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Mein Kampf: Hitler's dark vision for the future
00:26:55
In the centenary year of its publication, Lisa Pine explores the origins, content and legacy of Adolf Hitler's notorious political manifesto
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- [00:02]
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Rob Attar
Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. Published 100 years ago in 1925, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf was one of the most consequential books of the 20th century. It laid out Hitler's political ideology and future aspirations, as well as making the Nazi leader a lot of money. In more recent times, Mein Kampf has continued to influence neo Nazis and anti Semites around the world, and there have been passionate debates over whether it should still be published in the 21st century. In this episode, Rob Attar speaks to Dr. Lisa Pyne, an expert on Nazi Germany, about the history of the book and its dark legacy.
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Dr. Lisa Pyne
Lisa could we begin with the genesis of Mein Kampf? What were the circumstances in which it was written?
- [02:46]
Historical Expert
The genesis or the origins of Mein kampf began in 1924 when Hitler was in prison at Landsberg following his conviction for high treason for attempting to overthrow the German government in November 1923 in the infamous Beer Hall Putsch. At this point, his political career was at quite an all time low and he hoped that writing and then publishing the book, first of all, would earn him some money, and second, would serve as a propaganda platform to air his views and to attack his enemies. It's believed that Hitler dictated an account of his life and worldview to Emil Morris and Rudolf Hess in 1924. And the book that he produced was published as Mein Kampf or my struggle in 1925. And essentially, mein Kampf set out Hitler's worldview. It was comprised of a variety of aspects of Nazi ideology, the most central of which were antisemitism and anti Bolshevism, also extreme nationalism and racial myths as well. So there's a lot in there about the Germans as the Aryan race. There's a lot about cultural contamination by what Hitler regarded as the Jews as inferior. There's a lot of the argumentation of these kind of racial theories and Social Darwinist theories that had developed at the end of the 19th century and that had influenced Hitler's ideas like the survival of the fittest, that there should be no racial miscegenation or mixing and all of those kinds of ideas. And Hitler really developed his views on how he was going to be able to acquire power whilst he was in prison. And he realised during this time that he would have to use the tools of democracy in order to achieve power.
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Dr. Lisa Pyne
What kind of a response did the book get initially when it was published?
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Historical Expert
So Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and it was not an immediate bestseller at all. The first edition of 10,000 copies largely sold out and a second edition was published, but quite quickly after that, the sales slackened. Now, this changed in 1930, once the Nazi party made huge gains in parliamentary elections and sales of Mein Kampf began to increase. During this time, through aggressive marketing, the publisher pressurized the public, German institutions and Nazi organizations to purchase copies. And of course, once the Nazis came to power, every household was obliged to have a copy. This made Hitler personally extremely wealthy, allowing him to purchase and later to lavishly decorate and expand the Berghof, his retreat in the beautiful Obersalzberg Bavarian Alps, where he spent quite a lot of his time. So the Berghof was where he held his. His mountain court. And really this was financed by the money that he made personally out of the sales of Mein Kampf. Now, as I said, once Hitler came to power, sales increased dramatically. So just before Hitler came to power in 1932, sales had reached 80,000 in 1933, the year that Hitler came to power. One and a half million copies were sold. In addition to this, the state recommended that all government employees should buy the book. From 1936, a copy of a people's edition of Mein Kampf, in which both volumes were bound together, was given to all newlyweds on their wedding day. So we've kind of got this idea that every household should have a copy of businesses too handed out the book to employees as a bonus for good performance. And also deluxe versions were made so available with marble covers and gold plated pages for high ranking Nazi leaders. And so the book became a bestseller and secured Hitler's fortune with over 10 million copies being printed in Germany by 1945, also including a Braille edition in 1936, and also millions more sold abroad, translated into 16 different languages. A special commemorative edition for Hitler's 50th birthday was also published in 1939. So that kind of tells us something about the numbers published, of course. How many people actually read Mein Kampf? We do not know. As I said, what we do know is that it made Hitler personally very wealthy.
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Dr. Lisa Pyne
So you talked about whether people actually did read Mein Kampf. And I suppose we can expect that perhaps some of the people didn't, considering they hadn't really chosen to own the book often. I mean, the book has often been described as fairly badly written. Words like turgid, meandering. Do you think that's a fair assessment of Hitler's writing style?
