Some of Hitler’s statements are blandly cynical: that the masses cannot comprehend anything but simple slogans, so they must be fed a constant diet of them. He also states that the larger the lie, the greater its chances of being believed, so the Nazi Party must tell simple, large, lies, and do so repeatedly.
And the largest statement Hitler makes in his book is a repeated and massive lie: that the Jews of the world are engaged in a systematic conspiracy to corrupt and wreck all that is civilized and decent. Communism, capitalism, and democracy, are all Jewish tools to destroy the Aryan race. The Jews are doing so through conspiracy, control of banks, the media, Communism, labor unions, and industry, Hitler says. They are also doing so through prostitution, pornography, drug addiction, and syphilis, and bringing "Negroes into the Rhineland to bastardize the white race."
He accuses world Jewry of poisoning Gentile bloodlines with rape and ritual kidnappings, even circumcision. Much of his imagery of Jewish evil is depicted in sexual and pornographic terms, taken from Streicher’s ranting, Ford’s articles, the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," and the pamphlets Hitler read in Vienna. Every misfortune that has befallen the world he lays at the foot of the Jew.
"Was there any form of filth or profligacy, particularly in cultural life, without at least one Jew involved in it? If you cut even cautiously into such an abscess, you found, like a maggot in a rotting body, often dazzled by the sudden light – a little Jew," Hitler rages.
According to Hitler, the Jews are a "race of dialectical liars," "the great masters of the lie;" "traitors, profiteers, usurers, and swindlers;" "a world hydra;" and "a horde of rats." He adds, "Alone in this world they would stifle in filth and offal."
"Without any true culture," Hitler fulminates, The Jew is "a parasite in the body of other peoples," "a sponger who like a noxious bacillus keeps spreading as soon as a favorable medium invites him." "He lacks idealism in any form." A Jew is a "coward," a "plunderer," a "menace," a "foreign element," a "viper," a "tyrants," and "a ferment of decomposition."
It is thus a staggering hypocrisy that eight decades later, Hitler’s apologists will gamely insist that Hitler was not anti-Semitic, bore no malice to the Jews, and had nothing to do with the Holocaust.
Hitler also writes a suggestion that will take root and become future policy: "If at the beginning of the War and during the war 12 or 15,000 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. On the contrary: 12,000 scoundrels eliminated in time might have saved the lives of millions of real Germans, valuable for the future."
Indeed, anything that Hitler opposes is a Jewish conspiracy. "Conscience," Hitler says, "is a Jewish invention. It is a blemish, like circumcision."
Over and over, Hitler repeats himself: The Jew must be controlled, put down, and destroyed. To do so, Germany must invade Russia and annihilate "Jewish Bolshevism."
The book spells out Hitler’s entire program. Unfortunately for the world, not even Hitler’s closest supporters can wade through its disorganized prose. Yet everything he intends is all there: the conquest of Europe and domination of the world, the establishment of a dictatorship to run it, the importance of the "Big Lie," and the destruction of the Jewish and Slavic peoples.
The British Embassy in Berlin supplies the Foreign Office with the texts, and they are studied carefully. But not enough people take them seriously. Few people believe that Hitler will really attempt what he is threatening. It reads like a political harangue to whip up voters, the usual mudballs hurled in the gutter of elections. Elected statesmen and officials know that fellow elected statesmen and officials rarely follow through on the harsher statements of their election rhetoric.
What readers don’t realize – probably because of the book’s appalling writing – is that Hitler has clearly established and rigidly upheld political principles. Despite their irrationality and disorganization, Hitler never deviates from his writing and its plans, or his belief in his "mission."
When publisher Max Amann receives the manuscript, he’s annoyed – the book is unbelievably boring. Amann was hoping for the compelling tale of Hitler’s rise from poverty and anonymity to political leadership. Instead it’s an incomprehensible polemic.
