New English translation of the classic work by Adolf Hitler.  Now, for the first time ever, in dual English-German text (German on left-facing page, English on the right).

 

This is a complete and unedited translation of Volume One of Mein Kampf, in modern and highly readable American English.  This is the first such effort since the 1940s, and it far surpasses all existing versions.  This edition includes section headings, helpful footnotes, bibliography, and useful index.

 

Mein Kampf is the autobiography and articulated worldview of one of the most consequential leaders in world history.  It is also one of the most maligned and least understood texts of the 20th century.  A major problem in the Anglophone world has been the poor state of English translations.  Both the Mannheim and Murphy editions are poor efforts, awkwardly phrased, and replete with archaic British wording; they are simply painful to read.  This new translation is clear, lucid, and highly readable—and yet true to the original.  And, unlike every other edition, this version has authentic section headings embedded in the text, which serve to both organize Hitler’s ideas and to parse long sections of text into manageable units. 

 

The Dalton translation will become the standard reference for this famous work.

CHAPTER 1:  IN MY PARENTS’ HOUSE

 

I consider it most fortunate today that destiny selected Braunau-on-the-Inn to be my birthplace.  This little town lies on the border between two German states—the union of which seems, at least to us of the younger generation, a task to which we should dedicate our lives and pursue with every possible means!

 

German-Austria must return to the great German Motherland.  And not for mere economic reasons.  No, no.  Even if the union were a matter of economic indifference, and even if it were to be economically disadvantageous, it still must take place.  The same blood should be in the same Reich.  The German people have no right to engage in colonialism until they have brought all their sons together in one state.  Only when the territory of the Reich embraces all Germans and then finds itself unable to assure them a livelihood, only then will the moral right arise to acquire foreign territory. The plow will then become the sword, and the tears of war will produce our daily bread for generations to come.

 

And so this little border town appeared to me as the symbol of a great mission.  But in another way too, it points to a lesson that is applicable today.  More than 100 years ago, this insignificant place was the scene of a tragic calamity that affected the whole German nation.  It will be remembered forever, at least throughout German history.  At the time of our Fatherland’s deepest humiliation, Johannes Palm—Nuremberger, bookseller, uncompromising nationalist, and enemy of the French—was put to death here because he had the misfortune to have loved Germany so passionately.  He stubbornly refused to reveal the names of his colleagues, or rather the leaders who were chiefly responsible for the affair.  The same happened with Leo Schlageter.  The former, like the latter, was denounced to the French by a government agent.  An Augsburg police chief won this unenviable fame on that occasion, and set the example that was later to be copied by neo-German officials of Herr Severing’s regime.

 

It was in this little town on the Inn—gilded by the memory of a German martyr, a town that was Bavarian by blood but under Austrian rule—that my parents lived, towards the end of the last century.  My father was a civil servant who fulfilled his duties very conscientiously.  My mother looked after the household and lovingly devoted herself to the care of her children.

 

I don’t remember much from that period because, after a few years, my father had to leave that beloved border town.  He took up a new post farther down the Inn, at Passau, hence in Germany itself. 

 

In those days it was typical for an Austrian civil servant to be transferred periodically from one post to another.  Soon my father was transferred to Linz, and there he retired to live on his pension.  But this didn’t mean that the old gentleman would now ‘rest.’  As the son of a poor cottager, and while still young, he grew restless and left home.  When he was barely 13 years old, he slipped on his small backpack and set forth from his native woodland parish.  Despite the pleas of villagers who could speak from experience, he went to Vienna to learn a trade.  This was in the 1850s. 

 

It was a difficult time, that of deciding to leave home and face the unknown, with three gulden in his pocket.  By the time the boy of 13 became a youth of 17, he had passed his apprenticeship examination as a craftsman, but was not content.  Quite the contrary.  The long period of hardship, constant want, and misery strengthened his resolve to give up working at a trade and strive for ‘something higher.’  As a boy it had seemed to him that the position of the parish priest in his home village was the highest in the scale of attainment; but now that the big city had enlarged his outlook, he looked upon the state official as the highest of all.  With the tenacity of one whom misery and suffering had already made ‘old’ while still young, the 17-year-old stuck to his new project.  He became a civil servant.  He was about 23 years old, I think, when he achieved his life’s dream.  Thus he was able to fulfill the promise he had made as a poor boy, to not return to his native village until he was a success.

 

He achieved his goal.  But back in the village, there was no one who remembered him as a little boy, and the village itself had become strange to him. 

 

Finally, when he was 56 years old, he retired.  But he couldn’t bear to be idle for even a single day.  On the outskirts of the small market town of Lambach, in Upper Austria, he bought a farm and tilled it himself.  Thus, at the end of a long and hard-working career, he came back to the life that his father had led. 

 

1.1  The Young Ringleader

 

It was at this time that I first began to have ideals of my own.  I spent a good deal of time playing out in the open, on the long road from school, and mixing up with some of the roughest boys, which caused my mother many anxious moments.  This made me something quite the opposite of a stay-at-home.  I gave scarcely any serious thought to the question of choosing a vocation in life; but I certainly had no interest in the kind of career that my father had followed. 

 

I think that an inborn talent for speaking now began to develop in me, during the more or less strenuous arguments with my friends.  I became a youthful ringleader, one who learned quickly at school but was rather difficult to manage.  In my free time, I practiced singing in the choir of the monastery church at Lambach.  I was well-situated to be emotionally impressed again and again by the magnificent splendor of the church ceremonies.  It was natural for me to look upon the Abbot as representing the highest human ideal worth striving for, just as the humble village priest had appeared to my father in his day.

 

For awhile at least, that was this case.  But my father didn’t appreciate my oratorical gifts as beneficial for a career, and so he naturally couldn’t understand my youthful ideas.  This internal conflict made him feel somewhat concerned. 

 

As it happened, my short-lived yearnings soon gave way to hopes that were better suited to my temperament.  Browsing through my father’s books, I happened to come across some publications that dealt with military subjects.  One of these was a popular history of the Franco-German War of 1870–71.  It consisted of two volumes of an illustrated periodical dating from those years.  These became my favorite reading.  Soon that great and heroic conflict began to dominate my thinking.  And from that time on, I became more and more enthusiastic about everything that was at all connected with war or military affairs. 

 

But this story had a special significance for me on other grounds, too.  For the first time, and as yet in only quite a vague way, I began to think:  Is there a difference—and if so, what is it—between the Germans who fought that war and the other Germans?  Why didn’t Austria also take part in it?  Why didn’t my father and all the others fight in that struggle?

 

Are we not the same as other Germans?

 

Do we not all belong together?  That was the first time that this problem began to agitate my brain.  And from the conclusions that I reached, I was forced to accept the fact—though with a secret envy—that not all Germans had the good luck to belong to Bismarck’s Reich. 

 

This was something that I couldn’t understand.