I had expected to find something truly esoteric or something that linked Hitler with Satanism when I launched into Hitler’s Secret Book but I was disappointed to find out that the book was filled with his philosophy and National Socialist Movement (NAZI) ideology.

The book was discovered among Hitler’s personal collections by an American Soldier after the Second World War and it was subsequently first published in 1961. Unlike the two parts of Mein Kampf, this book didn’t add to Hitler’s popularity because it was written in 1926, and even before the completion of the manuscript, he experienced speedy popularity among the German folk as an orator, a self-propelled relentless politician, and a propagandist. Nonetheless, the book introduced me to Hitler’s thought processes and his politically radical stance.

At the very beginning of the text he establishes the connection between politics and history by saying, “politics is history in the making” and, to him, politics is all about self-preservation (perhaps in terms of race, ethnicity, or ideology) and as such history is replete with wars fought for the aim of self-preservation. Maybe in this regard, interpreting the Russo-Ukrainian war might be quite beneficial. However, he also admitted that no race or people is capable of dominating others without making alliances with others. Thus, he contemplated alliances with Russia, England, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Prussia but still castigates the same nations for different other reasons. His back-and-forth arguments in the book gives credence to the fact that it was dictated like the previous two other books of his, and, as such, one could feel the surreptitious switching of emotions as he talks about European nations in both good and bad light. What he had been consistent on, however, was his verbal “battle against de-Germanization, Negrification, and Judaization” of Germany which accounts for his intolerance of the black race and his wilful desire to extirpate Jews from Europe.

Therefore, what is clear, from the text is that the foundation of World War II was laid by Hitler long before he had access to the center of German power. Being a critic of the Versailles Treaty as well as other post-WWI treaties, Hitler proposed that “Germany cannot bring about a change in her present situation (as of 1926) by herself so far this must ensue by means of military power”. Also, the League of Nations would not back Germany for a territorial expansion or even the reclamation of German territories lost to France and Italy in the Great War, therefore he fancied an alliance with Italy and it eventually came to be but all is history now.

Now that the world is at the brink of a Third World war, it is pertinent to chew on one of Hitler’s saying, that “whoever will not be a hammer in history will be an anvil” and it appears that some entire continents could serve as anvils. From time immemorial, the territorial distribution of the globe has always been a process and had never been static. What is sure is that before the world ends, humanity will continue to forge identities in order to justify its survival and its bestial acquisition of resources in the name of politics. But all is fair because nothing lasts forever.

One cannot finish reading the book without acknowledging that Hitler was sincere to his beliefs, only that those beliefs were out of sync with the global realities of the 20th Century. His knowledge of history is quite remarkable but it lacked depth otherwise he would have advocated for the unification of the world or at least of Europe considering the fact that they have a shared ancestry. In the end, one is left with a little admiration for Hitler in spite of the tons of hate he has attracted from the world for his malevolence.

Many thanks to my Oga, Yemi Oparinde, for the book.