Mein Kampf (Stackpole Sons)

by Adolf Hitler

For other versions of this work, see Mein Kampf.

Mein Kampf

Mein Kampf

 

By Adolf Hitler

 

The first complete and unexpurgated
edition published in the English language

 

Stackpole Sons Publishers
New York City

This translation of Mein Kampf
copyrighted 1939, in the United States
by Stackpole Sons

 

Manufactured entirely by The Telegraph Press, Harrisburg, Pa.

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Preface to the First Unexpurgated
Edition in English

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I doubt whether any book has been as frequently mentioned as Mein Kampf, or as widely quoted in this or any other country in the last five years. I cannot conceive of any book of which I more positively disapprove, but I consider it vitally important for every intelligent American to acquaint himself at first hand with the theories on which the National Socialist state is founded. It is important because the ideas of Hitler’s Mein Kampf are the warp and woof of the education of Germany’s youth, creating in them economic, political and historic concepts that will exercise a baleful influence on world happenings for at least a generation to come; because it seems to me that the publication of an unexpurgated translation of this significant book is an undertaking that will meet with the approval of all those who, because of their unfamiliarity with the German language, have never had a chance to read the original version which is still the acknowledged credo of Germany’s Nazi regime.

In a series of Commentaries for the Use of School and Home published by the German Ministry of Culture, Dr. Koenig, the well known German educator describes Mein Kampf as follows:

“… By its varied and fascinating style, by its design, its composition and its contents, this work is a classical masterpiece. Boys and girls in their teens must acquire a proper insight in order to understand this new Bible of the People. They must become acquainted and familiar with the lines of policy traced therein by the master’s hand. The grown-ups must, by reading this book, purify and strengthen their civic consciousness. Fathers must teach the thoughts contained in it to their children …”

These are not the words of a boot-licking sycophant. They express the reverent attitude of a large portion of the German public toward the words of their Fuehrer. That this fantastic book, with its atrocious style and its countless contradictions, could become the testament of the German nation, is in itself illustrative of the state of mind that made Hitlerism possible. Today a large part of Germany accepts Hitler’s contention that human existence is controlled by the laws of an eternal conflict and struggle upward. Man must understand says Hitler, “that in a world in which planets revolve about the sun and moons about planets, in which force is master over weakness and either makes it an obedient servant or encompasses its destruction—that in such a world there cannot be special laws for the human race. It too must bow before the eternal verities of the final truth … In this eternal struggle humanity has grown to greatness—in eternal peace it will go down to destruction …”

Who are the strong? Hitler develops his race theory to find the answer. It is, says he, “the key, not only to world history but to all human culture.” He violently disavows the Marxist principle that “Man equals man,” and in its place postulates a conception of race that sees in the Aryan the Divine instrument that must guide the destinies of our civilization. “What we see before us today of human culture, of the products of art, science and technical achievement, is almost exclusively the creative produce of the Aryan.”

On closer examination, however, we find the author qualifying this sweeping statement. Actually it is only the German Aryan who will attain to world leadership. To other nationalities Hitler reserves unto himself the right to give the accolade, as a great ruler bestows special recognition on deserving subjects. Nor is it sufficient for a people to use the German language as the background of its cultural life. “A racially alien people,” says Hitler discussing the ‘Germanization of the Polish element,’ “which expresses its alien thoughts in the German tongue, comprises the greatness and the dignity of our national heritage by its own inferiority.” Later he defines National Socialism as a “world concept which aims, while denying the idea of democratic mass rule, to give this earth to the best of its peoples, to the highest of the human race …” This insistence on Germanic—not Aryan—supremacy appears again at the end of the book when Hitler sums up his political dogma in the sentence: “Just so Germany must inevitably win the position on this earth that it can justly claim as its own, if it is led and organized in accordance with these principles. That state which, in this age of race poisoning, devotes itself to the cultivation of its best racial elements, must one day become the ruler of the earth …”

Is it necessary to enlarge on this absurd grandiloquence for an American public? Undoubtedly, it is! Ten years ago one would have been mad to believe that the German people would accept such postulates as that “Parliamentarism is the instrument of that race whose innermost aims make it fear the sun, today and forever”; that “Marxism is the product and the instruments of Jews”; that Freemasonry is an “excellent instrument for the defense and realization of Jewish aims.” Today we wonder. Who knows what America will believe tomorrow?

It is natural, I suppose, that one should think of Nazi anti-Semitism first when one discusses Hitler. It is also unfortunate. In its preoccupation with the tragic problem of the German Jew the world at large overlooked much of the significance of the Third Reich’s more far-reaching activities. Hitler withdrew from the League of Nations; Hitler marched into the Rhineland; Hitler repudiated German disarmament; Hitler won the Saar and established a National Socialist government in Danzig; Hitler joined Mussolini in Spain and marched into Austria; Hitler forced Chamberlain to accept the treacherous Munich pact.

