Bavarian interior minister: ‘The entire democratic world is watching Germany on this one’

German interior ministers decided Thursday to prosecute anyone who reprints or sells Mein Kampf, the manifesto written by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler before his rise to power, Haaretz reported.

The copyright to the incendiary book is currently held by the state of Bavaria. Bavaria impounded Hitler’s entire legal estate in 1945, but the copyright to Hitler’s book will run out in 2015, 70 years since his suicide.

The interior ministers of the 16 German states who announced the decision did not yet determine whether they would tolerate reprints in which each of the publication’s falsehoods were annotated by scholars.

Since the end of the Second World War almost 70 years ago, Germany has endeavored to erase any trace of Nazism.

While officials acknowledge that is easy to find Mein Kampf on the internet or even in the occasional box of old books, any contemporary reprint of the book in Germany would send a negative message to victims of the Nazi dictatorship.

“The entire democratic world is watching Germany on this one. We’ve got to especially respect the feelings of survivors of the Holocaust,” said Winfried Bausback, interior minister of Bavaria.

Hitler wrote the book in 1924 in the Landsberg Prison, framing his political thoughts on the basis of racial theory.