posted a one star review on Amazon of Er ist wieder da (Look Who’s Back) by Timur Vermes, a “satirical” novel about Hitler. She told people NOT to read it. Amazon deleted her review. Manny wanted to find out how far this censoring policy was being taken (we all remember the great Goodreads censorship craze of 2014 and we all know who owns Goodreads). So Manny chose Mein Kampf and wrote a one line non-review urging people NOT to read the book to find out if his non-review would be deleted. He then described what happened next in his Goodreads review. It wasn’t deleted, but many interesting things happened. The comments section of this Goodreads review then took on a life of its own, and became one of the most interesting discussions ever on Goodreads. (Someone should make a best-of-Goodreads-comments-sections list!)

Then, in another part of the forest, I came across a book called How to Read Sade, which I read and reviewed. It was part of a series of “How to Read” books, which included some of the usual suspects – the introduction refers to them as “great thinkers and writers” – so you have Darwin, Freud, Wittgenstein, Foucault, Jung, Marx – and HITLER.

What was he doing there? I was curious to find out. And also I thought that whereas I agreed with Manny to the extent of never wishing to go anywhere near Mein Kampf itself I could allow myself to read about Mein Kampf. In approaching the infectious object I would be donning the disinfective space suit of criticism.

ON TO THE AMBLE ITSELF

And this is exactly how it turned out. Neil Gregor gives us a very solid, useful essay about Hitler’s book, showing us clearly where its arguments repeat previous writers and where they suddenly become radical and original, and how Hitler’s political views were, like those of any paranoid conspiracy theorist, fairly coherent within their own system. He is at pains to say that of course Hitler was not like Wittgenstein or Freud, not any kind of great or important thinker. (True – so, really, what WAS he doing in this series?) Page three asks the question “Should we read Hitler at all?” The answer is – if we wish to understand how the Nazi ideology was formed, here is the big kahuna of foundation documents. All 650 pages of it. But be warned:

The reader will not struggle to find logical inconsistencies and self-contradiction. Some passages border on the incomprehensible.

Still, we need to confront Mein Kampf:

To dismiss Hitler’s ideas as merely eccentric or deranged is intellectually and morally lazy – it enables us to talk about Hitler in a way that avoids raising more awkward questions about the genealogy of his beliefs of their place within the intellectual traditions of western modernity.

HITLER’S BRAIN IN ACTION

Hitler was against a lot of things and he was for one thing. Which was, as you know, the German race. But not any old German race – the one which was flourishing in that golden age of the First Reich, whenever that was – around the year 900 probably. Whereas many Germans were happy to see their country embrace industrialisation and become industrially powerful (1880-1910) Hitler hated all that. Capitalism made people think only about themselves, getting on, making a buck, founding a company, manufacturing steel – but what they should be thinking about is the German race, not themselves. The race is everything, the individual nothing.

Germany was constantly being undermined by new forces. Internationalism undermined the nation-state, whether by the capitalists, who owed their allegiance to no one, or the communists, who preached the unity of all workers in all countries and rejected the whole nation-state concept. Hitler thought that both of these powerful economic-political-internationalist drivers were run by “the Jews”.

Where Hitler got his pathological anti-Semitism from is a study in itself – there’s a great book Explaining Hitler by Ron Rosenbaum (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) all about that.

WHO PUT THE GERM IN GERMANY?

Throughout Mein Kampf we see medical imagery. The nation state (Hitler’s term was “the racial state” because there was only room for one race in his state) is thought to be like a body, prone to outside infection. There’s a whole lot about parasites, poisons, viruses, noxious bacilli, plagues and so on. At the same time, the state is involved in a constant life-and-death struggle for survival with other nation-states. To call these ideas “vulgar social Darwinism” as Neil Gregor does is probably right but surely pollutes the name of Darwin, so I hesitate to do so.

So you see where all this is going – Hitler is obsessed with Germanness and believes that being extremely German is what makes Germans great. There was absolutely no room for racial minorities in Hitler’s reich. No multiculturalist he. But even if you were 100% German you didn’t get a free pass, you had to be fit and healthy too. Maximum Germanness at all times! How can you be maximum if you have only got one leg?

Hitler had some radical ideas on how to achieve maximum Germanness. He states in MK that unfit Germans are to be strongly discouraged from having any children, and fit & healthy ones are to be instructed to have many children.

The racial state… must see to it that only the healthy beget children.

Well, there’s a chilling line. There’s the forced sterilisation programme, there’s T-4, the euthanasia programme, and there is the first experiments with carbon monoxide in a converted van at the Brandenburg an der Havel State Welfare Institute in February 1940.

RECOMMENDED

Neil Gregor has done us all a favour, he’s slogged (carefully and slowly, he says) through MK and Hitler’s little-known Second Book (unpublished until 2006) and come up with a very clear account of how Hitler thought about things rendered down to 110 short pages. I think that’s about all anyone could stand.

