The almost 2,000-page book combines a memoir of failures, both Hitler’s and Germany’s, with an explanation of how to gain political power and an anti-Semitic rant that laid the foundation for German oppression of Jews prior to and during the war. It wants to spoil these to those who may still feel attracted to them today. Russian Foreign Ministry Commissioner for Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law Konstantin Dolgov has called the plans to republish Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf in Germany a odd way of countering the growing neo-Nazi trends in Europe. Up to 4,000 copies of the new version will be printed.
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“Mein Kampf” is partly autobiographical, but it also outlines Hitler’s ideology that formed the basis for Nazism. Its cover is a sober gray in gray with no artwork. “This book is too risky for the general public”, Florian Sepp, a historian at the Bavarian State Library, which keeps original copies of “Mein Kampf”, told the Daily Express. Volume 1 was released in 1925, and Volume 2 in 1926.
There he wrote much of the first volume, which is mostly his glorified autobiography and a history of the party. “There is no single book surrounded by so many myths and received with so much disgust and fear”.
Publishing a critically annotated version of “Mein Kampf” is consistent with the history of publishing other Nazi documents and is a necessary completion of such documentation, the institute said.
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Free speech advocates have long argued that the ban is an ineffective deterrent in the digital age. Our principle was that there should be no page with Hitler’s text without critical annotations. Germans can easily get their hands on English-language copies of “Mein Kampf” or find the original floating around on the Internet.
