Hitler's Second Book: The Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The first complete and annotated edition of the book that Adolf Hitler dictated just before his rise to power but never wanted to publish. Contains startling and revealing ideas that drove him once in power but that he didn￯﾿ﾽt want made known.

Dr. Gerhard L. Weinberg was working in the repository of captured German records in Alexandria, Virginia, when in 1958 he found a manuscript that had been dictated, by Adolf Hitler. Since publishing Mein Kampf in 1925 and 1926, Hitler had not dealt with foreign policy issues to any extent. In 1928 he decided to write a new book to address a number of questions tied to events that were taking place at the time especially the elections to the Reichstag where the Nazi party had a mere 12 seats out of 410. However the main idea behind the new book was to provide answers to a number of foreign policy issues. It is here that the idea of an alliance between Germany and Italy is clearly enunciated and Mussolini is praised. Of course, the entire text is riddled with the familiar racial language that was Hitler￯﾿ﾽs particular trademark, as well as his form of extreme Social Darwinism and insistence of the need for ￯﾿ﾽliving space￯﾿ﾽ and the need to ￯﾿ﾽGermanize￯﾿ﾽ the new space in the East, which meant in any case annihilating the Jews and others located there.

The new contribution offered here was the much broader, ￯﾿ﾽopen￯﾿ﾽ vision Hitler gave of his foreign policy views and the fact that all of them were oriented toward war and aggression. He only conceived foreign policy and relations with other countries in those terms and stated for example that his goal was not to revise the Treat of Versailles at all since he wanted to acquire much more space for Germany than the borders of 1914!

Finally the most startling vision is the terrifying future Hitler offered, one of continuous warfare, with new wars being carried out in a kind of chain-reaction until the final inevitable clash with the United States. These statements, wrapped in the typical rhetoric and with many references to people and events that belong to those times, and masterfully explained by Dr. Weinberg￯﾿ﾽs annotations, makes this one of the essential documents, unavailable until now, for a deeper understanding of the Nazi period and his long list of horrors.

FROM THE CRITICS

Omer Bartov - The New Republic

Must we read another ranting book by Hitler? This book is certainly as close to the heart of darkness as a book can be. But it should have been read in its time, and it should be read now.... This is a book that should be read... by contemporary journalists, political observers, and all concerned people who have the stomach to recognize evil when they confront it.

Publishers Weekly

In 1958, while directing the microfilming and organization of a trove of archives that the U.S. forces had taken from the Nazis at the end of WWII, historian Weinberg (A World at Arms) discovered the manuscript of a second book that Hitler had written but never published. The manuscript was published in German in 1961, accompanied by Weinberg's annotations, but this is the first authoritative English version (a pirated and poor translation appeared in the 1960s). The text bears all of Hitler's hallmarks: rambling thoughts, half-baked ideas, pedantic writing-along with a terrifying, sustained belief in war and violence as the means to ensure that Germans would flourish. Compared to Mein Kampf, there are fewer pages devoted to Jews. Nonetheless, what comes across most strongly is Hitler's abiding commitment to the principle of race and his identification of Jews as the enemy that threatened to undo all that Germans had created. Hitler dwells at length on foreign policy, and outlines a strategy of alliance with Fascist Italy and Great Britain. (He actually believed that Britain would accept a German-dominated European continent so long as Germany did not challenge the overseas British empire.) He also foresees an inevitable clash with the United States. This provides solid historical background on Hitler's thinking in the late 1920s, when his party was nothing more than a tiny, radical sect. Weinberg provides helpful notes and a very informative introduction. 20,000 first printing. BOMC, History and Military Book Clubs main selection. (Oct. 10) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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