Decades later, through numerous translations, Monday morning quarterbacking, and armchair analysis, Hitler’s writing – despite Hess’s best efforts to clean it up – remains almost unreadable. His prose is turgid, sentences heavy, autobiographical material riddled with lies. Otto Strasser calls the book "A veritable chaos of banalities, schoolboy reminiscences, subjective judgments, and personal hatred."
Even Hitler is not a fan of his own masterwork. He tells Hans Frank that it’s nothing more than a collection of leading articles for the Völkischer Beobachter.
Amann doesn’t even think it will sell to Nazi Party members. He tells Hitler to clean it up as soon as possible. Hitler gets the chance to do so in a more pleasant atmosphere than prison.
On December 19, 1924, the Bavarian Supreme Court orders Hitler’s immediate release. Those in power think Hitler is a changed man who won’t cause any more trouble. Hitler’s warden, Otto Leybold, writes his bosses at the Bavarian Ministry of Justice in September, "There is no doubt that he (Hitler) has become a much more quiet, more mature and thoughtful individual during his imprisonment than he was before and does not contemplate acting against existing authority." That clinches it. The Bavarian government only imposes a ban on his public speaking in Bavaria and other states, until 1927 (Prussia until 1928).
Next day Leybold tells Hitler the good news in Cell Seven, while Hitler and his pals are decorating the Christmas tree. Hitler gives his comrades a heartfelt farewell, his 282 Marks, and packs his bags. "When I left Landsberg," he recalls later, "Everyone wept (the warden and the other members of the prison staff) – but not I! We’d won them all to our cause."
Hitler emerges from captivity at 12:15 p.m. on December 20, 1924, into a raw, gray day. He still has three years, 333 days, 21 hours, and 50 minutes of his sentence remaining, and the world would likely be a better place if he had served it.
The Hitler that faces a prison staff all lined up to bid their famous inmate farewell is a different man from the one who entered Landsberg. Hitler no longer considers himself the "drummer" of the national cause. He sees his like-minded anti-Semites and nationalists as traitors who betrayed him. He won’t work with them any more. From now on, Hitler is on a messianic political mission. His narcissistic egomania expands – he now has a self-image of himself as a heroic leader, and he will no longer tolerate compromise or disagreement with his world-view. He will be willing to hear and incorporate changes in his basic plans, as long as they do not deviate from his overall objective. From then on, Hitler believes his work is more than a political calling…he sees the hand of "Providence" in his work. His life’s work – destroying Jewry and Bolshevism – is a crusade. Germany is the tool by which Hitler will achieve his personal destiny. His will be done.
Like many men who endure a term in prison, he comes out spiritually hardened. Unlike many ex-cons, he is not hardened physically. On a diet of gift food and sugar-coated candies and cakes behind bars, Hitler has gone from looking like a trim Frontkämpfer to a paunchy bourgeois Bavarian landlord, replete with lederhosen.
But Hitler declares his months in jail to be critical to his development. "That period gave me the chance of deepening various motions for which I then had only an instinctive feeling. It was during this incarceration, too, that I acquired that fearless faith, that optimism, that confidence in our destiny, which nothing could shake thereafter," he writes later.
After handshakes with the warders, Hitler is greeted by his printer, Adolf Muller, and photographer Heinrich Hoffman. After leaving jail, Hitler says, "Get a move on, Hoffmann, or we’ll have a crowd collecting; and anyway, it’s bloody cold." Hoffmann gets the car moving.
Hoffmann soon realizes he should snap a picture of the determined and sullen Hitler boarding the canvas-topped touring car they have brought for the trip. He does so when they reach the Landsberg city gate. The photograph is later mis-captioned as being taken at the prison gate.
"What a joy it was for me to be in a car again!" Hitler recalls later. He asks Muller to hit the gas on the bumpy roads. "No," Muller answers. "It’s my firm intention to go on living for another 25 years."
Hitler returns to his apartment to a warm welcome from his dog, Wolf, and finds the flat filled with flowers and welcome-home wreaths. He also returns to find his party now declared illegal, and extremely divided. He must unite the Nazi Party behind him.
