Preface to the First Unexpurgated
Edition in English
I doubt whether any book has been as frequently mentioned as Mein Kampf, or as widely quoted in this or any other country in the last five years. I cannot conceive of any book of which I more positively disapprove, but I consider it vitally important for every intelligent American to acquaint himself at first hand with the theories on which the National Socialist state is founded. It is important because the ideas of Hitler’s Mein Kampf are the warp and woof of the education of Germany’s youth, creating in them economic, political and historic concepts that will exercise a baleful influence on world happenings for at least a generation to come; because it seems to me that the publication of an unexpurgated translation of this significant book is an undertaking that will meet with the approval of all those who, because of their unfamiliarity with the German language, have never had a chance to read the original version which is still the acknowledged credo of Germany’s Nazi regime.
In a series of Commentaries for the Use of School and Home published by the German Ministry of Culture, Dr. Koenig, the well known German educator describes Mein Kampf as follows:
“… By its varied and fascinating style, by its design, its composition and its contents, this work is a classical masterpiece. Boys and girls in their teens must acquire a proper insight in order to understand this new Bible of the People. They must become acquainted and familiar with the lines of policy traced therein by the master’s hand. The grown-ups must, by reading this book, purify and strengthen their civic consciousness. Fathers must teach the thoughts contained in it to their children …”
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