User reviews

"Mein Kampf" is a very good historical documentary film made by the Italian film company, Minerva Film, in 1960. Other biographical and documentary films have been made about Adolf Hitler and the rise of Naziism. But this is the first film made after World War II that delves into the very films that the Nazis themselves were made during Hitler's reign. Scenes and film clips are taken from the German films that had been captured or obtained after the fall of Germany.

All of the scenes were shot by Nazis. A great deal of the film is about the German conquest and occupation of Poland, with some riveting scenes of the Warsaw Ghetto. The film has close-ups of Hitler and Eva Braun, most of the Nazi leaders, and battle scenes. And, leading up to all that are earlier film clips of the years of discord in Germany before the rise of Hitler and Naziism. The film has close-up scenes of German people, soldiers and officers at various rallies and trials, that are very daunting and revealing. In some, one senses the people don't believe what they are hearing; but the next moment we see them smiling and raising their hands in the Nazi salute and shouting "Heil, Hitler." This is a good historical film to have.

A bonus came with the DVD of this film that I obtained. It's entitled, "Adolf Hitler." It's a bio-documentary on Hitler's origin, youth, and rise to power. The film quality of this bonus collection of news clips is very poor. It's especially very dark to the point of not being able to see faces and details throughout much of the film. An enhancement project could do much to make this an interesting film of record.

I highly recommend this bio-documentary film for students and anyone interested in World War II, Naziism, and history in general.

"Mein Kampf" presents the raising and fall of the Third Reich, showing mainly the destruction of Poland and the life of Hitler, which is told since he was a mediocre student and frustrated aspirant of artist living in slums in Austria and Germany, until his suicide in 1945 after being the responsible for the death of millions of people, and the destruction of Europe. All the footages are real and belonged to a secret file of Goebbels, inclusive with many very strong scenes filmed by Goebbels himself. It is impossible not crying with the scenes of the Jews in the ghetto of Warsaw and in the concentration camps. When a viewer sees a movie such as "Schindler's List", for example, he or she knows that the characters are fictional, and they are actors and actresses using make-ups or edited using computer effects in the present days. However in "Mein Kampf", when you see a person, he or she is real; her bones, the flies around the wounds are reality! This documentary is a magnificent, impressive and depressive lesson of history, and should be mandatory in any school worldwide. It is ironical when we see the following introduction: "As human beings, we are responsible for what he did – for he was one of us and we permitted this to happen. May we be wise enough and strong enough to prevent this from ever happening again." Or when the narrator advises in the end of the documentary that these things should never happen again. When I see on TV what is happening in Iraq or Palestine, just to mention recent examples, I really lose my faith in the human race. It is sad to see what mediocre, but powerful leaders, can do with mankind! Just as a reference, another magnificent documentary about Adolf Hitler is "Undergångens Arkitektur", and a great movie to see what happened with the megalomaniac dream of Hitler and the fate of Berlin and Germany is "Germania Anno Zero". My vote is ten.

Title (Brazil): "Minha Luta" ("My Fight")

As was often the case in the 60s children were allowed to see such films and this had a profound effect on me. Even now I cry at man's inhumanity and doubt God's existance to allow such things.

I fear lessons have not been learned.

My father (who I miss everyday) and I went to movies together a lot when I was a child in the 1950s.

One we saw was John Wayne's The Alamo. After the movie I was going on and on about how great it was.

I remember he was silent.

The next night he took me to see Mein Kampf. He said he wanted me, as a boy of 12, to see what war was really like. (he had volunteered for the Army Air Corps the day after Pearl Harbor, so knew it first-hand).

I was changed.

10 years later I applied to be a Conscientious Objector during Vietnam. As part of my application I mentioned Mein Kampf. I'm proud of what I did. That "war" was a disaster for Vietnam and for our country.

So, to parents out there: take your sons and daughters to see this film. Teach your children well.

While competently put together, this film is woefully short on details. It is possible that by 1960, the year this film was made, there simply wasn't the wealth of information available about this point in history that there was in later years, but this is unlikely. Of what they do show, the viewer is left with the distinct sense that so much more is there for the telling. The invasion of France is given barely a sentence. The focus mainly stays on Hitler's rise to power and then shifts mainly to the occupation of Poland. This, in and of itself, is not problematic, but perhaps the film should have been just about that one particular aspect of the war. By trying to cover everything, so much is missed that a disservice is done to the audience. Additionally, the opening crawl which sets out the editorial bent of the feature does not age particularly well. We don't need to be told Hitler was a monster, nor that he was one of us, a human being. This kind of theatricality seems to undermine the dark subject matter which is eventually revealed.

Still, this documentary accomplishes much. It still contains some of the most jarring and unforgettable war imagery of any documentary film ever made on this subject. In particular, the Nazi-shot footage of the Warsaw ghettos, the scenes of the concentration camps, the kangaroo court, down to the raving Nazi judge, which Germany used to justify the mass murder of Hitler's traitors, as well as some incredible footage of the razing of major cities which were pivotal turning points of the war: Warsaw, Berlin, and Stalingrad. The atmosphere during various Hitler speeches is also very well-captured and gives a sense of the gravitas with which he seemingly hypnotized an entire nation. For these scenes alone, the film is absolutely worth watching.

That being said, the almost tabloid approach to the content and heavily editorialized narration dampens the credibility of the picture almost from the word go. The definitive WWII documentaries are still, nearly forty years since their release, the "World at War" films, narrated by Laurence Olivier, which aired in Britain in 1973. In twenty-six separate parts, they have the time to truly investigate and attempt to make sense of humankind's worst and most violent protracted affair. Directed in far less a heavy-handed fashion than Mein Kampf, they set a gold standard which has still not been touched.

If you are NEW to WWII study, Mein Kampf is a perfectly adequate start. But it does not go nearly deep enough. Start here, and keep going.

A strong but somewhat shallow documentary about Hitler's rise and fall. It contains some remarkable (and sometimes - warning - very disturbing) archival footage, but does not have enough sociological or political depth - you never get much of an analysis on how Germany's defeat in the first World War slowly but surely led to Hitler's rise to power, or on how he got the public to worship him to the extent that they did. In any case, you cannot deny the impact of the concluding scenes. **1/2 out of 4.

Mein Kampf is a rather disjointed documentary giving heavy emphasis to Hitler's rise to power and the occupation of Poland, subjects that probably deserve their own films. If the same story with variations was told in the same length of time about each occupied country we'd have a 9 hour film.

Two things this documentary had going for it that I liked. It gave the best account I've seen of Adolph Hitler's years of the development of the Nazi party and how it grew. That part ought to be required viewing in America, it will seem frighteningly familiar as to what is happening now.

The other thing is a lot of previously unseen, at least by me of footage that none other than the Propaganda Minister was responsible for. Some even which Joe Goebbels shot personally. With minimal commentary they tell their own tale of the Third Reich.

Heartbreaking in the footage of the Warsaw ghetto were the lamentations in Hebrew. No other words were needed.

Not the best told tale of the Third Reich but good enough.