Friday, October 3, 2008

Best Selling Author fighting Lung Cancer

Adolf Hitler

Best Selling Author


To call Adolf Hitler a "best-selling" author is actually an understatement.
By 1942 his book "Mein Kampf" (My Struggle) had sold more copies than any book except the Christian Bible, and continues to sell in large quantities in the twenty-first century. On the internet Mein Kampf is an ever-present popular free download, available in many languages.

Adolf has written many poems and a second book which was only published after his death.
These are all viewable and downloadable on the internet.

Hitler's Mein Kampf New Best-seller In Turkey

Agence France-Presse Friday, 18 March 2005
ANKARA (AFP)—Cheap cover prices and a rise in nationalist sentiment have made an unlikely best-seller in Turkey of Adolf Hitler's autobiography, Mein Kampf, analysts here say.
The book was first published here in 1939, when Axis and Allied countries were competing for Turkey's soul, as they tried to woo it away from the neutrality it would maintain until the very end of World War II.
But since January, the book has sold more than 50,000 copies and is number four on the best-seller list drawn up by the DetR bookstore chain.


Your Mother
(Direct English Translation)

"When your mother has grown older,
When her dear, faithful eyes
no longer see life as they once did,
When her feet, grown tired,
No longer want to carry her as she walks -

Then lend her your arm in support,
Escort her with happy pleasure.
The hour will come when, weeping, you
Must accompany her on her final walk.

And if she asks you something,
Then give her an answer.
And if she asks again, then speak!
And if she asks yet again, respond to her,
Not impatiently, but with gentle calm.


Klara Hitler

And if she cannot understand you properly
Explain all to her happily.
The hour will come, the bitter hour,
When her mouth asks for nothing more."

Adolf Hitler, 1923.

In an interview on 5 June 1946, Adolf's sister, Paula, recalled the following about her brother:

"During this time my mother was severely ill we were most unhappy. Assisting me, my brother Adolf spoiled my mother during this time of her life with overflowing tenderness. He was indefatigable in his care for her, wanted to comply with any desire she could possible have and did all to demonstrate his great love for her."

In the Thicket of the Forest at Artois


Adolf Hitler sketched the above illustration which accompanied his poem.
He wrote "based on a true event", which begs the now unanswerable question:
was Adolf relating his own experience?

In the Thicket of the Forest at Artois
(Direct English Translation)

"It was in the thicket of the Artois Wood.
Deep in the trees, on blood-soaked ground,
Lay stretched a wounded German warrior,
And his cries rang out in the night.
In vain ... no echo answered his plea ...
Will he bleed to death like a beast,
That shot in the gut dies alone?

Then suddenly ...
Heavy steps approach from the right
He hears how they stamp on the forest floor ...
And new hope springs from his soul.
And now from the left ...
And now from both sides ...

Two men approach his miserable bed
A German it is, and a Frenchman.
And each watches the other with distrustful glance,
And threatening they aim their weapons.
The German warrior asks:
"What do you do here?"
"I was touched by the needy one's call for help."

"It's your enemy!"
"It is a man who suffers."

And both, wordless, lowered their weapons.
Then entwined their hands
And, with muscles tensed, carefully lifted
The wounded warrior, as if on a stretcher,
And carried him through the woods.

'Til they came to the German outposts.
"Now it is over. He will get good care."
And the Frenchman turns back toward the woods.
But the German grasps for his hand,
Looks, moved, into sorrow-dimmed eyes
And says to him with earnest foreboding:

"I know not what fate holds for us,
Which inscrutably rules in the stars.
Perhaps I shall fall, a victim of your bullet.
Maybe mine will fell you on the sand
For indifferent is the chance of battles.

Yet, however it may be and whatever may come:
We lived these sacred hours,
Where man found himself in man ...
And now, farewell! And Gods be with you!"



Adolf Hitler, 1916




Mein Kampf' still sells around regular 3000 copies a year in Britain.

In the US, Houghton Mifflin holds the rights to Mein Kampf, but recently, there was a small problem:

The company's new directors complained that the jacket of the book had to be changed as the wording contained an offensive phrase 'this evil book.'

That would not do at all. 'We can't say a book is evil if we ourselves are publishing it,' the managing director stated. The wording was therefore changed to 'this vile book', and sales continue once more.


