a moment ... He struck people as unbalanced. He gave rein to his hatredsagainst the Jews, the priests, the Social Democrats, the Habsburgswithout restraint". In Percy Ernst Schramm's "The Anatomy of a Dictator", which was based on an analysis of the transcripts of the "Table Talk" recordings, Hitler is quoted as saying that "after a hard inner struggle" he had freed himself from the religious beliefs of his youth, so that he felt "as fresh as a foal in the pasture". Adulthood and political career Hitler's public rhetoric and writings about religion Although personally skeptical, Hitler's public relationship to religion was one of opportunistic pragmatism. In religious affairs he readily adopted a strategy "that suited his immediate political purposes." He typically tailored his message to his audience's perceived sensibilities and Kershaw considers that few people could really claim to "know" Hitler, who was "a very private, even secretive individual", able to deceive "even hardened critics" as to his true beliefs. In private, he scorned Christianity, but when out campaigning for power in Germany, he made statements in favour of the religion. Hitler's public utterances were peppered with references to "God" and "Spirit". In Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, Bullock wrote that Hitler, like Napoleon before him, frequently employed the language of "divine providence" in defence of his own personal myth, but ultimately shared with the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin "the same materialist outlook, based on the nineteenth century rationalists' certainty that the progress of science would destroy all myths and had already proved Christian doctrine to be an absurdity": Hitler had an "ability to simulate, even to potentially critical Church leaders, an image of a leader keen to uphold and protect Christianity [from Bolshevism]" wrote Kershaw, which served to deflect direct criticism of him from Church leaders, who instead focused their condemnations on the known "anti-Christian party radicals". Religion in Mein Kampf Mein Kampf (1924–25), written while Hitler was in prison after his failed 1923 putsch, contains numerous references to "God", "the Creator", "Providence" and "the Lord". Laurence Rees described the thrust of the work as "bleak nihilism" revealing a cold universe with no moral structure other than the fight between different people for supremacy: "What's missing from Mein Kampf", wrote Rees"and this is a fact that has not received the acknowledgement it shouldis any emphasis on Christianity"though Germany, Rees noted, had been Christian for a thousand years. So, concluded