Cowboy wrote: ↑Thu Jul 31, 2025 4:04 pm
…What primed me to read it was wanting to hear what his actual ideals/motives were. There is a lot of talk about him in light of current events and that causes a lot of mixed messaging, so I wanted to be able to form my own coherent thoughts on the man. The best way to do this was obviously to read what he had to say.
…More importantly, to me at least, people who had actually read it called the book boring.
…Overall, I think the book is a very good read if it is read with intent. It definitely changed the way that I think about politics. People who think that it is a "blueprint for genocide" are either uninformed on the topic or deliberately spreading false propaganda.
Thanks for this.
I enjoyed reading your chosen excerpts.
Fascinating!
Regarding it supposedly being a “boring” book to read, I’ve read that the Mannerheim and Murphy translations into English were deliberately translated into difficult, sluggish, obtuse English to discourage it having a wide readership.
I’ve wanted to read it for the same reasons that you gave but was waiting for a modern and better translation.
I was hoping Dalton’s translation would be better.
I do have a rather basic understanding of German as I have lived and worked there a few times in the 70s and 90s. So when Dalton’s translation came out I was disappointed with the few passages that I checked.
Here’s something I wrote that touches on all that (i.e. unrepresentative translations) some years ago. It was in response to a jewish person choosing to share a particular quote from it without any commentary, on a discussion forum.
* ^ * * ^ * * ^ * * ^ * * ^ * * ^ * * ^ * * ^ *
AH’s book, AH himself, Schopeneur and mistranslations
For anyone who no longer wants to be a gullible, brainwashed believer in the war-time based demonisation of Adolf Hitler, they will have to unlearn what they have learnt and will have to try and look at the facts anew, without presumption, prejudice or bias.
Regretably it seems, the vast majority of people older than 30 will not be able to do this, as — after decades of conditioning — they have become incapable of reasoning themselves out of a position that they didn’t reason themselves in to.
For example, here is a quote from ‘Mein kampf’ that is often presented as representing AH’s attitude to life and war:
Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.
I’ve often seen these words in English falsely attributed to Adolf Hitler, and as representing his views on “fighting”, and by implication ‘war’.
But the Reichschancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 Adolf did NOT write those words.
He neither spoke nor wrote in English (he spoke and wrote in German only), so this therefore is, in reality, a popular and commonly-repeated mistranslation designed to make Adolf and his thoughts look bad. As any fair-minded reader will discover, if they read the vernacular version of the words in Adolf’s biography ’Mein kampf’ that this misquote is based upon.
For anyone not so familiar with German, here below are his actual words, followed by a translation that I regard as a fairer and more accurate representation in english.
ORIGINAL GERMAN:
”Wer leben will, der kämpfe also, und wer nicht streiten will in dieser Welt des ewigen Ringens, verdient das Leben nicht.
Selbst wenn dies hart wäre - es ist nun einmal so! Sicher jedoch ist das weitaus härteste Schicksal jenes, das den Menschen trifft, der die Natur glaubt überwinden zu können und sie im Grunde genommen doch nur verhöhnt. Not, Unglück und Krankheiten sind dann ihre Antwort!”
~ Adolf Hitler, ‘My struggle’ — Kapitel 11. Volk und Rasse
archive.org/details/Mein-Kampf2/page/n349/mode/1up?view=theater&q=boden
LITERAL WORD-FOR-WORD TRANSLATION:
“Who life wants, the violent struggle also, and who no contention wants in this world of eternal grappling, earns the life not.”
~ Adolf Hitler, ‘My struggle’ — Chapter 11, ‘Nation and race’.
A MORE COLLOQUIAL AND COMPLETE ENGLISH TRANSLATION:
“Who wants life, [must accept] the violent struggle also, and who wants no contention in this world of eternal grappling, does not earn life. Even if this seems harsh — that's just the way it is! Certainly, however, by far a harder destiny is that which befalls the human being who thinks he can triumph over nature when in reality he mocks her. Hardship, misfortune and illhealth will then be their resulting consequence!”
