Summary:The book is Hitler's autobiographical work with emphasis on his philosophy regarding the state and politics.

The book opens up how one of the most barbarian dictators in the history of mankind thought and justified his actions. It is known to everyone that Hitler molded the way history books as we see them today and committed one of the gravest crimes on the mankind, but what this book reveals is the underlying fuel that propelled this man. Its his beliefs and perspective towards the German nation that made him choose the specific political path. Hitler writes how the basic fundamentals of politics and society took shape in his mind starting from his very childhood and through his youth. His distaste towards parliamentary democracy is openly shown and he proves how such a system has brought upon the degradation of the political body of the nation and is incapable of doing any good. He states that the basic issue with parliamentary democracy is accountability since it can not be ascertained to a single person.. Hitler is a steadfast nationalist and in this book of his, he charts the way forward for the great German State. In the competition to gain more land and resources he clearly states that a nation needs to go out and acquire external land. He also professes that man should not come in the way of natural selection of the strongest and maintains that artificial means to stop population growth lowers the strength of the nation since in a natural selection process only the strongest would have survived in the competition. He also debates how only Aryan race is capable of fueling the progress of mankind and that the Jews have been working endlessly in order to dominate the human race and in doing so they use corrupt means of manipulating the societal structure in various nations. He clearly states that if Germany wants to reach its destiny, Jews need to be eradicated from the nation. In the latter part of the book, he shows how he joins the German Labour Party and spearheads the youth movement to awaken the German nation. The party becomes increasingly popular under dynamic leadership of Hitler and his flare for public speaking come to fore in this struggle to gain political stature. Social/Historical context:The book is a window into the life in Germany at the time of World War I and post that. It gives a perspective from the other side. The book is a piece of document that shows how a dictator can think and pushes you to believe that it is not entirely wrong what Hitler thought. The social structure in Germany and the segments of the society are clearly shown through the eyes of Hitler. The book also presents political structure of Germany at that time and the lacunae that existed in the system along with the strategies of propaganda employed by the French during WWI. The manipulation of public sentiments by Hitler helps reveal the emotions of the mass and how the social conditions in Germany helped him take advantage. Writing Style:The book is written in a very straight forward manner without any diplomacy. As expected from someone like Hitler, the writing style is compelling and thought provoking. It almost convinces the reader towards Hitler's way of thinking. The writing is easy to understand and very direct. My Thoughts:When I started reading this book, I didn't know what the contents are exactly, I knew just that Hitler had written it and expected it to reveal the inner world of the Dictator. The book was up to the expectation and has provided great insight. The only part that may trouble some of the readers is that the book demands a certain historical knowledge in order to fully appreciate the contents.

Adolf Hitler's rambling magnum opus, Mein Kampf ("My Struggle") is considered a blueprint of the radical nationalist, pungently anti-Semitic vision that he would put into practice when the Nazis captured power in Germany, in 1933. It reflects his thinking so accurately that one German historian describes the book as "direct access to Hitler's brain." In fact, the book's contents were considered potent and infectious enough that the postwar administration in Allied-occupied Germany banned its publication, a prohibition that German authorities maintained, and which is to remain in place until the end of 2015, when the copyright expires. What happens then is the object of intense discussion and soul-searching in Germany, where, 67 years after the war's end, freedom of speech is still curtailed when it promotes Nazi ideology. Hitler wrote most of Mein Kampf in 1924, during his incarceration for his role in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, when he and his followers tried to seize power in southern Germany. One of his motives for writing the book was to use the royalties to pay off his legal fees. It was originally thought that Hitler dictated it to his prison mate and early follower, Rudolf Hess. But recent research concludes