[Mohammad Ali Shamekhi · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتاب برای من کتاب جالبی بود. جدای از تلاش جالب توجه نویسنده برای بیرون کشیدن نوع نگاه هیتلر به تاریخ و اجتماع از دو کتاب او - یعنی "نبرد من" و "کتاب دوم" - ، نفس باورهای هیتلر برای من از نظر فلسفی جالب بودند

برای کسی که با سنت رمانتیک تفکر آلمانی از یک سو و تفکر هایدگر از سوی دیگه آشنا باشه، خوندن این نوشته پیشنهاد میشه - البته در مورد هایدگر کمتر. میشه رد پای تفکر رومانتیک رو در نگاه هیتلر به جهان پی گرفت - مثلا بحث نبوغ، قهرمان، تأکید به شور و مصمم بودن، تأکید به فردیت ( هم شخصی و هم قومی ) و ... . از طرف دیگه می شه فهمید چرا هایدگر امیدی به هیتلر بسته بوده - هیتلری که به شهرنشینی سرمایه دارانه، تسلط جنبه های کمی ( اقتصاد )، سلطه ی اکثریت کور، انترناسیونالیسم مارکسیستی و ... می تازه

اما خیلی دیدگاه ساده بینانه ایه که فکر کنیم جنایات هیتلر رو میشه به جنبه های رمانتیک فروکاهید. با دیدن نوشته های هیتلر می شه از تأثیر پررنگ طبیعت گرایی ( میراث امثال ماکیاولی در سیاست، لاروشفوکو در اخلاق و نیچه در همه جا! )، داروینیسم اجتماعی، باور به خصلت های نژادی ( میراث امثال گوبینو ) و علم باوری ( که البته با شبه علم همراهه ) سخن گفت. اگر تفکر اروپایی مثل رومانتیک ها به جای نژاد بر فرهنگ تأکید می کرد، ما به جای هیتلر داخائو و آشویتس و ... احتمالا صرفا با یه امپریالیست دیگه روبرو می شدیم. به نظر من همونطور که توهم توطئه در افق سیاست وجود داره در افق تفکر هم می شه ازش استفاده کرد - اینکه مثلا هیتلر رو به رومانیتک ها، یا نیچه یا هر کس دیگه ای فرو بکاهیم و تعدد عوامل واقعی رو نادیده بگیریم

خلاصه اینکه به نظرم خوندن کتابی از این دست برای اینکه تبعات افکارمون رو بسنجیم و بهشون آگاه باشیم می تونه ضروری باشه

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this one for a class on Fascism and Anti-Authoritarianism. I considered giving it 5 stars, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. But I found it to be very informative, intensely thought-provoking, and coherent and clearly organized. There are also (believe it or not) funny moments, during which Gregor makes clear his opinion of Hitler as a writer -- which was not very high. Lots of run-on sentences, mixed metaphors, clunky and heavy prose. We read this in combination with The Nazi Conscience by Koonz, and while the two texts diverge from each other on several key points, the two in combination add up to a really interesting analysis of the ideology and motivations of the Nazi Party. It seems to be one of those unanswerable questions, but Gregor (and Koonz) lead the reader down a path from which they can begin to see how what happened was possible.

I'm just glad I didn't have to read Mein Kampf.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very useful, short, sharp analysis of Hitler's ideology. An introduction through texts to what the man actually thought. There is the usual problem with trying to explain a way of thinking that is completely alien and requires a leap of imagination that 'taints' the leaper if it is successful, but Neil Gregor gets it 95% right. Recommended

[Jillian Matthews]

For class

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Neil Gregor explains what can be inferred in the ramblings of Adolf Hitler, and reminds readers of what cannot. Gregor also consistently reminds his readers to not read too much into Hitlers ramblings, that the benefit of hindsight should not be used to make assumptions.
Gregor also reminds the reader of what many people forget--a poor writer does not mean a poor thinker.

[Terry Burgess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Assigned this book in a college English course. If one wants to get inside the mind of Hitler without reading Mein Kampf would recommend.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great overview. Gregor has given a detailed overview on Hitler's deranged and constant stream of nonsense that he wrote in his two shit-piles of books (if Mein Kampf wasn't bad enough, turns out there was a Second Book unpublished until 2006). Hitler's main preoccupations are (surprise, surprise) the Jews, of which he paradoxically can blame for both the destructive materialist tendencies of industrialised capitalism, which destroys the 'purity' of the good honest German, and also 'Judeo-Bolshevism', in which communism supposedly tries to steal the workers away from their blood-and-soil roots by deluding into believing in human equality and a unification of class overleaping racial and national lines (which of course is basically treason to Hitler). Why? 'Cus the Jews are always trying to good old White European Aryan culture and society, as he repeatedly refers to Jews as, amongst others, 'the plague of nations', 'a disease', 'tuberculosis', 'parasites', 'poison', a 'foreign virus' and a 'noxious bacillus'.

This of course leads into Hitler's belief in medical terminology being fit enough to describe countries and nations, with Germany being the 'body', the fight for racial 'struggle' as the equivalent of the body fighting anti-bodies, and obviously the Jews being the damaging viruses to the body.

