Why I actually don’t hate Hitler

A review of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

I hate the man, but I must not, for humans are only the carriers of ideas and ideologies.

If I have to be correct then I must say- ‘I pity the man’. For the mistakes, miscalculations, ignorance and utterly wrong assumptions.

I rarely read books with an agenda. I try to be doubtful of myself and my stand and then as I delve deeper into the pages, I build an image of the world completely alien to me. My attempt more often than not is to understand the differences between my worldview and that of others and the reasons behind those differences. After all, reading stories is an exercise at building empathy.

Yet there are people who are so confident of their knowledge and stand that they decide to learn no more, see no more and listen no more. Such people often get to the heights they don’t deserve, but the world ever so sheepishly and ever so mistakenly gives them the same opportunity as meant for wiser people. Nobody is blamed yet everybody is at fault.

Hitler was a man who played a game of “Us vs Them”. As if the world didn’t have enough to go around for a few more good people with better intentions than just the raging folks. He thought that his stand was the best, his people was the best, his nation was the best, of course giving no definite reason or evidence as to why?

Why did our education system didn’t do a better job teaching Hitler the theory of evolution better? Natural systems better? Religion better? And the difference between nationalism and patriotism better?

Or an even better question, why didn’t we as a species understand and accepted those concepts earlier rather than later?

I pity the man because for no mistake of his, he based his stand on completely wrong assumptions. He formed his ideologies on half wrong and mostly incomplete knowledge. He did what a pseudo-life guide would say in one of his speeches- “Why do I need the knowledge of books and science when life itself has so much to teach me?” While these are the very people, who learn ever so poorly from nature’s lessons.

Don’t get me wrong here, if there is something truly evil in this world, there’s a good chance it was made in Hitler’s image.

But I also blame the system for not teaching students how science really works and how we differentiate between hypotheses and theories that are prevalent. To not teach every human, that “Us vs Them” is a shrewd and outdated philosophy. That the enemy is rarely out there, but in us. We ourselves become our own destruction.

In blindly shooting for the enemy which doesn’t exist, we push our own people into devastation, the oblivion of proudness for a people half extinct and for values half rotten.

Hitler pointed time and again in his book to the “International Jew”. A race which according to him was controlling the whole world, routing the courses of many states, deciding on international matters, controlling presses and media of apparently every nation and through the financial world- creating the fate and future of all humans. Yet somehow in all this, they were destroying the human species. They were designing a plot to rule the world and were still the worst race ever. You may read all this again and tell me how can I not say that Jews were the most successful race ever according to Hitler. That in his hatred he forgot how absurd his logic was and how narrowly he was thinking.

He went on in almost all the pages of the book to point out the integrity and strength of the German people at a point when Germany as a nation-state was hardly present. He told how the Aryan race can easily rule the world, provided the world is cooperative enough to be ruled. And said how truthful and hardworking Aryans are and yet their own government is in the hands of Jews. I must add then that so was every other nation in the world then. So has been in all histories and so will be for many a future. We have seen such nations and people all our lives and it would be very wrong to say that we ourselves didn’t get trapped in such statements. It is true that nobody wants to take the blame for their blunders.

Every nation was once perfect but then foreign invaders destroyed it. It’s always the same narrative, mostly the same enemies.

Perfect nations, if they really exist, cannot be invaded. Otherwise, it would be a logical fallacy.

Hitler mentions many such ideologies of his which have no basis on evidence or fact but just on the belief of a very fanatic man. And men like these are present in this world today too. Men and Women who think humans are different because they live on either side of imaginary lines called borders. That people are not individuals but only groups. That nations are more than a mere agreement between a people to survive together for a while. That nationalism is more important than patriotism. That this is all a zero-sum game. That there is not enough on this planet for everyone’s need. That the cost of equality and justice is the loss of national identity. That political systems are perfect and require no change. And that life is a war, not a struggle.

But such people will be here again and again. Taking from us our precious freedom at the cost of the image-building of an imagined entity called a nation. And we will be just as wrong as Hitler was in believing so.

Such people must be reminded and taught that most systems are non-zero-sum games. That it is not “Us vs Them” but instead “Us vs Us”. We must remind people of peace and justice. We must remind that isolation is a death sentence and that only open arms welcome growth. That a divided world does little else than wars and that united- there is a chance for us, our species.

Mein Kampf then is not a struggle of a single human but for us all to be mindful of our ignorance, our hatred and our miscalculations. But Hitler isn’t here to read this, only we are. And as long as there remains a common enemy of bad faith, we (together) have enough to fight against.

Thanks to Summy Antony, Avneet, Akash Bajwan and Harshal for reading the drafts of this.