At Christmas with the Hanfstaengls, wearing a blue dandruff-flecked suit, Hitler gobbles the Viennese sweets, but ignores the wine and meat, preferring instead to regale the Hanfstaengl family with his memories of the Somme, complete with sound effects of artillery. Hitler tells the Hanfstaengls that meat and alcohol is bad for him.
On January 4, 1925, Hitler tries to make peace with the new Bavarian Premier, Heinrich Held, admitting that his putsch was a mistake, and that he now opposes Ludendorff’s increasingly crazy anti-Catholic rhetoric. Hitler calls himself a loyal son of the Catholic Church, and says his only fight is against Marxism. No more putsches. Held promises to end the ban on the Nazi Party and its newspaper. Held also believes that Hitler is a changed man who won’t cause any more trouble. "This wild beast is checked. We can afford to loosen the chain," Held says. Not one of his brighter predictions.
Hitler shows his adherence to the government by meeting with the National Bloc of Bavarian State Deputies, armed with a huge bullwhip, and lacerates them (with rhetoric, not rawhide) on supporting Ludendorff instead of the Held government.
Next, Hitler and Hess go to a comfortable inn amid the mountains of Berchtesgaden, where they gamely clean up the book’s grammar. At last "Mein Kampf" is ready for the printers. At 400 pages and 12 marks a copy, it earns Hitler 15 percent royalties. In 1925, it sells 9,000 copies. By 1928 sales are down to 3,000 a year. Clearly Hitler isn’t even interesting any more, let alone a threat. However, he still pockets 18,000 marks in royalties.
Germans and many people around the world are more interested in aviation… Massachusetts Institute of Technology student James Doolittle writes a paper on how planes can pull out from steep dives, which interests few Americans, but fascinated Soviet, German, French, and British airmen…Juan de la Cievera’s new autogiro takes to the air near Madrid on January 9, 1923. Two American Army lieutenants fly nonstop from East Coast to West Coast in 27 hours on May 2nd, 1923…and on August 27th, two more keep a two-seater DH-4B bomber in the air for 37 hours, 14 minutes, and 14 seconds, in the first test of air-to-air refueling. Meanwhile, Germans are still restricted to two-hour flights in powered planes. Gliding, as a gesture of defiance against Versailles, becomes a national craze. Among those taking to the air is Captain Kurt Student.
So the Germans continue their secret training in Russia and open gliding schools and clubs all across the Reich. To avoid the Versailles limit on training six military pilots a year, Seeckt gets his officer aviation cadets their commercial pilots’ licenses before they join the Reichswehr.
On January 1, 1924, France’s General Nollet, overseeing Germany’s compliance with Versailles mandates, tells the Germans he will "tolerate no further delay," and resume inspections immediately. Stresemann claims that German disarmament is complete. The Allies offer to replace the annoying Control Commission with a Committee of Guarantee – the same commission under a less stress-inducing name.
The German Officer Corps hits back, issuing a manifesto from the National Union of German Officers, the German Officers League, and the Naval Officers’ Union, denouncing the new committee. The officers bellow: "Out with all these Control Commissions! Clear them out of Germany!"
Stresemann rejects the Allied plan, saying that the League of Nations is the proper authority to oversee German disarmament. Then in June Stresemann backtracks, allowing inspections, so as to jump-start talks on French evacuation of the Ruhr. The inspections don’t begin until September 8, and score a hit in December: a pacifist-minded workman in a factory in Wittenau tips off the committee. British officers find a store of 113,000 rifles. The German workman draws a long prison term from German judges – for betraying the Reich.
Meanwhile, the Nazi bloc slips in the December 1924 popular vote from 1.9 million to 907,300. Weimar offers to send Hitler back to Austria, but the Austrians don’t want him.
