Local authorities in Germany are to reprint “Mein Kampf” (“My Struggle”), Adolf Hitler’s hate tract, for the first time since the death of the Nazi dictator in 1945.
Tuesday’s decision by the state of Bavaria, which controls the copyright, means the book will be available again in three years, when its German copyright expires, but with content warnings throughout.
It follows years of agonized debate about whether Germans remain susceptible to Nazi ideology and how to stop it reviving. The book is available in many other countries.
After meeting anti-Nazi activists in Nuremberg, the city that once hosted Nazi Party rallies, Bavarian Finance Minister Markus Soeder said a complete edition, with annotations throughout by historians warning against Hitler’s errors, would help demystify the book.
A separate edition for schools also would be issued, with historians already at work writing the commentary.
“In all the editions, we want to make clear what nonsense the book contains as well as its fatal consequences,” Soeder said.
Bavaria also will fund scholars to analyze Hitler’s speeches to the Nazi Party rallies in Nuremberg to see how he recycled his ideas.
Hitler published “Mein Kampf” in two volumes, in 1925 and 1926, seven years before he was elected German leader in 1933. The book set out race theories, claiming the Germans were superior Aryans, whereas Jews and others were inferior.
Nearly 10 million copies were printed in the Nazi period. A free copy was given to every German couple when they got married.
Bavaria took over all of Hitler’s assets, including his copyrights, after his 1945 suicide. It has since blocked all attempts to republish his writings. A change of approach is necessary because copyright in Germany expires 70 years after an author’s death.
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