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MEIN KAMPF in America: How Adolf

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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 ma-
terials 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 oth-
ers.1 (Fields rejected the author Louisa May Alcott, telling her that she should [s]tick to
your teaching; you cant 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 poli-
tics, 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 anti-
Semitism autobiography Mein Kampf.
Houghton Mifflin had been no stranger to publishing books that it felt were of politi-
cal 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 Russias 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 Mifflins Formative Years (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1970).
4. Book NewsThat Is News, 12 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.

Printing History 3 Mein Kampf in America

 (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 hun-
dred 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. Hitlers control began
when Zentral Verlag der N.S.D.A.P. was registered as a company in Hitlers 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 Hitlers 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 Nachfolgerthat is, Adolf Hitlerwanted to promote transla-
tions 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 in-
ternational rights with offices in London, New York, and Berlin to negotiate translation
rights with foreign publishers.11

6. Elke Frhlich, HitlerGoebbelsStrasser: A War of Deputies, as Seen through the Goebbels

Diaries, 192627, in Working towards the Fhrer, ed. Anthony McElligott and Tim Clark
(Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 2003), 4167.
7. Konrad Heiden, The Fhrer, 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 (Mnchen: Verlag Franz Eher Nachfolger, 1925), 1.
10. Otto Leybold to State Attorneys 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, 193039, Wiener Library Bulletin 27 (1974): 210.

Printing History 4 Mein Kampf in America

 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 Hitlers. 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, Hitlers 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 Hitlers 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 Europischen Kabinette, 18711914. To be published in four volumes as German
Diplomatic Documents, 18711914, the work contained reports, correspondence, and oth-
er 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 Hitlers autobiography.

apropos of workI have an idea, but I dare say you feel too busy with your other
book to consider ithowever 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 wifes suggestion to translate Mein Kampf,
but also take the unusual step of doing so without a publishers contract and com-
mitment 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://cabinet-
magazine.org/issues/10/mein_royalties.php).
13. Blanche Dugdale to Edgar Dugdale, 21 September 1930, in James J. Barnes and Patience
P. Barnes, Hitlers Mein Kampf in Britain and America: A Publishing History, 193039
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 4.

Printing History 5 Mein Kampf in America

 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 be-
lieved 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

Dugdales 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 Hitlers 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 di-
rector at Hurst and Blackett, a subsidiary of Hutchinson and Company, one of Britains
most prominent publishing houses. When Hitlers 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 Keartons 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 Dugdales translation, Hurst and

14. Edgar T. S. Dugdale, National Socialism in Germany, English Review 5 (October 1931):
56573.
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, Hitlers Mein Kampf, 5.
17. Ibid., 4.

Printing History 6 Mein Kampf in America

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, Hitlers 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 Dugdales abridged translation and Hurst and Blacketts 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 Mifflins editor-in-chief, Ferris Greenslet.19
Houghton Mifflins original plan was to secure English-language and American book
rights directly from the German publisher and hire two Harvard University instruc-
tors, Frank Stanton Cawley and Francis Peabody Magoun Jr., to translate the 780-
page 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 Nazi-
controlled Reichstag voted to endow the German chancellor with dictatorial authority,
the Houghton Mifflin board voted to approve the plan to publish Hitlers Mein Kampf
in English.20
In her book The Building of the House: Houghton Mifflins 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. Greenslets duties included contract negotiations, editorial

18. Oron James Hale, Adolf Hitler as Taxpayer, American Historical Review 4 (1955): 83042.
Hale indicated that Hitlers 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, ap-
proved by the board of directors, stamped 26 April 1933, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers,
Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 319, 23.

Printing History 7 Mein Kampf in America

 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
peoples feelings and nagged the staff and used the servants bells to summon them.)22
With the boards approval, Roger Scaife and Ferris Greenslet led Houghton Mifflins
effort to publish Mein Kampf in America. The first thing Greenslet did was cable Franz
Eher Nachfolger expressing Houghton Mifflins 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 transla-
tion 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 Mifflins 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 execu-
tive committee, stamped 6 June 1933, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library,
Harvard University, MS Storage 319, 23.

Printing History 8 Mein Kampf in America

already done, and the second was for cost reasons: a 1000-page book on a not well-
known government official in Germany would not sell.26 Meanwhile, Ferris Greenslet
contacted Curtis Brown to begin negotiating for Houghton Mifflins 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 Hitlers own pen is infi-
nitely 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 Hitlers 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 re-
duce Germans to their underlings.28 By the summer of 1933, Hitlers revenge against the
Jewish people under his rule had begun with beatings, arrests, and other atrocitiesall
well known in the United States.
Houghton Mifflins 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 pub-
lish Hitlers 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 citys
board of education to stop purchasing Houghton Mifflin textbooks. The petition letter
called the publisher an American firm that knowingly lends its assistance in spread-
ing the lying propaganda of a common gangsterpropaganda 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 NewsThat 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 Hitlers Vision, History Review 57 (9
February 2007): 3035.
29. Postcard dated 18 August 1933, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers, Houghton Library,
Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

