Jewish Paper Protests American Publication of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”
A Jewish newspaper on this day protested the plan of Houghton Mifflin Co. to publish in the U.S. an English language edition of Mein Kampf, Adolph Hitler’s autobiography. The book would be the first such edition of the Nazi leader’s autobiography in the U. S.
In an article in The American and Jewish Tribune, Louis Rittenberg argued that the publisher was “abetting Hitler propaganda in this country,” and that even “a single paragraph” of the book “is enough to outrage one’s sensibilities.”
The controversy over the publication of Mein Kampf was only the beginning of a long controversy over freedom of speech for Nazis in the U.S. See the original 1934 ACLU statement defending freedom of speech for Nazis and other hate groups.
In the 1970s, the question of the right of a small Nazi group to march in Skokie, Illinois, became a major national controversy. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals finally ruled in favor of the Nazi group in a strongly worded defense of freedom of speech. The Nazi group decided not to exercise their right, and never marched or held a demonstration in Skokie.
Read the latest book on hate speech: Nadine Strossen, Hate: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship (2018)
Read more about the German-American Bund and other pro-Nazi Americans: Bradley W. Hart, Hitler’s American Friends: The Third Reich’s Supporters in the United States (2018)
Watch a documentary on American Nazis in the 1930s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw4_xmUgo3w&bpctr=1396635058
Learn more about hate speech: Samuel Walker, Hate Speech: The History of an American Controversy (1994)
Learn more: Paul S. Boyer, Purity in Print: Book Censorship in America (1968)