While leaving a campground early one morning in summer about 25 years ago, I chanced upon a copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf, in German, on what looked like an abandoned stool by the fire grill. As no one was around I could have taken it and left. But I didn't. I thought whomever had left it there might return, sooner or later, to reclaim it.
I proceeded to read it. But as my knowlege of German was only just so-so, I did not get much out of the passages I happened to 'read'. However, whatever I was able to 'decipher' I found I knew it already from my prior reading of other stuff elsewhere.
A short time later I was offered a collector's edition of Mein Kampf in English at a flea market for C$25. I did not buy it as, to me, the price was too high, and what I was able to read then and there was boring. Besides I did not not like Hitler's convoluted style of reasoning and writing.
By contrast, I recall that the black-and-white movies I saw about 40 years ago of Hitler heiling and orating with well-timed gestures/gesticulations and holding his audience spell-bound was more interesting by far. I also saw Nazi movies comparing Jews to sewer plague-causing rats and what nots, and I was horrified! and I became a rabid Nazi-hater overnight!
However, that anti-Nazi feeling in me became somewhat tempered over the ensuing years when I gleaned new insights from political science and geopolitics and from the analyses of Mr. Gwynne Dyer, a political analyst and an independent journalist based in London.
I wish to write more. But my girlfriend is reminding to meet her for lunch. Gotta run now! L8R.
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