that Hitler typed it himself in his cell on a portable typewriter, and then later dictated further parts to a publisher. The tome is a 700-page, two-volume monstrosity, the first edition of which came out in 1925. Though the book contains autobiographical information and was used as a basis for the Nazi Party's political programs, it is written in the agitprop style of a political pamphlet. During the Weimar Republic years, the book was a best seller and the subject of fervent debate. Hitler conceived Mein Kampf as a call to a vlkisch nationalist alternative not only to Marxism and social democracy, but also to parliamentary democracy, monarchy, and the church. He describes international Jewry as a force committed to a global conspiracy to dominate the world and reduce Germans to their underlings. Using the classic anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, he asserts that rootless, cosmopolitan Jews were behind Bolshevism as well as American-style capitalism. Hitler's tract calls for Germany's rearmament, the annexation of Austria, the rejection of the Versailles peace treaty, and the necessity of a Rassenkrieg (racial war) to win Lebensraum (living space) for Germans in eastern Europe. Because Munich was Hitler's last legal address before he and his National Socialist German Workers Party came to power in Berlin, Bavaria owns its intellectual-property rights, a hot potato that officials here have juggled uneasily for decades. Despite the fact that 12 million copies of Mein Kampf are in printmaking it one of the world's all-time best sellersGerman courts have repeatedly upheld the ban on publication, as well as the book's flaunting in public and display in store windows. One may legally, however, own Mein Kampf, disseminate it, use it in university coursework, and even sell secondhand copies. Anybody can download it today free from the Internet. The de facto Nazi bible was outlawed in the delicate postwar years, when Germany was a traumatized, post-fascist country, far removed from the imperative of coming to terms with its past. "The prohibition was completely justified at the time," says Hajo Funke, a political scientist emeritus at Berlin's Free University. "Both the American and German authorities were rightly worried that it could attract a cult following. In addition to this, there were much tougher prohibitions aimed at a population that had just undergone 12 years of fierce Nazi propaganda and still had those thoughts in their heads. At the time, there were broad networks of active former Nazis, including ex-SS officers." Today there are still networks of right-wing extremists in Germany, as there are most everywhere in Europe. And in Germany, the state's rigorous prosecution of Nazi propaganda is accepted by most citizens. Just last year, Germans were shocked at revelations that a terrorist group calling itself the National Socialist Underground had murdered 10 people, nine of them immigrants. Polls attest that

anti-Semitism still has currency among about 20 percent of Germans. That figure is not higher than elsewhere in Europe, but Germany is, after all, Germany. Most observers feel that Germans have long possessed the political sophistication to have Mein Kampf readily available in bookstores, and that the ban has outlived its purpose. "German society as a whole is now mature enough," says Bernd Wagner, an expert on right-wing extremism who runs a program for neo-Nazis opting to leave the scene. But the Bavarian authorities aren't taking any chances. At the cost of $700,000, they have opted to publish annotated editions, including English and audio-book versions, to go on sale on January 1, 2016. The hope is that these will precede the publication of private publishers' unannotated versions and will therefore steal their thunder. The task of annotating Mein Kampfincluding one for high-school studentsis in the hands of a small team of historians at the prestigious Institute of Contemporary History, in Munich. The aim of the exercise, which will include critical introductions, is to "demystify" its messages. "Mein Kampf is like a rusty old grenade. We want to remove its detonator," explains Christian Hartmann, who leads the Munich team. "We intend to defuse the book. This way it will lose its symbolic value and become what it really is: a piece of historical evidencenothing more." Exactly what Hartmann and his team intend to include in the commentary is a source of tension. Why should historians alone get the job, ask political scientists? What will be emphasized and what will be omitted? Will the commentary confine itself to Hitler's early ambition to conquer Europe alone, or will it point toward phrasing that indicates the waging of a world war? Can one read into Hitler's antiSemitic tirades his intention to exterminate Europe's Jewry, even though that idea is nowhere explicitly mentioned in Mein Kampf? Scholars are among those