Adolf Hitler - Mein Kampf: The Stalag Edition

MEIN KAMPF

The Stalag Edition:

The Only Complete and Officially Authorised English

Translation Ever Issued

Ostara Publications

Mein Kampf

The Stalag Edition: The Only Complete and Officially Authorised English Translation Ever Issued

By Adolf Hitler

Translator: Unknown NSDAP member.

First issued as

My Struggle

By Adolf Hitler

Zentral Verlag Der NSDAP, Franz Eher Nachf. GMBH 19371944.

This edition

Ostara Publications

http://ostarapublications.com

Original title page of a copy of the only official English translation of MeinKampf ever issued, complete with Stalag camp number 357 stamp.

Stalag 357 was located in Kopernikus, Poland, until September 1944, when it was moved to the old site of the former Stalag XI-D, near the town of Fallingbostel in Lower Saxony, in north-western Germany.

Its internees included British air crews, and later, British soldiers captured at the Battle of Arnhem.

AUTHORS PREFACE

On April 1st, 1924, I began to serve my sentence of detention in the Fortress of Landsberg am Lech, following the verdict pronounced by the Munich Peoples Court on that day.

After years of uninterrupted labour it was now possible for the first time to begin a work for which many had asked and which I myself felt would be profitable for the Movement. I therefore decided to devote two volumes to a description not only of the aims of our Movement, but also of its development.

There is more to be learned from this than from any purely doctrinaire treatise.

This has also given me the opportunity of describing my own

development in so far as such a description is necessary to the understanding of the first as well as of the second volume and to refute the unfounded tales which the Jewish press has circulated about me.

In this work I turn not to strangers, but to those followers of the Movement whose hearts belong to it and who wish to study it more profoundly.

I know that fewer people are won over by the written, than by the spoken, word and that every great movement on this earth owes its growth to great speakers and not to great writers.

Nevertheless, in order to achieve more equality and uniformity in the defence of any doctrine, its fundamental principles must be committed to writing. May these two volumes therefore serve as building stones which I contribute to the common task.

The Fortress, Landsberg am Lech.

At half-past twelve on the afternoon of November 9th, 1923, those whose names are given below fell in front of the Feldherrnhalle and in the forecourt of the former War Ministry in Munich as loyal believers in the resurrection of their people:

Alfarth, Felix, Merchant, born July 5th, Bauriedl, Andreas, Hatter, born May 4th, Casella, Theodor, Bank Official, born August 8th, Ehrlich, Wilhelm, Bank Official, born August 19th, Faust, Martin, Bank Official, born January 27th, Hechenberger, Ant., Mechanic, born September 28th, Koerner, Oskar, Merchant, born January 4th, Kuhn, Karl, Headwaiter, born July 26th, Laforce, Karl, Student of Engineering, born October 2 8th, Neubauer, Kurt, Man-servant, born March 27th, Pape, Claus von, Merchant, born August 16th, Pfordten, Theodor von der, Councillor to the Supreme Provincial Court, born May 14th, Rickmers, Joh., retired Cavalry Captain, born May 7th, Scheubner-Richter, Max Erwin von, Dr. of Engineering, born January 9th, Stransky, Lorenz, Ritter von, Engineer, born March 14th, Wolf, Wilhelm, Merchant, born October 19th, The socalled national authorities refused to allow the dead heroes a common grave. I therefore dedicate to them the first volume of this work, as a common memorial, in order that they, as martyrs to the cause, may be a permanent inspiration to the followers of our Movement.

The Fortress,

Landsberg am Lech,

October 16th, 1924.

VOLUME ONE A RECKONING

CHAPTER 1: MY HOME

To-day I consider it a good omen that Destiny appointed Braunau-on-the-Inn to be my birthplace, for that little town is situated just on the frontier between those two German States, the reunion of which seems, at least to us of the younger generation, a task to which we should devote our lives, and in the pursuit of which every possible means should be employed.

German-Austria must be restored to the great German Fatherland, and not on economic grounds. Even if the union were a matter of economic indifference, and even if it were to be disadvantageous from the economic standpoint, it still ought to take place. People of the same blood should be in the same Reich.

The German people will have no right to engage in a colonial policy until they have brought all their children together in one State. When the territory of the Reich embraces all Germans and proves incapable of assuring them a livelihood, only then can the moral right arise, from the need of the people, to acquire foreign territory. The plough is then the sword, and the tears of war will produce the daily bread for the generations to come.

For this reason the little frontier town appeared to me as the symbol of a great task, but in another respect it teaches us a lesson that is applicable to our day. Over a hundred years ago this sequestered spot was the scene of a tragic calamity which affected the whole German nation and will he remembered for ever, at least in the annals of German history.

At the time of our Fatherlands deepest humiliation, a Nrnberg bookseller, Johannes Palm, an uncompromising nationalist and an enemy of the French, was put to death here because he had loved Germany even in her misfortune. He obstinately refused to disclose the names of his associates, or rather the principals who were chiefly responsible for the affair, just as Leo Schlageter did.

The former, like the latter, was denounced to the French by a government official, a director of police from Augsburg who won ignoble renown on that occasion and set the example which was to be copied at a later date by the German officials of the Reich under Herr Severings regime.

In this little town on the Inn, hallowed by the memory of a German martyr a town that was Bavarian by blood but under the rule of the Austrian State, my parents were domiciled 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 of that period I have not retained many memories, because after a few years my father had to leave that frontier town which I had come to love so much and take up a new post farther down the Inn valley, at Passau, therefore, actually in Germany itself.

In those days it was the usual lot of an Austrian civil servant to be transferred periodically from one post to another. Not long after coming to Passau my father was transferred to Linz, and while there he retired to live on his pension, but this did not mean that the old gentleman would now rest from his labours.

He was the son of a poor cottager, and while still a boy he grew restless and left home. When he was barely thirteen years old he buckled on his satchel and set forth from his native country parish. Despite the dissuasion of villagers who could speak from experience, he went to Vienna to learn a trade there.