Recently a letter crossed my desk that was very thoughtful.   It consisted mainly of the introduction to a 1939 translation, into English and published by Houghton Mifflin Co., of the first  Mein Kampf  as it was originally written in 1924.  It gives insight into the Editors take on what had transpired in Germany during this time span.  This introduction shows that in 1939 there were some who clearly saw what was going in the Germany of that era and they were trying to get the word out.
        It is unfortunate that political correctness contemporarily has been used as a form of censorship, to stifle  thoughtful consideration of history as it happened.

    This is an accurate translation of a book which is likely to remain the most important political tract of our time, and which is now for the first time available in complete form to the American reader.  Until now the only version of  Mein Kampf  in English has been a condensation of the complete book, published in 1933, containing less than half of the total text.
    The Austrian and Czecho-Slovakian crises of last year (1938) culminating for the moment in the pact of Munich, have awakened the American public as never before to the seriousness to the world and to themselves of the Nazi program, and consequently to the possible significance of every page of the book that can justly be regarded as the Nazi gospel.  Here, then, in its entirety, for the American people to read and to judge for themselves, is the work which is sold in Germany by the millions, and which is probably the best evidence of the character, the mind and spirit of Adolf Hitler and his government.
    There are undoubtedly passages of great importance which now appear in English for the first time.  For example, Chapter V of the condensed version left out the whole of what Hitler described as his wartime reflections on propaganda and its methods for fighting Marxism.  We have marked at various points in the text the important new material.  Furthermore, any abridgment must necessarily fail, in proportion to the degree of its condensation, to give the full flavor of the author's mind.  even the repetitions have their significance in conveying a sense of character behind them.    Mein Kampf  is, above all, a book of feeling.
    All this is in no sense a condemnation of the abridgment prepared by E. T. S. Dugdale in England and published under the title  My Battle  as in 1933 it seemed most unlikely that any large American public would care to read  Mein Kampf  as a whole, and for its time and purpose it was undoubtedly adequate.  Since then the whole book has assumed a more urgent character..............
    The reader must bear in mind that Hitler is no artist in literary expression, but a rough-and -ready political pamphleteer often indifferent to grammar and syntax alike.  Departures from normal German form have not been re produced, since no purpose would be served thereby, but where the demands of a perfectly smooth English style might seem to conflict with exactness of meaning, ................
    Then to,  Mein Kampf  is a propagandistic essay by a violent partisan.  As such it often warps historical truth and sometimes ignores it completely..........................
    In conclusion, what should one expect to learn from  Mein Kampf ?  Read with a clear eye, the book will show what manner of man  Der Fuhrer  is,  one who as a boy had nothing excepting a passionate belief that Germany must obtain a larger place in the sun with the help of the sword once wielded so efficiently by Prussian kings; who learned to define to his own satisfaction what groups wanted this kind of Germany, and what other groups were indifferent or opposed to that ideal;
(in other words a slick politician);  who after the War gathered round him all those who refused to concede that defeat necessarily meant the end of German expansion; and who, finally, with their help, got control of the government and then set out to mobilize the whole nation for a new advance.
    Before the War he lived in Austria and felt that the Habsburgs, by making concessions to the Slavic groups in their empire, were putting the German group on a level with others and therefore lessening its willingness to dominate.  Therefore he wanted the German group to get rid of the Habsburgs and join forces with the greater Prussian Germany.  After the War he felt that the leaders of the Republic, by seeking to bring about internal reconciliation and by making concessions to the Allies, were doing exactly what the old Habsburgs had done, excepting that this time it was not Austrian Germany but the holy of holiest, Prussia itself, that was being weakened.  To those who said that it was war which had sapped the substance of Germany, and that another war would end European civilization, he replied that it was only 'eternal peace' which destroyed peoples and that neither the individual nor society could escape Nature's decree that the fittest alone survive.
    Yet this simple philosophy is by no means the whole Hitler.  He has added to it the moving force which, revealed both in this struggle for power and in his use of that power since 1933, is the most startling phenomenon of our time.  Only the leaders of the Mohammedan, French, and Russian revolutions have aroused a comparable driving power, and at present it dominates Europe.  The forces in opposition have lacked the clearness of plan, the unity of motive, the certainty of conviction, needed to make their cause prevail.
    The engines of industry now spin round in trepidation, and the engines of war are piled giddily in higher and higher pyramids.  Already in Europe, the last are all that really counts,  the others work to create an illusion and to help meet the staggering costs.  There is no stopping them until in the world ideas or ideals which are stronger than that contained in  Mein Kampf.  It is our profound conviction that as soon as enough people have seen through this book, lived with it until the facts they behold are so startlingly vivid that all else is obscure  by comparison, the tide will begin to turn.
    We have all of us the deepest regard for the German people.  Some of us have given a good deal of time and energy to the study of just German demands and to fostering of better understanding of the German tradition.  None of us has abandoned the sincere belief that Germany is destined to be a great and cherished member of the family of peoples.  So we have elected to set down without malice, yet with all the truth we can muster, the record as we see it.
                                                                                                 John Chamberlain
                                                                    Sidney B. Faye
                                                                    John Gunther
                                                                    Carlton J. H. Hayes
                                                                    Alvin Johnson
                                                                    William L. Langer
                                                                    Walter Millis
                                                                    R. De Roussy De Sales
                                                                    George  N. Schuster
 