eager to get their hands on the Munich team's annotated version in order to discover what emphases the notes convey. For instance, Julius H. Schoeps, director of the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies, at the University of Potsdam, argues that one of Mein Kampf's most essential elements is Hitler's presentation of himself in quasi-religious terms, as a "savior," even a Christ figure. Although Schoeps' focus is not particularly maverick, there is no consensus that this is a primary aspect students should take away from the book. More generally, Schoeps argues that annotations should be ample, not just minimal footnotes, and that they should explicitly underscore connections and explain nuances. "Mein Kampf was the clearest single ideological formulation of Nazism," says Funke, who as a political scientist focuses on the ideological design of fascism. "In it you'll find radical anti-Semitism, Hitler's will to dominate the world, vlkisch nationalism, Aryan supremacy, the logic of eugenics, and his justifications for a Fhrer-led state. The annotated editions have to make these points, as well as being historically exact and clear." But Wolfgang Benz, director of the Center for Research on Antisemitism, at the Technical University of Berlin, believes that Mein Kampf is not nearly as definitive a work on Nazism as many of his colleagues think, and that imputing so much weight to it in the annotated editions blows its relevance out of proportion. Norbert Frei, a historian at Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, feels that the commentary is in the right hands in Munich but agrees that "it has to refrain from overeditorializing. "You could comment on every line, but that would be way too much," he says. "It should stick to correcting factual errors, identifying persons mentioned, etc." The debate over annotation is less relevant for university students, since their instructors aid them in making sense of the content. "The commentary is for your nonacademic man on the street, so he'll be

able to understand its context," says Schoeps. Selections from Mein Kampf have long been on course syllabi, particularly in political-science departments in Germany. Usually West German instructors would photocopy a short section or a few pages for their classes. Before the age of photocopiers, students in the 1960s, like Hajo Funke, filched copies from their parents' shelves or found used editions in secondhand book stores. After all, there were plenty floating around in the postwar decades. During the Nazi years, every newlywed couple in Germany and every soldier on the front received a free copy. By 1945 an estimated 10 million were in circulation. But making Mein Kampf available to high-school students, even with a commentary aimed at teenagers, is a different matter. Germany's federal agency for civic education is drawing up a manual to help teachers better explain the text. The Bavarian Teachers' Association has protested the move. Rightwing-extremism experts, like Bernd Wagner, worry that when bookshops sell new editions of Mein Kampf, neo-Nazis will be better able to persuade young people to buy them. "And if the kids aren't talking about the content" with someone in the know, "then they might make some of the theses their own." Some scholars outside Germany are less worried about that possibility. "I have no qualms about Mein Kampf being available to a broader German public," says Jonathan Sperber, a professor of modern European history at the University of Missouri at Columbia. "Actually reading the work, with its tedious 1920s German, would, if anything, discourage the various neo-Nazis and skinheads in Germany today." "The idea of immunizing the populace against Hitlerism by banning Mein Kampf was always pointless," says Anson Rabinbach, a historian at Princeton University. "It has also been available in German on the Internet for some time." "A long overdue scholarly edition should address such issues ... as its intellectual roots, audience, and contemporary influence," he says Concentration-camp survivors and their relatives are appealing to publishing houses and book retailers not to carry the book. Germany's democratic socialist party, the Left Party, blasts the annotated version as a misguided approach. "The right-wing scene has always had access to the book," said a news release from the party, "and an annotated edition simply contributes to the wider dissemination of fascist thinking under the guise of scholarship." The Left Party, particularly strong in eastern Germany, maintains that Mein Kampf should be banned completely in Germany, because it constitutes inflammatory fascist propaganda. But the historian Frei responds that "in order to prevent publication, the state would either have to prove it was inflammatory or create a new law. Why should we give Adolf Hitler the honor of going to so much trouble so long after his death?"

