Editing Mein Kampf (section)

== Analysis ==
In {{lang|de|Mein Kampf}}, Hitler used the main thesis of "the Jewish peril", which posits a [[Antisemitic canard|Jewish conspiracy to gain world leadership]].<ref>{{cite web|first=Robert|last=Carr|url=https://www.historytoday.com/archive/mein-kampf-%E2%80%93-text-its-themes-and-hitler%E2%80%99s-vision|title=Mein Kampf – The Text, its Themes and Hitler's Vision|work=History Review|issue=57|date=March 2007|via=[[History Today]]}}</ref> The narrative describes the process by which he became increasingly [[Antisemitism|antisemitic]] and [[militarism|militaristic]], especially during his years in Vienna. He speaks of not having met a [[Jew]] until he arrived in Vienna, and that at first his attitude was liberal and tolerant. When he first encountered the antisemitic press, he says, he dismissed it as unworthy of serious consideration. Later he accepted the same antisemitic views, which became crucial to his program of national reconstruction of Germany.

{{lang|de|Mein Kampf}} has also been studied as a work on [[political theory]]. For example, Hitler announces his hatred of what he believed to be the world's two evils: [[communism]] and [[Judaism]]. In the book, Hitler blamed Germany's chief woes on the [[Reichstag (Weimar Republic)|parliament]] of the [[Weimar Republic]], the Jews, and [[Social Democratic Party of Germany|Social Democrats]], as well as [[Marxism|Marxists]], though he believed that Marxists, Social Democrats, and the parliament were all working for Jewish interests.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://archive.org/details/meinkampf035176mbp|title=Mein Kampf|work=Internet Archive|year=1941}}</ref> He announced that he wanted to destroy the [[parliamentary system]] completely, believing it to be corrupt in principle, as those who reach power are inherent [[opportunism|opportunists]].

===Antisemitism===
While historians dispute the exact date Hitler decided to [[Final Solution|exterminate the Jewish people]], few place the decision before the mid-1930s.<ref name=Browning2003p12>{{cite book |first=Christopher R. |last=Browning |author-link=Christopher Browning |year=2003 |title=Initiating the Final Solution: The Fateful Months of September–October 1941 |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies |location=Washington, D.C. |oclc=53343660 |page=12}}</ref> First published in 1925, {{lang|de|Mein Kampf}} shows Hitler's personal grievances and his ambitions for creating a [[New Order (Nazism)|New Order]]. Hitler also wrote that ''[[The Protocols of the Elders of Zion]]'', a fabricated text that purported to expose a Jewish plot to control the world,<ref>{{Cite news |last=Graves |first=Philip |url=https://archive.org/details/truthaboutthepro00londiala|title=The truth about 'The Protocols': a literary forgery |year=1921 |work=[[The Times of London]] |format=pamphlet |type=articles collection |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130510140102/https://archive.org/details/truthaboutthepro00londiala|archive-date=10 May 2013}}</ref> was an authentic document. This later became a part of the [[Nazi propaganda]] effort to justify persecution and annihilation of the Jews.<ref>{{cite book |first=Adolf |last=Hitler |author-link=Adolf Hitler |title=Mein Kampf |chapter=XI: Nation and Race |volume=I |pages=307–308 |title-link=Mein Kampf}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|first=Nora|last=Levin|title=The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry 1933–1945|date=1973|publisher=Schocken|location=New York City|isbn=978-0805203769}}</ref>

