Reply #12: My fourth grade teacher [View All]

[Yo_Mama]

Told us all in class one day (we were on history/social studies) that we should all read Mein Kampf when we grew up.

She said it was important for us to read it to understand that sometimes people mean exactly what they said. She said that if the book had been taken seriously, the world would have intervened far earlier to stop the rise of Nazi Germany and many millions of lives would have been saved. She said it would happen again, and it would be important for us to realize that just because what someone says and writes seems crazy and hard to believe, that just not justify us in ignoring their beliefs.

So I did read it when I grew up. And I think she was right to say what she did. People did not take Hitler's ideology seriously, and because they did not, they let him get very powerful.

Probably very few people in the US read Mein Kampf with admiration. It is a part of history - painful history - but it is very important that people remember the mistakes of history so that we can amend them the next time around. I do know that some people admire this sort of thing, but I cannot understand why. I don't think the book would make anyone admire Nazism as an ideology.