In 1922, just four years after the war to end all wars, an unknown Austrian then living in Bavaria planned a pamphlet to be called Settling Accounts.
Mein Kampf must be read and constantly remembered as a specimen of evil demagogue
We would be wrong in thinking that such a program, such a man, and such appalling consequences could not reappear in our world of the present.
That such a man could go so far toward realizing his ambitions, and -- above all -- could find millions of willing tools and helpers; that is a phenomenon the world will ponder for centuries to come.
For in its pages Hitler announced -- long before he came to power -- a program of blood and terror in a self-revelation of such overwhelming frankness that few among its readers had the courage to believe it ...
In his excellent introduction to this definitive American translation of Mein Kampf, Konrad Heiden writes: For years Mein Kampf stood as proof of the blindness and complacency of the world.
Ironically, and frighteningly, by the time Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933, what has been considered by many to be the most satanic book ever written was running neck and neck with the Bible at the top of the German bestseller lists.
Soon Mein Kampf was even being passed out to newlywed couples as a gift.
Gradually this pressure was extended to all elements of the German population.
As Hitler\'s power increased, pressure was put on all party members to buy the book.
They were wrong to do so.
People either laughed at it or ignored it.
In 1926 a second volume appeared - it was no more successful than the first.
When Mein Kampf was published in 1925, it was a failure.
It was written in hate and it contained a blueprint for violent bloodshed.
Settling Accounts became Mein Kampf, an unparalleled example of muddled economics and history, appalling bigotry, and an intense self-glorification of Adolf Hitler as the true founder and builder of the National Socialist movement.
With the help of these collaborators, chief among them Rudolf Hess, the pamphlet became a book.
In November 1923, Adolf Hitler was jailed for the abortive Munich Beer Hall putsch along with men willing and able to assist him with his writing.
In it he intended to attack the ineffectiveness of the dominant political parties in Germany which were opposed to the new National Socialists (Nazis).
In 1922, just four years after the war to end all wars, an unknown Austrian then living in Bavaria planned a pamphlet to be called Settling Accounts
