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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHitler’s Book ‘Mein Kampf’ Sells Out Just Days After Hitting German Bookstores
January 11, 2016
Avaneesh Pandey
Posted with permission from International Business Times
A new, heavily annotated version of Mein Kampf Adolf Hitlers semi-autobiographical manifesto has reportedly sold out just days after hitting German bookstores. The book was published in the country for the first time in 70 years after the copyright, held by the German state of Bavaria, expired.
According to reports citing officials at the Munich Institute for Contemporary History, which published the annotated two-volume work, 15,000 advance orders for the book had already been received, against an initial print run of just 4,000 copies. Additionally, the institute has received requests for translating the controversial work into Italian, French and English.
Copies of the new edition, which has been priced at 59 euros ($64.5), have also been put on sale on the German website of online retailer Amazon for 385 euros ($421), over six times the publisher's price.
Mein Kampf, or My Struggle, was written by the German despot in the 1920s, mostly while in prison. Academics argue that reading the tome is essential to understanding the Holocaust and demystifying Hitlers brutal rule. Even prior to the current republication of the heavily annotated version, second-hand hard copies of the text from the pre-1945 Nazi era have been available in bookshops in Germany and online.
Those who argue in favor of republication of the book which is banned in several countries, including Austria and the Netherlands, but has long been freely available in many others, such as the U.S. and India say that a properly annotated edition could curb any future rise in neo-Nazi and far-right propaganda, especially in the current context where a growing influx of refugees in the country has fueled fierce debate.
However, those who oppose the republication of the book, which includes several Jewish community leaders from Germany, say the anti-Semitic diatribe should remain banned.
Unlike other works that truly deserve to be republished as annotated editions, Mein Kampf does not, Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, told Agence France-Presse. Now, it would be best to leave 'Mein Kampf' where it belongs: the poison cabinet of history.
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/hitlers-book-mein-kampf-sells-out-just-days-after-hitting-german-bookstores/
Bucky
(53,986 posts)I'd like a special edition with pictures of holocaust victims and burnt out Germany cities in 1945 on the facing pages
Rod Beauvex
(564 posts)Right wing extremism came back with a vengasnce in the 80's and has gotten worse since. Dems and liberals just don't seem to understand how much of the world is really right wing.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)Multiple format copies available right now on amazon for under 40.00.
The unabridged version is available for under 12.00, Prime free shipping.
Easy download for e-book readers.
Not to mention free versions all over the web.
I've read it, at 2 times in my life.
Best way to make a book desirable is to ban it.
JI7
(89,244 posts)FLPanhandle
(7,107 posts)All they are accomplishing by banning it is to increase interest in it.
I've tried to read it but it's so badly written that I gave up.
JI7
(89,244 posts)Why it was banned. And this was for decades before the internet.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)1975.....I made up a list of banned books.
Then I set out to find and read them.
then I gave the list to my kids a few years later.
today getting all the books would take maybe an hour, on the internet.
kjones
(1,053 posts)Never got through it though...however, surprising, I managed to
get maybe a tenth into it before he started ranting about Jews
and Marxists. Before that mess, just sounded like biography...
then he got...Hitler-y.