While I was not anticipating this read to be particularly good, it was worse than I had originally expected. The writing was hard to get through and while reading through the intro was tough, it gave some insight into the main characters of Hitlers youth and life growing into a dictator.
Hitlers education as a child never went beyond a secondary school. He recalls in some of the early chapters that he was a good student and it was up to him to decide if he wanted to pass or fail a class, however a couple of footnotes scattered through the chapter show that he lies about his educational record more than once. This further proves his narcissistic personality that is clearly seen throughout the book. We are also introduced to the man who sparked Hitler’s interest in nationalism, his high school history teacher Leopold Poetsch. Poetsch later distanced himself from Hitler after being considered an enemy of Austria, even though hitler gives credit to Poetsch as a defining factor in his future.
Following Hitler through the book he speaks a lot of his rise to power, and his motivation behind those actions. After joining the German Worker’s Party he took more of an interest in propaganda, which led to him climbing in the party’s power structure. But it also opened the doors to the propaganda tactics he used in the Nazi party. One of his many criticisms of the war he states is that Germany lost partly because of British propaganda, and goes in depth into how propaganda should be used and how people are so easily influenced. All of his statements in this book about himself, his upbringing, and the Jewish people of Germany and Austria show the narcissistic mind of the man who created arguably one of the most famous books to follow a political movement.
