Mein Kampf

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MEIN KAMPF in America: How Adolf Hitler Came to Be Published in the United States Article · July 2016

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M E I N K A M P F in America: How Adolf Hitler Came to Be Published in the United States

by Donald Lankiewicz

H

oughton Mifflin Harcourt, the Boston-based trade publisher and instructional materials provider, is a venerable firm with roots reaching back to Ticknor and Fields in 1832. Not long after William Ticknor and James Thomas Fields started publishing books, they attracted by way of generous royalties virtually all the New England literary luminaries of the mid-nineteenth century: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, and others.1 (Fields rejected the author Louisa May Alcott, telling her that she should “[s]tick to your teaching; you can’t write.”)2 That author-centered tradition continued into the twentieth century under Henry O. Houghton and George Mifflin, whose firm published as Houghton Mifflin Company from 1880 until the 2007 acquisition of Harcourt Publishing. Houghton Mifflin Company brought readers the most distinguished authors of its day in the arts and politics, including Henry James, Sarah Orne Jewett, Mark Twain, and Woodrow Wilson.3 Then came Adolf Hitler and his anti-Versailles, anti-Weimar, anti-Communist, and antiSemitism autobiography Mein Kampf.

Houghton Mifflin had been no stranger to publishing books that it felt were of political and historical importance. In 1913, the publisher brought out Pan-Germanism from Its Inception to the Outbreak of the War: A Critical Study by Roland G. Usher, exposing the German plan for world aggression, and in 1931, New Russia’s Primer: The Story of the Five-Year Plan by Russian author Mikhail Ilin, explaining the Soviet economic strategy for world domination.4 In these books, Houghton Mifflin had a conscious scoop. In Mein Kampf, it knew it had something, but not quite what.5 Hitler began dictating Mein Kampf to Rudolf Hess in 1924 while serving nine months of a five-year sentence in Landsberg prison for attempting a coup, the unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, where he and his National Socialist German Workers Party

1. A Catalogue of Authors Whose Works Are Published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1901).

2. Louisa May Alcott, The Journals of Louisa May Alcott, ed. Joel Myerson and Daniel Shealy (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1997), 109.

3. Ellen B. Ballou, The Building of the House: Houghton Mifflin’s Formative Years (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970).

4. “Book News—That Is News,” 1–2 September 1933, Houghton Mifflin Company, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

5. Ferris Greenslet, Under the Bridge: An Autobiography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943), 191.

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(N.S.D.A.P., or “Nazi”) followers tried to seize power in southern Germany. The German publisher of Mein Kampf, Franz Eher Nachfolger of Munich, issued the first four hundred pages on 18 July 1925 as a first volume, subtitled A Reckoning. The remainder was released as a second volume, The National Socialist Movement, on 10 December 1926. The entire work was reissued in a single-volume popular edition in May 1930.6 Hitler originally titled his massive work A Four and One-Half Year Struggle against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice: Settling Accounts with the Destroyers of the National Socialist Movement. Max Amann, a Nazi Party official, Hitler confidant, and director of Franz Eher Nachfolger of Munich, is said to have suggested the much less bitter, more concise, and effective Mein Kampf, or My Struggle, also known in English as My Fight.7 The publishing company that Franz Eher founded in 1901, Eher-Verlag [Eher Publishing], was in 1933 owned by its nachfolger [successor], the Central Publishing House of the Nazi Party, or Zentral Verlag der N.S.D.A.P. Although it was associated with the Nazi Party, Adolf Hitler proved to be its sole owner. Hitler’s control began when Zentral Verlag der N.S.D.A.P. was registered as a company in Hitler’s name after the party acquired Eher-Verlag on 17 December 1920.8 Zentral Verlag der N.S.D.A.P. printed all Nazi newspapers, magazines, maps, calendars, and books, including Mein Kampf, which was published with the Franz Eher Nachfolger imprint.9 One of Hitler’s motives for writing Mein Kampf was to use the book royalties to pay off his legal fees. Otto Leybold, the prison governor of Landsberg, noted at the time that “[Hitler] hopes the book will run into many editions, thus enabling him to fulfill his financial obligations and to defray the expenses incurred at the time of his trial.”10 However, Franz Eher Nachfolger—that is, Adolf Hitler—wanted to promote translations of Mein Kampf into other languages to increase sales. In 1925 and 1927, the German publisher registered the two volumes respectively in the United States for copyright protection and in 1928 hired Curtis Brown Limited, a literary agency specializing in international rights with offices in London, New York, and Berlin to negotiate translation rights with foreign publishers.11

6. Elke Fröhlich, “Hitler–Goebbels–Strasser: A War of Deputies, as Seen through the Goebbels Diaries, 1926–27,” in Working towards the Führer, ed. Anthony McElligott and Tim Clark (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 2003), 41–67.

7. Konrad Heiden, The Führer, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1999), 226.

8. “News and Notes,” Times Literary Supplement [London], 2094 (21 March 1942): 1.

9. Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf (München: Verlag Franz Eher Nachfolger, 1925), 1.

10. Otto Leybold to State Attorney’s Office, State Court 1, Munich, 15 September 1924 (http:// naziarchive.weebly.com/uploads/2/2/1/0/22107004/oberregierungsrar_leybolds_statement_ about_adolf_hitler_in_prison.pdf ).

11. James J. Barnes, “Mein Kampf in Britain, 1930–39,” Wiener Library Bulletin 27 (1974): 2–10.

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Cherry Kearton, son of the noted British wildlife photographer with the same name, worked for Curtis Brown in 1928 and tried without success to sell translation rights for Mein Kampf. At a combined 780 total pages, the two-volume work was too long and dull, and publishers felt no reader had reason to buy it. Throughout Europe and the United States, the Great Depression also made publishers cautious about taking chances on books such as Hitler’s. By 1930, the two volumes of Mein Kampf were more or less forgotten at Curtis Brown.

Meanwhile, sales of Mein Kampf in Germany were on the rise. Selling a relatively modest nine thousand copies in 1925, the number of books sold exceeded fifty thousand in 1930.12 As Adolf Hitler gained in popularity as an author, he also gained in popularity as a politician. By 1930, Hitler’s Nazi Party had become the second largest political party in Germany.

In September 1930, Blanche “Baffy” Dugdale, the niece of former British Prime Minister Arthur James Balfour, was traveling in Germany for the British government and took notice of Hitler’s rising celebrity. She saw the situation as an opportunity for her husband. Edgar T. S. Dugdale was an accomplished translator in the process of finishing work on an abridged English version of the forty-volume Die Grosse Politik der Europäischen Kabinette, 1871–1914. To be published in four volumes as German Diplomatic Documents, 1871–1914, the work contained reports, correspondence, and other diplomatic materials dating from the close of the Franco-Prussian War to the outbreak of the Great War in Europe. On 21 September 1930, Baffy Dugdale wrote to her husband about translating Hitler’s autobiography. apropos of work—I have an idea, but I dare say you feel too busy with your other book to consider it—however here it is for whatever it is worth. I gather, from references in the foreign papers I have read this week, that Hitler has written some kind of Autobiography. I am certain that if that has not been translated already, a publisher would consider it just now. . . . But I know nothing more about the matter than that.13

Edgar Dugdale decided not only to take his wife’s suggestion to translate Mein Kampf, but also take the unusual step of doing so without a publisher’s contract and commitment to publish the work. Why he did it might be seen in an article he wrote on National Socialism in Germany for the English Review magazine in October 1931.

12. Jay Worthington, “Mein Royalties,” Cabinet Magazine 10 (Spring 2003) (http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/10/mein_royalties.php).

13. Blanche Dugdale to Edgar Dugdale, 21 September 1930, in James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes, Hitler’s “Mein Kampf ” in Britain and America: A Publishing History, 1930–39 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 4.

