tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/mein-kampf-15282/articlesmein kampf – The Conversation2017-11-08T18:48:30Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/871442017-11-08T18:48:30Z2017-11-08T18:48:30ZHow Hitler used a lie about November 9 as the foundation for the Third Reich<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193819/original/file-20171108-14177-a1lv3m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Making of a demagogue. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As Adolf Hitler worked on his secret first autobiography in the summer of 1923, he faced a problem. He had decided that in Adolf Hitler: His Life and His Speeches, <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/07/europe/hitler-biography-koerber/index.html">to be published</a> as a biography attributed to the young right-wing writer Adolf-Victor von Koerber, he would present himself as a boy from Austria whose formative experiences had led him to political revelations about the hidden architecture of the world.</p>
<p>His pitch would be that these revelations would allow him to become Germany’s saviour at the very moment of the country’s most dire need. Yet to tell a credible story about himself, he needed to connect the story of his own life to that of the nation – as understood by the right wing extremists he was trying to lead. Theirs was a story of a heroic nation, undefeated in war, which had been stabbed in the back by traitors on the home front on November 9, 1918, the day of the <a href="http://alphahistory.com/weimarrepublic/german-revolution/">German revolution</a>.</p>
<p>The challenge for Hitler was that his own real-life experiences on that day did not fit this narrative. After having (unfairly) been cold-shouldered and branded a “rear-area pig” by his wartime peers, he had spent the day in a military hospital recuperating from a mustard gas attack. He was still harbouring fluctuating political ideas and had not expressed anything anti-Semitic by that point. </p>
<p>Worse still, in the weeks and months to come, he would readily serve the successive left-wing revolutionary regimes that Bavaria was about to experience. At the moment when he was radicalised in the summer of 1919, he had been more anti-capitalist and incensed by globalism than anti-Bolshevik. Until that time, he had not realised that Germany had really been defeated in the war – though many Germans thought it had been some sort of draw until the Versailles treaty was drawn up, he could not possibly admit being one of them. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193824/original/file-20171108-14209-4454x2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193824/original/file-20171108-14209-4454x2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193824/original/file-20171108-14209-4454x2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193824/original/file-20171108-14209-4454x2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193824/original/file-20171108-14209-4454x2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193824/original/file-20171108-14209-4454x2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193824/original/file-20171108-14209-4454x2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193824/original/file-20171108-14209-4454x2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Workers protesting in Berlin, November 1918.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>I am the resurrection</h2>
<p>Hitler thus decided in the summer of 1923, as he was trying to create a space for himself in national politics, that he would simply recast his past. And what better way to connect his own life to that of the nation than to pick November 9 as the moment of his political epiphany?</p>
<p>The aspiring dictator now used biblical language to describe how he had essentially been dead from the mustard gas attack before the revolution had brought him back to life. In the moment of this resurrection, he wrote, he had decided to become the leader who would bring deliverance to the German people. Hiding behind the name of Koerber, a war hero who could lend him broader legitimacy because he was not part of the Nazi party, Hitler was not shy in comparing his fate that November 9 directly with that of Jesus:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This man, destined to eternal night, who during this hour endured crucifixion on pitiless Calvary, who suffered in body and soul; one of the most wretched from among this crowd of broken heroes: this man’s eyes shall be opened! Calm shall be restored to his convulsed features. In the ecstasy that is only granted to the dying seer, his dead eyes shall be filled with new light, new splendor, new life!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A year later, when Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, his much longer second autobiography, he used this fictional recasting of his experiences on November 9, 1918 as the focal point of the story. He described how he had responded to the news that revolution had broken out and that the war was over and had been lost. </p>
