Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ and the Holocaust: A Prelude to Genocide

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John J. Michalczyk, Michael S. Bryant, Susan A. Michalczyk
Bloomsbury Academic, Apr 14, 2022 - History - 354 pages

For decades scholars have pored over Hitler's autobiographical journey/political treatise, debating if Mein Kampf has genocidal overtones and arguably led to the Holocaust. For the first time, Hitler's Mein Kampf and the Holocaust sees celebrated international scholars analyse the book from various angles to demonstrate how it laid the groundwork for the Shoah through Hitler's venomous attack on the Jews in his text.

Split into three main sections which focus on 'contexts', 'eugenics' and 'religion', the book reflects carefully on the point at which the Fuhrer's actions and policies turn genocidal during the Third Reich and whether Mein Kampf presaged Nazi Germany's descent into genocide. There are contributions from leading academics from across the United States and Germany, including Magnus Brechtken, Susannah Heschel and Nathan Stoltzfus, along with totally new insights into the source material in light of the 2016 German critical edition of Mein Kampf. Hitler's views on Marxism, violence, and leadership, as well as his anti-Semitic rhetoric are examined in detail as you are taken down the disturbing path from a hateful book to the Holocaust.

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About the author (2022)

John J. Michalczyk is Professor and Director of Film Studies in the Art, Art History, and Film department of Boston College, USA, and author and/or editor of fourteen books, including works on Ingmar Bergman, as well as on French and Italian filmmakers. More recently he has published Filming the End of the Holocaust (Bloomsbury 2016), Confront! Resistance in Nazi Germany (2005), and Nazi Law: From Nuremberg to Nuremberg (Bloomsbury 2017). Since 1992, he has been a documentary filmmaker, whose works include The Cross and the Star: Jews, Christians and the Holocaust; Nazi Medicine: In the Shadow of the Reich; Creating Harmony: The Displaced Jewish Orchestra from St. Ottilien; Writing on the Wall: Remembering the Berlin Wall; Nazi Law: Legally Blind; and Hitler's Mein Kampf: Prelude to the Holocaust. Michael S. Bryant is Professor of History and Legal Studies at Bryant University, USA. He is the author of Eyewitness to Genocide: The Operation Reinhard Death Camp Trials, 1955-1966 (2014), and co-author of Global Legal Traditions: Comparative Law for the 21st Century (2021) and Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' and the Holocaust (Bloomsbury Academic, forthcoming), amongst others.

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