The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

by William L. Shirer

Hunger was then my faithful bodyguard; he never left me for a moment and partook of all I had… My life was a continual struggle with this pitiless friend.

In Mein Kampf Hitler discourses at length on the art of reading. By “reading,” to be sure, I mean perhaps something different than the average member of our so-called “intelligentsia.” I know people who “read” enormously… yet whom I would not describe as “well-read.” True, they possess a mass of “knowledge,” but their brain is unable to organize and register the material they have taken in… On the other hand, a man who possesses the art of correct reading will… instinctively and immediately perceive everything which in his opinion is worth permanently remembering, either because it is suited to his purpose or generally worth knowing… The art of reading, as of learning, is this:… to retain the essential, to forget the nonessential.*… Only this kind of reading has meaning and purpose… Viewed in this light, my Vienna period was especially fertile and valuable.45 Valuable for what? Hitler’s answer is that from his reading and from his life among the poor and disinherited of Vienna he learned all that he needed to know in later life.