Mein Kampf and the Koran

Should incoming students at the University of North Carolina be required to read the Koran? As Juan Cole reported in HNN in July, Fox's Bill O'Reilly compared"the class reading of a book about the Koran now to assigning Mein Kampf or a work about Japanese emperor worship during World War II."

This got us wondering. Was Mein Kampf ever assigned to students during the thirties or forties? Unfortunately, we have not been able to find out. But in the course of our research we came across an edition of Mein Kampf issued in 1939 by the Book-of-the-Month-Club, published jointly by Houghton Mifflin and Reynal & Hitchcock.

Apparently, merely publishing Hitler's book on the eve of World War II was considered controversial. Appended to the front of the book was a note of explanation. We found it interesting. We thought our readers might as well:

The following individuals as a committee sponsor the publication of this annotated and unexpurgated edition of Mein Kampf:

Pearl Buck
Dorothy Canfield
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Ida Tarbell
Cyrus Adler
Charles A. Beard
Nicholas Murray Butler
Theodore Dreiser
Albert Einstein
Morris Ernst
Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick
Rev. John Haynes Holmes
James M. Landis
Thomas Mann
Bishop William T. Manning
Eugene O'Neill
Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.
Monsignor John A. Ryan
Norman Thomas
Walter White
William Allen White
Rabbi Stephen S. Wise

Perhaps neither the two publishing firms involved nor the editorial committee responsible for this book, nor even its distinguished sponsors, could with propriety make any reference to the simple significance of their action in providing this unexpurgated and annotated edition for American readers; as its mere distributors to a special group of readers, we can do so.

Adolf Hitler has not wanted MEIN KAMPF to be published, complete, outside of Germany. It is not impossible, a psychologist has observed, that he is subconsciously ashamed of the distorted psychopathic self-portrait he provides, realizing that it would be appraised abroad with somewhat more detachment than by Germans; or it may be that he has been guided purely by political considerations. Who can tell? But it remains a fact that he and the Nazi party have done everything within their power to keep the full contents of this bible of Nazism, MEIN KAMPF, away from the eyes of other peoples.

Scrupulously within the ancient rules of law which he despises, Hitler's full book none the less is published here for the political understanding of the American people. Moreover, it is the initiative of plain individuals, untouched by even a trace of pressure from government, which throws down this gage to the new barbarism; their very deed is an affirmation of the instinctive and undying opposition of a free people to any restraint upon their liberty of thought, which is the very essence of democracy, and which the Hitlerian ideology itself would extirpate from human life; but first, as Hitler indicates in his book, poisoning it by a propaganda which itself could hardly be more contemptuous of human intelligence and dignity. It is a demonstration, by quiet deed, of the truest spirit of democracy, to combat this new form of evil among men by first dragging it forth to the full light where it can be coolly appraised. This, it seems, is the clear significance of the publication in this country of an unexpurgated edition of MEIN KAMPF; it may
be too easy for all of us to overlook this; perhaps because it seems so natural that it should be done in our country.

Perhaps the most active person among those who have been seeking to awaken Americans to the full menace of Hitlerism--to all that we hold dear in both democracy and religion--is Dorothy Thompson. Her appraisal of MEIN KAMPF, as published in the New York Herald Tribune, is so clarifying a document to those who may wish to read and fully understand the book, that by permission it is reprinted here.

Here's what Mr. O'Reilly said on his show (July 10) in the course of an interview with English professor Robert Kirkpatrick, who was a member of the committee responsible for the selection of the Koran at UNC:

O'REILLY: I'm for academic freedom. I want all the students in universities and colleges across the country to be as well versed as possible. But I don't know what this serves to take a look at our enemy's religion. See? I mean, I wouldn't give people a book during World War II on the emperor is God in Japan, would you?

KIRKPATRICK: Sure, why not? Wouldn't that explain, wouldn't that have explained kamikaze pilots?

O'REILLY: No. It would have just -- I don't think it would have. I mean, I would say the culture of Japan, fine, but not the religion. The religion aspect of this bothers me. Now, you're going to let kids not read it if they want, correct?

KIRKPATRICK: Of course, yes.

O'REILLY: And they have, but they have to write a 300-word essay telling you why they don't want to.

KIRKPATRICK: Well, I think that's part of the whole incoming first year student project is to get them to recognize that as a member of an academic community, they have to learn to think and to read and to write and to defend their opinions. And defending the right not to read the book is something that will be very interesting to read.

O'REILLY: Absolutely. I wouldn't read the book. And I'll tell you why I wouldn't have read "Mein Kampf" either. If I were going to UNC in 1941, and you, professor, said, Read "Mein Kampf," I would have said, Hey, professor, with all due respect, shove it. I ain't reading it.

KIRKPATRICK: Why? Well, is that because you think you would have been converted to -- if you read it?

O'REILLY: No. It's because it's tripe. Tripe.

KIRKPATRICK: How do you know if you haven't read it?

O'REILLY: Because I know I would have read a summary about it and be conversant enough to argue and debate with you, as I am now.

I've looked at the Koran. All right? And I have nothing against the Koran, by the way. I mean, there are some things in the Koran that are good, and there are some things that aren't good. Same thing in the Old Testament, some things that are good, some things that aren't good.

But I'm telling you, these are our enemies now. I mean, the Islamic fundamentalism is our enemy. And I would have preferred you to have an overall global look at the Islamic world rather than the Koran. See? I think it would have been more instructive. Would I be wrong there?

KIRKPATRICK: Well, I think you would have a number of books to choose from, and each one of those books would have had its own slant.

O'REILLY: Yes, but you don't have them.

KIRKPATRICK: And we were trying to -- we were trying to pick a book that did not have a particular slant.

Transcript by LexisNexis