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Historical Expert
I think it's a very fair assessment. It's incredibly difficult to read. It makes a very difficult read because of the poor style for a start, but also because of the subject matter too. So we can think in terms of the length, so it's something like 600 pages, but it's not written in a very coherent manner. So it's kind of not kind of following a logical order. It's got parts of it in which there's that kind of diatribe and it's kind of all of Hitler's rancor and resentment being sort of spilled out onto the page, which perhaps suited his oratorical style. So when he was giving his speeches, that kind of was more effective, but on paper it didn't turn out very well. Even that style might have been the bit that was more appealing, but most of it was very turgid. Some of the sentences were extremely long, difficult to even follow through a sentence to the end in places. So it is incredibly hard to read. It's not really designed, I think it's probably important to say it wasn't really designed for everybody to actually read. Was aimed really, I think, at Hitler's acolytes. It was really aimed at his followers to show that he had put into place an ideology, that he had penned this himself and that everyone was following him. So I think that's kind of the key point about who it was written for. So really, they all believed that he was providentially in power. He believed this himself. And it was all about perpetuating that myth, really, this idea that he was a messianic leader destined for power, and that he'd kind of written all his ideas down ahead of time. Here in Mein Kampf, how closely does.
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Dr. Lisa Pyne
The ideology propounded in Mein Kampf reflect what then happened during the Third Reich?
- [10:14]
Historical Expert
I think that's a really excellent question because the ideologies and the key themes that are laid out in Mein Kampf really came to underpin Nazi policy once the regime came into being. So we've got aspects like nationalism, antisemitism, race and the folk or the nation, anti communism, war, foreign policy, and of course, this idea of Lebensraum, or living space. And also inside, there is a lot about propaganda and education and exactly what Hitler outlined for the way in which, once he would come to power, he would disseminate his ideas to the masses, influence all levels of German society, and of course, particularly the youth, both in terms of school, education and the youth groups.
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Dr. Lisa Pyne
Does Mindcamp offer any hints to the future Nazi treatment of the Jews of Europe? Can we get any suggestions of the Holocaust that would come?
- [12:57]
Historical Expert
Hitler's anti Semitism is absolutely clear. So his personal antisemitism was absolutely clear and demonstrable already there in Mein Kampf. And I think the centenary of the publication of Mein Kampf now is an opportune moment to understand this and to see that Hitler's personal antisemitism did come to permeate state policy once he came to power and did culminate in the Holocaust during the Second World War. Of course, antisemitism is perhaps the most widely known and discussed ideology that he expressed in Mein Kampf. So in terms of the proportion of the subjects and the themes that he writes about, the Jews are perhaps the most prominent or preeminent, but I think perhaps less well understood, perhaps. And something that we should understand is Hitler's fundamental aim to destroy democracy, being absolutely central to his thoughts and his actions. And this anti democratic sentiment has, of course, many advocates still today in political parties and movements such as spread widely across the globe. So I think that we've got a moment now in terms of trying to understand and comprehend the nature not only of the text itself, Mein Kampf, with its abhorrent and pernicious ideology, but also to understand something about the nature of a leader like that. So the dictator himself, Adolf Hitler, who was grossly underestimated at the time. So I think perhaps people didn't realise that he would first of all come to power. So they didn't take him seriously. And perhaps also they didn't take seriously what he would put into place once he came to power. And I think it's really important to understand this.
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Dr. Lisa Pyne
So in that case, are you saying that Hitler's opponents, both domestically and internationally, should have been reading Mein Kampf and should have been taking it seriously?
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Historical Expert
I think that Hitler's opponents, certainly domestically and internationally, should have taken this seriously. I think that the words in Mein Kampf, as distasteful, as violent, as strong and graphic as they are, were illustrative of a man who needed to be taken seriously. So there were those who underestimated him, there were those who ridiculed him. There were those who mistakenly believed that his words were just rhetoric, that he wouldn't put any of this into practice. So he was seriously underestimated and the dangers that he posed were misunderstood. So people thought that his words would never be translated into deeds. And of course this proved to be complete folly. And so in contemporary times, when radical political ideologies are in evidence, when antisemitism has once again reared its ugly head and risen above the surface again, we see this kind of toxic language again today in social media and elsewhere in public debate. Some of these words regrettably and shamefully seem to be very reminiscent of, of what Hitler penned a century ago.
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Dr. Lisa Pyne
Coming on then to the afterlife of Mein Kampf, we get to 1945, the war ends. What then happens to the book at this point? I mean, for starters, who owns the copyright?