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Mein Kampf has, however, not so far been put before the public in this country in any form, complete or abridged. When we consider that it is implicitly believed in by a large section of the German people, it seems not unimportant that English readers should get to know what the National Socialists intend to effect in Germany, if ever they get the chance.14

Dugdale’s article reveals his detailed familiarity with Mein Kampf as he quoted passages and summarized chapters, an indication he may have already begun or was well into his translation. Dugdale also may have been indulging in self-promotion to any would-be publisher.

Dugdale not only translated Hitler’s original work but also abridged it, cutting it from 780 to 297 pages. As he later explained, “I was particularly careful not to omit any of the points which Hitler made in his book. The abridgment was done in order to induce some publisher to consent to take it on, and certainly not in order to suppress anything.”15 Unfortunately for Dugdale, no publisher was willing at that point in time to take on his abridged translation.

In 1933, Cherry Kearton, the former literary agent at Curtis Brown Limited, was a director at Hurst and Blackett, a subsidiary of Hutchinson and Company, one of Britain’s most prominent publishing houses. When Hitler’s chancellorship was announced on 31 January 1933, Kearton telephoned Geoffrey Halliday, a former colleague at Curtis Brown, wanting to buy the English-language rights to Mein Kampf. Kearton asked Halliday if the two-volume German edition was still available and, if so, at what price. Halliday replied that the book could be had for £350.16 That was an unusually high fee in 1933 considering the issues of selling a long, dull book, but publishing Mein Kampf in English in 1933 was a risk Kearton seemed willing to take now that Hitler had gained greater prominence on the world scene.

Negotiations between Hurst and Blackett and Curtis Brown continued through February and March. By April 1933, Kearton decided to make the deal with the £350 going to Franz Eher Nachfolger as an advance on royalties, but before a contract could be finalized, Edgar Dugdale showed up at Kearton’s office. Dugdale learned through his publishing contacts that Hurst and Blackett was to acquire the rights to publish an English translation of Mein Kampf in Britain, and he offered his completed abridged English translation to the publisher for free.17 With Dugdale’s translation, Hurst and 14. Edgar T. S. Dugdale, “National Socialism in Germany,” English Review 5 (October 1931): 565–73.

15. Edgar T. S. Dugdale to Geoffrey Halliday, undated copy, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 319, 23.

16. Barnes and Barnes, Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” 5.

17. Ibid., 4.

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Blackett could go to press more quickly than commissioning its own translation for the complete work. A shorter book would also make Mein Kampf more salable.

Meanwhile in Germany, Hitler’s popularity reached the point where Mein Kampf was required reading in schools, and it became a common practice to give a copy as a wedding gift. In 1933 alone, Mein Kampf sold more than one million copies due mainly to pressure put on all German citizens to buy the book. It ran neck and neck with the Bible at the top of the German best seller lists. Hitler eventually earned enough money from his book royalties to accumulate a tax bill of 405,494 Reichsmarks, which the Reich Ministry of Finance forgave once it declared the chancellor to be tax exempt.18 Mein Kampf royalties had made Hitler a very rich man.

Unaware of Edgar Dugdale’s abridged translation and Hurst and Blackett’s desire to publish it, an editor at Houghton Mifflin Company named Lovell Thompson thought it would be a good idea to translate Mein Kampf and publish it in the United States. Hitler was becoming more prominent each day in world politics, and Thompson suggested the idea to Houghton Mifflin’s editor-in-chief, Ferris Greenslet.19 Houghton Mifflin’s original plan was to secure English-language and American book rights directly from the German publisher and hire two Harvard University instructors, Frank Stanton Cawley and Francis Peabody Magoun Jr., to translate the 780page book and abridge it to half the size. The plan found favor with Director Roger Livingston Scaife who proposed it to the Houghton Mifflin Company board of directors in a memorandum dated 21 April 1933. On 26 April 1933, one month after the Nazicontrolled Reichstag voted to endow the German chancellor with dictatorial authority, the Houghton Mifflin board voted to approve the plan to publish Hitler’s Mein Kampf in English.20 In her book The Building of the House: Houghton Mifflin’s Formative Years, Ellen B. Ballou wrote that Roger Scaife and Ferris Greenslet considered themselves publishing partners and often called themselves partners in letters to authors. Scaife usually handled advertising and book format. Greenslet’s duties included contract negotiations, editorial 18. Oron James Hale, “Adolf Hitler as Taxpayer,” American Historical Review 4 (1955): 830–42.

Hale indicated that Hitler’s tax files for the period between 1925 and 1935 contain over two hundred items of which seventy-five are income and turnover tax returns and assessment forms; thirty are registry covers and receipts; and the remainder are official notifications, account cards, correspondence, and memoranda. A microfilm copy of the records is in the Alderman Library of the University of Virginia.

19. Henry Laughlin to Chester Kerr, 16 January 1943, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

20. Ferris Greenslet to the Houghton Mifflin Company board of directors, 21 April 1933, approved by the board of directors, stamped 26 April 1933, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 319, 23.

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oversight, and what Ballou described as “the soft answer that turneth away wrath.”21 The “wrath” most often came from Scaife.

Scaife was an aggressive, skilled, and publicity-oriented publishing executive, who began work at Houghton Mifflin in 1898 after graduating from Harvard and rose up the ranks to become a company director. Max Hall in his history of Harvard University Press, where Scaife was director between 1943 and 1947, described Scaife as difficult. (“People who knew him called him a ‘character,’ a promoter in the best sense of the word, funny, stubborn, hell on wheels, competent, vain-glorious, a demanding man who hurt people’s feelings and nagged the staff and used the ‘servants’ bells’ to summon them.”)22 With the board’s approval, Roger Scaife and Ferris Greenslet led Houghton Mifflin’s effort to publish Mein Kampf in America. The first thing Greenslet did was cable Franz Eher Nachfolger expressing Houghton Mifflin’s interest in acquiring an English-language translation and American distribution rights for Mein Kampf. The German publisher waited almost a month before replying that an English publisher also expressed the same interest and already made an offer for English-language rights and an option for American rights. Greenslet asked for the name of the English publisher, and Franz Eher Nachfolger simply answered “Hurst and Blackett.”23 Roger Scaife immediately cabled the English publisher.

On 2 June 1933, Cherry Kearton of Hurst and Blackett replied to Scaife telling him the American rights were actually in the hands of the literary agency Curtis Brown Limited. However, Kearton told Scaife that he had received an abridged English translation of Mein Kampf at no cost. Kearton also expected additional content from Franz Eher Nachfolger to be delivered in German, and it would need translating. Kearton offered to make the Dugdale manuscript available to Scaife if Houghton Mifflin was willing to pay half the cost.24 Scaife took the offer to Houghton Mifflin’s executive committee, which on 6 June 1933 approved the revised plan to publish Mein Kampf using the Dugdale translation.25 Lovell Thompson later recalled why Houghton Mifflin decided to publish an abridged version. He said there were two reasons. One was that the abridged translation was 21. Ballou, The Building of the House, 545.

22. Max Hall, Harvard University Press: A History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986 ), 106.

23. Franz Eher Nachfolger to Houghton Mifflin, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 319, 23.

24. Cherry Kearton to Roger Scaife, 2 June 1933, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 319, 23.

25. Ferris Greenslet to the board of directors, 21 April 1933, revised plan approved by the executive committee, stamped 6 June 1933, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 319, 23.

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already done, and the second was for cost reasons: “a 1000-page book on a not wellknown government official in Germany would not sell.”26 Meanwhile, Ferris Greenslet contacted Curtis Brown to begin negotiating for Houghton Mifflin’s right to sell the Dugdale translation in the United States.