Printing History 9 Mein Kampf in America

foundations of American institutionsshould have no right to participate in the distri-
bution of the taxpayers money.30 In response, Edward Mandel, the associate superin-
tendent of schools, rejected Lobers petition and defended Houghton Mifflins 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
Mifflins example, or they would be boycotted. Those threats most likely contributed to
the John Day Companys decision to cancel its plan to publish The New Germany Desires
Work and Peace, English translations of Hitlers major speeches of 1933.32 Other protes-
tors 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 instruc-
tions that the publishers Houghton and Mifflin Co., Boston, Mass[.], is immedi-
ately 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 Anglo-
Jewish 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 le-
gitimate 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 Hitlers Mein
Kampf, American Hebrew and Jewish Tribune, 11 August 1933, clipping in the Houghton

Printing History 10 Mein Kampf in America

 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 Hitlers Mein Kampf in the United States.35
Houghton Mifflin had its defenders, however. Henry Seidel Canby, editor of the
Saturday Review of Literature, countered Rittenbergs 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, not-
ed 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 Browns New York manager. Everitt received Houghton
Mifflins 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 al-
lowed 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 Hitlers Book; Anglo-Jewish Weekly Decries Proposed
Issue Here by Houghton Mifflin Co. Called Propaganda Aid Editorial Warns of Stirring Up
HatredsProtests to Libraries Are Urged, New York Times, 18 August 1933 (http://query.ny-
times.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): 1314; and (28 July 1933): 1516.

Printing History 11 Mein Kampf in America

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 of-
ficial Nazi newspaper Vlkische Beobachter [Nations Observer] and a promoter in Britain
of Nazi policies. He informed Hurst and Blackett that, before it could publish Hitlers
book, the German governmentthat is, the Nazi Partyhad to approve the transla-
tion. Hurst and Blackett reluctantly agreed to the vetting, which resulted in a shorter,
censored, and yet authorized version of Hitlers work.41
Berlin demanded the omission of the books most inflammatory statements, par-
ticularly those expressing hatred of Jews. Among the required omissions were Hitlers
exultant references to Japan as the one nation impermeable to international Jewish pro-
paganda and the charge that all prostitution is Jewish-inspired. Also omitted is Hitlers
open avowal of faith in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, from which many of Hitlers
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
Dugdales 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-Paulis 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 Browns 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.

Printing History 12 Mein Kampf in America

 on American laws. We therefore beg you to submit to Houghton Mifflin the ac-
companying 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 Hallidays re-
quest, 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 Dugdales
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 transla-
tor, 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.

Printing History 13 Mein Kampf in America

 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.

Printing History 14 Mein Kampf in America

On 13 October, Scaife wrote to President Roosevelt.

In confidence I may add that we have had no end of trouble over the bookpro-
test 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 Filenes 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 intel-
lectual 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 Hitlers
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
Hitlers work. On reading Houghton Mifflins 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 books flyleaf that [t]his translation is so expurgated as to give a wholly false view of
what Hitler is or saysThe German original would make a different story.50
Because of the controversy, many newspapers and magazines refused to accept adver-
tising 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 asser-
tion that Adolf Hitlers 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.

Printing History 15 Mein Kampf in America

in which it is now offered to an American audience.52 American socialist Ludwig Lore,
writing for the Nation, claimed that Edgar Dugdales 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 worlds
future, that we read Hitlers 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 Hitlers rants often sensible enough
and excused his anti-Semitism as nothing to marvel over because so many nations dis-
played 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 Mifflins competitors took advantage of its Mein Kampf con-
troversy. 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 Hitlers 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): 21314.
53. Ludwig Lore, The Book of Adolf Hitler: A Diluted Version, a review of My Battle, in
Nation (1 November 1933): 51516.
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):
50610.
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 16 Mein Kampf in America

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 contrast-
ing letters and a swastika, Hitlers 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. Thompsons 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, democ-
racy 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 citi-
zens 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 af-
ter the Great War. Hitler restored the imperial black, white, and red superimposed with
the Nazi swastika in March 1933.
The German Consulate viewed Dorothy Thompsons blurb as being equally offen-
sive 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 Hearsts 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.

Printing History 17 Mein Kampf in America

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 distri-
bution 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, dy-
namic 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 sup-
plied 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 Fhrer 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, Hitlers Mein
Kampf, 8081.
64. Barnes and Barnes, Hitlers 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 18 Mein Kampf in America

 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 Hitlers 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 Hitlers 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 refu-
gees 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 econo-
mists 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 Harrisburgs 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, Hitlers 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-is-
dead-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), declas-
sified in 1968.
68. Henry Laughlin to Howland Sargeant, 2 July 1943, Houghton Mifflin Company Papers,
Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Storage 318, 2.