<p>On hearing the news, Hitler claims that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…it was impossible for me to stay any longer. While everything began to go black again before my eyes, stumbling, I groped my way back to the dormitory, threw myself on my cot and buried my burning head in the covers and pillows.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He describes how in the nights and days after learning about this Socialist revolution, while experiencing “all the pain of my eyes”, he decided upon his future: “I, however, resolved now to become a politician”. The previous 267 pages of Mein Kampf had been but a build-up: this one sentence is the most famous in the book.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193822/original/file-20171108-14182-1y8xype.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193822/original/file-20171108-14182-1y8xype.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193822/original/file-20171108-14182-1y8xype.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193822/original/file-20171108-14182-1y8xype.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193822/original/file-20171108-14182-1y8xype.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193822/original/file-20171108-14182-1y8xype.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193822/original/file-20171108-14182-1y8xype.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193822/original/file-20171108-14182-1y8xype.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Ad infinitum.</span>
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</figure>
<p>Hitler now also incorporated another November 9 into the story, the failed <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007884">right-wing coup</a> from 1923 that had landed him in prison. The fact that this occurred on the 9th of the month was in fact a coincidence. Hitler had initially not even be the central figure of the putsch. Only through a clever staging of himself in his trial had it been turned from “the Ludendorff putsch”, named after the World War I general involved, into “the Hitler putsch”. In Mein Kampf, Hitler now sold the coup as an attempted counter-revolution to the left-wing revolution of five years earlier.</p>
<h2>How November 9 grew</h2>
<p>By 1927, Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s then chief ideologue, codified Hitler’s story of the two November 9s into a narrative that would form the backbone of Nazi propaganda for the next two decades, labelling the date Germany’s “fateful day” (Schicksalstag). In 1938, Goebbels deliberately organised <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005201">Kristallnacht</a> on the same date to showcase the Nazis’ belief that Jews had stabbed Germans in the back by surrendering in World War I on November 9, 1918 and creating a German parliamentary democracy.</p>
<p>Even today, Hitler and Rosenberg’s “fateful day” narrative is disconcertingly alive and well in Germany. It now incorporates yet another November 9 – that of 1989, the day the Berlin Wall fell. </p>
<p>To be sure, the Nazi story of November 9 as the day of Hitler’s resurrection and thwarted German heroism has been turned into one of tragedy and sorrow. Yet Germans continue to refer to that day of the year as their “Schicksalstag”, unaware that they are employing Rosenberg’s language.</p>
<p>Worse still, many Germans still treat Hitler’s November 9, 1918 as an embellishment of an essentially true story about how he had had become radicalised. This leads them to look for the wrong warning signs for the emergence of new Hitlers at a time of renewed populism and demagoguery – not recognising the ways in which extreme forms of anti-globalism, triggered by the confluence of economic and political crises, can radicalise those who were once essentially moderate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87144/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Weber received funding from the British Academy and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation to help him write Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi.</span></em></p>The Nazi fuhrer’s story about his ‘resurrection’ in 1918 is an important lesson for today.Thomas Weber, Chair in History & International Affairs, University of AberdeenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/581962016-07-05T01:57:21Z2016-07-05T01:57:21ZThe curious history of ‘Mein Kampf’ in France<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128910/original/image-20160630-30635-1j28qws.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Adolf Hitler and his entourage take a stroll in Paris on June 23, 1940.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Adolf_Hitler,_Eiffel_Tower,_Paris_23_June_1940.jpg">German Federal Archives/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Seventy years after the death of Adolf Hitler, “Mein Kampf” is in the public domain and free to be republished. </p>
<p>The history of its English version is relatively well-known, <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/history/british-history-general-interest/hitlers-mein-kampf-britain-and-america-publishing-history-193039">thanks to historians James and Patience Barnes</a>. Its history in French is not. While French journalist Antoine Vitkine wrote a <a href="http://editions.flammarion.com/Search_result.cfm?TypeSearch=Globale&keyWords=vitkine">2009 global history of “Mein Kampf”</a> and two French lawyers and a historian recently <a href="http://www.editionsbdl.com/fr/books/pour-en-finir-avec-mein-kampf.-et-combattre-la-haine-sur-internet/515">shed light</a> on the French-language editions of “Mein Kampf,” neither book has been translated into English.</p>
