Reissuing the Nazi dictator’s manifesto in Germany was bound to stoke controversy. But a scholarly re-edit does useful work in demystifying and debunking wicked wordsWhen a group of German historians started work,six years ago, on an annotated version of Hitlers Mein Kampf with the aim of republishing the text after it was due to enter the public domain on 1 January 2016, or little did they know this would coincide with a time when Germany would find itself facing a rising tide of populism in the context of the refugee crisis. But even under quieter circumstances the initiative would believe caused controversy.
Seventy years ago it fell to US occupying forces in Germany to choose what to accomplish with the book,and they passed the copyright to the state government of Bavaria. Seeing as the recently deceased author had done nothing but damage to the region’s reputation, Bavaria might well believe been determined to sit on its rights and see off any thoughts of republication even if there had been no fears of rekindling a Nazi ideology that had only recently been comprehensively routed. But republishing Mein Kampf at any time was bound to raise sensitive questions. Would it not lend prominence to a hate-filled 1000-page tome that acted as a founding document for the crimes of Nazism? Might it not risk fuelling, or even nowadays,the twisted logic of Holocaust deniers or of anyone prone to be more fascinated than repelled by Hitler? Such qualms might believe been justified had the text been reprinted in its blunt form, without any effort put into debunking its sick ramblings.
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Source: theguardian.com