Comment and Opinion

Mein Kampf

This site is not listed in The Millenium Project because I object to someone publishing Hitler's manifesto on the Internet. It is here so that people can see for themselves the words of one of the most influential books of the 20th century. There is now, as there has been for the last half-century, pressure on booksellers and publishers not to make this book available. There is no doubt that the words in this book are offensive to many people, especially in hindsight, and there is also no doubt that the philosophies in this book led to the death of many millions of people, but these are insufficient reasons for banning or censoring it.

You may wonder why I have chosen a picture of Neville Chamberlain and his famous "piece of paper" to illustrate this page, rather than a picture of Hitler. The picture of Chamberlain was taken in 1938 but the book had been well known and available to anyone who wanted to read it for a long time before that. If Chamberlain and the people around him had spent less time considering the promises Hitler made on that piece of paper and more on the promises he made in his book then appeasement may have been a much less attractive option and many lives may have been saved. George Santayana was never more correct than when he said "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" and the picture is there to remind us of our past .