<p>Beginning in 1934 – and into the 21st century – a tug-of-war over the French version of the text took place among an eccentric, right-wing publisher named Fernand Sorlot, Hitler’s lawyers, German censors, and the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism.</p>
<p>With a much-anticipated critical edition of Hitler’s hateful screed in the pipeline, it’s worth revisiting how the French translation endured decades of dubious sales, editing and censorship.</p>
<h2>From ‘My Struggle’ to ‘My Doctrine’</h2>
<p>When Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, people around the world were fascinated with the Nazi leader known for his fiery rhetoric. Many were curious to learn more about the man’s life and his true beliefs.</p>
<p>An obvious entry point into Hitler’s mind and political agenda was “Mein Kampf,” first published in Germany in two editions, the first in 1925 and the second in 1926. Referred to as the “Nazi bible,” international publishing houses started translating it into different languages.</p>
<p>The first French edition of “Mein Kampf” – entitled “Mein Kampf: Mon Combat” (<em>Mon Combat</em> simply means “My Struggle” in French) – was published in 1934 by the <em>Nouvelles Éditions Latines</em> (New Latin Editions), a publishing house founded a few years earlier by Sorlot. Though Sorlot was sympathetic to anti-Semitism and fascism, he seemed motivated more by turning a profit than advancing any political agenda. Sorlot was also publishing the book illegally: He hadn’t even secured the rights to publish a French edition of Hitler’s tome. </p>
<p>When Adolf Hitler caught wind of the French version, he and his publisher brought Sorlot to court, demanding that he cease publication. Hitler knew that Germany was not ready for war, and, on the international stage, he was doing his best to conceal his plans. In “Mein Kampf,” Hitler had called for the destruction of France, a country referred to, at various points, as the “irreconcilable mortal enemy,” “the most terrible enemy,” and “the mortal enemy of our nation.” The last thing he wanted was to tip his hand by having a translated copy circulating among the French.</p>
<p>During his trial, Sorlot claimed that he was acting out of patriotism, that he wanted to warn the French public of the looming German threat. Even before the rise of Nazism, France was highly suspicious of its Eastern neighbor. In the late-19th century, following the <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/history/european-history-after-1450/franco-prussian-war-german-conquest-france-18701871?format=PB">Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71</a>, Germany had annexed the French Alsace and Moselle, two border regions disputed by the two countries for centuries. World War I, of course, did nothing to ease the tensions between France and Germany. </p>
<p>But, in 1934, Hitler had the law on his side, and Sorlot lost the trial, forcing him to withdraw the unauthorized French translation from the market. Whether it was out of patriotism or to earn a quick buck, Sorlot continued to covertly sell the translated version. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125420/original/image-20160606-13085-1d74l1e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125420/original/image-20160606-13085-1d74l1e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125420/original/image-20160606-13085-1d74l1e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125420/original/image-20160606-13085-1d74l1e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125420/original/image-20160606-13085-1d74l1e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1222&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125420/original/image-20160606-13085-1d74l1e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1222&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125420/original/image-20160606-13085-1d74l1e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1222&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Fayard edition of ‘Ma Doctrine.’</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1938, Adolf Hitler authorized Fayard, a leading French publishing house, to print a French translation of “Mein Kampf.” </p>
<p>When the first translation into English was published in the United States by Houghton Mifflin in 1933, it softened Hitler’s rhetoric and visions of expansion. Similarly, Hitler ensured that the French version was also significantly edited. The numerous anti-French passages that the original edition contained were toned down or cut altogether. </p>
<p>Sorlot’s 1934 unabridged translation was 687 pages. Fayard’s 1938 edition, published under the much gentler title “Ma Doctrine” (“My Doctrine”), would only be 347 pages.</p>
<h2>Blacklisted</h2>
<p>In 1940, Hitler invaded Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France.</p>