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Historical Expert
After Hitler's death at the end of the Second World War, the Allies transferred the book's copyright to the German state of Bavaria, but with the proviso or the condition that reprints would be banned. Now, the book's copyright then ran out 70 years later. So on 31 December 2015, the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich decided to issue an annotated version, particularly to try to offset the possibility of any ill advised versions, so to have a priority proper scholarly annotated text to expose the lies and the half truths and the vicious tirades of the Nazi regime. Nevertheless, several hundreds of thousands of the original copies of Mein Kampf survived and some of them can still be found in antique shops and bookshops. Yet of course it's illegal. And symbols of Nazi Germany, especially the swastika, of course, are illegal in Germany today. And Germany's justice system maintains that any republication or distribution of the original work without proper annotation remains illegal.
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Dr. Lisa Pyne
And what's the situation like outside of Germany? I realise there are strict rules within Germany about its publication, but those rules haven't necessarily been as strict elsewhere in the world.
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Historical Expert
Yes, of course several hundreds of thousands of Mein Kampf originals survived and can still be found in like old bookshops and antique shops. But of course they're illegal to be distributed in Germany itself. But of course that doesn't mean that they're not available in many other countries. So Mein Kampf was and remains available in translation in many countries, including Britain, France, the usa, Turkey, Israel and the Palestinian territories. I mean, we have to say that Mein Kampf undoubtedly has an enduring influence on neo Nazi antisemitic extremist groups. Nevertheless, of course, it's a significant historical source and one that we need to be able to use and to use educationally in order to comprehend the dangers of underestimating the impact of such ideologues or ideologies. And so the new Critical Edition that was put out by the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich, Obviously, with its 1300 extra pages of annotations and text, was designed to explain and to explicate what was going on. And of course, that's not something that the neo Nazis or the anti Semites would like. So something like the Critical Edition, of course, then, wouldn't appeal to them. And the main point of it was to be used and used carefully for educational purposes. I just wanted to also say something else about the notoriety that it gained, and really, really to say that it only gained that notoriety as a result of Hitler's political rise. I think we can safely say that without that, and of course, without the dreadful impact Hitler made not only on German history, but on world history as well, that his work would have remained in all likelihood, an obscure treatise. But as a result of Hitler's power and actions, Mein Kampf, then, is an important historical document. So, however flawed and however extremely hard it is to read, it's important to understand that Hitler wrote that in order to appeal to his followers to suit their zealousness. And I think the other thing we can say is that whilst Hitler managed to hoodwink most of the outside world during the 1920s and 1930s, in regard to the true nature of his ideological goals and. And really to put them off the scent of his warlike purposes, to his followers, Mein Kampf was regarded as a kind of scripture of the Nazi movement, and it was very important for Hitler to stamp his authority and leadership on the movement. And if we think about Mein Kampf, it's kind of an autobiography, a history of the party and a political treatise all wrapped up into one text. So I think that's one important thing to say.
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Dr. Lisa Pyne
And how much do you think we need to look at Mein Kampf as a reflection of Hitler in this early stage of his career, rather than Hitler and the Nazis more generally?
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Historical Expert
I think this is a really important question and we have to view Mein Kampf in its context. So this text that we're looking at has to be understood in the context of Hitler's personal experiences and the views that he developed at a specific time, which is between 1919 and 1924. In particular, the text is reflective of his love of violence, aggression and war. I think the Other important thing about it, again in terms of its context, is that we see Hitler's writing as a product of the developments of European political life and ideas that were current and that he was reading so these kind of political pamphlets and literature that were circulating during his time in Vienna, kind of popular pamphlets, the Austrian newspaper. So all of that heavily influenced Hitler and he was trying to show that he was well read and well versed in contemporary political writings. But I think the thing also that's important in terms of not only the ideology that he puts forward, but also understanding this in its context is actually the very first line of the text. So the very first sentence reads, today it seems to me providential that fate should have chosen Brown Owl on the Inn as my birthplace. Why? Because this small town was situated on the border of Germany and the Austrian Empire. And he's making the very first point about nationalism, his desire to reunite the two German speaking peoples into one territory. The other really important thing in terms of his view of the Austrian Empire at that time too, was that he absolutely hated its cosmopolitanism, the fact that it was a multinational empire, you know, made up of many Slavic peoples that he regarded to be inferior as well. And he was very much concerned that it should all be about German greatness and bringing all the Germans into one territory.
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Rob Attar
That was Dr. Lisa Pine. Her latest book is Soviet and Nazi Posters, Propaganda and Policies, which was published in January 2020 by Bloomsbury. And if you're interested in learning more about the mentality that underpinned the Nazi regime, then check out the link in the episode description of this podcast to find a different episode where Professor Richard J. Evans explores the motivation of those who governed and supported the Third Reich.
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