The book also covers Hitler's obsession with lebesnuram, and the need for 'living space' for the burgeoning children of Germany (that mothers were encouraged to constantly have) and his views of the disabled (hint, hint, he isn't very keen on them either, for similar reasons as the Jews).

The best sections are Gregor taking to pieces Hitler's thinking and writing style. So for instance, an excerpt in which Hitler states this:

If a really vigorous people believes that it cannot conquer another with peaceful economic means, or if an economically weaker people does not wish to let itself be killed by an economically stronger one, as its ability to feed itself it slowly cut off, then in both cases the mist of peaceful economic phraseology will be suddenly torn apart and war, that is the continuation of politics by other means, steps into its place. (2B, 22-3)

Gregor writes:

Reading this hopelessly unstructured string of clauses on can picture Hitler standing, peering over the shoulders of his hapless scribe, forming sentences as ideas come into his head and inserting sub-clauses as the thoughts and associations randomly strike him. There is an unmistakeably 'stream of consciousness' quality to the writing, which does not appear to have undergone even the most basic editing, let alone anything like rigorous polishing. It also contains an almost impossibly clumsy mixed metaphor - what is the 'the mist of peaceful economic phraseology'? And how does one tear mist apart? (pg. 7)

Good stuff! And also very accurate.

The main point in reading Hitler would be too discover if Hitler's dribblings are proof of further intentions. Gregor states Mein Kampf in particular is also partly an attempt to wheedle his way in as the new leader for the German far-right. But as to whether what he did in power from 1933-1945 can be seen here in his little books, is doubtful at best. It would be stupid to suggest, as someone like Lucy Dawodowitz does, that Hitler could have planned everything that went on in the war as far back as the writings of Mein Kampf, I doubt anyone, unless they were a James Bond villain, could be assured enough that their masterplan would work out great for nearly 10 years without any sudden contextual changes in the world affecting their decisions whatsoever.

But it does not mean we should ignore it outright. Gregor logically concludes that if Hitler did define the world into medicinal terms, then this metaphor "translate(d)...back into the human world of politics...becomes chillingly clear" in what he meant when he said vague statements like "poison is countered only by an antidote" (MK 306)".

On the whole, as to the question of “should you read Hitler?” The answer is probably not. 600+ pages of the writings of a man, who these days would be probably some drunk ranting on a street corner on a cardboard box, about the “Jews” and the “communists” and all his wacky theories on race, history and how-the-world-works based on these, is not very desirable.
Instead, this book is a much better substitute, being short and swift, but detailed enough to give you enough insight into Hitler’s thinking, while still, with Gregor’s commentary, anchoring you back into reality.

[Kaylee Monahan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I understand this is a history book with the intent of education not entertainment. However, the prose was extremely convoluted and Gregor heavily relied on useless rhetorical questions, so much that finishing this book felt like walking through molasses.

Chapters 5-7 encapsulated the essence of the already short book and the idea was presented properly in them. I will say that I did walk away with a better understanding of Hitler’s mental map and inconceivable ideology. When I have to read excerpts of Mein Kampf for class, this reading will serve useful.

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

"For Hitler, the Jews were a separate race. They were unique among races, however, in that unlike all others they did not have their own territory to defend. They were an international race. In the eternal history of racial struggle they thus played a peculiar role. With no living space of their own, they were obliged to live a parasitical existence." (50)

"'We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze towards the land in the east. At long last we break off the colonial and commerical policy of the pre=War period and shift to the soil policy of the future. If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states.'" (quoting Mein Kampf, 95)

"'sooner will a camel pass through a needle's eye than a great man be "discovered" by an election.'" (quoting MK, 102)

"Hitler argued that when a new supporter 'steps for the first time into a mass meeting and has thousands and thousands of people of the same opinion around him, when, as a seeker, he is swept away by three or four thousand others into the mighty effect of suggestive intoxication and enthusiasm, when the visible success and agreement of thousands confirm to him the rightness of the new doctrine and for the first time arouse doubt in the truth of this previous conviction -- then he himself as succumbed to the magic influence of what we designate as "mass suggestion."'" (quoting MK, 106-7)

[Gebo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not my favorite of the How to Read series, but a pretty good book nonetheless. This book covers the ways that Hitler's Mein Kampf and Second Book relate to his politics as chancellor of Germany. It completely ignores his speeches, however. If you'd like to know more about Hitler and his relation to his writing, this is a great book to check out.

The best parts of the book is its simple, clear writing style and it's easy-to-follow subject matter. It's an excellent tertiary source in that regard; however, it just kind of ends without a conclusion and given the sporadic nature of the chapters, just leaves the reader to finish off/sum up the material/story themselves.

[Otto]

Well thought out, persuasive, skillfully edited, but hardly comprehensive. A slim volume that raises many interesting points, political, historical, and personal.

[John Sharp]

This book was okay. Not totally impressed, but it was worth reading.

[Edward · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good introduction to the ideology of Hitler, and a less embarrassing purchase than Mein Kampf.

[Megh Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very analytical read, quite enjoyable if you're trying to understand Hitler's ideology.