[BRIEF NOTE] Hitler's Second Book
May. 7th, 2004 03:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI was very surprised to see Hitler's Second Book on the shelves of Stauffer Library's new books collection, yet it definitely exists and is legitimate. You can go to Amazon.com to order it. If you order it today, if things go the right way at the warehouse and you're willing to pay the extra cost, you can even get it for Monday.
This book remained unpublished during Hitler's lifetime. The introduction of its editor Gerhard Weinberg suggests this is because Hitler didn't want another book to compete with the flagging sales of Mein Kampf in 1928. A later publication would have conflicted with his goals of achieving political respectability. As Christopher Dreher pointed out in an article in The Globe and Mail,
The book received only a brief and inadequate translation and publication in the early 1960s. In a way, this is its coming out.
Omer Bartov noted in The New Republic (article only available to online subscribers) that Hitler's policies remained consistent between Mein Kampf and his second unpublished work, and over the entirety of his political lifetime.
He boringly harps upon it here. Hitler's Second Book is interesting in the way that it tries to explain away the Italo-German/Austrian disputes over South Tyrol, first by minimizing the absolute numbers and importance of South Tyrol's German population, second by pointing the need for Germany to achieve much greater goals with a necessary Italian collaboration.
The thing that struck me most about Hitler's Second Book was the extent to which Hitler identified national identities as primordial and essential and correspondingly rejected anything that could compromise these identities. Bavarian separatism, the assimilation of Polish and Czech immigrants, Coudenhove-Kalergi's Pan-Europa, the integration of French colonies and colonials into mainstream life, marriages between Jews and Christians--all were, pardon the use of German, verboten.
(And yes, he's a bombastic bad writer. We knew that anyways.)
As Dreher and Bartov point out, it's important to read this book in a time of growing anti-Semitism, in particular of an annhilationist anti-Semitism in the Arab world. The book's importance transcends this particular context and prejudice, however; it's useful to examine the specific ways in which Hitler, an unquestioned master of populist prejudice, exploited prejudices against hybridity and cosmopolitanism and contradictions of self-contained nationalist narratives. The 21st century will be globalized and pluralized, else it will not be at all.
This book remained unpublished during Hitler's lifetime. The introduction of its editor Gerhard Weinberg suggests this is because Hitler didn't want another book to compete with the flagging sales of Mein Kampf in 1928. A later publication would have conflicted with his goals of achieving political respectability. As Christopher Dreher pointed out in an article in The Globe and Mail,
Prof. Weinberg pointed out how strange Hitler's bellicose platform seemed in a German politician at the time. "It's 1928, 10 years after the end of the First World War," he said, "many Germans were of the opinion that one world war was too much for a century, and very dubious about the value of war. And here's someone who advocates taking not just bits of territory, but huge stretches of land."
The book received only a brief and inadequate translation and publication in the early 1960s. In a way, this is its coming out.
Omer Bartov noted in The New Republic (article only available to online subscribers) that Hitler's policies remained consistent between Mein Kampf and his second unpublished work, and over the entirety of his political lifetime.
The Aryan race needs domestic unity and freedom from polluting racial elements, and so it must expand into an undefined and likely limitless "living space" in the East. Germany's most important short-term enemy is France, for historical reasons and because it has become "negroized." Germany's most likely allies are Italy and Britain, with whom the Reich should have no quarrel since they also seek to expand in different directions. The greatest long-term enemy is the United States, not least because it is made up of healthy Aryan stock that has turned its back on the fatherland. The Slav states and the nations to Germany's east are to be taken over. The Slavs, and especially the Poles and Russians, are not worthy of ruling themselves, for whatever is great and worthy in the East was created by German colonizers and rulers. The greatest danger to the world are the Jews, who have taken control of the Soviet Union and are behind all the Marxist parties in Europe, and at the same time are the bosses and the manipulators of international capitalism. The Jews rule the world through a global conspiracy, and it is Germany's duty to destroy them before they subjugate humanity forever.
He boringly harps upon it here. Hitler's Second Book is interesting in the way that it tries to explain away the Italo-German/Austrian disputes over South Tyrol, first by minimizing the absolute numbers and importance of South Tyrol's German population, second by pointing the need for Germany to achieve much greater goals with a necessary Italian collaboration.
The thing that struck me most about Hitler's Second Book was the extent to which Hitler identified national identities as primordial and essential and correspondingly rejected anything that could compromise these identities. Bavarian separatism, the assimilation of Polish and Czech immigrants, Coudenhove-Kalergi's Pan-Europa, the integration of French colonies and colonials into mainstream life, marriages between Jews and Christians--all were, pardon the use of German, verboten.
(And yes, he's a bombastic bad writer. We knew that anyways.)
As Dreher and Bartov point out, it's important to read this book in a time of growing anti-Semitism, in particular of an annhilationist anti-Semitism in the Arab world. The book's importance transcends this particular context and prejudice, however; it's useful to examine the specific ways in which Hitler, an unquestioned master of populist prejudice, exploited prejudices against hybridity and cosmopolitanism and contradictions of self-contained nationalist narratives. The 21st century will be globalized and pluralized, else it will not be at all.
