Germany and National Socialism

Editions of Mein Kampf in at least fourteen translations are circulating all over the world and a facsimile version of the book can be downloaded from the Internet. In Germany, however, Mein Kampf is banned. The Free State of Bavaria, to which Hitler’s copyright passed after the war, has prevented the release of the book to this day.

In Germany, even scholarly annotated re-publications of original Nazi propaganda material are still viewed very critically, as the recent discussion about the project Zeitungszeugen (Newspaper Witnesses) has demonstrated. Despite a court ruling that the lapse of copyright 70 years after the death of the author also applies to Nazi publications, a cry of indignation arose when first editions of historical newspapers such as the Völkischer Beobachter were reprinted. Depending on their point of view, representatives of all the factions in the Bavarian State Parliament deemed it everything from questionable to unacceptable to confront victims of the Hitler regime and young people with the ideas of the Nazis at first hand. But there were also isolated voices that traced the fascination with this material to its being taboo.

In 2010 it was finally agreed to convene a panel of experts on this issue. They could also make a preliminary decision about the re-publication of Mein Kampf. Appointed experts have repeatedly called for a relaxation of the ban. For example, such renowned historians as Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Hans Mommsen and Ian Kershaw have continually, though vainly, championed a critical edition of the feeble “mental outpourings” (Mommsen) that Hitler brought to paper while he was still a failed putschist, a decade before his ascent to power. The manifesto, which was first published in 1925 and later revised several times, was written in prison and sets out Hitler’s sentiments, world view and the roots of his racist mania. In the Third Reich, Hitler made it a kind of “Nazi bible” – with the added benefit that the royalties made him a multimillionaire.

At the source of inhumanity

The closer the copyright expiration date in 2015 approaches, the louder the warnings become that urge the swift preparation of a historical-critical edition. The supporters of a responsible new edition now include the Board of Trustees of the Nuremberg Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds. And Stephan Kramer, General Secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has also offered to cooperate.

In the discussion, the educational aspects of re-publication now dominate over the fact that the book constitutes an incitement to racial hatred. Those who read the book can no longer deny the Nazi genocide or make out Hitler’s war to have been a “panicked reaction” to Stalin’s war plans. With the same idea, Rafael Seligmann has represented the “pro” position against the scepticism of anti-Semitism researcher Wolfgang Benz in the dispute over re-publication in the weekly newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine. The Jewish author castigated the notion that locking the book away could dispel the nightmare of neo-Nazism. According to Seligman the educational aspect induced democratic governments throughout the world to release Mein Kampf to the reading public: "They trust the intelligence of their citizens. The Bavarian and the Federal governments should show similar confidence and give their citizens the opportunity to inform themselves about and to form their own judgment of the inhumanity of the Nazis at the source”.

Terra incognita

Horst Möller of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, which has decided to prepare a critical edition of Mein Kampf, sees things similarly. The project will start virtually from scratch. The Salzburg historian Othmar Plöckinger’s study of the history of the origins, publication and reception of the book (2006), and Barbara Zehnpfennig’s controversial political-philosophical interpretation of the work (2000), could perhaps provide an important foundation.

The Institute refuses to be put off the project by doubts about whether the layman will reach for a tome of considerably more than 1,000 pages, and interlarded with commentaries, when one day the original will be freely available to him. But perhaps we should give Bernd Sösemann a hearing. The Professor for the History of Public Communication counsels: “In view of the public interest, it might be advisable also to publish an edition largely free of scholarly paraphernalia. But a generally comprehensible introduction and a short bibliography of useful secondary reading would be indispensable”.