<p>In the wake of the invasion, the German authorities wanted to exploit the countries’ natural and industrial resources while also being able to devote as many troops to the front lines. The best way to do both was a mollified public, so they sought to blacklist any texts – “Mein Kampf” included – that could fuel existing anti-German feelings. In all occupied countries, the German authorities created “indexes” of prohibited books or authors. </p>
<p>In France, since Sorlot’s original translation, two additional unauthorized translations of “Mein Kampf” had been published, as well as a few other book-length commentaries that quoted extensive excerpts from Hitler’s book. All were placed on the list of <a href="http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8626072f/f3.image">“books withdrawn from sale by the publishers or forbidden by the Germans,”</a> often referred to as “Otto’s List” after Otto Abetz, the German ambassador to France during the war.</p>
<h2>Postwar angst over racism and anti-Semitism</h2>
<p>After the war, Sorlot resumed publishing, which included printing and selling “Mein Kampf.” He initially did so discreetly, but with time, encouraged by the absence of backlash from the French authorities and the public, he started selling Hitler’s book more openly.</p>
<p>This ended in 1978. The 1970s had seen a <a href="http://fresques.ina.fr/jalons/fiche-media/InaEdu04662/le-racisme-en-france-au-debut-des-annees-70.html">sharp rise in racism and anti-Semitism</a> in France, and <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674935396&content=reviews">Holocaust deniers were becoming increasingly vocal</a>. An 1881 French law against defamation and insults was reinforced <a href="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000000864827">in 1972 by an anti-racism law</a> (known as <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/422386?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">“Pleven Law”</a>), which criminalized racist insults and the incitement of racial hatred.</p>
<p>For obvious reasons, “Mein Kampf” didn’t comply. The fact that Hitler’s book was still being sold by Sorlot’s <em>Nouvelles Éditions Latines</em> – by then considered a right-wing publishing house – garnered the attention of the <em>Ligue Internationale Contre le Racisme et l’Antisémitisme</em> (International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism). By the late 1970s, Sorlot could hardly argue that he was selling a translation of “Mein Kampf” out of patriotism. This time, he played the “historical document” card. It didn’t work, and Sorlot was given a hefty fine of 80,000 francs (the equivalent of approximately US$250,000 today).</p>
<p>Surprisingly, he was allowed to continue publishing “Mein Kampf” as long as it contained a reminder of the 1972 French anti-racism law, as well as a summary of Nazi atrocities and <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007722">the Nuremberg trials</a>. After much legal wrangling between the two sides, an eight-page text was finally written by a historian and included in all subsequent editions of “Mein Kampf: Mon Combat.”</p>
<p>Today, in France – as in most democratic countries – there’s a general consensus that “Mein Kampf” should be republished because it’s an important historical document and to demystify it. It’s also already widely available on the web, often on dubious sites that don’t offer context.</p>
<p>A critical edition in French is in the works and will almost certainly be published by the end of the year by Fayard, the original publisher of the radically edited “My Doctrine.” This time, the publishing house will set the record straight: rather than massage the language and condense the text, it will take pains to explain and contextualize much of the “Nazi Bible’s” racist, anti-Semitic ideology – and its devastating consequences.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58196/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Manu Braganca does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>One publisher spent over 40 years trying to profit off Hitler’s hateful tome.Manu Braganca, Research Fellow, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/535272016-01-25T09:54:52Z2016-01-25T09:54:52ZWhy is it so hard to get a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf?<p>Hitler’s infamous political memoir, <a href="https://theconversation.com/mein-kampf-publication-the-best-way-to-destroy-hitlers-hateful-legacy-51707">Mein Kampf</a>, continues to trouble us like few other texts in the world. Seven decades after the end of the Third Reich, it fascinates and appals in equal measure.</p>
<p>Available in many translations, Mein Kampf is widely read around the world and regularly features on <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/5182107/Indian-business-students-snap-up-copies-of-Mein-Kampf.html">bestseller lists in India</a>. The state of Bavaria, however, used copyright legislation to ban any new German editions from being produced after 1945. All that came to an end though, when the copyright expired at the end of 2015. It is now legal to produce new copies of the book.</p>
