Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ will be published in Germany for the first time since World War II, though scholars have heavily annotated the 2016 edition, turning the Nazi leader’s infamous manifesto into an “anti-Hitler” text.
Researchers at the Munich Institute for Contemporary History
(IfZ) have been preparing the edition since 2010 in anticipation
of the expiration of the copyright deadline for the book, which
comes 70 years after the author’s death.
Hitler shot himself on April 30, 1945 as advancing Soviet troops
were engaged in street battles with Nazi forces just several
blocks away from his bunker in Berlin.
IfZ deputy director, Magnus Brechtken, told The Local website
that the new ‘Mein Kampf’ edition will consist of two volumes,
totaling 2,000 pages.
Less than a half of those pages will be occupied by Hitler’s
original 27 chapters, with the rest being made up of around 5,000
comments by the academics, an introduction and the index.
Last year, IfZ director Andreas Wirsching, said that the
institute have turned its edition of ‘Mein Kampf’ into “an
anti-Hitler text.”
The German State of Bavaria currently owns the rights for the
book, but they expire at the end of 2015.
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Bavarian authorities initially supported the republication of
‘Mein Kampf’, promising to invest €500,000 into the project in
2012.
State of Bavaria minister-president, Horst Seehofer, however,
ultimately changed his stance on the project after a trip to
Israel.
In 2014, justice ministers from all the German states ruled to
prolong the ban on publishing non-annotated copies of “Mein
Kampf” in the country.
Issuing an unedited copy of the book will result in prosecution
for incitement to hatred, the ministers warned.
A spokeswoman for the Bavarian justice ministry said IfZ’s
academic edition of Hitler’s work should be legal under certain
conditions.
‘Mein Kampf’, which Hitler wrote while in prison after a failed
coup attempt, was first issued in 1925, presenting the basics of
his National Socialist ideology, which was later accepted by Nazi
Germany.
The book is forbidden as extremist across the EU, in Russia,
China, Argentina and many other countries.
Mein Kampf’ is available in most libraries in the US and is
freely distributed, however, due to the country’s strong free
speech protections. It sells around 15,000 copies annually.