PS: With the benefit of hind sight, it makes one wonder what changes might have occurred,    had their voices been louder or if we had paid a little more attention to history.

  In his (1991) book Hitler's Army Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich,  Omer Bartov attempts to analyze and explain the cause and effect of the Third Reich government on the German people and the Army in particular.  This subject is  worth the time spent as it hopefully may give some insight and understanding, which might help prevent a repetition of past history.
            Some excerpts from his Conclusion, which follow, explain some of Bartov's findings.

  "The German people did not go to war in 1939 with the same "Hurra-Patriotismus" of August 1914.  Indicatively, the mood of the nation during the Sudetenland crises in autumn 1938 was not essentially different from that of Britain and France.  Contemporary reports noted that there was "no enthusiasm whatsoever for entanglement in war,"  that "Morale was widely depressed,"  and that there was  "overall a 'general war psychosis,' "    As the crisis reached its climax it was reported:..........
"Everywhere there prevailed great tension an anxiety, and everywhere the wish was heard: anything but war..... expressed with particular vigour by veteran World War front soldiers."   Yet once the Munich accords were signed, the public mood rapidly changed into one of admiration for the Fuhrer's "political skill."   People had taken Hitler's "peace campaign"  of the mid-1930s quite seriously, and had come to believe that he wanted to avoid war just as much as they did.  By 1939 the public was so certain of the Fuhrer's ability to extricate Germany from political crises without going to war, that there was far less "war psychosis" than during the preceding year.
        When war did eventually break out, a widespread depression was noted by all observers of the German public.  Bernt Engelmann recalls: "No crowds had gathered.  We saw no trace of rejoicing, certainly none of the wild enthusiasm that Germans had shown in 1914."  An American correspondent found the population apathetic.  A Gauleiter who was traveling throughout the country at the time remarked that there was "no happiness, no joy."  Instead, he wrote, "everywhere I came upon oppressive silence, not to say depression, prevailed.  The whole German people seemed to be struck by a paralyzing horror, so that it was capable of neither expressions of approval nor of disgust."  Another observer spoke of the "dull obedience of a mass educated to follow (its leaders) blindly and thoughtlessly, but also stupefied and confused by militant propaganda."  It has been claimed that the majority of the German population manifested at the beginning of the war a mood of "unwilling loyalty,"  One might say that the Germans accepted the outbreak of war with the same fatalism that characterized their behavior during the last desperate months leading to the "capitulation.
    The great military trumps in the first two years of the war dispelled much of the gloom.  If in 1939 the Germans still believed that Hitler could always avert war at the very last moment, after the victory over France they were sure that he could defeat any enemy.  There were other reasons for contentment.  During the 1930s the regime had done away with unemployment and was perceived by large sectors of the population as having brought Germany out of what seemed until the Machtergriefung as an insoluble economic crisis.  Prosperity and social order under Hitler's rule could be seen as a "return to normality" after the anarchy of the Weimar Republic's last years.  Not that the Nazis had created the idyllic  Volksgemeinschaft; indeed, toward the outbreak of war there were renewed signs of unrest among the workers who wished to make use of the increasing labor shortage to demand higher pay.  Yet as long as one did not belong to the political or "racial" categories persecuted by the regime, was not subject to the "euthanasia" campaign, and did not engage in anti Nazi activities, one was not badly off in Germany of the late 1930s.  Furthermore, when within less than a year Germany came to occupy most of Western and Central Europe, the economic prospects of ruling over the entire continent left little room for social unrest.  National pride in Germany's military achievements combined with hopes for unprecedented prosperity from which everyone, at least every "Aryan", would gain.  Successful empire builders have always benefited from this kind of      "social imperialism."