Adolf Hitler one of the most powerful and forcing personality relates his experiences in a manner that match stroke for stroke his character.A true genius as he ,was misplaced in history . When the whole world ,after the era imperialism and racism ,was trying to move into a new era devoid of these two he stuck to the principle of race preservation.Hitler was against Marxism ,then prevalent in the eastern Europe, and Jews.According to him Marxism was all set to destroy Germany in his days and Jews were pestilence which pulled the state into decrepitude.Hitler insists throughout that state or an authority in charge of the state is a means to achieve the end of race preservation.It is the iron will of nature that allows the strong to survive and weak to perish and onus is on the survivors or winners against the struggle to carry on the process of evolution in order to achieve highest degree of human life and race.In this struggle individual should sacrifice for the common weal and preserve his race against all odds.Individual interest should not meddle with the interest of state , this he calls idealism and if individual interest dominate that of the state he calls it a self preservation which is a sin . Every species has instinct of self preservation , it at a higher level turns into idealism which is the sole reason for the survival of a species.Jews is a race which does not possess these qualities and are parasites who do not have a civilization or state of their own according to Hitler.During his stay in Viena Hitler comes in contact with the press which is mostly under the control of Jews or Marxist.The state authority of Austria- Hitlers home state- was full of Jews.Owing to their inefficiency to look after the affairs of state further decays the state . He calls Austrian parliament a set of simpletons who know nothing better than squabbling among themselves and shirking responsibility.Hitler accuses the Jews press of deliberately misleading the masses by contorting the facts.The press of the Germany leads people astray and spoils the spirit of the nation.Here Hitler expresses his intent of controlling the press or to be simple considers freedom of press to have adverse affects on the masses who lack the intellect to discern between farce and fact.The more Hitler studied the situation around him the more he was convinced about the dictatorial role a person of genius should assume in controlling the state authorityHitler was a person who read world from every perspective .He leads a life of absolute poverty in Vienna this gave him this opportunity.He talks of how masses are important for the success of any social movement.In his words they should be lead in only one direction to produce the most desired results.Hitler studied the affairs of state as it is but drew wrong conclusions from it .He detested whole of the democratic system .In understanding the political and economic situation of the Germany he reveals a spark of genius.He wanted to destroy the cause of the problems in trying do so terminated people whose ideas were wrong.He had no sympathy towards races he considered inferior to his .He succumbed to his ideas of racial discrimination.He wanted to replace Marxism with Nazism .When he wanted to replace an idea by idea and a philosophy by another he used force against all those who opposed him .He endeavors upon exterminating a complete race which was an abominable crime.He wanted to remove the race from the face of the earth which he called a pest.I could not personally construe his idea of removing a race.He forms an idea and just does not look at anything which refutes it.This was very true in his idea about Jews.And regarding Marxism he was more than correct when he says a philosophy needs another philosophy to be replaced.But he does not understand or consider the fact that the new philosophy should be a better one and broadly acceptableone.He never considers world peace an important fact in taking a decision which makes or breaks it .He portrays pacifists or peace mongers as cowards.Peace was an unnecessary element in Hitlers pursuit.So was his philosophy devoid of peace.And never it could be a suitable substitute.In trying to expurgate other ideas and ideals Nazism was demolished to the roots.He wanted national solidarity but he also wanted a nation which had no other people except Germans.Hitler was more of a monarch.He led Germany headlong into though he had achieved what was necessary for the Germany he dreamed of.He conquered Austria , Hungary and Czech when he lunged Germany into a war and he conquered Poland when he declared war on the world . He made a blunder plunging a nation which he pulled out of economic and political crisis into the darkness of the dreaded war.He created a great state and destroyed it within a span of 20 years reason being preservation and expansion of race which was "THE IRON WILL OF NATURE " as he claimed.

