How Ironic

The Book Thief has become one of my new favorite books. I found it extremely depressing yet uplifting at the same time. One of the aspects that I was most interested in was how big a role irony played throughout the book. I found that the use of irony added another dimension to the book, it left me laughing at the cleverness of Zusak at times and asking "why?" at others.
Mein Kampf is clearly an important book throughout Zusak's novel, it managed to help Hitler influence a nation. I found the other uses of Mein Kampf to be extremely ironic. Max uses the book to hide a key to the Hubermann's house, in a way the book that was aimed at destroying Max and others like him, actually saved him. Max also uses Mein Kampf as a tool to write his own stories. It's ironic and symbolic that the pages Max uses to write his stories to Liesel at one time, contained a much different content.
I thought one of the most interesting forms of irony was also one of the saddest. Most of the Germans that readers had gotten so close to during the novel died in an air raid. Liesel managed to survive in the Huberman's basement, which was previously deemed too shallow to be a bomb shelter. Max also ended up surviving WWII, even though being Jewish he was one of the main targets, and most of the people that tried so hard to help him perished. This is the kind of irony that left me wondering why Zusak wanted the story to play out this way and what he intended it to mean. These examples are only skimming the surface of the many other examples of irony within The Book Thief.