<p>This has obviously caused some anxiety and, in an attempt to steer the way the German public engages with the text, the <a href="http://www.ifz-muenchen.de/?id=550">Institute for Contemporary History in Munich</a> decided to launch a critical scholarly edition. It includes a long introduction and countless footnotes that point out the many flaws in Hitler’s arguments. As the editors have explained, their main aim was to foreground “what we can counterpose to Hitler’s innumerable assertions, lies and expressions of intent”. </p>
<p>The edition sold out before it even appeared on the shelves of bookstores. Many readers, including me, are still waiting for their copies. It seems that 15,000 advance orders were placed for a print run of just 4,000. The printers were overwhelmed and left unable to fulfil the requests of many frustrated customers. </p>
<p>It has also created a thriving black market. Copies are being <a href="http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/hitlers-mein-kampf-sells-out-instantly-after-being-published-in-germany-for-first-time-in-70-years-34351999.html">traded</a> at extortionate prices, well above the official €59.</p>
<p>Some worry that the Institute is inadvertently spreading Nazi propaganda. There is a real question as to whether those 15,000 advance orders could have come only from people with a historical interest in the text.</p>
<p>Others object to the overtly pedagogic approach taken by the editorial team that produced the new version. Are this group acting like a “nanny state”, using a tsunami of footnotes to control how the text is read today, rather than allowing readers to use their own judgement? </p>
<h2>Not exactly a beach read</h2>
<p>The moral taboo surrounding Mein Kampf is of course all about its author. Hitler was unique in writing a major political work before he came to power, and then continuing to issue that same work throughout the lifespan of the Third Reich.</p>
<p>As Hitler is now regarded as the very epitome of evil, his authorship suggests that Mein Kampf must also be the most evil book in the world.</p>
<p>But those looking for dangerous examples of Nazi ideas will find them in other places much more readily. The infamous speeches of <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/joseph-goebbels">Joseph Goebbels</a>, rousing the masses to enthusiasm around the idea of “total war”, Leni Riefenstahl’s great propaganda movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025913/">Triumph of the Will</a>, or the much reproduced anti-Semitic caricatures of <a href="http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/sturmer.htm">Der Stuermer</a> are all easily accessed and offer far more to worry about to people fearing the spread of extreme views.</p>
<p>The lengthy ramblings of Mein Kampf are unlikely to turn anyone into a modern-day fascist. The book was distributed in its millions under the Nazi regime, but there is little evidence that it worked as effective propaganda. It is, in fact, extremely hard to read.</p>
<p>It doesn’t present a particular political theory, either. Personal anecdotes are interwoven with observations on a vast array of different issues, from economics to architecture, from landscape aesthetics to history. There are certainly antisemitic rants, too, but what gives the text coherence, in so far as it has any, is a general mood music about a new style of politics of “intuition” and “character”, rather than theory and logical deduction. And indeed, much of it is not original Hitler. Whole passages are plagiarised or adapted from an array of earlier thinkers. Hitler’s skill was to synthesise, and to make these ideas and assumptions accessible. </p>
<h2>Why the appeal?</h2>
<p>The ideological context on which Hitler was drawing was familiar to many at the time. This contributed to the book’s apparent “commonsense” appeal, which in turn helped to mask some of Hitler’s more outlandish conclusions as apparently self-explanatory.</p>
<p>But this historical context has long faded, and a critical edition like that presented by the Munich editors can help explain these connections, that are so central to the book’s appeal. What this shows, however, is neither the nature of Nazi “propaganda” (this Hitler mostly left to his henchmen), nor what was unique about the regime (while racist ideas are sprinkled liberally throughout the book, there is no “blueprint” for the Holocaust in it).</p>
<p>What Mein Kampf does explain is precisely how ordinary, in many respects, National Socialism was at the time – and how that very ordinariness lured so many people into supporting a regime that committed the most extraordinary crimes.</p>
<p>A critical scholarly edition that explains that appeal would certainly be worthwhile. And it could serve as a warning against uncritical modern uses, where Mein Kampf has been treated as anything from an entertaining novel to a manual for management techniques in business.</p>
