Mein Kampf

ON APRIL I, 1924, because of the sentence handed down by the People's Court of Munich, I had to begin that day, serving my term in the fortress at Landsberg on the Lech.

Thus, after years of uninterrupted work, I was afforded for the first time an opportunity to embark on a task insisted upon by many and felt to be serviceable to the movement by myself. Therefore, I resolved not only to set forth, in two volumes, the object of our movement, but also to draw a picture of its development. From this more can be learned than from any purely doctrinary treatise.

That also gave me the opportunity to describe my own development, as far as this is necessary for the understand- ing of the first as well as the second volume, and which may serve to destroy the evil legends created about my person by the Jewish press.

With this work I do not address myself to strangers, but to those adherents of the movement who belong to it with their hearts and whose reason now seeks a more intimate enlightenment. I know that one is able to win people far more by the spoken than by the written word, and that every great movement on this globe owes its rise to the great speakers and not to the great writers.

Nevertheless, the basic elements of a doctrine must be set down in permanent form in order that it may be repre- sented in the same way and in unity. In this connection these two volumes should serve as building stones which I add to our common work.