~ Adolf Hitler, ‘My struggle’ — Chapter 11, ‘Nation and race’.
Of all the ideas to choose from in Mein Kampf (a book I haven’t read, by the way), why do so many journalists, authors, etc., pick just this particular quote to share?
I suspect the ONLY reason why someone would share the unfair and inaccurate English translation, would be to to falsely imply that Adolf Hitler loved fighting and war and regarded it as the ’natural’ pursuit of all beings.
Whereas, in REALITY he didn’t like war. He hated it and after personally experiencing its horrors during 1914-1918, sought hard to avoid it.
So this promotion of just this one quote from Hitler’s autobiography I regard as a DELIBERATE DECEPTION. One I suggest is chosen as a self-justification for British, American and Jewish-instigated war-mongering racism, imperialism and war-crimes.
I suggest this false idea of Adolf’s supposed applauding of ”fighting” is mostly believed, repeated and advertised by gullible and impressionable people who feel an immature need to portray Adolf as a wicked person and icon of ’evil’ in order to feel good about themselves and to justify their erroneous WW2 beliefs-from-ignorance.
These particular quoted thoughts, dictated by Adolf while in Landsberg prison, seem to me to be a reflection of his familiarity and belief in the philosophy of Arthur Schopenauer.
And we know he was familiar with Schopenhauer’s aphorisms as Christa Schroeder in her posthumously* printed memoir recalled taking him to task and embarrassing him for attempting to pass off an aphorism of Schopenhauer’s philosophy as his own thought.
(* Christa Schroeder instructed that her memoir be only published AFTER death. As a self-confessed ”fanatic for truth” she presumably knew that her honest portrayal of Hitler — with all his foibles and mood-swings —showing he was also as a warm, friendly, courteous, generous and humorous person and boss, would get her into trouble and could even land her in prison).
Here are a few thoughts from Arthur Schopenahauer expressing a similar idea:
ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WORLD.
Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim. It is absurd to look upon the enormous amount of pain that abounds everywhere in the world, and originates in needs and necessities inseparable from life itself, as serving no purpose at all and the result of mere chance. Each separate misfortune, as it comes, seems, no doubt, to be something exceptional; but misfortune in general is the rule.
…The pleasure in this world, it has been said, outweighs the pain; or, at any rate, there is an even balance between the two. If the reader wishes to see shortly whether this statement is true, let him compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other.
The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole!
We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey. So it is that in our good days we are all unconscious of the evil Fate may have presently in store for us — sickness, poverty, mutilation, loss of sight or reason.
No little part of the torment of existence lies in this, that Time is continually pressing upon us, never letting us take breath, but always coming after us, like a taskmaster with a whip. If at any moment Time stays his hand, it is only when we are delivered over to the misery of boredom.
But misfortune has its uses; for, as our bodily frame would burst asunder if the pressure of the atmosphere was removed, so, if the lives of men were relieved of all need, hardship and adversity; if everything they took in hand were successful, they would be so swollen with arrogance that, though they might not burst, they would present the spectacle of unbridled folly—nay, they would go mad. And I may say, further, that a certain amount of care or pain or trouble is necessary for every man at all times. A ship without ballast is unstable and will not go straight.
Certain it is that work, worry, labor and trouble, form the lot of almost all men their whole life long. But if all wishes were fulfilled as soon as they arose, how would men occupy their lives? what would they do with their time? If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves; or there would be wars, massacres, and murders; so that in the end mankind would inflict more suffering on itself than it has now to accept at the hands of Nature.
…The brute [animal] flies from death instinctively without really knowing what it is, and therefore without ever contemplating it in the way natural to a man, who has this prospect always before his eyes. So that even if only a few brutes die a natural death, and most of them live only just long enough to transmit their species, and then, if not earlier, become the prey of some other animal,…
~~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Translated By T. Bailey Saunders