Hitler is one of the most controversial characters in the history of the world. Some hate him, and there are a few who still adore him. This autobiography originally published in German and later translated to English, tries to bring out the fact that Hitler was indeed born out of destiny, and was not an evel psycho as he is believed to be because of the simple fact that a psycho or insane individual can never rule a country, pull the country out of the economic crisis, and have an entire country believe that he was God. This book describes the utter poverty in which Hitler was brought up and how he hated democracy as a domain for selfish politicians. This book goes further into the details of rise of Hitler as the ruler of Germany, his initial political years, his fiery speeches, his opinion about the Jews, and his dream to make the world free from the non-aryan human beings. The book further to describe the other sides of Adolf Hitler, like he was a vegetarian, his mistress for many years Eva Brown, whom he married just before their death, and his love for dogs. His favorite dog was a German Shepherd named Blondie. The later part of the book gives an account of the defeat of the Germans at the hands of the Russians, about Hitler's fear of him getting captured by the Russians, and finally of his suicide by first giving cyanide pills to his favourit pet dogs, then to Eva Brown, his fiancee for long but newly married bride, and finally of killing himself with a gunshot. It also gives an account of Hitler's last orders to destroy his and his wife's body and under any circumstances not let them fall into the Russian hands. This book has lot to learn from. It reveals the fact that Hitler had a grand plan to make a new world order that is even today full of controversies. A must have book for readers of biographies and lovers of history.

Hitler's Mein Kampf (translated loosely as My Struggle), was penned by Hitler in the ancient walls of the prison fortress at Landsberg am Lech, Germany, where he would spend thirteen months of an original five year conviction for high treason, in his failed attempt to stage a coup against the then inpower Berlin government. Foreshadowing the title of his book, Adolf Hitler penned these words in his diary shortly after his conviction for treason: "The trial of common narrow-mindedness and personal spite is over- and today starts My Struggle, Landsberg on 1 April 1924." As a politician, Hitler was more at home with oratory than with literary skills, as he mentioned in the preface, "I know that men are won over less by the written word than by the spoken word, and that every great movement on this earth owes its growth to great orators and not to great writers." With this principle in mind, Hitler proceeded to pour into his book, in a gushing torrent, all his political beliefs, his irrational prejudices and hatreds, and his twisted theory of Aryan superiority. Mein Kampf was to be the definitive statement of Hitler's view of life and the world- he did not intend to waste the opportunity. After three and a half months of labour in his political prison by Hitler, he finally delivered the manuscript to Nazi publisher Max Amann. What he received was a badly written and disjointed political and personal philosophy, lacking any real structure or style. At Amann's insistence, a crew of Nazi figures took hand in revising the text. Together they corrected Hitler's grammar, reorganized his arrangement of topics, and toned down some of the more objectionable passages. In the final account of Mein Kampf that we read today, Hitler's point of view was one of Aryan supremacy, achieved only by cleansing the German race as it existed then of Jews and other inferior races. One of the most outrageous, and as we know today, untrue point of view in the work was that Jews caused the downfall of Germany in the first World War, which was a humiliating defeat for the Germans. Hitler used a weapon for this purpose- money. The German banking industry then was controlled by Jews. Hitler declared that the Jews perpetrated an international banking conspiracy: in the war, Jewish bankers in Germany and elsewhere made large loans of money to nations on both sides of the war, and thus, neither side could become powerful enough to triumph. As the war progressed, the Jewish conspirators began tightening Germany's credit so that its flow of money gradually dried up. Without adequate financing for its war machine, Germany had little hope of winning the war.In this excerpt for Mein Kampf, it reveals Hitler's extreme and unconditional hatred of Jews: "If at the beginning of the war, and during the war, twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain." In more ordinary times, these wild accusations might have had little effect on the German people, but we have to consider that Germany, in the 1920s and 1930s was a proud, nationalistic society that had been reduced by the World War I to licking its wounds and searching for excuses. Because of their difference, financial prosperity, and professional successes, the Jews were an easy target for suspicion, jealousy and blame. The outcome was that the German people, looking for someone to blame for their debilitating loss, were only too willing to believe Hitler's twisted view. Thus the Jews had become the inevitable scapegoat for Germany's loss in WWI and everything else that was wrong in Germany. In another of these lines from Mein Kampf, Hitler clearly defined the relationship between the Jew and the Aryan: evil versus good; the subhuman versus the s