July 18, 1925

Mein Kampf

The first volume of Hitler's Mein Kampf is published

Ten thousand copies at 12 Reichsmarks each, under a title far shorter than the one the author had wanted for it.

18 July 1925, from a Munich party press

Franz Eher Nachfolger, the Nazi Party's Munich publishing house, issued the first volume of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf on 18 July 1925. He had begun the manuscript in Landsberg Prison after his 1924 conviction for high treason, intending it as both a propaganda platform and a source of income while his political career was at a low point.

It went out as Mein Kampf: Eine Abrechnung — Mein Kampf: A Reckoning. Hitler's own proposed title had been Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice.

What was between the covers

The volume combined tendentious autobiography with Nazi political propaganda: radical antisemitism, racial ideology and plans for aggressive territorial expansion. Scholars find much of its autobiographical narrative false, incomplete or retrofitted so that Hitler's later ideas appear rooted in his youth.

Scholarship credits the first volume's editorial revisions chiefly to Josef Stolzing-Cerny and Ilse Pröhl. Rudolf Hess, who had assisted with the manuscript in prison, revised the second volume.

Ten thousand copies

The first edition ran to 10,000 copies, priced at 12 Reichsmarks — comparatively expensive for a German book in 1925. It largely sold out, and then sales slackened.

This was not a mass bestseller on publication day; that came with the Nazi Party's electoral growth and Hitler's appointment as chancellor. Volume 2 followed on 11 December 1926.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources 2 audit passes

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