    The invasion of the Soviet Union caught not only Stalin, but also many Germans by surprise, and once more unleashed a wave of apprehension and anxiety. ........ On the second day of  "Barbarossa" the SD noted that "according to reports.......from all parts of the Reich the announcement of the outbreak of war with Russia has caused great surprise among the population."   By July it was claimed that the "general mood [Stimmung]   among wide sectors of the population has...................... undergone an increasing  deterioration."................  Nazi propaganda, created the basis for a grotesquely distorted view of reality.  Although it was know that Germany had attacked, the Soviet Union was seen as the aggressor;...
    In the Wehrmacht the working class disappeared, only to re-emerge in 1945 after many years at the front as Hitler's soldiers and the representatives of the Herrenrasse in the vast territories occupied by Germany.   At home some of them might have remained immune to the regime's propaganda, but once in uniform they were sucked into the army's  "melting pot"  and forged into Hitler's instruments, becoming the executors of his policies, ........
    There was no class oriented rebellions in the Wehrmacht, indeed, there were no mutinies at all.  In the Rhur industrial region workers might have grumbled against the regime, but in the ranks they numbered among those very same soldiers considered by all observers as Hitler's most loyal supporters.  This transformation of Germany's  workers into Hitler's soldiers was a measure of the regime's success in mobilizing the whole nation to fight its war of conquest and destruction.
    Naturally, the soldiers fought for many reasons; they fought for survival, for their comrades, for their families in the rear, and for Germany's victory and prosperity...............
    If for Hitler the war had been a vehicle for winning over those Germans who had previously remained aloof from his regime, it served postwar German society to repress the memory of its crimes by lamenting its own fate.  The war had made the Wehrmacht into Hitler's army, the Germans into Hitler's people.   Defeat converted them all into victims.  If Austria was Hitler's first victim, Germany was his last.        And victims cannot be called to account."

 

Quotes From German Combat Soldiers:

    Man becomes an animal.  He must destroy, in order to live.  There is nothing heroic on this battlefield......... The battle returns here to its most primeval, animal like form;  whoever does not see well, fires too slowly, fails to hear the crawling on the ground in front of him as the enemy approaches, he will be sent under............
    Another soldier wrote as early as 11 July:  "Here war is pursued in its 'pure form' ['Reinkultur'], any sign of humanity seems to have disappeared from deeds, hearts, and minds.  The scenes which one observes border on insane hallucinations and nightmares." ................
    "This war has made us soldiers different.  With the sense of a predator we recognize how the rest of the world will be ground between the millstones of this war.  The Middle Ages are finally reaching their end.  Knights, kings, townsmen, peasants have all been destroyed."  Paradoxically, the troops may have clung to each other and kept fighting precisely because of that terrible sense of isolation and abandonment which oppressed them so heavily, for there was nowhere to flee to in the depths of Russia:......................
    It is the courage of the desperate trying to defend [ in Russia]  what has already been won, for fear of falling alive into the hands of the enemy, and the instinct of self preservation, which are the reasons for the men fighting in the East to make this sacrifice.  They do not give up..............
    Yet the unprecedented turmoil on the Eastern Front greatly radicalized this concept, producing the image of the new, ideal, instructive warrior.  "Orders are not given any more," wrote one member of the GD Division:  "Leadership has reverted to its original form."  It is, he claimed, "a battle for survival," where everything was allowed which might prevent the extinction of the individual soldier, and by extension also that of his comrades, his unit, his race and country................
    The demodernization of the front had several important consequences.  First, it led to such heavy losses among combat units that the traditional backbone of the German army, the "primary groups"  which had hitherto assured its cohesion, were largely wiped out.  Second, in order to prevent the disintegration of the army as a whole which might have resulted from the breakup of the "primary group" the Wehrmacht introduced and ruthlessly implemented an extremely harsh disciplinary system, to which was given not merely a military, but also an ideological legitimization.  Yet draconian punishment did not suffice in cases where fear of the enemy was greater than fear of ones superiors.  Thus in compensation for their obedience, and as a logical conclusion of the politicization of discipline, the troops were in turn given license to vent their anger and frustration on the enemy's soldiers and civilians.  The demodernization of the front consequently greatly enhanced the brutalization of the troops, and made soldiers more receptive to ideological indoctrination and more willing to implement the policies it advocated.
    This process was possible, however, only because a large proportion of the Wehrmacht's officers and men already shared some key elements of the National Socialist world view.  Confronted with a battlefield reality which no longer corresponded to their previous image of war, and with an enemy who could not be overcome by employing familiar military methods, German soldiers now accepted the Nazi vision of war as the only one applicable to their situation.     It was at this point that the Wehrmacht finally became Hitler's army.