Author Lorraine Tong with the Cranston edition of Mein Kampf — Photograph by David Rice
About the Author
Lorraine H. Tong
Legislative Aide, Foreign Policy Advisor & Author
A Career in Public Service
Lorraine H. Tong served as Senator Alan Cranston's legislative aide and advisor for foreign policy for eight years, working alongside one of the most consequential figures in twentieth-century American politics.
Her years in the Senate gave her an intimate understanding of Cranston's character, his convictions, and the remarkable early chapter of his life that led him to confront Hitler's ideology head-on — years before the world fully grasped the danger.
Drawing on that firsthand knowledge, Tong researched and wrote Hitler on Trial: Alan Cranston, Mein Kampf and The Court — a short but powerful account of a 24-year-old journalist's determination to warn America and the world in the months before Germany invaded Poland.
Alan Cranston: The Man Behind the Story
To understand the book, you need to understand the man.
Alan MacGregor Cranston (June 19, 1914 – December 31, 2000) was born in Palo Alto, California. After graduating from Stanford University in 1936 with a degree in English, he became a foreign correspondent for the International News Service — and it was in that role that he first encountered the full, unvarnished text of Hitler's Mein Kampf.
When an abridged English-language translation was released in the United States — sanitized to strip out Hitler's most virulent antisemitism and his explicit plans for conquest — Cranston was outraged. In 1939, at just 24 years old, he translated and published his own annotated condensed edition using Hitler's actual words, determined to show American readers the true measure of the threat.
Hitler's American publisher sued him for copyright infringement in a Connecticut court. A judge ruled in the publisher's favor and halted publication — but not before half a million copies had already been sold, reaching a wide audience with an urgent warning about what Hitler truly intended.
Cranston went on to serve as California State Controller (1959–1967) and then as a United States Senator from California for four terms (1969–1993). He served as Senate Democratic Whip from 1977 to 1991 and ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984, making nuclear disarmament the centerpiece of his campaign. After leaving the Senate, he founded the Global Security Institute in 1999 and spent his final years advocating for the global abolition of nuclear weapons.
Cranston dedicated his life to public service, world peace, and the belief that ordinary people — and young journalists — have a responsibility to speak truth to power, even when the cost is high.
The Book
Hitler on Trial examines the journalist's early life, the people and events that shaped him, and his stunning discovery that the American edition of Mein Kampf had been sanitized. Using Hitler's own words, Cranston translated and published an annotated condensed edition — and Hitler's American publisher sued for copyright infringement.
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