Our Battle – a sharp response to Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler – a direct attack and early warning against the Nazi ...

Our Battle – a sharp response to Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler – a direct attack and early warning against the Nazi propaganda machine. New York, 1938 – First edition

"Our Battle – Being One Man’s Answer to ‘My Battle’ by Adolf Hitler", by Hendrik Willem van Loon. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1938. First edition, second printing. Extremely rare.

"I am going to pay Adolf Hitler the only compliment I ever hope to pay him. I admit that among our enemies, he is without doubt the most dangerous, because he is one of those rare individuals who truly believe everything they say." (From the introduction).

A sharp and direct rebuttal to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Van Loon, a Dutch-American historian and author, viewed the rise of Nazism as a real and urgent threat - not only to Europe but to the core values of liberty and democracy throughout the Western world, particularly in the United States. An incident that took place in New York State - during a rally attended by the mayor, in which members of the crowd cheered at the mention of Adolf Hitler’s name, on October 14, 1938 prompted the author to begin writing the present work.

Van Loon wrote this book out of a deep sense of moral duty, aiming to warn against the destructive influence of the racist, nationalist, and anti-democratic ideas propagated by Adolf Hitler - ideas that were already beginning to find resonance beyond Germany, particularly in Mussolini's Italy. Written in the first person, the book blends historical analysis with a moral outcry, a personal and urgent call to resist everything Nazi Germany stood for. Van Loon does not limit his criticism to the Nazi regime; he also warns American readers against complacency and indifference. His response to Hitler’s Mein Kampf is framed as another kind of struggle, that of a thoughtful and enlightened individual committed to defending the values of humanism, tolerance, and reason. Van Loon illustrates how Hitler swiftly seized control of Germany and managed to radically reshape the mind of the “ordinary German citizen.” He emphasizes that Hitler’s ambitions extended far beyond Germany’s borders, as made clear in Mein Kampf, whose sales figures were rising steadily each year. He further demonstrates how Nazi propaganda operated according to the very principles Hitler outlined in his book, exposing lesser-known details about the Nazi orchestration of the Reichstag fire in February 1933, intended to provide a pretext for persecuting political opponents at an early stage. “Once Hitler was in power, the death-dance of democracy began in deadly earnest... His strident voice convinced his citizens that they had not truly lost the war, but had been betrayed by their Jewish enemies...”,  Van Loon writes. He issues a stark warning against the poisonous propaganda of Joseph Goebbels, "the most dangerous man in Hitler’s circle", more dangerous, he argues, than the military threat posed by Germany. Goebbels, he writes, was more threatening in the toxic propaganda he spread than Hermann Göring, even with all the air power at his command.

It was a rare and prescient voice for its time, before the outbreak of World War II, a voice that understood the gravity of the threat and sought to awaken the world’s conscience while there was still time. Van Loon opens the book with a quote from the Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza:

"I have labored not to mock, not to mourn, and not to hate the actions of men, but to understand them." A declaration that even in the face of extreme hatred, one must seek to understand its roots and act against it with wisdom. 

Through this lens, Van Loon directly appeals to the leaders of the United States to stop the Nazi beast before it is too late.

Following the book’s publication, radio commentator H. V. Kaltenborn issued a powerful statement and plea: "All appeals to reason, to art, and to treaties have proven worthless when faced with a mentally crippled man obsessed with the religion of hate. I plead with all my fellow Americans to heed Van Loon’s warning before it is too late. This is a clear call for America to wake up, rearm, and resist!"

The author, Hendrik Willem van Loon, was Dutch by origin. He grew up in the Netherlands until the age of 20, at which point he arrived at his ancestral estates on the banks of the Hudson River. He spent several years working for the Associated Press and, in fact, since the summer of 1906, spent a significant portion of his time in Germany. Van Loon lived for five years in Munich, where he completed his doctorate. He continued to visit Germany regularly until the Nazis came to power. As someone who consistently warned America, both in writing and on radio, of the Nazi danger, he was no longer able to travel to Germany itself. However, he spent four months during the summer in the countries geographically closest to Germany, gathering as much firsthand information as possible about the situation in the Reich. 

He returned to America in early October 1938, determined to wake American leadership to act swiftly and decisively against Nazi Germany, using every means available before it was too late. He warned explicitly against Hitler’s tactics of deception, which he knew well and analyzes in depth in this work. 

Extremely rare. Only two copies are listed in the global WorldCat library catalog - one in a library in Germany and another in Switzerland.

139 [1] pages. Minor wear to spine. Good condition.