The historian [[Ian Kershaw]] observed that several passages in {{lang|de|Mein Kampf}} are undeniably of a [[Genocide|genocidal]] nature.<ref>{{cite book|first=Ian|last=Kershaw|author-link=Ian Kershaw|title=Hitler 1889–1936 Hubris|publisher=[[W.W. Norton and Company]]|location=New York City|date=1999|isbn=978-0393320350|page=258}}</ref> Hitler wrote "the nationalization of our masses will succeed only when, aside from all the positive struggle for the soul of our people, their international poisoners are exterminated",<ref>Adolf Hitler, ''Mein Kampf'', Volume One – A Reckoning, Chapter XII: The First Period of Development of the National Socialist German Workers' Party</ref> and he suggested that, "If at the beginning of the war and during the war twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the nation had been subjected to poison gas, such as had to be endured in the field by hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers of all classes and professions, then the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain."<ref name="Yahil-1991">Adolf Hitler, ''Mein Kampf'', Volume Two – A Reckoning, Chapter XV: The Right of Emergency Defense, p. 984, quoted in {{cite book |last=Yahlil |first=Leni |title=The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932–1945 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=e_aRvKpLUf0C&pg=PA51 |access-date=9 January 2016 |year=1991 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-504523-9 |page=51 |chapter=2. Hitler Implements Twentieth-Century Anti-Semitism |oclc=20169748}}</ref>

The racial laws to which Hitler referred resonate directly with his ideas in {{lang|de|Mein Kampf}}. In the first edition, Hitler stated that the destruction of the weak and sick is far more humane than their protection. Apart from this allusion to humane treatment, Hitler saw a purpose in destroying "the weak" in order to provide the proper space and purity for the "strong".<ref>A. Hitler. ''Mein Kampf'' (Munich: Franz Eher Nachfolger, 1930), p. 478</ref>

===Anti-Slavism and {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} (''living space'')===
Hitler described that, when he was in [[Vienna]], it was repugnant for him to see the mixture of races "of Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, [[Ruthenians]], Serbs and Croats, and always that infection which dissolves human society, the Jew, were all here and there and everywhere."<ref>Joachim Fest, Hitler, p. 60</ref> He also wrote that he viewed the Japanese victory over the Russians in the [[Russo-Japanese War]] in 1904 as a "blow to [[Austrian Slavism]]".<ref>{{cite book|first=Francisco|last=Bethencourt|title=Racisms: From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century|publisher=[[Princeton University Press]]|location=Princeton, New Jersey|date=2015|isbn=978-0691169750|page=325}}</ref>

In the chapter "Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy", Hitler argued that the Germans needed {{lang|de|[[Lebensraum]]}} (living space) in the East, a "historic destiny" that would properly nurture the German people.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://ww2history.com/experts/Sir_Ian_Kershaw/Hitler_s_expansionist_aims|title=Hitler's expansionist aims > Professor Sir Ian Kershaw > WW2History.com|website=ww2history.com|access-date=1 September 2010|archive-date=3 December 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101203005619/http://ww2history.com/experts/Sir_Ian_Kershaw/Hitler_s_expansionist_aims|url-status=live}}</ref> Hitler believed that "the organization of a Russian state formation was not the result of the political abilities of the Slavs in Russia, but only a wonderful example of the state-forming efficacy of the German element in an inferior race."<ref>Adolf Hitler, ''Mein Kampf'', Eastern Orientation or Eastern policy</ref> In {{lang|de|Mein Kampf}}, Hitler openly described his proposed future German expansion in the East, foreshadowing [[Generalplan Ost]]:
{{blockquote|And so we [[Nazism|National Socialists]] consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of our pre-[First World] War period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east. At long last we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-War period and shift to the soil policy of the future.

If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states.<ref name="Fest2013">{{cite book|first=Joachim C.|last=Fest|title=Hitler|year=2013|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt|isbn=978-0-544-19554-7|page=216}}</ref>}}

Hitler wrote that he was against any attempts to [[Germanization|Germanise]] Slavs, and criticised previous attempts at trying to Germanise the Austrian Slavs. He also criticised people in pan-German movements in Germany who thought that forcing ethnic Poles living in Germany to speak the German language would turn them into Germans; he believed that would have caused a "foreign race" by its own "inferiority" to damage the "dignity" and "nobility" of the German nation.<ref>Richard Weikart, Hitler's Ethnic, p. 73</ref>