Mein Rant

Much of German propaganda was sinister, especially in the portrayal of Jewish citizens. American propaganda was cautionary and dark. British propaganda, on the other hand, was that the righteous should prevail and that those in the wrong - be they errant schoolboys, bullies, or robbers, or even wartime leaders, should always fail. Rubbishing the enemy, assassinating nasty characters with humorous methods, was a technique people learned from comics. Britain was expert in this area. So enter Heath Robinson, and R F Paterson's Mein Rant, which we reproduce in this book, with a new introduction by leading comic archivist, Morris Heggie. Mein Rant is a clever and funny satire of Hitler's Mein Kampf, illustrated by Heath Robinson. Today, and since World War One, Heath Robinson's name has been used to describe absurdly complicated inventions that achieved very simple results. Here his work is used to great impact. Mein Kampf ('My Struggle'), Hitler's autobiography, was published in two volumes in 1925 and 1926 which Hitler wrote in Landsberg Prison, and R F Paterson said of it: Mein Kampf had neither rhyme nor reason, while my abridgement undoubtedly has rhyme. 'A conversion of Hitler's Mein Kampf to a delightful and pungent verse-satire. The result is an absolute triumph of the Comic Muse over intractable, almost hopeless material'.