As Houghton Mifflin negotiated with Franz Eher Nachfolger by way of Curtis Brown Limited, Roger Scaife anticipated a timely resolution. Houghton Mifflin confidently announced to the publishing industry on 13 July 1933 that it would soon publish Mein Kampf. The announcement, in part, read as follows.

For the first time the German Dictator speaks to the American people. In the form of an autobiography, he tells the stirring story of the growth of an idea from the beginnings to the proportions of a great national movement and his own meteoric rise from obscurity to one of the leading figures in contemporary Europe. . . . The publishers maintain that this book from Hitler’s own pen is infinitely more valuable and interesting than any which has been written about him.27

The first public announcement appeared in newspapers on 18 August 1933 and sparked immediate criticism and outrage. Mein Kampf was not only Hitler’s autobiography but also a manifesto for the Nazi Party and a blueprint for the Third Reich. Its focus on “the Jewish peril” alleged a Jewish global conspiracy to gain world leadership and reduce Germans to their underlings.28 By the summer of 1933, Hitler’s revenge against the Jewish people under his rule had begun with beatings, arrests, and other atrocities—all well known in the United States.

Houghton Mifflin’s announcement generated volumes of protest letters from around the country. In the mail was also at least one bomb threat. “You are warned if you publish Hitler’s book you and your plant will be blown to bits when you least expect it,” read an unsigned postcard postmarked “Hudson Terminal Annex New York.”29 In New York City, Wall Street broker Louis Lober led a petition drive for the city’s board of education to stop purchasing Houghton Mifflin textbooks. The petition letter called the publisher “an American firm that knowingly lends its assistance in spreading the lying propaganda of a common gangster—propaganda that strikes at the very 26. Lovell Thompson in Wendy Withington to Paul Weaver, 20 May 1981, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 319, 23.

27. “Book News—That Is News,” 13 July 1933, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

28. Robert Carr, “Mein Kampf: The Text, Its Themes and Hitler’s Vision,” History Review 57 (9 February 2007): 30–35.

29. Postcard dated 18 August 1933, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

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foundations of American institutions—should have no right to participate in the distribution of the taxpayers’ money.”30 In response, Edward Mandel, the associate superintendent of schools, rejected Lober’s petition and defended Houghton Mifflin’s right to publish, stating that “[t]he issue before us is not Hitler or Hitlerism but the freedom of the press.”31 Meanwhile, some protestors warned other publishers not to follow Houghton Mifflin’s example, or they would be boycotted. Those threats most likely contributed to the John Day Company’s decision to cancel its plan to publish The New Germany Desires Work and Peace, English translations of Hitler’s major speeches of 1933.32 Other protestors wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt, a Houghton Mifflin author, urging him to use his influence to intervene and stop Houghton Mifflin from publishing Mein Kampf.

Max Conn, the owner of a metal stamping company in Chicago, made the following argument.

Knowing your fair mindedness, both against the slandering of Jews as well as against socialism and Nazi-ism, I wish you would be kind enough to issue instructions that the publishers Houghton and Mifflin Co., Boston, Mass[.], is immediately informed to suppress the publication and if any books have already been sent to book dealers throughout the country, that they be recalled.33

Protests were particularly heated in the Jewish community. Writing in the AngloJewish weekly American Hebrew and Jewish Tribune, managing editor Louis Rittenberg accused Houghton Mifflin of attempting “to cash in on the misery and catastrophe of an important section of the human family.” He maintained that “we charge them [Houghton Mifflin] with abetting Hitler propaganda in this country, which is even now secretly seeking a fund of $5,000,000 for publicity purposes, in its effort to gain a legitimate foothold in America.”34 David Brown, publisher of the American Hebrew and 30. Louis Lober to the New York Board of Education in Edward Mandel, Report to Board of Superintendents, 20 September 1933, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

31. Edward Mandel, Report to Board of Superintendents, 20 September 1933, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

32. “New Hitler Book Barred as Biased; Publisher Here Cancels Plan to Bring Out Speeches of Reich Chancellor,” New York Times, 21 November 1933 (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract. html?res=9A03E7DB133FE63ABC4951DFB76783888629EDE).

33. Max Conn to Franklin Roosevelt, 31 August 1933, National Archives, Department of State Decimal File H-D 811.918/257.

34. Louis Rittenberg, “Houghton Mifflin Company Postpone Publication of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf,’ ” American Hebrew and Jewish Tribune, 11 August 1933, clipping in the Houghton Printing History

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Jewish Tribune, in an open letter in the same issue, called on libraries and booksellers to protest against Houghton Mifflin for planning to publish the book. He stated that “we protest emphatically against publication, sale and distribution of the English translation of Hitler’s Mein Kampf in the United States.”35 Houghton Mifflin had its defenders, however. Henry Seidel Canby, editor of the Saturday Review of Literature, countered Rittenberg’s argument by maintaining that not publishing Hitler would have done the Nazi cause greater good. Canby reasoned that “[f ]anaticism thrives on darkness.”36 In Opinion: A Journal of Jewish Life and Letters, noted Unitarian minister and pacifist John Haynes Holmes observed that “[a]s a matter of fact, it is this very banning of books which is one of the supreme achievements of Herr Hitler himself.”37 As Houghton Mifflin continued to address the public controversy caused by its Mein Kampf announcement, it faced issues finalizing an American-rights contract with Franz Eher Nachfolger. Ferris Greenslet of Houghton Mifflin was now working with C. Raymond Everitt, Curtis Brown’s New York manager. Everitt received Houghton Mifflin’s initial proposal and replied on 13 June 1933 with minor comments to the effect that serial rights should be eliminated and that the advance should be increased. Everitt conceded that “I think it would be difficult to beat your royalty offer.”38 With that, Greenslet had a contract drawn up dated 29 June 1933 and sent it to Everitt to forward to the German publisher. Weeks and then months passed without a signed contract.

Meanwhile, as part of a prepublication publicity campaign, Hurst and Blackett allowed the Times of London to excerpt the abridged translation of Mein Kampf. 39 Some readers thought that the Nazis must have dictated the English translation as propaganda for foreign consumption. Others criticized the quality of the translation. One German reader from Dresden wrote to Nazi Party headquarters in Munich calling the excerpts “a misrepresentation of the facts” and “the greatest slander of our Leader, a source of Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

35. David Brown, “Publisher Scored for Hitler’s Book; Anglo-Jewish Weekly Decries Proposed Issue Here by Houghton Mifflin Co. Called Propaganda Aid Editorial Warns of Stirring Up Hatreds—Protests to Libraries Are Urged,” New York Times, 18 August 1933 (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=980DEFDE1231EF3ABC4052DFBE668388629EDE#).

36. Henry Seidel Canby, “Tweedledum and Tweedledee,” Saturday Review of Literature 6 (26 August 1933): 64.

37. John Haynes Holmes, “Through Gentiles Eyes: Let Hitler Be Heard!,” Opinion: A Journal of Jewish Life and Letters 12 (October 1933): 18.

38. C. Raymond Everitt to Ferris Greenslet, 13 June 1933, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

39. “Hitlerism,” Times [London] (24 July 1933): 13; and “Hitler on His Creed,” Times (25 July 1933): 15; (27 July 1933): 13–14; and (28 July 1933): 15–16.

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propaganda for our most powerful enemies.”40 More importantly, the excerpts in the Times caught the attention of Hans Wilhelm Thost, a London correspondent for the official Nazi newspaper Völkische Beobachter [Nation’s Observer] and a promoter in Britain of Nazi policies. He informed Hurst and Blackett that, before it could publish Hitler’s book, the German government—that is, the Nazi Party—had to approve the translation. Hurst and Blackett reluctantly agreed to the vetting, which resulted in a shorter, censored, and yet authorized version of Hitler’s work.41 Berlin demanded the omission of the book’s most inflammatory statements, particularly those expressing hatred of Jews. Among the required omissions were Hitler’s exultant references to Japan as the one nation impermeable to international Jewish propaganda and the charge that all prostitution is Jewish-inspired. Also omitted is Hitler’s open avowal of faith in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, from which many of Hitler’s arguments came. Since the text belonged to Hitler, by contract Hurst and Blackett could abridge it further but could not expand it.