<p>At least some of the 15,000 people trying to get a copy of the new version may well be disappointed by what they find. I for one look forward to finally receiving mine and discovering what new light it casts on the “normality” of one of history’s most infamous dictators.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53527/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maiken Umbach collaborates with the Institute for Contemporary History at Munich on a project about the history of private life under National Socialism funded by the Leibniz Gemeinschaft. She also receives AHRC funding to work with the National Holocaust Centre and Museum in Laxton on the use of photography to exhibit the history of the Third Reich and genocide. </span></em></p>Printers have been overwhelmed with orders for the first edition of the text to be published in Germany since 1945.Maiken Umbach, Professor of Modern History and Faculty Research Director, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/517072015-12-03T13:56:34Z2015-12-03T13:56:34ZMein Kampf publication – the best way to destroy Hitler’s hateful legacy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104272/original/image-20151203-32297-1hxagtc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A toxic text – but we can learn from it...</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/adam_jones/7751170792/in/photolist-bchE66-8FdXqf-5WNE9w-5YDLqC-5WJs2T-98XbB-dmVqGN-bchDhH-bchDTX-bchDHM-bchEpZ-bchDre-bchEye-bchEfR-6TkpDc-2iRPyH-4Eog3H-7UJz7u-4Hb5XQ-qkbkz8-5WJtqk-o5wKsD-rgQENg-zR3KuB-fFFvmt-5nkv2f-99DewM-cNWM2J-9QZFA8-4WxFqz-cNWQ29-nwSxXy-5Jy5mk-3nVTm-dgKEPw-cNWQf3-cNWPRf-ffiM9v-5Jyrtn-5D8Fyt-cHqD4G-cHqDMs-giAdv5-cgCtRU-KDPAv-49aNJq-63AKAv-7wH4Jw-5HNT3-eXYvLW">Adam Jones/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.ifz-muenchen.de/">Institute for Contemporary History</a> in Munich plans to publish an annotated version of Mein Kampf <a href="http://www.ifz-muenchen.de/?id=550">in 2016</a>; the main idea being that a critical edition of the book should be <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-historian-discusses-new-scholarly-edition-of-hitler-s-mein-kampf-a-834560.html">available</a> to counter the anticipated reprint of it by neo-Nazis. </p>
<p>For 70 years, reprinting Mein Kampf has been illegal in Germany. However, the copyright, which is owned by the Bavarian government – and is used to enforce the law – expires this year. From 2016, anyone can reprint it.</p>
<p>This new annotated version was initially supported and funded by the Bavarian government, but then in January 2014 it withdrew its support. The reason the Bavarian governor cited was that he had met with Holocaust survivors on a trip to Israel and they pleaded with him not to allow the publication. Yet there is debate among both <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/11434440/Publishing-Mein-Kampf-is-the-best-way-to-undermine-Hitlers-poison.html">historians and survivors</a> whether this is the best position to take.</p>
<h2>A question of guilt</h2>
<p>Why is this book still seen as toxic by so many? The most obvious reason is that it is written by Hitler and is seen as an artefact of his dreadful legacy. But it can also play a valuable, positive role in ensuring that Hitler and the Nazi party are remembered for what they really were – monstrosities – at a time when some continue to hold them in a strange kind of reverence.</p>
<p>After the debates in the 1990s over the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler's_Willing_Executioners">Goldhagen book</a>, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmachtsausstellung">exhibition about the crimes of the Wehrmacht</a> and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_to_the_Murdered_Jews_of_Europe">Holocaust memorial</a>, by the end of that decade public opinion in Germany came around to the conclusion that Germany’s guilt must be accepted unequivocally and that the minute documentation of the country’s Nazi past is paramount. As a matter of fact, the current discussion about the reprint of Mein Kampf hasn’t created so much of a general, public debate, but seems to be taking place mainly <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4179151,00.html">between academics, the Bavarian government and some of the Holocaust survivor groups</a>.</p>
<p>Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in two volumes: the first while incarcerated at Landsberg prison in 1924 after his failed coup attempt in November 1923, and the second after his release in early 1925. Both volumes are a rather crude mix of autobiography – and a quite glossy version at that – and Nazi party political manifesto. During the Third Reich, as you would expect, it became a best-seller – on average, every household had a copy and it was also school reading material.</p>
<p>Maybe the taboo and embarrassment in post-war Germany was due to this circumstance – that the stereotypical excuse, “we didn’t know about the atrocities” could be easily called into question simply based on the distribution of Mein Kampf being so widespread.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104276/original/image-20151203-20682-1bsgrmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104276/original/image-20151203-20682-1bsgrmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104276/original/image-20151203-20682-1bsgrmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104276/original/image-20151203-20682-1bsgrmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104276/original/image-20151203-20682-1bsgrmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104276/original/image-20151203-20682-1bsgrmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104276/original/image-20151203-20682-1bsgrmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mein Kampf given as wedding present, Germany.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mein_Kampf_as_wedding_present,_Germany,_1936.jpg">Agence de presse Meurisse, via Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A window into Hitler’s mind?</h2>
