100 Years of Mein Kampf

A century has passed since the publication of Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s notorious book. Part-autobiography, part-political manifesto, few today have read it – and even fewer admit to doing so. Yet its ideas, expressed in often meandering and barely coherent prose, laid out the groundwork for the most destructive ideology of the 20th century.

John Kampfner, whose Jewish father fled Czechoslovakia in 1939, sets out to explore the book’s origins, its impact and its disturbing echoes in today’s world.

From its early slump to the sale of 12 million copies, Mein Kampf came to be seen as more than just a book – it was a symbol, a Nazi devotional object. After the war, and the horrors of the Holocaust, prosecutors at Nuremberg cited the book as the “blueprint of Nazi aggression”. Victorious Allied forces tried to suppress it, while wrestling with how to do so without mirroring the censorship of the very regime they had defeated.

In post-war Germany, John discovers the book’s strange afterlife – including how it found its way into satire and stage performance as the country began a tentative reckoning with its past. Mein Kampf’s republication in Germany in 2016, heavily annotated by historians, sparked intense debate about memory, responsibility and how best to confront dangerous ideas.

In 2025, John is struck by the extent to which the spirit of Mein Kampf lives on in digital spaces, political rhetoric and increasingly mainstream narratives about race, identity and nationhood. Attempts to neuter the book may have limited its visibility – but not its ideas.

The programme explores the notorious and anti-Semitic content of Adolf Hitler's infamous book.

Producer: Jack Butcher
Executive Producer: Robert Nicholson

A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4