On 1 August 1933, Hurst and Blacklett delivered the authorized manuscript of the Dugdale translation to Houghton Mifflin along with an introduction written by Edgar von Schmidt-Pauli, a Nazi journalist. Ferris Greenslet was less than enthusiastic about Dugdale’s translation. He thought it “too much abridged,” but agreed there was nothing to do about it. Greenslet also rejected the notion of an introduction being written by someone other than Hitler. In addition, Greenslet found Schmidt-Pauli’s writing “wordy and rather propaganda-ish in flavor.”42 In the end, Houghton Mifflin translated the front piece that Hitler had written for the German edition.

Houghton Mifflin had the final manuscript but did not have a signed agreement from the German publisher to publish it. Finally on 14 September 1933, Franz Eher Nachfolger contacted Curtis Brown’s Berlin office with its reason for not yet signing the 29 June 1933 Houghton Mifflin contract. The translation from the German read as follows.

The cause of this [delay] was that we could not agree to the American text because it is based on present and future Congress laws. You will yourself admit that it is difficult for us in Germany to commit ourselves at this stage to something based

40. Hans Bernhoff to the Brown House [Hitler headquarters in Munich], 26 August 1933, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 319, 23.

41. Lynne Olson, Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), 185.

42. Ferris Greenslet to C. Raymond Everitt, 2 August 1933, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 319, 23.

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on American laws. We therefore beg you to submit to Houghton Mifflin the accompanying German contract for their signature.”43

For his part, Geoffrey Halliday of Curtis Brown felt that the German publisher was giving “rather a lame explanation” for the delay. He suspected Franz Eher Nachfolger was getting “cold feet” due to the controversy over the Dugdale translation that had been excerpted in the Times of London in July. Halliday was also critical of the contract Franz Eher Nachfolger provided for Houghton Mifflin to sign. In a letter to Ferris Greenslet, Halliday called it “badly prepared.”44 Clause thirteen, in particular, is worth noting. (“The rights acquired in the present contract by the Houghton Mifflin Company in Boston may be assigned to other American non-Jewish publishing houses.”)45 At Halliday’s request, Houghton Mifflin made minor changes to its original contract and updated it to 29 July 1933.46 This was the agreement, signed by Roger Scaife for Houghton Mifflin and Max Amann for Franz Eher Nachfolger, that was delivered to Curtis Brown 13 October 1933.47 With the contract now fully executed, Houghton Mifflin released Edgar Dugdale’s abridged English translation of Mein Kampf, which Houghton Mifflin titled My Battle (fig. 1). Simultaneously in Britain, Hurst and Blackett published the Dugdale translation as My Struggle. The only difference was that My Battle carried the name of the translator, and My Struggle did not. Edgar and Baffy Dugdale wanted to avoid publicity in the United Kingdom because they were active in the Zionist Movement. Edgar did not want guilt by association for him, and Baffy did not want Mein Kampf associated in any way with her uncle Lord Balfour.

Prior to releasing My Battle in October 1933, Roger Scaife sent letters to both Adolf Hitler and Franklin Roosevelt in advance of complimentary copies. In both letters, he acknowledged to the world leaders the controversy over its publication in the United States and was clearly annoyed by the dispute. Scaife wrote to Chancellor Hitler on 6 October.

43. Franz Eher Nachfolger to Curtis Brown Limited, 14 September 1933, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 319, 23.

44. Geoffrey Halliday to Ferris Greeslet, 18 September 1933, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 319, 23.

45. Franz Eher Nachfolger to Dr. [Kurt] Fielder, including draft contract, 14 September 1933, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 319, 23.

46. Houghton Mifflin Mein Kampf contract, 29 July 1933, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

47. Mildred Block to Roger Scaife, 13 October 1933, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 319, 23.

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Fig. 1. The title page of the first American edition of My Battle (Mein Kampf ) (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, c1933) by Adolf Hitler and abridged and translated by E. T. S. Dugdale.

Our announcement of this publication has aroused great interest, and in some quarters opposition. We have, nevertheless, persisted in our plans, and we believe that the actual publication of the book will result in wide discussion and, we hope, in satisfactory sale.48 48. Roger Scaife to Adolf Hitler, 6 October 1933, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 319, 23.

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On 13 October, Scaife wrote to President Roosevelt.

In confidence I may add that we have had no end of trouble over the book—protest from the Jews by the hundreds, and not all of them from the common run of shad. Such prominent citizens as Louis Kirstein [president of Filene’s Department Store] and Samuel Untermeyer [internationally known civil rights attorney] and others have added their protest, although I am glad to say that a number of intellectual Jews have also written complimenting us upon the stand we have taken.

A group of Jews in New York petitioned the New York Board of Education to refrain from the purchase of any of our books because we are issuing Herr Hitler’s volume, but I am glad to report that the Board refused to consider the request, claiming that the freedom of our Press should be maintained. Other forms of restraint have been brought to our attention in no uncertain words.

I thought the incident worthy of your attention, especially in view of the number of public spirited individuals from this race who hold important posts under your Administration.49

Fluent in German, the president had read the original German-language version of Hitler’s work. On reading Houghton Mifflin’s My Battle, he was quick to see that it failed to include the sweeping anti-Semitism of the original. He wrote in longhand on the book’s flyleaf that “[t]his translation is so expurgated as to give a wholly false view of what Hitler is or says—The German original would make a different story.”50 Because of the controversy, many newspapers and magazines refused to accept advertising for My Battle, but those with respected book sections decided it was appropriate to critique the work. Ferris Greenslet later recalled that “[o]ne school of thought was outraged that the book had been published at all, another that it had not been published in its entirety.”51 Many reviewers dismissed the translation as a watered-down version of the original.

Matthew Josephson began his essay in the Saturday Review of Literature with the assertion that “Adolf Hitler’s impresarios would seem to have done him a disservice on the whole in pruning down his eight-hundred-page ‘autobiography’ to the skeleton form

49. Roger Scaife to Franklin D. Roosevelt, 13 October 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, New York.

50. My Battle, FDR Library Book Collection, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, New York.

51. Greenslet, Under the Bridge, 192.

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in which it is now offered to an American audience.”52 American socialist Ludwig Lore, writing for the Nation, claimed that Edgar Dugdale’s abridgment presented a portrait of “a man who bears only a vague resemblance to the one originally portrayed in the autobiography.”53 James W. Gerard, who had served as American ambassador to Germany prior to the United States involvement in the First World War, added a historical perspective in his review for the New York Times: “[i]t is with sadness, tinged with fear for the world’s future, that we read Hitler’s hymn of hate against that race which has added so many names to the roll of the great in science, in medicine, in surgery, in music and the arts, in literature and all uplifting human endeavor.”54 Surprisingly, H. L. Mencken writing in the American Mercury displayed his ignorance of Hitler and Nazi philosophy. Mencken declared Hitler’s rants “often sensible enough” and excused his anti-Semitism as “nothing to marvel over” because so many nations displayed anti-Jewish prejudice.55 Mencken also wrongly predicted that “[e]ither he [Hitler] will have to change his programme so that it comes into reasonable accord with German tradition and the hard-won principia of modern civilization, or they will rise against him and turn him out.”56 Some of Houghton Mifflin’s competitors took advantage of its Mein Kampf controversy. Alfred A. Knopf rushed to publish The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror and the Burning of the Reichstag by the World Committee for Victims of German Fascism.57 Written during the summer of 1933 by a pro-Communist, anti-Nazi organization, the book described in haunting detail the terrors of Hitler’s anti-Semitic policies and attacks on intellectuals as well as the working class.58 Revenue for My Battle between 1933 and 1936 proved disappointing for Houghton Mifflin with a total of 7,313 copies sold at three dollars a copy.59 In an attempt to boost 52. Matthew Josephson, “Making of a Demagogue,” Saturday Review of Literature 15 (28 October 1933): 213–14.

