Mein Kampf Republished After 70 Years in Germany

Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ to be republished in Germany for first time since Holocaust

By Jessica Chasmar – The Washington Times – Wednesday, February 25, 2015

A heavily annotated version of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” will be republished in Germany for the first time since World War II.

The copyright for Hitler’s manifesto has been held by the state of Bavaria for 70 years, which blocked its duplication, but those rights expire in December, so Germany’s Institute for Contemporary History plans to reissue the book in January, The Telegraph reported.

“I understand some immediately feel uncomfortable when a book that played such a dramatic role is made available again to the public,” said Magnus Brechtken, the institute’s deputy director, The Washington Post reported.

“On the other hand, I think that this is also a useful way of communicating historical education and enlightenment — a publication with the appropriate comments, exactly to prevent these traumatic events from ever happening again,” he said.

Florian Sepp, a historian at the Bavarian State Library where “Mein Kampf” is kept in a secure “poison cabinet,” told The Post that the book “is too dangerous for the general public.”

The book’s annotated reissue will be 1,300 pages longer than Hitler’s 700-page original and will include critical commentary. Its republication is effectively being financed by German taxpayers, who fund the Institute for Contemporary History, the Washington Post reported.

The rambling autobiography, written in a Bavarian jail after the failed Nazi uprising in Munich in November 1923, detailed Hitler’s views on Jews and preserving the Aryan race.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/25/hitlers-mein-kampf-to-be-republished-in-germany-fo/#ixzz3SslyMpz5