"Hitler is doing much for Germany, his unification of the Germans, his destruction of communism, his training of the young, his creation of a Spartan State animated by patriotism, his curbing of parliamentary government, so unsuited to the German character; his protection of the right of private property are all good; and, after all, what the Germans do in their own territory is their own business, except for one thing--the persecution and practical expulsion of the Jews."
NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW OF
MEIN KAMPF by Adolf Hitler (1933)

MEIN KAMPF by Adolf Hitler

Many famous books were written while its author languished in prison; but this book, Mein Kampf, (My Struggle) is most famous of them all - and for good reasons:

  • No other author had sold as many copies of a book by 1942.
  • No other author in history is still as well known as Adolf Hitler
  • No other author's book has had such continuous exposure, sales,
    bannings and support 70 years after first publication


Mein Kampf is a multi-faceted book for the serious thinker:

  • It is an autobiography of Adolf Hitler
  • It is filled with deep concepts and philosophy
  • It is a political treatise and plan for the future of Germany
  • It is an analysis of German and world history
  • It proposes positive steps for German Foriegn Relations
  • It discusses problems then facing the German people, such as health, communism, trade unions, population demographics and the economy

June 2 2005 - LONDON (Reuters) - A signed first edition of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" goes under the hammer later this month with a price guide of up to 25,000 pounds ($45,370), auction house Bloomsbury said Thursday.

"It is illegal to sell Mein Kampf in bookstores in Germany or publish it there. Amazon shipped so many copies of Mein Kampf to Germany that over the summer Hitler made Amazon's top 10 best-seller list among German buyers"
(New York Times, 11.17.99)

ZOA Press Release - September 10, 1999 - Contact: (212) 481-1500

ADOLF HITLER'S MEIN KAMPF IS BEST-SELLER
AMONG THE PALESTINIAN ARABS

NEW YORK- Adolf Hitler's autobiography, Mein Kampf... has made it to the best-seller list in the Palestinian Authority-controlled territories. The French news agency, Agence France Presse, reports that Mein Kampf is presently at number six on the PA best-seller list. It noted that Mein Kampf was banned from the territories during the years of Israeli administration of the region, but was recently allowed in by the PA.

"Mein Kampf" has already been banned in Portugal, and the publishing house Hugin Editora have been pressurised to recall all copies of Mein Kampf and shred the lot. The Federal State of Bavaria has already pressured countries such as Sweden, Norway, Latvia, Switzerland and Hungary to ban Mein Kampf book sales totally.


WIKIPEDIA

Today, the copyright of Mein Kampf is owned by the state of Bavaria. The copyright will end on December 31, 2015. The government of Bavaria, in agreement with the Federal Government of Germany, does not allow any copying or printing of the book in Germany, and opposes it also in other countries but with less success. Owning and buying the book is legal. Trading in old copies is legal as well, unless it is done in such a fashion as to promote hatred or war, which is generally illegal. Most German libraries carry heavily commented and excerpted versions of Mein Kampf.

Radio Prague

Two books published recently in this country - one a couple of years ago and the other at the end of last year - raised very strong reactions among the lay and expert public. In 2000, a Prague-based publishing house put out a new Czech-language edition of Adolf Hitler's notorious book "Mein Kampf". This created uproar in the media, and publisher Michal Zitko received a three-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of two million crowns for spreading fascist ideas. Last year, the Supreme Court annulled the verdict but Mr Zitko is to stand trial again in mid-June on different charges


Friday November 19, 1999

Germans grabbing 'Mein Kampf' from virtual shelves

DOUGLAS DAVIS
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

LONDON -- Even though "Mein Kampf" is banned in Germany, Adolf Hitler's book is still one of the most sought-after titles for German readers over the Internet.

The popularity of "Mein Kampf" among German customers is second only to Elizabeth George's detective novel "In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner," according to a report by Internet bookseller Amazon.com at last month's Frankfurt Book Fair.

Amazon's competitor, barnesandnoble.com, in which the German publishing giant Bertelsmann has a 40 percent stake, said its sales put the book in fourth place. Bertelsmann has asked barnesandnoble.com to cease delivering the book to customers in Germany.