53. Ludwig Lore, “The Book of Adolf Hitler: A Diluted Version,” a review of My Battle, in Nation (1 November 1933): 515–16.

54. James W. Gerard, “ ‘A Hymn of Hate,’ My Battle by Adolf Hitler,” New York Times Book Review (15 October 1933), reprinted in New York Times Book Review 100 (6 October 1996 ): 42.

55. H. L. Mencken, “The Library: Hitlerismus,” American Mercury 120 (December 1933): 506–10.

56. Ibid., 510.

57. “Alfred A. Knopf Announces The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror,” 8 September 1933, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

58. World Committee for the Victims of German Fascism, The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror and the Burning of the Reichstag (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1933).

59. R. H. Roberts to Henry Laughlin, 9 June 1943, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Printing History

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sales and distribution, the publisher reissued My Battle in 1937 as a popular edition priced at $2.50. In addition to lowering the price, Houghton Mifflin designed a new dust jacket. Gone was the image of Hitler in a stiff-armed salute against a black-and-white background. The new dust jacket featured panels of red, yellow, and black with contrasting letters and a swastika, Hitler’s party emblem, on the front and a lengthy blurb by Dorothy Thompson on the back.

Thompson was a syndicated newspaper columnist, a news commentator for NBC radio, and one of the most sought-after public speakers of that time. She also held the distinction of being the first foreign correspondent expelled from Nazi Germany for her writing. Thompson’s was the only blurb on the dust jacket because Houghton Mifflin tried without success to find a favorable one. Her blurb read in this manner.

As a liberal and democrat I deprecate every idea in this book. But it is not the function of liberals and democrats to live in a world of illusions. The principles, ideas, and policies laid down in this book have been followed with remarkable consistency by its author, who today controls the destinies of one of the greatest world powers.

The reading of this book is a duty for all who would understand the fantastic era in which we live, and particularly it is the duty of all who cherish freedom, democracy and the liberal spirit. Let us know what it is that challenges our civilization.60

As the original edition of My Battle caused controversy among many American citizens and the Jewish community, the new popular edition caused controversy with the German government. The German consulate in Boston complained that the red, yellow, and black color scheme of the dust jacket was an intentional insult to Hitler and the Third Reich. Houghton Mifflin unwittingly had reissued My Battle with a dust jacket design in the colors associated with the Weimar Republic, the government that in 1919 replaced the imperial government in Germany with representative democracy. Hitler and the Nazi Party blamed the Weimar Republic for crippling Germany in the years after the Great War. Hitler restored the imperial black, white, and red superimposed with the Nazi swastika in March 1933.

The German Consulate viewed Dorothy Thompson’s blurb as being equally offensive for not only what it said but also who said it. Before her expulsion from Germany, Thompson had interviewed Hitler and wrote about him in “I Saw Hitler!,” the title of both her 1932 article for Hearst’s International-Cosmopolitan and later a book. She Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

60. Adolf Hitler, My Battle, trans. Edgar T. S. Dugdale (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1937), dust jacket.

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described Hitler as “formless, almost faceless, a man whose countenance is a caricature, a man whose framework seems cartilaginous, without bones. He is inconsequent and voluble, ill poised and insecure. He is the very prototype of the Little Man.”61 Hitler eventually took his revenge by expelling Thompson from the country in August 1934. At the time, Thompson said that “[a]s far as I can see, I really was put out of Germany for the crime of blasphemy. . . . My offense was to think Hitler is just an ordinary man. . . .

Worse things can happen to one.”62 Houghton Mifflin was quick to address the dust jacket and blurb issues. In a letter to Arthur P. Teele, the lawyer for the German consulate in Boston, Houghton Mifflin executive Ira Rich Kent stated that the firm was trying “to promote the sale and distribution of the book as widely as possible.” Kent also explained that “[t]he sales of the book in the original printing had not been up to our expectations, and we believed that a new promotion effort, of which this jacket is an important part, was desirable in order to secure for the book the distribution that its importance unquestionably deserved.”63 Teele replied and suggested that Houghton Mifflin supplement the Thompson blurb with something more positive. The Germans recommended that Houghton Mifflin use recent statements from former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George.64 Following his visit to Germany in September 1936, Lloyd George wrote an article for the London Daily Express in which he praised Hitler as “a born leader of men,” “a magnetic, dynamic personality,” and “the George Washington of Germany.”65 However, as Houghton Mifflin pointed out, nothing in the article said anything about Mein Kampf.

German concerns were soon tempered by increased sales in the new popular edition of My Battle. With a renewed interest in Hitler after Nazi forces seized control of Austria, American readers began buying the book at a more rapid pace. Houghton Mifflin supplied book dealers with fifteen hundred copies in August 1938, seventy-five hundred in October, and another five thousand in December. Commenting on the increased sales of Mein Kampf in the United States, one German newspaper observed that “[w]henever the Führer is in the limelight of politics, the demand for the book increases.”66 61. Dorothy Thompson, I Saw Hitler! (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1932), 13.

62. Dorothy Thompson, statement of August 1934, after being expelled from Germany, in Marion K. Sanders, Dorothy Thompson: A Legend in Her Time (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973), 199.

63. Ira Rich Kent to Arthur P. Teele, 4 March 1937, A. A. Bonn, files 32/4 and 32/13, Political Archives of the German Foreign Office, Berlin; cited in Barnes and Barnes, Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” 80–81.

64. Barnes and Barnes, “Hitler’s Mein Kampf,” 81.

65. David Lloyd George, “I Talked to Hitler,” Daily Express [London] (17 September 1936 ): 12 and 17.

66. Unidentified newspaper clipping in material on Captured German Records Printing History

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From 1933 to 1938, it seemed that an abridged My Battle gave to the American public as much of Mein Kampf as it was prepared to read, but as Hitler moved rapidly on his path of world conquest, demand grew for a complete translation of Hitler’s book to know the man better. By December 1938, two publishers were feverishly translating it, but neither was Houghton Mifflin Company.

On 6 December 1938, Eugene Reynal and Curtice Hitchcock, owners of the Reynal and Hitchcock publishing house in New York, telegraphed Ferris Greenslet saying they wanted to discuss an important matter and asked for an appointment in Boston on 9 December. That day, they proposed a plan for publishing through a licensing agreement with Houghton Mifflin a complete unexpurgated edition of Mein Kampf. Sensing the growing market demand in 1938 for a complete Mein Kampf, Reynal and Hitchcock began work earlier that summer on their own unabridged translation of Hitler’s original 320,000-word text along with eighty thousand words of annotated commentary.

Reynal and Hitchcock had hired Helmut Ripperger to lead a team of German refugees from the faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York City to translate the work. To prepare the commentary, Reynal and Hitchcock had put together a team of academics they called editorial sponsors. Among them were economic historian and journalist John Chamberlain; John Gunther, author of Inside Europe; George N. Shuster, former editor at Commonweal and an observer of German political developments of the time; French journalist and historian Raoul de Roussy de Sales; American economists Graham Hutton and Alvin Saunders Johnson; and historians Sidney Bradshaw Fay, Carlton J. H. Hayes, Walter Millis, and William L. Langer. Langer was the brother of Walter C. Langer, an American psychoanalyst who would later produce a secret and prophetic psychological study of Hitler for the Office of Strategic Services in 1943.67 Houghton Mifflin showed no interest in the Reynal and Hitchcock plan and gave them no encouragement at the 9 December meeting.68 On 12 December, Reynal and Hitchcock met with William Soskin, executive editor at Stackpole Sons, a small Pennsylvania trade publisher owned by Harrisburg’s very successful Telegraph Press.

