# Adolf Hitler's Own Book Mein Kampf (My Battle)/Publisher's Foreword

Publisher’s Foreword
This book, Mein Kampf, written in 1925 by an obscure German political prisoner, is a startling, almost miraculous prophecy of present-day history as it is being made by the author, Adolf Hitler.
The reader of Mein Kampf is always amazed at the completeness with which Hitler is carrying out his fantastic aims. It seems incredible that after having set down in writing such brutal, coldly-calculated plans, Hitler is being allowed by his fellow Germans—and by the rest of the world—even to attempt to execute them.
If Hitler’s plans as stated in Mein Kampf are carried out—if he is not stopped—they mean inevitable war, bloodshed, and the destruction of civilization as we know it.
The reader of this strange book is never able to understand how Hitler can sneer at the masses, call them dull, stupid, moronic—and still capture them.
But—usually the individual never quite considers himself a member of the great masses. It is always his near neighbor who is dull, stupid!
Also—wild, rambling Mein Kampf never attracted much attention until Hitler was powerful enough actually to begin carrying out the threats and promises he wrote into his book.
Finally—the German edition of Mein Kampf—which has made Hitler a millionaire through laws making it compulsory that it be read in the Nazi state and that it be presented to all newly wedded couples—was carefully expurgated. So was the British edition—and the French edition. Each country was offered only a specially-prepared edition, None were allowed to know the true Mein Kampf.
The book first appeared in America in an abridged, carefully expurgated edition, in which were omitted certain basic principles and ambitions which it it behooved Hitler to conceal from American eyes.
Millions of copies of Mein Kampf have now been bought and read all over the world, for it has become the most vital and significant political tract of our time. Rival publishers have recently put two unabridged, unexpurgated editions on the American market. They are best sellers. People throughout the United States must wait months for their turn to obtain Mein Kampf from lending libraries.
But Mein Kampf should be read today!
Every living American should know—immediately—exactly what it was that Hitler said back in 1925—for now words are finding expression in acts of aggression, persecution, tyranny!
It is impossible to understand the ever-changing world of today without knowing the most important ideas and plans Hitler wrote down in Mein Kampf.
Yet in the complete edition of Mein Kampf it is a trying, tiresome task to rescue what is coherent thought from the midst of Hitler’s torrent of 270,000 words.
This edition of Mein Kampf contains every important point, every important idea Hitler presented, every important sentence he wrote. Hitler’s inconsistencies, self-contradictions, extremities, even his erratic language—all these are retained here.
But we have eliminated his long-winded digressions, and cut out much of the endless repetition—repetition which he himself explains is necessary in order indelibly to impress an idea upon the mind of everyone exposed to his propaganda.
Sometimes we have expressed in a single sentence a thought which Hitler required two or three pages to present. We have slashed Hitler’s 270,000 words to 70,000.
But nothing important is omitted!
All important portions of the text, expurgated in the original American edition, are presented here.
The reader of our edition will know exactly what Hitler said in Mein Kampf. He will have gained an indispensable background without which it is impossible even to attempt to understand the present world. He will perhaps see a bit more clearly the role he, as an individual, must play in this Hitler-threatened age.
We have criticized, commented upon, and explained the text wherever it was considered necessary.