While it is not illegal for Germans to own copies of "Mein Kampf," written by Hitler in 1924, its sale in Germany is banned under a law that prohibits the dissemination of Nazi propaganda.


Germans probe Yahoo! over suspected Mein Kampf sales
By Linda Harrison in New York
Published Monday 27th November 2000 23:55 GMT
Yahoo! execs are in trouble in Europe again - and this time the Germans have taken the Internet giant to task over suspected sales of Mein Kampf.

German prosecutors today said they had launched a probe into online auctions of the banned Hitler book on the Yahoo! Germany site. Unnamed execs at the California-based Web portal are under investigation regarding the auctions on two dates this year: 1 February and 19 April, Manfred Wick, a senior prosecutor the state of Munich, told Reuters.

This is the second time in a week that Yahoo! has had to wrestle with European bigwigs. Last Monday a court in France gave it 90 days to stop French surfers from accessing its sites that flog Nazi memorabilia.

"The company distances itself from Nazi philosophy," a Yahoo! Germany spokeswoman said. "On the German Yahoo! Web site 90,000 objects are on offer. As soon as Yahoo! gets information that illegal products are included, it removes them."

It is illegal to sell Nazi memorabilia in France and Germany.



Translator's Introduction to Mein Kampf (extract)
James Murphy 1939 translation

IN PLACING before the reader this unabridged translation of Adolf Hitler's book, MEIN KAMPF, I feel it my duty to call attention to certain historical facts which must be borne in mind if the reader would form a fair judgment of what is written in this extraordinary work.

The first volume of MEIN KAMPF was written while the author was imprisoned in a Bavarian fortress. How did he get there and why? The answer to that question is important, because the book deals with the events which brought the author into this plight and because he wrote under the emotional stress caused by the historical happenings of the time. It was the hour of Germany's deepest humiliation, somewhat parallel to that of a little over a century before, when Napoleon had dismembered the old German Empire and French soldiers occupied almost the whole of Germany.

In the beginning of 1923 the French invaded Germany, occupied the Ruhr district and seized several German towns in the Rhineland. This was a flagrant breach of international law and was protested against by every section of British political opinion at that time. The Germans could not effectively defend themselves, as they had been already disarmed under the provisions of the Versailles Treaty. To make the situation more fraught with disaster for Germany, and therefore more appalling in its prospect, the French carried on an intensive propaganda for the separation of the Rhineland from the German Republic and the establishment of an independent Rhenania. Money was poured out lavishly to bribe agitators to carry on this work, and some of the most insidious elements of the German population became active in the pay of the invader. At the same time a vigorous movement was being carried on in Bavaria for the secession of that country and the establishment of an independent Catholic monarchy there, under vassalage to France, as Napoleon had done when he made Maximilian the first King of Bavaria in 1805.

The separatist movement in the Rhineland went so far that some leading German politicians came out in favour of it, suggesting that if the Rhineland were thus ceded it might be possible for the German Republic to strike a bargain with the French in regard to Reparations. But in Bavaria the movement went even farther. And it was more far-reaching in its implications; for, if an independent Catholic monarchy could be set up in Bavaria, the next move would have been a union with Catholic German-Austria. possibly under a Habsburg King. Thus a Catholic BLOC would have been created which would extend from the Rhineland through Bavaria and Austria into the Danube Valley and would have been at least under the moral and military, if not the full political, hegemony of France. The dream seems fantastic now, but it was considered quite a practical thing in those fantastic times. The effect of putting such a plan into action would have meant the complete dismemberment of Germany; and that is what French diplomacy aimed at.

Of course such an aim no longer exists. And I should not recall what must now seem "old, unhappy, far-off things" to the modern generation, were it not that they were very near and actual at the time MEIN KAMPF was written and were more unhappy then than we can even imagine now.

By the autumn of 1923 the separatist movement in Bavaria was on the point of becoming an accomplished fact. General von Lossow, the Bavarian chief of the REICHSWEHR no longer took orders from Berlin. The flag of the German Republic was rarely to be seen. Finally, the Bavarian Prime Minister decided to proclaim an independent Bavaria and its secession from the German Republic. This was to have taken place on the eve of the Fifth Anniversary of the establishment of the German Republic (November 9th, 1918.)