Soskin decided that Stackpole Sons should publish its own complete, unabridged version Filmed at Berlin (American Historical Association, 1960), Microfilm Publication T580, Reichorganisationleiter der NSDAP, roll 832; cited in Barnes and Barnes, Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” 82.

67. Walter H. Waggoner, “Walter [C.] Langer Is Dead at 82; Wrote Secret Study of Hitler,” New York Times (10 July 1981) (http://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/10/obituaries/walter-langer-isdead-at-82-wrote-secret-study-of-hitler.html). See Walter C. Langer, A Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler: His Life and Legend (Washington, D.C.: Office of Strategic Services, 1943), declassified in 1968.

68. Henry Laughlin to Howland Sargeant, 2 July 1943, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

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believing that Houghton Mifflin did not hold exclusive rights to publish Mein Kampf in the United States. Lacking a translation, however, Soskin proposed acquiring the rough translation that Reynal and Hitchcock had in development.

At the 12 December meeting with Reynal and Hitchcock, Soskin explained his intention to nullify the copyright for Mein Kampf and put it into the public domain. If that would happen, Soskin thought, Reynal and Hitchcock might back away from their licensing proposal to Houghton Mifflin and sell the translation to Stackpole Sons, but Reynal and Hitchcock reminded Soskin that they had been working on the project for several months and hoped to continue talks with Houghton Mifflin. On 14 December, Curtice Hitchcock telegraphed Ferris Greenslet asking further consideration of Reynal and Hitchcock’s proposal.69 Houghton Mifflin was not totally sold on the Reynal and Hitchcock offer until an announcement by Stackpole Sons to publish a complete Mein Kampf translation appeared in the New York Times on 24 December 1938. Then Houghton Mifflin made it a top priority to publish its own complete, unabridged translation as soon as possible. The only available translation that was not yet complete but well under way was the one by Reynal and Hitchcock. On 29 December, Reynal and Hitchcock met again with Houghton Mifflin, and the decision was made to license the work from Reynal and Hitchcock for three years and copublish Hitler’s book under Houghton Mifflin’s copyright.

Next, Houghton Mifflin sought to stop Stackpole Sons from publishing what Houghton Mifflin considered a pirated edition. On 14 January 1939, Henry Laughlin, president of Houghton Mifflin, cabled Franz Eher Nachfolger and Curtis Brown asking the German publisher to join in any future legal action against Stackpole Sons. Franz Eher Nachfolger replied two weeks later saying only it had not authorized anyone but Houghton Mifflin to publish Mein Kampf. 70 Henry Laughlin then telephoned General Edward Stackpole Jr., a highly decorated veteran of the Great War and an officer in the Pennsylvania National Guard, who owned the trade publisher that included the Military Service Publishing Company. Laughlin told the general what he was doing was “unethical” and “the possibility of profit is very slight compared to that of the loss he will sustain if the [Houghton Mifflin] copyright is upheld.”71 Despite Laughlin’s effort, Stackpole had already decided to proceed, knowing his company’s parent, Telegraph Press, had enough resources to take on any legal challenge.

On 28 January 1939, attorneys representing Houghton Mifflin took action in New York District Court to stop Stackpole. Meanwhile, Houghton Mifflin’s copublisher, Reynal 69. Ibid.

70. Henry Laughlin, interdepartmental memorandum, 23 January 1939, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

71. Ibid.

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and Hitchcock, launched a major publicity effort to set its Mein Kampf apart from the Stackpole Sons edition.

On 28 February, Houghton Mifflin’s Reynal and Hitchcock translation was in bookstores in advance of Hitler’s fiftieth birthday. Sitting on a nearby shelf most likely was the Stackpole Sons translation franticly completed by June Barrows Mussey. Both reached bookstores the same day. Across the top of the Stackpole Sons front dust jacket read “The Complete Unauthorized,” and across the bottom “This Edition Pays No Royalty to Adolf Hitler.”72 For a few months, there was furious competition between the two publishers. Stackpole Sons advertised that it paid no royalties to Hitler, to which Reynal and Hitchcock responded by promising all profits from the book to a refugee relief fund. Stackpole Sons, in turn, committed five percent of all of its proceeds to refugee relief, while Reynal and Hitchcock scored a coup by getting their edition of Mein Kampf distributed through the Book-of-the-Month Club, which guaranteed royalties of ten thousand dollars to the publisher and twenty thousand dollars to its refugee fund.73 Not paying royalties to an author, even Adolf Hitler, did not sit well with some American authors. In the 11 March 1939 issue of the New Yorker, E. B. White and Wolcott Gibbs took Stackpole Sons to task. “From now on Hitler is going to think of us with new fury, as a bunch of highbinders who are doing him out of 30 cents on every book,” they wrote.74 Houghton Mifflin feared that Stackpole Sons was not the only publisher considering a complete unabridged English translation of Mein Kampf. Harper and Brothers considered it several times.75 In Britain, Hurst and Blackett was preparing to release a complete unabridged English Mein Kampf based on a translation originally prepared by James Vincent Murphy for the Third Reich. James Vincent Murphy was an Irish translator and journalist who lived in Germany. The Nazi Propaganda Ministry hired him in 1936 to translate the work, but he became disenchanted with Third Reich policies and spoke out against them. Angry Nazi officials expelled him, and he left Germany without his translation manuscript. Legally, it was the property of the Propaganda Ministry. Nevertheless, he sent his wife, Mary, to Germany to get a copy from Greta Lorcke, Murphy’s German secretary. Hurst and Blackett used the copy of Murphy’s translation as a basis for the book it published in March 1939. The Nazi Propaganda Ministry also used the original Murphy translation as the basis for a limited edition My Struggle printed in Germany.

72. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. B. [ June Barrows] Mussey (New York: Stackpole Sons, 1939), dust jacket.

73. Jay Worthington, “Mein Royalties.”

74. E. B. White and Wolcott Gibbs, “Comment,” New Yorker (11 March 1939): 15.

75. Alan Collins to Ferris Greenslet, undated, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

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Known as the Stalag Edition, most of the books would later go to English-speaking soldiers in camps for prisoners during the Second World War.76 As plaintiff in the case of Houghton Mifflin versus Stackpole Sons, Houghton Mifflin claimed copyright infringement. Stackpole Sons, the defendant, argued that Hitler’s American copyright was invalid. Philip Wittenberg, the attorney for Stackpole Sons, reasoned that the United States Copyright Act of 1909 related to American and German citizens, and at the time of the publication of Mein Kampf, Hitler was not a citizen of any country. On 31 July 1925 when Franz Eher Nachfolger registered Mein Kampf, Hitler’s nationality was described as “staatenloser Deutscher” [German without a state]. Hitler had renounced his Austrian citizenship on 7 April 1925 and only became a German citizen in 1932. Under the copyright law, according to Wittenberg, such a stateless person could not claim exclusivity to a work. As a result, it would be in the public domain.

Anyone was eligible to publish it and not be required to pay royalties.77 On 15 February 1939, Archie Dawson, representing Houghton Mifflin, moved for a preliminary injunction halting the production and distribution of the work by Stackpole Sons. The District Court denied the motion, and Dawson appealed. It was not until 9 June 1939 that the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Houghton Mifflin’s favor and reversed the decision of the District Court. In the months that the version of Mein Kampf was available from Stackpole Sons, it sold 11,500 copies.78 Stackpole Sons then petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States to hear the case. The Supreme Court denied the petition on 29 October 1939, and Houghton Mifflin moved for a final judgment in District Court. The legal wrangling continued for the next two years as Stackpole Sons shifted its argument from Mein Kampf being in the public domain to the validity of Houghton Mifflin’s contract with the German publisher. The debate focused on a single question. Did the person who signed Houghton Mifflin’s 29 July 1933 contract with Franz Eher Nachfolger have the authority to do so?

