"MEIN KAMPF"

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 79, 30 September 1938, Page 8

"MEIN KAMPF"

MYTH AND REALITY

ENGLISH VERSION WORTHLESS

. A VIOLENT BOOK

How many people know the truth about Hitler's "Mein Kampf?" It is said that there has been a rush on the English translation recently, but the readers of this have no more idea of Hitler's real thesis than the German neo-pagans know about the nature and spirit of the Bible from reading LudendorfTs hundrea-page summary, writes Professor S. H. Roberts in the "Sydney Morning Herald." Hitler says that he wrote "Mein Kampf"' in the anguish of his soul during his incarceration in Landsberg fortress after the abortive revolt of November, 1923. This is not true. Originally the book appeared in two volumes. The first, with 406 pages, appeared in 1925, and was said, to be largely written by Rudolph Hess; the other 376 pages, did not appear until 1927. On page 782, Hitler stated that he was writing in November, 1926, and it was- in this volume that the sections on foreign" policy appeared, that is, after the Treaty of Locarno and long after the Dawes Plan. It has been said that the campaign book of an agitator should not be taken as the considered policy of the Fuhrer of a great nation, but Hitler has never disavowed "Mein Kampf." On the contrary, the book is now in its third million, and is selling today in its old form. It is only two years ago that Hitler refused to delete the derogatory references to the French nation. The English edition was published in October, 1933, under the title, "My Struggle." It is little more, than a third the size of the German original. Whole slabs have been omitted from it, the meaning of entire sentences has been changed,*and practically every extreme statement is toned down. READERS ARE MISLED. Reading the English version, the unwary reader might conclude that, after: all, there is little justification for the repeated , condemnations of "Mein ; Kampf." The sections on foreign policy, for instance, read as a temperate statement of the German nation'sl right of self-determination. But how different is the story when we turn to the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of Book II of the original! Here we have a strident de- j mand for military imperialism that descends beneath any war propaganda in its vulgarity and crudity. Let us work through the book, taking consecutive statements and giving a fair summary, without wrench- j ing flamboyant details from their context in order to give them a distorted meaning. " ■ . On the very first page is the statement that "German Austria must come back again to the German Fatherland," j and, a few sentences further on, "The same blood belongs to a common Reich." There is not much about foreign policy in Book I, but on page 152 Hitler writes that land for the j Germans is not to be taken in such j places as the/ Cameroons, but in j Europe, "and what is not yielded" to i gentle persuasion will have to be taken by force." Quoting with approval von Moltke's dictum that the most brutal methods in ! war are the most humanitarian, Hitler next refers N to the supreme race, conquering and subduing the world in such a fashion as to become its exclusive master (page 315). On the same page comes the amazing conclusion that the Germans are pacifists, because pacifism will be possible after the Germans have conquered the world; and so "anybody who truly desires . the triumph of the pacifist idea should support by every means the conquest of the world by Germans." "STROKE OF A MIGHTY SWORD." Thus we come to the famous chapter 13. Starting with the statement that the only goal in foreign policy is the gain of the German people, Hitler goes; on to discuss lost Germans, and maintains that "oppressed countries are won back to the. bosom of a s common Fatherland not by flaming protests, but by the stroke of a mighty sword." .This wording appears in leaded type on page 689 of the original. In the English version the last phrase becomes "by a power or combination of powers," and hopelessly misleads the reader. Going on to discuss methods, Hitler seeks allies, and writes on page 697 that "the destiny of peoples can be welded together only by a prospect of common success, that is, by common acquisitions, by conquests—in short, by a mutual expansion of power." In this role of German ally he mentions Britain and Italy, because his racial doctrines in Book 1 had already ruled out the quasi-human Russians and the negrified-Jewish French. On page 699, he repeats that "the deadly enemy of tfre German people is and must remain France," whichever party is in control there. Fifty-six pages further on, towards the end of the book, he is even' more explicit, and writes .that the Anglo-italian alliance "will give Germany a chance of comfortably preparing for the day of reckoning with France." He actually uses the phrase "the annihilation of France," a prospect which open's up pleasant day dreams for him. The disappearance of France is only a means to an end. It is to "be looked upon solely as a means of gaining for ever the possibility of ex- j pansion for our people." Thus on page 767; already on page 741 he had said that the only meaning of German foreign policy was "to get more living room for our people in Europe." "NEW SOIL IN EUROPE." This new room is to be obtained in two ways, firstly, by winning back to the Fatherland all lost" Germans, and, then, by direct expansion over the territory of other Powers. On page 742 occurs the vital statement that "if we speak today of new soil in Europe, we can only think first of Russia aad her subject border-States." Czechoslovakia, be it noted," qualifies on both counts, both as a possessor of lost Germans and as a sally-port for Bolshevik Russia. . In the previous paragraph Hitler had said that "we start afresh where we left off six hundred years ago," and, as our ancestors fought for the present soil of Germany, "so, in the future, soil (and with it the life of our peoples) will be given to us not by the grace of any nation, but only by the power of a victorious sword." Again, in this struggle, "we National Socialists must keep undeviatingly to the goal of our foreign policy, to secure the soil due to the German people on this earth." One of his most significant utterances is to be found in the same discussion. "State boundaries are created by men and altered by men. The fact that a nation successfully acquires excessive territory carries no higher guarantee |of Divine approval. It proves no | more than the power of the conqueror ! and the weakness of the victim. It is from this power alone that right is derived." In the last hundred pages of the j book comes a repeated plea for the

| redemption of all lost Germans. "Today," he writes, "I am led by the sober consideration that lost territories are not won back by the speeches of Parliamentary windbags, but by a sharpened sword, that is, by bloody struggle." "OLD FRONTIERS NOT ENOUGH." Expanding this idea on page 736, he held that the frontiers of 1914 were not enongh, "for they were in reality not at all complete in including all people of German nationality and they were not reasonable with regard to their military-geographical significance." He had previously written: "The frontiers of 1914 are of. no importance for the future of the German nation." „ So, by the use of force, the strongest nation becomes the favourite child of Nature and "is given the right to be Lord of Existence." As he says again on page 782: "A State which, in an age of racial poisoning, takes care of its best racial elements, becomes one day lord of the earth." There we may leave this confused taradiddle: It has never been disavowed as the Nazi Bible, and Hitler's own acts are giving practical expression to it, stage by stage. No reasonable man would have been sorry to have written it off as a regrettable but transient piece of agitation, but Hitler will not consent to do so. He is moving inexorably towards the goal as defined in his original German writing. First came national unity, then rearmament,, then the Saar and the Rhineland, then Austria, now Czechoslovakia—and what next? Are the last stages to be that conflict with Russia and France which Hitler called the prelude to_ world-dominion and to that final peace, "upheld not by the olive-branches of tearful hired female mourners but established by the victorious sword of a master-people* leading the world to serve a higher culture'*? Or is Hitler making a whole nation read his book and then proceeding to nuite a different policy? Even a regi- '. mented people might begin to question such a discrepancy.