Mein Kampf - English edition

Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 in Braunau-am-Inn (i.e. Braunau on the river Inn). He was therefore about 25 through 30 during the First World War, and about his mid-30s when these volumes were written. This small town was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a joint and rather ramshackle empire with two 'Emperors', and which impressed Hitler in a negative sense, as being something like what could be called 'multicultural'. Incidentally, several currencies circulated side by side, something that influenced Friedrich Hayek of 'The Road to Serfdom'. Austria, or Österreich, was for about a millennium something like a border state against Islam. This east Reich, or eastern realm, or east Mark or March (a word now most familiar in Tolkien's fiction), like lands to the east of Prussia, had German populations amid Czechs, Hungarians, Poles and others. These eastern areas lacked obvious geographical boundaries such as mountain ranges and sea barriers, inviting migrations, and imprecise boundaries: Poland especially fluctuated in size, and Lithuania even more so. Sweden was another country which expanded hugely, under Gustavus Adolphus, at the time of the Reformation, mostly because of French money. These peoples had histories and mythologies and stories which were partly propagandist: German examples include German prehistory and mythology, German resistance to Rome, Charlemagne's 'Holy Roman Empire', Huns from the east, the Reformation with the devastating Thirty Years' War, Turks at the gates of Vienna, and Napoleon. In view of the fact that the history of Napoleon was, in Britain, throughout the 19th century, censored and manipulated, it must be the case that his effects were censored and lied about even more on the European mainland.