Hitler's purpose in writing 'Mein Kampf'?

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This is the question for an essay i'm doing right now. It's a sources essay, so i have to research it as much as i want but then just write it in 45 minutes.

So, does anyone have any opinions? I know about the contents of the book and what Hitler says within it, but what were his main purposes? Part of it is to highlight his racial worldviews, while the semi-autobiographical parts of the book were later altered during publishing in an attempt to paint Hitler in a more positive light.

The second volume of the book deals with Hitler and his belief that for Germany to achieve historical greatness they need to acquire more land, firstly defeating France and then turning their gaze to the east. Hitler didn't just want to control Central Europe, but instead the whole continent and he wanted to achieve this by the use of the Germany sword, ie war.

So, what else could his purpose have been aside from outlining his personal/racial worldviews and the necessity for war in achieving greatness as a nation?

meme

Blaming Germany and Austria's situation on the victorious powers in World War I. Criticizing parliamentary democracy as ineffective.

I used to assign it to my students until a very smart kid who used to wear very graphic anti-abortion tshirts to class wrote in the final exam that he had always thought Hitler was evil and crazy until he read Mein Kampf and realized he really had a point :rolleyes:

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meme wrote:

Blaming Germany and Austria's situation on the victorious powers in World War I. Criticizing parliamentary democracy as ineffective.

I used to assign it to my students until a very smart kid who used to wear very graphic anti-abortion tshirts to class wrote in the final exam that he had always thought Hitler was evil and crazy until he read Mein Kampf and realized he really had a point :rolleyes:

eek that's a bit scary!

your first points sound good though, thanks for the input. i imagine to early readers it just came off as the rantings of another politician, but he showed that he meant what he said once he gained power.

kenny olav

you shouldn't ever cite Wikipedia, but it's a good place to start:


Lebensraum (help·info) (German for "habitat" or literally "living space") was one of the major political ideas of Adolf Hitler, and an important component of Nazi ideology. It served as the motivation for the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, aiming to provide extra space for the growth of the German population, for a Greater Germany. In Hitler's book Mein Kampf, he detailed his belief that the German people needed Lebensraum ("living space", i.e. land and raw materials), and that it should be found in the East. It was the stated policy of the Nazis to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Russian and other Slavic populations, whom they considered inferior, and to repopulate the land with Germanic peoples. The entire urban population was to be exterminated by starvation, thus creating an agricultural surplus to feed Germany and allowing their replacement by a German upper class.

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thanks for that! i'm not allowed to cite or reference in any way in this essay, i have to just prepare it and then write it in 45 minutes as a short piece of writing.

catefrances

i hope youve actually read mein kampf

tybird

It also made him some money...and got what became the Nazi party's platform out into the public psyche. The printed word was still the dominant form of mass communication in that era.