Despite a lack of cooperation from the German publisher, Henry Laughlin, with the help of a German publishing directory, identified Max Amann as managing director of the German publisher and signing authority for the contract.79 In addition, Amann’s signatures were the same on the 1933 contract and the 1925 copyright registration letter to the United States Library of Congress, but that evidence did not convince the 76. Adolf Hitler, My Struggle [Stalag Edition] (München: Zentral Verlag der NSDAP, Franz Eher Nach. GMBH, 1937–44).

77. “Mein Kampf and the Protection of Literary Property of Stateless Persons,” Yale Law Journal (1 November 1939): 132–39.

78. Archie Dawson to Henry Laughlin, 29 February 1940, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

79. Henry Laughlin to Archie Dawson, 26 July 1940, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

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court.80 Finally in 1941, the German publisher received permission from Hitler to support Houghton Mifflin against Stackpole Sons. It provided a sworn statement before an American consular official in Munich verifying that Max Amann had been duly empowered to conclude the 1933 contract.81 On 7 August 1941, the District Court made its summary judgment, and on 4 September 1941, ruled that Stackpole Sons must pay damages to Houghton Mifflin. Based on the 11,500 copies Stackpole Sons estimated to have sold, a figure of $15,250 was agreed upon and collected. Houghton Mifflin ended up paying its own court costs, however, which it estimated to be more than $23,000. Because of the lack of timely cooperation from Franz Eher Nachfolger, Houghton Mifflin felt justified in dividing legal costs equally with the German publisher. Before any royalties for the unabridged edition were to be paid, half the legal costs were to be deducted.82 The case between Houghton Mifflin and Stackpole Sons became a minor landmark in United States copyright law. It definitively established that “stateless persons” have the same copyright status to exclusivity in the United States as other non-Americans. As a result, Congress later amended the copyright law to reflect the court’s decision.83 In the years leading up to the Second World War, Houghton Mifflin kept both its unabridged (Reynal and Hitchcock) and abridged (Dugdale) translations of Mein Kampf in print. It was the 1937 edition of My Battle with the red, yellow, and black dust jacket and Dorothy Thompson’s blurb that caught the eye of Alan Cranston at Macy’s New York book department in 1939.

Before Cranston became a United States Senator from California, he was a foreign correspondent in Ethiopia, Italy, and Germany for the International News Service.

Cranston had read the complete German-language version of Mein Kampf and considered the English-language abridgment to be far less forceful. “It turned out it had been edited so that a good bit that Hitler wrote was left out,” Cranston later told the Los Angeles Times in a 1988 interview. Missing were sections that showed Hitler’s plan for world conquest.84

80. Max Amann [Proprietors Frz. Eher Nach., GMBH] to United States Library of Congress, 31 July 1925, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

81. Barnes and Barnes, Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” 121.

82. Ibid.

83. Houghton Mifflin Co. v. Stackpole Sons, Inc., and the Telegraph Press, 104 F. 2d 306, Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, decided 9 June 1939.

84. Alan Cranston in Anthony O. Miller, “Court Halted Dime Edition of ‘Mein Kampf ’: Cranston Tells How Hitler Sued Him and Won,” Los Angeles Times (14 February 1988) (http:// articles.latimes.com/1988-02-14/news/mn-42699_1_mein-kampf ).

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Cranston decided that the best way to respond to Hitler’s arguments was to write an anti-Nazi version of the book. With help from his friend Anster Spiro, a Hearst newspaper editor, and financial support from Benjamin Epstein of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, Cranston and Spiro went to work. Meanwhile, Epstein started Noram Publishing Company to market the anti-Nazi translation.85 Written in about eight days, Cranston slashed Hitler’s lengthy text to about seventy thousand words to create a thirty-two-page “Reader’s Digest-like version [showing] the worst of Hitler.”86 The tabloid sold one-half million copies at ten cents each in ten days. Thus, Noram Publishing clearly infringed on Houghton Mifflin’s copyright to the work. Houghton Mifflin filed an injunction and easily won in United States District Court. The court ordered Noram Publishing to destroy its existing stock and stop further printings.87 Cranston’s book had pledged “[n]ot 1 cent of royalty to Hitler,” and said all the profits would go to help refugees escaping Hitler’s Nazi rule. Meanwhile, Houghton Mifflin had paid royalties on Mein Kampf to Franz Eher Nachfolger and, in turn, payment went to Hitler. From 1939 to 1941, however, royalties to Franz Eher Nachfolger had been held up due to the litigation between Houghton Mifflin and Stackpole Sons. When the case was finally settled and royalty payments were to be continued, the United States and Nazi Germany were in a state of war. As a result, the royalty money stayed in the United States.

On 11 December 1941, the day the United States declared war on Germany, President Roosevelt invoked the 1939 Trading with the Enemy Act and issued an executive order establishing the Office of Alien Property Custodian. The executive order allowed the Office of Alien Property Custodian to amass a vast portfolio of enemy property in the United States including real estate, businesses, ships, and intellectual property in the form of patents, pending patent applications, trademarks, and copyrights. Houghton Mifflin and other publishers, as required by the law, had to disclose their German-owned royalty interest. As a result, the Office of Alien Property Custodian seized all royalties due on Mein Kampf, which amounted to about thirty thousand dollars since the last payment had been made.88 In 1941, Houghton Mifflin decided not to extend its lease arrangement with Reynal and Hitchcock for its translation of Mein Kampf. On 31 December 1941, Henry Laughlin wrote to Gene Reynal and Curtice Hitchcock.

85. Ibid.

86. Ibid.

87. Houghton Mifflin Co. v. Noram Pub. Co., Inc., et al., 28 F. Supp. 676, District Court, decided 14 July 1939.

88. “Mein Kampf License Seized,” Milwaukee Journal (24 September 1942): 34.

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It is the fact that our whole organization feels that Mein Kampf is our book, that we secured it at a time when its importance to our public was very largely ahead of it, that you had the publishing of it through what today appears to have been the period of its greatest appeal and usefulness, when it could be counted on for the greatest sales, and that we owe it to all persons in our organization, our employees and our stockholders, to carry it forward ourselves after March first [1942].89

Instead, Houghton Mifflin decided to publish a new American English edition of Mein Kampf and signed translator Ralph Manheim to a contract. In commissioning a new translation, Houghton Mifflin wanted to provide a more readable text. The Mein Kampf commission was Ralph Manheim’s first major translation. Before that, he translated mostly French and German short stories and poems for fees as low as three dollars for every one thousand words. Later in his career, he would translate all of Günter Grass’s books, Sigmund Freud’s letters to Jung, selected letters of Marcel Proust, and the transcripts of Adolf Eichmann’s post-war interrogations among more than one hundred other works.90 Manheim found translating Mein Kampf a difficult task because Hitler’s illiterate style, jumbled metaphors, and grammatical errors had to be rendered in a similar English version.91 When Houghton Mifflin released Manheim’s translation of Mein Kampf in October 1943, William S. Schlamm wrote in his review for the New York Times of his sympathy for the translator.

Ralph Manheim, who must have spent torturing months in the sewers of semantics, may have emerged with considerably duller senses for the rhymes and rhythm of “Faust.” If this is the case he should be put on the honor list of war casualties. For he has served his country, and served it well, by producing the first English Hitler translation which does justice to the author. Here, for the first time, you get Hitler’s prose almost as unreadable in English as it is in German.92

89. Henry Laughlin to Gene Reynal and Curtice Hitchcock, 31 December 1941, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

90. Bruce Lambert, “Ralph Manheim, 85, Translator of Major Works to English, Dies,” New York Times (28 September 1992) (http://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/28/us/ralph-manheim85-translator-of-major-works-to-english-dies.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3As).