Hitler staged a counter-stroke. For several days he had been mobilizing his storm battalions in the neighbourhood of Munich, intending to make a national demonstration and hoping that the REICHSWEHR would stand by him to prevent secession. Ludendorff was with him. And he thought that the prestige of the great German Commander in the World War would be sufficient to win the allegiance of the professional army.

A meeting had been announced to take place in the Bürgerbräu Keller on the night of November 8th. The Bavarian patriotic societies were gathered there, and the Prime Minister, Dr. von Kahr, started to read his official PRONUNCIAMENTO, which practically amounted to a proclamation of Bavarian independence and secession from the Republic. While von Kahr was speaking Hitler entered the hall, followed by Ludendorff. And the meeting was broken up.

Next day the Nazi battalions took the street for the purpose of making a mass demonstration in favour of national union. They marched in massed formation, led by Hitler and Ludendorff. As they reached one of the central squares of the city the army opened fire on them. Sixteen of the marchers were instantly killed, and two died of their wounds in the local barracks of the REICHSWEHR. Several others were wounded also. Hitler fell on the pavement and broke a collar-bone. Ludendorff marched straight up to the soldiers who were firing from the barricade, but not a man dared draw a trigger on his old Commander.

Hitler was arrested with several of his comrades and imprisoned in the fortress of Landsberg on the River Lech. On February 26th, 1924, he was brought to trial before the VOLKSGERICHT, or People's Court in Munich. He was sentenced to detention in a fortress for five years. With several companions, who had been also sentenced to various periods of imprisonment, he returned to Landsberg am Lech and remained there until the 20th of the following December, when he was released. In all he spent about thirteen months in prison. It was during this period that he wrote the first volume of MEIN KAMPF.


A Few Quotes From Mein Kampf

A time will come, even though in the distant future, when there can be only two alternatives: Either the world will be ruled according to our modern concept of democracy, and then every decision will be in favour of the numerically stronger races; or the world will be governed by the law of natural distribution of power, and then those nations will be victorious who are of more brutal will and are not the nations who have practised self-denial.

That kind of historical thinking which was developed in me through my study of history at school never left me afterwards. World history became more and more an inexhaustible source for the understanding of contemporary historical events, which means politics. Therefore I will not "learn" politics but let politics teach me.

To wage war against syphilis means fighting against prostitution, against prejudice, against old-established customs, against current fashion, public opinion, and, last but not least, against false prudery in certain circles.

Another reason why early marriages are impossible is our nonsensical method of regulating the scale of salaries, which pays far too little attention to the problem of family support. Prostitution, therefore, can only be really seriously tackled if, by means of a radical social reform, early marriage is made easier than hitherto. This is the first preliminary necessity for the solution of this problem.

The art of leadership, as displayed by really great popular leaders in all ages, consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention into sections. The more the militant energies of the people are directed towards one objective the more will new recruits join the movement, attracted by the magnetism of its unified action, and thus the striking power will be all the more enhanced. The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to the one category; for weak and wavering natures among a leader's following may easily begin to be dubious about the justice of their own cause if they have to face different enemies.

Thus we find in the world to-day not only a number of States that are much greater than the German in the mere numerical size of their populations, but also possess a greater support for their political power. The proportion between the territorial dimensions of the German REICH and the numerical size of its population was never so unfavourable in comparison with the other world States as at the beginning of our history two thousand years ago and again to-day. At the former juncture we were a young people and we stormed a world which was made up of great States that were already in a decadent condition, of which the last giant was Rome, to whose overthrow we contributed. To-day we find ourselves in a world of great and powerful States, among which the importance of our own REICH is constantly declining more and more. We must always face this bitter truth with clear and calm minds. We must study the area and population of the German REICH in relation to the other States and compare them down through the centuries. Then we shall find that, as I have said, Germany is not a World Power whether its military strength be great or not.

Fighting Cancer

Adolf's mother died from cancer. With profits from his best-selling book "Mein Kampf", he donated 100,000 Marks to cancer research he personally commissioned at the University of Jena. Is there a link between cigarette smoking and cancer? Adolf thought so, and the research he commissioned conclusively proved it. There is a very strong link and smokers are very likely to get cancer - as shown by his research results at bottom right.









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