Review of Stephen E. Ambrose's _The Good Fight_

[jbor]

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>From: Michel Ryckx <michel.ryckx at freebel.net>


> The only book I've ever stolen was a 1942 edition in my own language of
> 'Mein Kampf', which was
> written by AH while in his so-called prison after the 1923 Bierkeller
> Putsch, if I remember well.

Taylor, _Origins_:

    Hitler was himself an amateur historian, or rather a generaliser on
    history; and he created systems in his spare time. These systems were
    day-dreams. Chaplin grasped this, with an artist's genius, when he
    showed the Great Dictator transforming the world into his toy balloon
    and kicking it to the ceiling with the point of his toe. Hitler always
    saw himself, in these day-dreams, as master of the world. But the world
    which he dreamt to master and the way he would do it changed with
    changing circumstances. _Mein Kampf_ was written in 1925, under the
    impact of the French occupation of the Ruhr. Hitler dreamt then of
    destroying French supremacy in Europe; and the method was to be alliance
    with Italy and Great Britain. ... (1961, p. 69)

According to Taylor, _Mein Kampf_ demonstrates that Hitler was "obsessed by
anti-semitism, which occupies most of the book. Lebensraum only gets seven
of the seven hundred pages." ('Second Thoughts', 1963, ibid., xxi) Taylor
also comments:

    Whatever his long term plans (and it is doubtful whether he had any),
    the mainspring of his immediate policy had been "the destruction of
    Versailles". This was the theme of _Mein Kampf_ and of every speech he
    made on foreign affairs. I was a policy which won the unanimous support
    of the German people. (Ibid., 108)

The parallels with 'Mondaugen's Story' in _V._ are pretty obvious, Pynchon
demonstrating with Weissmann and Kurt how, during the 20s and 30s, "Hitler
merely repeated the ordinary chatter of Rightwing circles." (Ibid., xxi)

> For those as stupid as me to actually have read the thing, it is fairly
> easy to see how the
> 'program' of the NSDAP, as described in that book,  has been carried out
> between 1933-1945 and on
> which premises it was based, though one can hardly say it is a logical
> account.  The least one can
> say is that the author is megalomaniacal.

That hasn't been questioned.

> And it can certainly be
> established that the book was
> seldom read at the time (George Orwell a notable exception).

Well, that's only partially true. Taylor notes that "_Mein Kampf_ sold by
the million after Hitler came to power", even though in 1928, when it was
published, "_Volk ohne Raum_, for instance, by Hans Grimm sold much better
than _Mein Kampf_". (Ibid., xx-xxi). Hitler "forbade its publication in
English", by the way. (Ibid., 204)

best