91. John Calder, “Obiturary: Ralph Manheim,” Independent (28 September 1992) (http://www. independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-ralph-manheim-1554162.html).

92. William S. Schlamm, “German Best Seller; Mein Kampf. By Adolf Hitler. Translated by Ralph Manheim. 694 pp. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. $3.50,” New York Times (17 October 1943): BR3.

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At the war’s end in 1945, Germany was defeated, Hitler was dead, and the American reading public paid little attention to Mien Kampf, which was considered largely unreadable no matter who translated it. Nevertheless, Houghton Mifflin kept the Manheim translation in print for its publishing backlist, and the Office of Alien Property Custodian continued to collect royalties on its sales. The publisher had long taken the position that it was important to continue to keep the book in print so that Hitler’s atrocities would never be forgotten and would never be repeated.

On 14 October 1946, President Harry Truman terminated the Office of Alien Property Custodian and transferred its responsibilities to the Office of Alien Property under the attorney general.93 It was now the Justice Department’s job to return or liquidate the assets seized during the war, including copyright interests. Initially excluded from the returns were works of high-ranking Nazi officials, including Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

Royalties received from these works were diverted to the government’s War Claims Fund, established under the War Claims Act of 1948, assisting refugees and American former prisoners of war.94 In 1962, the United States Congress passed a second War Claims Act in an effort to speed up the return of assets seized during the war.95 To that end, the Justice Department approached Houghton Mifflin in 1966 to ask if the publisher wanted to buy back royalty rights to Mein Kampf. Houghton Mifflin offered fifteen thousand dollars. Since that sum was less than the prior four years of royalty payments, the government declined.96 The arrangement between Houghton Mifflin and the Justice Department continued for more than a decade when in April 1979, Austin Olney, Houghton Mifflin’s trade division editor-in-chief, contacted the Justice Department asking to reduce royalties from fifteen to ten percent. Olney cited rising manufacturing costs cutting into the company’s profit margin. The only other option, according to Olney, was to raise the book’s list price at the time from fifteen dollars to $19.95. Olney told the government that raising the book price would drastically reduce sales, and he reminded his Justice Department contact that “[s]ales in our hardcover edition which have been running at a rate of 1,500 a year have provided a useful return for us as well as for you.”97 The Justice Department 93. Harry S. Truman to James E. Markham, “Upon the Conclusion of His Duties as Alien Property Custodian,” 14 October 1946, The American Presidency Project: John Woolley and Gerhard Peters (University of California: Santa Barbara) (http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ ws/?pid=12525).

94. United States Public Law 80-896, 3 July 1948.

95. United States Public Law 87-846, 22 October 1962.

96. David Whitman, “On the Trail of the Mein Kampf Royalties: More from the Government Vaults, Action Report Online” (23 October 2000) (http://fpp.co.uk/Hitler/MeinKampf/ HoughtonMifflin.html).

97. Austin Olney to Justice Department, April 1979, cited in David Whitman, “Money from a Printing History

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rejected Houghton Mifflin’s royalty reduction request. Olney followed up with another letter to the Justice Department dated 3 July 1979, in which he wrote that the government was forcing Houghton Mifflin to raise the list price of Mein Kampf. Doing so, Olney explained, would not only reduce sales but “seems to be flying in the face of [then] President Carter’s anti-inflationary policies.”98 Olney’s second letter arrived at the Justice Department at a favorable time for Houghton Mifflin. The Justice Department was disposing of its remaining assets seized during the war in advance of closing the Office of Alien Property. Once again, the Justice Department asked Houghton Mifflin to make an offer to buy back Hitler’s American royalty rights to Mein Kampf.

Olney directed Mark Kelly in the Houghton Mifflin’s business office to project royalties through 1995. In doing so, Kelly made several assumptions. One was that hardback sales of the book would plummet to zero by 1986 and annual paperback sales would be no greater than 240 copies by 1994. As a result, total projected royalties through 1995 came to only $37,254.99 Olney offered the government that amount, and the Justice Department accepted.

Houghton Mifflin ended its royalty payments to the United States government on 1 October 1979.100 From 28 August 1942 when the government seized the royalty rights to 1979, Houghton Mifflin had paid more than $130,000 in royalties to the War Claims Fund. This amount accounted for eighty percent of the total royalty payments. Curtis Brown Limited received twenty percent as literary agent for the work.101 From 1979 to 2000, Curtis Brown continued to receive its twenty percent. The other eighty percent that would have gone to the author stayed with Houghton Mifflin. In the 16 October 2000 issue of U.S. News and World Report, senior writer David Whitman detailed the history of the Mein Kampf royalties with information gathered under the Freedom of Information Act. Whitman provocatively titled his article “Money from a Madman: Houghton Mifflin’s Mein Kampf Profits.” He wrote that “[i]ndustry sources Madman,” U.S. News and World Report 129 (16 October 2000): 55.

98. Austin Olney to Justice Department, 3 July 1979, in David Whitman, “On the Trail of the Mein Kampf Royalties.”

99. Mark Kelly to Austin Olney, including spreadsheet, 6 August 1979, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

100. “Agreement for the Termination of Right to Receive Future Royalties on the Publication and Sales of Mein Kampf,” 1 October 1979, signed by Richard McAdoo, director, Houghton Mifflin Trade Division, and Alice Daniel, assistant attorney general, Civil Division, United States Department of Justice, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

101. Mark Kelly to Austin Olney, including spreadsheet, 6 August 1979, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

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say that after subtracting Houghton Mifflin’s costs and bookseller discounts, the publisher probably netted, on average, $1 to $2.50 a book, or $300,000 to $700,000 since 1979.”102 Reacting to the negative publicity caused by the article, Wendy Strothman, then publisher of Houghton Mifflin’s trade division, announced on 20 October 2000 that Houghton Mifflin would give away all royalties accrued since 1979 and those in the future. The donations remained anonymous for many years because knowing their source might have caused some charities to decline to accept them. In 2016, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt found a willing recipient in the Jewish Family and Children’s Service, a Boston area organization that works directly with aging survivors of the Holocaust.103 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt continues to keep the 1943 Manheim translation of Mein Kampf in print and digital formats. Its reasons are explained in the publisher’s book description.

We would be wrong in thinking that such a program, such a man, and such appalling consequences could not reappear in our world of the present. We cannot permit ourselves the luxury of forgetting the tragedy of World War II or the man who, more than any other, fostered it. Mein Kampf must be read and constantly remembered as a specimen of evil demagoguery. . . . Mein Kampf is a blueprint for the age of chaos. It transcends in historical importance any other book of the present generation.104

If this venerable firm was founded in the nineteenth century determined to bring American readers works of significance and sway the national conversation on issues in politics and the arts, it succeeded with Mein Kampf in the twentieth century. People certainly talked.

Donald Lankiewicz teaches at Emerson College in the Writing, Literature, and Publishing Department. He holds a master’s degree in history from Saint Louis University, is a former high school history teacher, and spent much of his career as a publishing executive developing learning resources for history and the social sciences.

102. David Whitman, “Money from a Madman,” 55; also cited in Michael J. Bazler and Amber L. Fitzgerald, “Trading with the Enemy: Holocaust Restitution, the United States Government, and American Industry,” Brooklyn Journal of International Law 28 (2003): 683–810.

103. Malcolm Gay, “Publisher Redirects ‘Mein Kampf ’ Proceeds,” Boston Globe (29 June 2016): A1 and A8.

104. Mein Kampf, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (https://www.hmhco.com/shop/books/MeinKampf/9780395925034). This is no longer available, but the description is on the Amazon site.

Printing History

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