Nobody seems interested in Dwight D. Eisenhower, either, except Gen. Fox Conner. Eisenhower is in the Panama boondocks, his career as stalled as most other U.S. Army officers in the 1920s. However, Conner sees ability and talent in Ike, and has him studying military history and strategy. Conner also teaches Ike to understand coalition warfare…that the top man in a coalition command cannot make different nations march and think as one. He has to use his ability to persuade to achieve the goals. Conner also warns Ike that the job of the Great War is not done. Germany is still a resilient power that poses a menace to Europe and the world.
Eisenhower takes on Clausewitz, Plato, Cicero, and devours the Federalist Papers twice. But he gives up on Nietzsche, finding his acerbic views of morality disturbing.
Day after day, Ike works in the field or in his office, comes home, eats dinner, then reads military history until 2 a.m., goes to sleep, and is up four hours later for another day of work.
In 1922, Mamie gives birth to John Shelton Doud Eisenhower, and finds the stress of raising a baby in Panama after the death of one child more than she can take. She flees to Denver, then decides that she will have to make accommodations in her life to Ike’s career in order to continue the marriage, and returns to Panama.
The two Eisenhowers are deeply battered by the death of their son Dwight Jr., and the major’s charming grin and warm personality give way to an emotional wall, designed to shield him against further and future bad news, particularly involving his second son. Ike treats John impersonally, becoming a distant and authoritarian figure to John. Mamie, on the other hand, babies him.
As Conner’s executive officer, Eisenhower has to be Camp Gaillard’s "hatchet man," and the other officers regard Ike as a pampered pet and martinet. Maj. Bradford Chynoweth complains that Conner and Ike are lousy trainers, and that Ike is merely a "yes-man" to Conner.
Nevertheless, Eisenhower’s career is resurrected. Conner gives his star pupil high marks. Conner calls Ike "one of the most capable, efficient, and loyal officers I have ever met."
In January 1923, Maj. George Patton arrives at the Cavalry School at Camp Riley, where he impresses his instructors. One day, Patton talks to a young instructor, Lt. Paul Robinett, and says, "They say the machine gun is the killingest weapon on the battlefield. If that is so, I have got to know more about it. Will you give me some personal instruction on Saturday afternoons?" Robinett does so, and Patton masters the weapon. In return, he teaches Robinett and other young officers how to fence.
After seven months at Camp Riley, Patton goes on to the General Service School at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Leavenworth is one of the sacred sites of the U.S. Army, one of its vital forts in the Indian Wars, and then the Command and General Staff School (in Patton’s day) and the Command and General Staff College (today).
With the U.S. Army short of money in the 1920s, it cannot maintain its personnel strength, repair its facilities, or replace worn-out equipment with new vehicles and guns. However, it can still train its officers and men to think.
The men who go through the Leavenworth schools are those expected to achieve greatness. Then as now, the courses are intense, days filled with lectures, conferences, map study, field exercises, and long nights of studying. The school breaks careers, marriages, nerves, and places on them the highest stress short of war.
The Leavenworth approach is simple: students are given a series of problems, each of which require a decision. The idea is to make American officers think in the heat and fog of battle, and show initiative. Patton’s first problem is the surrender of Fort Henry in the American Civil War. Was the Confederate commander right in believing the fort was indefensible? However, the solutions are graded on the basis of their adherence to the approved "school solution."
The "school solutions," fortunately, emphasize maneuver over frontal assaults, and those plans that avoid trench warfare get the highest grades. The toughest problems, known as "pay problems" because that’s where the student earns his money, have strict time limits – two days or as little as 12 hours.
Among the students in Patton’s class is Maj. Bradford Chynoweth, and he disagrees with the "school solutions," believing they actually sap initiative. So does Patton, who writes that high marks at Leavenworth "depend more on technique than on intelligence." He copies out orders in long hand to make the process automatic in his mind. But he also brings with him enough polo ponies to create a team, and then ships in enough for a rival squad. In his spare time, Patton takes long walks with an infantry major from Mississippi, Troy Middleton.