<p>Hitler does not hold back in the book and lays out a lot of his plans. For example, he – like others on the German right-wing post-1918 – blames the defeat in World War I on a lack of determination among German soldiers which had been caused by Marxist agitators (who, in his view, were agents in a Jewish conspiracy). </p>
<p>He consequently states: “At the front a man <em>can</em> die, as a deserter he <em>must</em> die” (vol. II, ch. 9), and that if “twelve or fifteen thousands of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas” than “the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.” (vol. II, ch. 15). </p>
<p>In World War II approximately 16,000 German soldiers were executed for desertion (whereas the Americans shot one GI, and the British not a single soldier, for desertion). And the gassing of Jews and others was to become the signature atrocity of the Nazi regime. Hitler’s wicked ideas were thus out in the open, in print, by as early as 1925. </p>
<p>Which is why the republication is so important: on the one hand to make today’s society aware of complacency about the Holocaust, and also to make the point that despots and mass-murderers are often quite frank about their intentions. This should remind us that we shouldn’t dismiss, for example, statements by the Iranian regime that: “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/27/israel.iran">Israel needs to be wiped off the map</a>” as merely colourful rhetoric.</p>
<h2>Unravelling its own myth</h2>
<p>The reprint is long overdue for other reasons as well. Given that it has been a taboo for so long, Mein Kampf has developed an odd afterlife. It is freely available online in both German and translations (often on neo-Nazi websites). Amazon UK also offers the newly edited English version (which has four out of five stars in its customer reviews), just as Apple’s iTunes and other stores do. And in 2013 there was a <a href="http://comicsalliance.com/mein-kampf-manga-israeli-ambassador-japan-bible-comics/">Manga version being published in Japan</a>.</p>
<p>Equally bizarre is the fact that Germany’s largest publishing house, Bertelsmann, seems to want no part of any reprint of Mein Kampf <a href="http://www.ardmediathek.de/tv/Reportage-Dokumentation/Countdown-zu-einem-Tabubruch-Mein-Kam/Das-Erste/Video?documentId=27660658&bcastId=799280">in Germany</a> – critical edition or otherwise. Yet the publisher has no issue with the <a href="http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/10/mein_royalties.php">English edition by Pimlico</a>, a division of Random House, which Bertelsmann bought in 1998. </p>
<p>The emotional distress that the reprint in Germany might cause to Holocaust survivors is understandable. Yet, the post-war reverence towards Hitler held by some Germans (including some of this author’s own relatives) was often based on the excuse that the “Führer” was misunderstood and that his ideas had been misinterpreted by his minions. A look at Mein Kampf, such as the two quotations above, would use Hitler’s own words to quickly unravel that myth.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51707/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander von Lünen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mein Kampf will be reprinted in Germany next year – and it could have a surprisingly positive effect.Alexander von Lünen, Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities, University of HuddersfieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/383532015-03-06T11:04:30Z2015-03-06T11:04:30ZThe future of Mein Kampf in a meme world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/73706/original/image-20150303-31835-lsmnuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Adolf Hitler gives the Nazi salute in 1939.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-242815222/stock-photo-adolf-hitler-giving-nazi-salute-to-hitler-s-right-is-rudolph-hess.html?src=&ws=1">Image of Hitler by Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Seventy-five years ago, in his autobiographical volume Hitler and I (1940), the one-time Nazi party member and later renegade, Otto Strasser, offered up a frank reminiscence about Hitler’s infamous book, Mein Kampf. Strasser was dining with several high-ranking Nazi officials at the 1927 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg when he was asked if he had ever read Hitler’s notorious treatise. </p>
