Ulysses Mein Kampf
Adolf Hitler
1925
In the mid-1920s, Adolf Hitler’s two-volume outpouring of hatred and rage, Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”) had few admirers; critics found it tedious and gave it poor reviews. Yet after 1933, when Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany, Mein Kampf became a nationwide best-seller, prominently displayed in every bookstore, every house, and every classroom in the Third Reich. The state gave all newly married couples a copy of the book as a wedding present.
Even then, until 1939, when it was published in English and other languages, few people outside Germany read Mein Kampf. Those who did were alarmed at Hitler’s intention for world domination by a white “Aryan” race. The book presented the blueprint for genocide that Hitler followed during World War II (1939-1945), when 50-60 million people died worldwide and an estimated 5.7 million Jewish people, and countless Roma, LGBTQ+, and disabled people, among others, were murdered in Europe. Baron Elwyn-Jones, a counsel at the Nuremberg Trials, said, “From Mein Kampf the way leads directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz and the gas chambers of Majdanek.”
After the war, many countries restricted the sale or display of Mein Kampf. In Germany, Bavaria-the state that inherited the copyright after Hitler’s suicide-refused to permit its publication, and it was only after the book came into the public domain in 2015 that a heavily annotated scholarly edition of the work was published in the country. In 2020, Amazon announced that it would no longer sell copies of the book because its content violated the company’s code of conduct. However, the company then reinstated the book, saying it “served an important educational role in understanding and preventing antisemitism.” The debate continues, with some people claiming that publication exposes Hitler’s lies. A number of Jewish groups have long called for the book’s outright ban.
