(June 14, 2021 at 10:47 pm)Rev. Rye Wrote: Okay, a little more info: for the record, during the Nazi regime, it was given away for free to any newlywed couple and soldier fighting at the front. However, he made no law saying that everyone in Germany had to have a copy. That one, you're probably thinking of Mao's Little Red Book. That said, I am told it was popular enough that in libraries, it was in high demand. Admittedly, probably more because of who wrote it than the content. If literally anyone else but the Fuhrer wrote it, hardly anyone would bother with it. Even since he did, it was one of those books people owned, but almost never read.
As for the claims that Hitler disavowed the book, I wouldn't use terms that strong, but he did tell Hans Frank that "If I had had any idea in 1924 that I would have become Reich chancellor, I never would have written the book." Not much of a public disavowal, but still a sign that Hitler wasn't totally pleased with what he wrote over a decade after, especially the fact that people were holding him to these grandiose ideas he wrote about when, in a sane political system, his political career would have been finished and he'd be in jail for life instead of getting sentenced to what basically amounts to an unusually long writer's retreat.
Did the book only get as popular as it did after Hitler took power? Yes. Was that because he had brainwashed the public? Well, that really depends on what you consider brainwashing. It's more akin to what Trump did for the Republican base but with a Hell of a lot more control of his own PR (the fact that he wouldn't get into the full bugfuck insane mode until the 1940s at least certainly helped) and fewer people were able to call him on his bullshit (partly because of censorship, and partly because there was no easy spread of information like the Internet that could even logistically do so at the time).
He didn't have to make a law saying everyone had to have a copy. He was no humanitarian. This is splitting hairs. It was unwritten by the time he gained power, that if you didn't have a copy in your house, you had a very severe likelihood that someone would out you, family, friends, help.
Hitler all arguments aside, DID get rich off his book.
