Mein Kampf: can you still read it.

Interesting to see how Hitler made a great deal of money from his publication guided by the business acumen of his publisher,an old comrade from his service in the Great War

Max Amann,was Hitler's company sergeant in the Great War.He became the first business manager of the NSDAP in 1921.Then in 1922 he became the director of the Verlag Eher publishing company and under his control the party publisher went on to publish the Volkischer Beobachter,the daily of the party.

As well as making the notable change to Hitler's"Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies,Stupidity and Cowardice" to the more saleable title of "Mein Kampf",Atmann saw the publication through its many editions and created huge wealth for Hitler and also himself as Hitler's publisher and from his services to the NAZI Party.Other publications were turned out by Amann who saw that Hitler was well rewarded for his contributions to these publications....Illustrierter Beobachter and Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte.

In 1933 as Hitler assumed power, he made Amann, Reichleiter.(leader) of the National Socialist press and President of the Reich Press Chamber.

Germany's defeat and denazification hearings saw Amann's wealth confiscated by the West German state.He died in poverty in Munich on March 30 1957.

 

Publish and be damned, indeed...

 

Very interesting subject with lots of good comments.
I have not read it and do not intend to read it.
There are too many books around, I still want to read before my finish line. E g. I am just reading, "Making History" by Stephen Frey. All fake news, but very funny and entertaining I think.
Stefan.
NB: And I have just returned from Berlin; including a visit to the area, where A.H. killed himself.
Stefan.

 

Thank you VP - most interesting article. I remember reading about Sokal's original article which gave me a interest in the way Mumbo-Jumbo has taken the place of clarity of thinking and expression in our Universities (and quite possible our political system too)

Although I did begin to wonder whether this was also a spoof piece when I got to Professor Jonathon Anomaly !?! Shurley shome mistake?

 

I've recently read the Kindle editions of a couple of novels that mentioned Mein Kampf. If the Kindle was connected to the internet clicking on Mein Kampf took you to the Kindle Store where you could buy the Kindle edition of Mein Kampf.

 

I think one thing is obvious and that is the European political leadership did not read Mein Kampf in depth or they would have realised Hitler's vision for his envisaged Third Reich.

An assessment of Hitler's policies from January 1933 when he rose to power would have found that the regime was rigged for war.To be fair there were some, with WSC being the most notable who saw threat to European peace from Hitler....even so WSC was held by some to be a warmonger while at the same time there were some of those with political influence who saw Hitler as the vanguard for opposition to the political threat from Russia.

The Munich Agreement was merely an attempt to satisfy Hitler's "recognised" territorial ambitions and after the Czechs agreed to evacuate the Sudetenland by 1 October 1938.Hitler issued his infamous statement of "This is my last territorial demand in Europe".Then in March 1939,the whole of Czechoslovakia was occupied,President Hacha was coerced into asking Hitler to protect Czechoslovakia with the status of a protectorate.

At this point Britain and France came to the conclusion that their was no satisfying Hitler's territorial ambitions.

 

Read that The Foyles Building in Charing Cross used the Mein Kampf as protection from air raids and I thought yeah what ever !! as it was in The Star ?

But just googled it and apparently yes they did well according to Wiki ?
Foyles Building - Wikipedia

In 1932, on hearing that the Nazis were burning books, William Foyle sent Adolf Hitler a telegram asking if he could buy them instead.[

During the Second World War, to safeguard the store from the effects of the Blitz, sandbags filled with old books were used, and the roof was "covered" with copies of Hitler's Mein Kampf. In an account in The Argonaut, "News reels this week are showing a clerk of Foyle's of London stacking copies of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf in place of sand bags on the roof of the store as a protection against air raids!"

In 1940, a bomb which landed in Charing Cross Road itself nearly destroyed the bookshop, and a bridge was built over the large crater, christened "Foyles Bridge" by William Foyle

 

HItler did actually write a second book.

Adam Tooze analyses it in "The Wages of Destruction", as it apparently gave a better guide to his behaviour during WW2 than Mein Kampf did.

 

Blank first page - the first page is invariably blank
Title page
Blank end page - the last page is invariably blank
.....hang on a minute.....where's the front and back covers?



OK....the front cover should be blank as well.

 

"15) The National Reich Church declares that henceforth our peoples greatest document and book will be our Führer's Mein Kampf. The National Reich Church is conscious that this book contains not only the greatest but, much more the purest and truest ethics for the present and future life of our people." Page 18 at #4 of the document as under:

Report by the Legal Commission of the Free German Movement in Great Britain

 

There's a copy on USS New Jersey museum ship visible over his right shoulder

 

........ so readers of this thread may be interested in having a look at:
British Library
where Professor Jo Cox reflects:
"The experience of 1914-1918, he wrote in Mein Kampf, ‘spurred me to take up the question of propaganda even more deeply than before… What we failed to do, the enemy did with amazing skill and really brilliant calculation. I myself learned enormously from this enemy war propaganda’. Praising the manipulation of atrocity stories, he concluded that Allied propaganda was regarded as ‘a weapon of the first order, while in our country it was the last resort of unemployed politicians and a haven for slackers’. As a result, he determined that Germany would not be in such a position again, and propaganda was to play integral role in acquiring and, after 1933, consolidating power."

Quite a few have looked at Mein Kampf for insight into Hitler's attributed fixation on how the British Propaganda Department (Crewe House) had rotted the German soldier's moral 'component of fighting power', echoing Lüdendorff and his largely myth-based explanation for the defeat of 1918.

But exactly how much of:
The psychological tricks used to help win World War Two
came from study of Mein Kampf, members ought decide for themselves.

I noted

above:

Readers may also be interested in:
Myth of a ‘heroic’ Hitler whose First World War experience led him to power dispelled by new book | News | The University of Aberdeen
and its references to Mein Kampf.

 

I own a copy and have read it. A painful experience. Dreadfully written racist garbage.