Each time the world found what comfort it could in the thought that this would be the last of Nazi aggressions. Yet a simple perusal of Mein Kampf should have shown it the truth. As long as Hitler rules Germany there can be no peace. “Peaceful competition among nations,” he says, “has never existed. There is only the peaceful possibility of mutually acknowledged brigandage …” “Even as a boy I was never a pacifist,” he assures his readers. The World War found him “overwhelmed with stormy enthusiasm. I sank to my knees and thanked heaven out of the fullness of my heart that it had granted me the good fortune to live at this time …”

Naturally Hitler does not admit that Germany was beaten fairly. “ … the Jewish financial press and the Jewish Marxist press systematically fomented hatred against Germany until one state after another abandoned its neutrality, betraying the real interests of its people, and entered the World War coalition.” The world knows that it was the accumulation of economic, political and military rivalries and the violation of Belgian neutrality that drove England into the war. It knows also that it was America’s entry into the war, and not the influence of world Jewry that turned the tables on the Germans in 1919. But to Hitler history is a poor thing if it cannot be twisted to suit his purposes.

To justify his Anschluss claims, for instance, Hitler accuses the House of Hapsburg of fostering Czechian influences in the Dual Monarchy at the expense of the German population and calls Francis Ferdinand a patron of the Austrian Slavs. The enthusiasm with which the Hungarians, the Czechs and the Slavs proclaimed their independence from Austria might be cited as proof against him, if proof were needed. He insists that “France is the permanent and inexorable enemy of the German nation; that the key to her foreign policy will always be her desire to possess the Rhine frontier and to secure that river for herself by keeping Germany broken and in ruins.” “It is only in France that there is intimate agreement between the intentions of the stock exchange as represented by the Jews and the desires of the nation’s statesmen who are chauvinistic by nature. This identity constitutes an immense danger for Germany and it is the reason why France is by far the most terrible enemy of Germany …”

“That Power,” Hitler concludes his attack on France, “is our natural ally which with us resents as intolerable the domination of the French on the continent. No effort to unite with such a power should be too great, no sacrifice too heavy, if it will help us finally to overthrow the enemy that pursues us so relentlessly with its hatred …”

These and similar passages, we learn, are to be deleted from the first authorized version of Mein Kampf to be published in France. It is important to keep in mind that they still stand, however, in the Mein Kampf that is published in Germany’s home consumption.

Hitler defines the foreign policy of a National Socialist state in a passage so significant that it should be written in letters of red on the wall of every foreign office in Europe. “Beware always of the creation of two continental powers in Europe. Resist every effort to create a second military power on Germany’s borders, or even the creation of a state capable of becoming a military power, as an attack against Germany, and regard it not only as your right, but as your duty to prevent the erection of such a state, with armed resistance, if need be, or to destroy it altogether …”

The normal reader’s first reaction to this book will be one of incredulous amazement. It is possible that a highly cultured, sensitive people can be duped by this outpouring of wilful perversion, clumsy forgery, vitriolic hatred and violent denunciation? But think back a moment. Is our own past so entirely free of mass hysteria? Have we forgotten how clever propaganda turned the enthusiasm that re-elected Woodrow Wilson to the Presidency “because he kept us out of war” into a frenzy of chauvinistic hatred overnight? Today many an American is ashamed of that madness, but it was real and sincere while it lasted.

Something of the sort is happening in Germany, but on a much more gigantic scale. The German people in 1933 were in a mood that made them dangerously susceptible to the fascist bacillus. They had tried to find a way back to normal living and national self-respect and had found the way blocked by prejudice and blind misunderstanding. The great nations were interested only in reparations. The German labor parties which might have helped were split into half a dozen warring camps. All this was played against a background colored by a century of high pressure nationalism.

The German people had reached a point where order and security seemed to matter more than a political freedom that had become synonymous with brawls and bloodshed. Hitler understood these things and used them for his purposes, aided by a phenomenal capacity for organization and propaganda and by the readiness of Germany’s great industrialists to finance his campaigns. Once established, the German’s innate respect for authority made it simple to establish Fascist leadership.

Anti-Semitism, concentration camps and political oppression, however, are no more characteristic of the German people than fever and delirium are normal in the healthy human body. They are the symptoms of a virulent disease and they will disappear when that disease has run its epidemic course.

