ABSTRACT
In his translator’s note to a 1943 edition of Mein Kampf, Ralph Manheim makes several interesting observations that go to the very heart of Adolf Hitler’s challenge to the assumptions of democracy. At the core of Hitler’s ideology, elucidated in Mein Kampf stood what may be termed his Jewish syllogism. The Weimar period was “one of the most dynamic in German history” and one in which as Professor Pinson observed, “there was a release of a vast amount of cultural and spiritual energy that manifested itself in practically every phase of literature, art, philosophy, and academic scholarship. The leaders of the roughly two-thirds of the Weimar electorate which remained outside the Nazi fold until 1933 never managed to act co-operatively and responsibly so as to deny Hitler power. German political parties were unable — within the framework of Weimar Democracy with all the advantages of liberal rules and free communications — to co-operate for the purpose of saving the Republic.