Printing History 19 Mein Kampf in America

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 in-
tention 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 Hitchcocks proposal.69
Houghton Mifflin was not totally sold on the Reynal and Hitchcock offer until an an-
nouncement 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 pri-
ority 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 Hitlers book under Houghton Mifflins 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 Laughlins effort, Stackpole had already decided to proceed, knowing his
companys 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 Mifflins 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.

Printing History 20 Mein Kampf in America

 and Hitchcock, launched a major publicity effort to set its Mein Kampf apart from the
Stackpole Sons edition.
On 28 February, Houghton Mifflins Reynal and Hitchcock translation was in book-
stores in advance of Hitlers 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 re-
sponded 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 consid-
ered 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 trans-
lation 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, Murphys German
secretary. Hurst and Blackett used the copy of Murphys 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.

Printing History 21 Mein Kampf in America

Known as the Stalag Edition, most of the books would later go to English-speaking sol-
diers 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 Hitlers
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, Hitlers
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 citi-
zen 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 Mifflins 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 Mifflins contract with the German publisher. The
debate focused on a single question. Did the person who signed Houghton Mifflins 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, Amanns
signatures were the same on the 1933 contract and the 1925 copyright registration let-
ter to the United States Library of Congress, but that evidence did not convince the

76. Adolf Hitler, My Struggle [Stalag Edition] (Mnchen: Zentral Verlag der NSDAP, Franz
Eher Nach. GMBH, 193744).
77. Mein Kampf and the Protection of Literary Property of Stateless Persons, Yale Law
Journal (1 November 1939): 13239.
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.

Printing History 22 Mein Kampf in America

court.80 Finally in 1941, the German publisher received permission from Hitler to sup-
port Houghton Mifflin against Stackpole Sons. It provided a sworn statement before an
American consular official in Munich verifying that Max Amann had been duly empow-
ered 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 courts 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 Thompsons blurb that caught the eye of Alan Cranston at Macys 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 con-
sidered 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 Hitlers 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, Hitlers 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 ).

Printing History 23 Mein Kampf in America

 Cranston decided that the best way to respond to Hitlers arguments was to write an
anti-Nazi version of the book. With help from his friend Anster Spiro, a Hearst newspa-
per editor, and financial support from Benjamin Epstein of the Anti-Defamation League
of Bnai Brith, 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 Hitlers lengthy text to about seventy
thousand words to create a thirty-two-page Readers 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 Mifflins 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
Cranstons book had pledged [n]ot 1 cent of royalty to Hitler, and said all the profits
would go to help refugees escaping Hitlers 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.

Printing History 24 Mein Kampf in America

 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 Manheims first major translation. Before that, he trans-
lated mostly French and German short stories and poems for fees as low as three dol-
lars for every one thousand words. Later in his career, he would translate all of Gnter
Grasss books, Sigmund Freuds letters to Jung, selected letters of Marcel Proust, and the
transcripts of Adolf Eichmanns post-war interrogations among more than one hundred
other works.90
Manheim found translating Mein Kampf a difficult task because Hitlers illiterate
style, jumbled metaphors, and grammatical errors had to be rendered in a similar English
version.91 When Houghton Mifflin released Manheims 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 se-
mantics, 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 Hitlers 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-manheim-
85-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.

Printing History 25 Mein Kampf in America

 At the wars end in 1945, Germany was defeated, Hitler was dead, and the American
reading public paid little attention to Mien Kampf, which was considered largely unread-
able 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 Hitlers 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 Departments 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 Hitlers Mein Kampf.
Royalties received from these works were diverted to the governments 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 Mifflins trade di-
vision editor-in-chief, contacted the Justice Department asking to reduce royalties from
fifteen to ten percent. Olney cited rising manufacturing costs cutting into the companys
profit margin. The only other option, according to Olney, was to raise the books 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 26 Mein Kampf in America

rejected Houghton Mifflins royalty reduction request. Olney followed up with another
letter to the Justice Department dated 3 July 1979, in which he wrote that the govern-
ment 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 Carters anti-inflationary policies.98
Olneys 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 Hitlers American
royalty rights to Mein Kampf.
Olney directed Mark Kelly in the Houghton Mifflins business office to project royal-
ties 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 Mifflins 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.

Printing History 27 Mein Kampf in America

 say that after subtracting Houghton Mifflins costs and bookseller discounts, the pub-
lisher 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 Mifflins trade division, announced on 20 October 2000 that
Houghton Mifflin would give away all royalties accrued since 1979 and those in the fu-
ture. 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 Childrens 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 publishers book
description.

We would be wrong in thinking that such a program, such a man, and such ap-
palling 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 masters degree in history from Saint Louis University, is a former
high school history teacher, and spent much of his career as a publishing executive develop-
ing 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): 683810.
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/Mein-
Kampf/9780395925034). This is no longer available, but the description is on the Amazon site.

Printing History 28 Mein Kampf in America

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