When will that be? Who knows! Perhaps the last chapter of Hitler’s Mein Kampf is still to be written. The present version makes no mention of the Fuehrer’s plans of conquest and penetration in the Western Hemisphere. If it did, we might read this book with a clearer conception of its ultimate significance.

Ludwig Lore

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A Note on the Translation

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The translation in this volume, the first unexpurgated version in English, has been made from the two-volume first edition of Mein Kampf, the first volume of which was published in 1925, the second in 1927.

Where Adolf Hitler made changes in later editions to modify or change his meaning, the translator has adhered to the original version. Occasionally, however, Hitler’s alterations were made in order to clear up meaning and correct his language. In such cases the present translation has adopted the changes.

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Foreword

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On April 1, 1924, by decision of the Munich People’s Court under that date, I was to start serving my sentence in the fortress of Landsberg on the Lech.

For the first time in years of uninterrupted work this opened to me the possibility of undertaking a task frequently asked of me, and one which I myself felt was useful for the Movement. I therefore decided to write two volumes, not only explaining the aims of our Movement, but portraying its development. This will be more instructive than any purely doctrinary dissertation.

At the same time I found opportunity to describe my own growth in so far as it serves toward the understanding of both volumes and toward the destruction of the vile legends built up around my person by the Jewish press.

In writing, I address myself not to strangers, but to those adherents of the Movement who belong to it with their hearts, and whose intelligence now seeks more intimate enlightenment.

I know that men are won less by the written than by the spoken word; and that every great movement in this world owes its growth to great orators, not to great writers.

Nevertheless, for the uniform and unified propagation of a doctrine, its principles must be laid down for all time. These two volumes, then, are meant to serve as stones which I hereby add to the common structure.

The Author

Landsberg on the Lech
Prison Fortress

On November 9, 1923 at 12:30 P. M., the following men in the true belief in the re-resurrection of their people fell in front of the Feldherrnhalle as in Munich in the courtyard of the Kriegsministeriums:

• Alfarth, Felix, Salesman, born July 5, 1901
• Bauriedl, Andreas, Hatmaker, born May 4, 1879
• Casella, Theodor, Bank Official, born August 8, 1900
• Ehrlich, Wilhelm, Bank Official, born August 19, 1894
• Faust, Martin, Bank Official, born January 27, 1901
• Hechenberger, Ant., Locksmith, born September 28, 1902
• Körner, Oskar, Salesman, born January 4, 1875
• Kuhn, Karl, Headwaiter, born July 26, 1897
• Laforce, Karl, Engineering Student, born October 28, 1904
• Neubauer, Kurt, Servant, born March 27, 1899
• Pape, Claus von, Salesman, born August 16, 1904
• Pfordten, Theodor von der, Rat of the Supreme Court, born May 14, 1873
• Rickmers, Joh., Cavalry Captain a.D., born May 7, 1881
• Scheubner-Richter, Max Erwin von, Doctor Engineering, born January 9, 1884
• Stransky, Lorenz Ritter von, Engineer, born March 14, 1899
• Wolf, Wilhelm, Salesman, born October 19, 1898

The so-called national, constituted authorities refused the dead heroes a common grave.

Therefore, I dedicate to their common memory the first volume of this work, whose martyrdom served first to gleam forever before the adherents to our movement.

Landsberg a.L., Prison Fortress, October 16, 1924.

Adolf Hitler.

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Contents

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First Volume: An Accounting

1.

Childhood Home ​

19

2.

Years of Learning and Suffering in Vienna ​

33

3.

General Political Considerations of My Vienna Period ​

75

4.

Munich ​

130

5.

The World War ​

159

6.

War Propaganda ​

177

7.

The Revolution ​

187

8.

Beginning of My Political Activity ​

205

9.

The “German Workers’ Party” ​

214

10.

Causes of the Collapse ​

222

11.

People and Race ​

277

12.

Early Development of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party ​

321

 

Second Volume: The National Socialist Movement

1.

World-Concept and Party ​

361

2.

The State ​

374

3.

State Member vs. State Citizen ​

424

4.

Personality and the Idea of the People’s State ​

428

5.

World-Concept and Organization ​

438

6.

The Struggle of the Early Days. The Importance of Speeches ​

449

7.

The Struggle with the Red Front ​

466

8.

The Strong Man is Mightiest When Alone ​

492

9.

Basic Thoughts on the Meaning and Organization of the Storm Troop ​

501

10.

Federalism as a Disguise ​

536

11.

Propaganda and Organization ​

560

12.

The Union Question ​

577

13.

German Alliance Policies After the War ​

589

14.

Eastward Orientation vs. Eastern Politics ​

622

15.

Self-Defense as a Right ​

649

Afterword ​

669