Mein Kampf Reviewed
(L.A. Times, 1940)
1940 was a pretty good year for Adolf Hitler, but then the L.A. Times review of Mein Kampf came out:
It is obviously the book of an ignorant man, unaccustomed to logic or literature. It is sincere, and done in the style of the soap-boxer, the rabble-rouser. And it is Red; redder than any of the utterances of Emma Goldman or the I.W.W. street speakers. What Hitler calls National Socialism seems to us, although the man denies it on page after page, merely another form of Stalinistic Communism, only this is the German variety…his system blots out the businessman, banker, manufacturer, professional man, teacher, writer, and artist – just as effectively as Stalin’s [Soviet’s]; property goes to the state in both cases; and all freedom of press, church and person dies as wholly in Germany as in Russia.
Finally, to an American, a lemon by any other name, is just as sour.
•You might like to read a more thorough review of Mein Kampf•