What is Mein Kampf and what does it mean in English? Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic Nazi manifesto
A version of Hitler's notorious autobiography has become a bestseller in Germany
MEIN Kampf, Adolf Hitler's infamous and evil autobiography, is where the Nazi leader laid out his disgusting vision of the future.
A new version of the extensive work, whose title translates as 'My Struggle', became a bestseller in Germany after selling 85,000 copies since being published a year ago. But what else do we know about the book? When was it written and is it banned?
When did Adolf Hitler write Mein Kampf?
Hitler began work on Mein Kampf when he was imprisoned following his failed 'Munich Putsch' coup in November 1923.
Initially sentenced to five years at Landsberg Prison, he only served a year before being pardoned by the Bavarian government and released.
Hitler dictated much of the book to fellow prisoner Rudolf Hess, a prominent Nazi who later became Deputy Fuhrer and later helped to edit the book.
Initially, the Nazi leader wanted the book to be called "Viereinhalb Jahre (des Kampfes) gegen Lüge, Dummheit und Feigheit", which translates as "Four and a Half Years (of Struggle) Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice".
However, he was convinced by Nazi publisher Max Amann to change it to the more concise Mein Kampf - "my struggle".
Following his release from Landsberg, Hitler decamped to a hut in the alpine town of Berchtesgaden, where he would later build his famous "Eagle's Nest" chalet, to finish the book.
It became so long that it was published in two volumes, in 1925 and 1926.
The book was incredibly popular, selling 228,000 copies between 1925 and 1932 – and an astonishing one million in 1933, after Hitler came to power.
What is in Mein Kampf?
The book lays out the outline of much of what would characterise Hitler and the Nazi Party's time in power.
He divides humans into categories based on physical appearance, asserting that the blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan race are above all others.
Hitler describes at length how he became increasingly antisemitic during his early years in Vienna, Austria and expresses his belief of the world's two major evils – Communism and Judaism.
Mein Kampf contains chilling allusions to the frame of mind which led to the Holocaust, the genocide which cost the lives of around six million Jews during World War II.
For example, Hitler writes: "The nationalisation of our masses will succeed only when, aside from all the positive struggle for the soul of our people, their international poisoners are exterminated."
There are also clues towards the rampantly militaristic foreign policy Germany pursued under the Nazi leader in his passages on Lebensraum – or "living space".
"We National Socialists (Nazis) consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of our pre-War period," Hitler writes.
"We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the east."
Was the book banned in Germany?
The 2016, annotated version of Mein Kampf is the first to be published in Germany since the end of World War II.
The publisher spent years adding comments to Hitler’s original text in an effort to highlight his propaganda and mistakes.
Before the copyright on the book held by Bavaria’s state finance ministry expired at the end of 2015, the ministry had used it prevent the publication of new editions in the country.
Despite its incendiary content, the book wasn’t actually banned in Germany and could be found online, in secondhand bookshops and in libraries.
The Institute for Contemporary History said fears that the new publication might help make Hitler’s ideology socially acceptable had proven unfounded.
German authorities have made clear they won’t tolerate new versions without annotations.
A far-right publisher announced last year that it planned to produce an edition “without annoying commentary,” prompting an investigation of suspected incitement.
