Hitler's Secret Pamphlet for Industrialists, 1927

Abstract

More than two decades after Adolf Hitler's suicide, his as yet uncollected written works are still growing in number. In 1961 a hitherto unknown manuscript dealing primarily with foreign policy questions was published under the auspices of the Munich Institut fur Zeitgeschichte with the title Hitlers zweites Buch, later appearing in English as Hitler's Secret Book. Now another work from Hitler's pen has belatedly come to light: a pamphlet entitled Der Weg zum Wiederaufstieg (The Road to Resurgence). It is published here for the first time, along with an English translation. In terms of sequence of discovery, this pamphlet becomes the third of Hitler's known writings of appreciable size. In terms of origin, however, it now takes its place as his next composition after Mein Kampf, having been written in the summer of 1927, whereas the second book, mentioned above, was not composed until 1928. Unlike the latter, Der Weg zum Wiederaufstieg is not a manuscript. It is a finished product, a printed pamphlet bound with a paper cover. But, although it bears the imprimatur of a well-known publishing house, the Hugo Bruckmann Verlag of Munich, it was never released to the public. Instead, it was intended from t-he outset for distribution to, and consumption by, an exclusive reading audience: the leading industrialists of Germany. The origin and purpose of the pamphlet are revealed in the document printed as a preface to the text proper, a letter from Hitler dated August 1927 and headed with the salutation, Sehr verehrter Herr Geheimrat! The identity of the recipient of this letter is not difficult to arrive at, for on the cover of the pamphlet is this inscription: Uberreicht von Emil (presented by Emil Kirdorf). Eighty years old in 1927, Kirdorf was for many a venerable symbol of Germany's industrial might, the last survivor of those entrepreneurs who had presided over the rapid upsurge of heavy industrial production in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. As Hitler's letter makes clear, it was at Kirdorf's instigation that Der Weg zum Wiederaufstieg was written. As the letter also reveals, it was understood from the outset that Kirdorf would distribute the pamphlet to his business associates and acquaintances. That this was in fact done is attested to by the inscrip-