'Popularity' as a concept is very difficult to measure when discussing the dissemination of a literary work. It is difficult to prove that individuals believe in a message when we have no record of their thoughts at the time. People can buy books because they believe in the message, the author or because they want another book to fill a bookshelf. Despite this, we can examine the sales of Mein Kampf as an indicator of how widespread ownership was in the general German population.

It is important when answering this question to divide the question into before Hitler came to power and after. The first volume of Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and was not an immediate best seller. It was priced at twelve marks which was about twice the price of most books sold in Germany at the time making it expensive for most German citizens. Max Amann, the first business manager of the Nazi Party, boasted that it sold 23,000 copies in it's first year - claims met with intense scepticism in anti-Nazi circles. The Allied seizure of royalty statements from Eher Verlag, the Nazi publishing firm in 1945, revealed that only 9,473 copies were sold in 1925 and thereafter slumped for three years to a mere 3,015 in 1928. This can be explained by the fact that Hitler was not a hugely influential or broadly popular national political figure between 1925 and 1929; as Paul Roland puts it, Hitler was 'in the political wilderness.'

Hitler had written the book primarily to be consumed by the current followers of the National Socialist movement. The main reason for the creation of the book was not intellectual but for Hitler to relieve some of the tedium of life in Landsberg Prison after the failed coup of 1923. The book held little mass appeal for the 'average' German due the economic recovery of the Weimar Republic between 1923 and 1929 which had severely lessened wider public anxiety. These new circumstances worked in tangent with high cost, the lack of national influence of Hitler himself and the Nazi Party before 1930 and, to put it bluntly, the nature of the literary text. The simple fact is that the book is 782 pages in its raw form and does not read well, essentially being Hitler's rambling noted down and tidied up for publication. Neither the length nor the style were particularly broadly appealing, and even the publication of a two volume set of 400 words each did little to improve sales.

As the fortunes of the Nazi Party rose, however, the fortunes of Mein Kampf rose with it. As Hitler became increasingly popular during 1930 sales increased to 54,086 - this is also due to the publication of an inexpensive, cut back one-volume edition valued at eight marks rather than 12. By the end of 1932 sales had jumped to 90,351 as Hitler reinvented himself as a Bavarian gentleman, with a tailored suit and intense lessons to improve his public speaking.

In 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor, the tide had turned in the wider dissemination of Mein Kampf. Every 'loyal' German household was heavily encouraged to own their own copy, and by the end of Hitler's first year in office over a million copies had been sold making him the best selling author in Germany. Many more thousands were printed to be shipped abroad. Except for the Bible, no other book sold as well during the Nazi period; it was politic to present a copy to a bride and groom at their wedding, every school child received one upon graduation and few households felt secure without a copy on the table. By 1940 six million copies had been sold in Germany, with an estimated 10 million copies printed by 1945. There was heavy societal and state pressure for ordinary German citizens to own a copy of the book, even if given for free, and it is clear that this played a major role in how widespread the book became. This is not to say that some in the population did not believe in some or all of the messages presented in the work, especially radical Nazi intellectuals, but it is difficult to believe that most Germans ever even finished reading it. William Shirer argued that it is clear that not every German who bought a copy of Mein Kampf necessarily read it and that he 'had heard many a Nazi stalwart claim in private that it was hard going and that they were never able to get to the end of its 782 turgid pages.'

It would be difficult based on the existing primary material to make a judgement as to how widespread Mein Kampf was among the Wehrmacht on an individual basis. However, it is more than reasonable to suggest that their households back in Germany were more than likely to have owned at least one copy of the book based on the circulation levels.

Hitler would use many of the anecdotes and ideas presented in Mein Kampf throughout his political career in various speeches and state policies. Ideas such as Lebensraum, Fuhrerprinzip and Hitler's Weltanschauung (Worldview) of the needs of the strongest over the weak for wider survival were codified and put into practice during the Nazi regime as state policy. To describe Mein Kampf as the 'Bible' of National Socialism is not too great a stretch, as Hitler laid down in print exactly the type of Germany he intended to create.

With regards to the book itself, however, Hitler expressed some disdain for it after he became Chancellor in 1933 and began to distance himself from it. Thomas Ryback quotes Hitler as referring to the book as 'fantasies behind bars' that were little more than a series of articles for the Nazi Party newsletter. He later was quoted as raging to Hans Frank that 'If I had any idea in 1924 that I would become Reich Chancellor, I would have never written that book.' Whilst Hitler may have had antipathy towards the book in a literary sense, it is clear based on his actions in power that he believed in at least some aspects of the ideology he had created in the early 1920s.

The ownership of Mein Kampf was explicitly tied to the popularity of Hitler himself and the status of the Nazi Party as the sole power in German politics. It would have been expected for the average German citizen to own a copy after 1933, poor or not, but it is incredibly difficult to establish how 'popular' the messages contained within the book were in a wider view beyond Hitler himself and those who we know expressed their views on the book itself.

Sources:

Shirer, William. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. (Secker and Werburg, 1960)

Roland, Paul. The Nazis: The Rise and Fall of History's Most Evil Empire. (Arcturus, 2019)

Ryback, Timothy. Hitler's Private Library. (Random House, 2010)

Kershaw, Ian. The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich. (Oxford University Press, 1987)