<p>Strasser replied: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I admitted having quoted some significant passages from it without bothering my head about the context. This caused general amusement, and it was agreed that the first person who joined us who had read Mein Kampf should pay the bill for us all. Gregor [Otto’s brother and a leading party member]’s answer was a resounding ‘No,’ Goebbels shook his head guiltily, Goering burst into loud laughter, and Count Reventlow excused himself on the ground that he had had no time. Nobody had read Mein Kampf, so everybody had to pay his own bill.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While historians have long debated how many Germans actually read Mein Kampf during the Third Reich, today a different question has arisen: will anyone in Germany read it once it can be legally published there in early 2016? And what might be the impact on a digital generation for whom the Führer is a distant memory or internet <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/kitler">meme</a>? </p>
<p>Later this year, the official copyright for Mein Kampf expires – 70 years after the demise of its author. Since 1945, the Bavarian State (which owns the copyright) has refused to allow anyone to publish the volume. But in expectation of the copyright’s expiration (and in the hope of getting a jump on neo-Nazis who may try to publish their own slanted versions of the text) the esteemed Munich and Berlin-based Institute for Contemporary History decided some years ago to publish its own, critically annotated version. The move has generated some opposition, with some arguing against the release of any new version; “<a href="http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/03/02/adolf-hitlers-mein-kampf-to-be-reprinted-in-germany/">Can you annotate the Devil</a>?” one critic asks. </p>
<p>The question is whether anyone will have the strength to lift, let alone read, the new edition. The volume will be hefty, numbering more than 2,000 pages – the result of nearly 5,000 annotations supplied by scholars. These annotations will critically engage Hitler’s ideologically rooted claims in Mein Kampf, the goal being to prevent gullible readers from accepting any of them at face value. </p>
<h2>Who will read the new edition of Mein Kampf?</h2>
<p>Neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists will surely shy away from this new volume. But what about younger Germans who may simply be curious about the book? To be sure, they – like all German readers – have been able to access used and online versions of Mein Kampf for some time (even though selling or distributing the book is against German law) thanks to Internet vendors. But if they haven’t found their way to a version of the book by now, will they be tempted to look at the forthcoming edition?</p>
<p>Perhaps some will. But the likelihood is that the weighty tome will appeal to very few who belong to the millennial generation. Younger Germans, like their peers worldwide, have grown up reading brief Twitter Feeds and Facebook posts. When browsing the web, their attention spans, if estimates are to be believed, <a href="http://time.com/12933/what-you-think-you-know-about-the-web-is-wrong/">run to less than thirty seconds</a> per website. Moreover, they have been exposed to countless examples of the “Hitler Meme,” in the form of irreverent images that spoof the former Führer, in the form of satirical videos on YouTube, websites like <a href="http://www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com/cgi-bin/seigmiaow.pl">Cats That Look Like Hitler</a>, and online games like Six Degrees of Hitler. Today’s youth culture, in short, is accustomed to superficially mocking, rather than deeply engaging, with Hitler and his legacy.</p>
<p>For this reason, those who fearfully imagine adverse political repercussions arising from the re-issuing of Mein Kampf probably needn’t worry. Indeed, in important ways, the book runs counter the essential dynamics of present-day web culture, </p>
<p>My new book, <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/twentieth-century-european-history/hi-hitler-how-nazi-past-being-normalized-contemporary-culture#contentsTabAnchor">Hi Hitler!</a> highlights my research into the increasingly common commercialization and normalization of the Nazi past. I argue that a new internet rule has recently come into being, which I term the “Law of Ironic Hitlerization.” It asserts that the likelihood of an image getting attention on the web increases as soon as a Hitler moustache, swastika, or any other Nazi iconography is applied to it. For those brave enough, doing a brief image search on Google will turn up endless images of otherwise blameless characters – Hello Kitty, Colonel Sanders, the Teletubbies – who have fallen victim to this dynamic. </p>
<p>In all likelihood, however, Mein Kampf will resist the “Law of Ironic Hitlerization.” Unless intrepid web users can devise a way to “Hitlerize” – that is, to affix Nazi iconography to – Mein Kampf’s textual passages and footnotes, the reappearance of the book, for many readers, will be akin to stumbling upon a fossil.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38353/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gavriel D. Rosenfeld does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Would a reprint of Mein Kampf impact a digital generation reared on “Hi Hitler” spoofs?Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, Professor of History and Director of the Undergraduate Program in Judaic Studies, Fairfield University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.