The scholarly introduction to this controversial text starts out by explaining the context behind a translation, and I see it fit to do so as well.

To translate text in general is not particularly easy. To translate an entire novel to a different language, while still upholding the literary and cultural styling provided over a length such as is no trifling matter. While translating a German novel into English normally would be difficult, due to the emotional nature of the text, and some of the particulars of Hitler’s specific denomination of German writing, this is made much harder. This begs the question, if this is so difficult to do, why would someone, a professional translator, dedicate their time to creating a rendition of such a heinous text? The answer is strikingly simple: So that it doesn’t happen again.

History, especially the most gruesome parts, are worth studying in vivid detail for that reason. It is not enough to know that something happened, but why. It is for this reason that it is imperative to have access to the autobiography of one of the most notorious fascist leaders in recent history. This text goes into self described detail of his life, his motivations, and his political ideas from even a young age. It is important to have a thorough understanding of these things, in order to notice if something similar is happening in more modern times. Pessimistically, this is less to prevent it, and more to survive it. Being able to predict when a country is about to be overwhelmed by a regime helps significantly with survival.

It is also important to understand the way that this text was written, the styling used in its creation. This is not in praise of the man who wrote it, but done more in a fashion of calling him out. This was not by any means a brilliant literary masterpiece, especially in German standards. In fact, Germany was a literary and cultural powerhouse alongside its booming industry, which is what lead to the fact that Hitler was capable of producing such a work. Many lower class Germans were rather literate, and instead of simply reading things like magazines or short folk novels, they were reading books in their spare time. While this attributed to Hitler’s ability to produce such a piece, it did not do anything for the quality of it. While Hitler was literate, and particularly good at giving speeches, he was not a good writer. He struggled with German from a young age, and at best describes himself as an orator. Most of the text compensates heavily for this, and this is seen in translation. It is dull, droll, contradictory, mostly irrelevant, and jumps from one topic to the other on a whim. In one section he’s serious, and in another he’s angrily hurling epithets at the text, stringing along freakishly long sentences in an attempt to mimic literary prowess. It is standard in his dialect of German to include these painfully, pointlessly long sentences, though he takes this to an obvious extreme sometimes. The fact that he did not posses incredible literary prowess is important, since this was the book (Described as “The bible of Nazism” by the translator) that inspired the whole of the Nazi movement in Europe at the time. That doesn’t mean that this was a novel that was actually read by the supporters of it, in a similar suit to how the bible occupies the shelf of many Christians, going unread by them. They rely on it’s principal to motivate their faith, be it in political ideology, or religion. This adds to the importance of being willing to read such texts, it is likely that more scholars and students have read this book at this point than Nazi extremists did at the time.