⚠️ Historical Documentation Notice
This document is part of a historical archive and is presented for scholarly research and educational purposes.
The content reflects historical perspectives and should be understood within its historical context.
today’s ” AR-online” again AR-Online recent issues: December 1999 November 1999 October 1999 September 1999 August 1999 July 1999 June 1999 May 1999 April 1999 March 1999 February 1999 January 1999 December 1998 November 1998 October 1998 September 1998 August 1998 July 1998 http://www.theage.com.au/news/state/2001/08/01/FFXKLYCKSPC.html Melbourne, Unbanning Hitler By JULLA PASCAL Wednesday 1 August 2001 Germany, 1945.
As the Allies liberate the country, thousands of Germans rush to bury Mein Kampf in their gardens. The soil of the defeated is, literally, full of Hitler’s anti-Semitic ravings. Fifty-six years later, the book cannot be bought or sold in Germany, and it remains buried. Is it time to release the book to a new generation of Germans? Or would the unbanning result in a revival of Hitler’s race-hate?
Most German and Jewish scholars I speak with think not, but the idea of circulating Mein Kampf freely in Germany opens up difficult questions about freedom of speech and who stands to gain from Hitler’s estate. By the time of Hitler’s death, eight million copies of Mein Kampf had been sold. The book, bought by the state and given out to newlyweds in the Third Reich, made him a millionaire. Six million copies were issued to couples by 1942.
Hitler’s boast was that Mein Kampf had the largest sales of any book worldwide, apart from the Bible. His royalties were $1 million a year. Mein Kampf was written in the Bavarian prison fortress of Landsberg am Lech in 1923-24, after Hitler’s abortive beerhall putsch. Stylistically turgid and filled with repetition, the first version was improved to hide that it was written by a half-educated man.
According to Hitler, the evil behind Germany’s woes was “the Jewish people”, who wanted “to pollute Aryan womanhood and soil the Aryan bloodline”, an idea that is still common currency on neo-Nazi websites today. Anybody reading Mein Kampf could not fail to be aware of Hitler’s plans for the Jews, the disabled and those others considered “racially inferior”. The original title was A Four-and-a-Half-Year Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice .
Hitler’s publisher, Max Amann of Franz Eher Verlag, persuaded him to choose the shorter version (“Mein Kampf” means “my struggle”). Officially, the book cannot be bought in Germany, Hungary, Israel, Latvia, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland, but is readily available in Russia, Romania, the United States and the United Kingdom. Mein Kampf was first sold in the Czech lands in 1936, and again in 1993, both times in abridged, annotated versions.
In March 2000, Otokar II published a full Czech edition. Publisher Michal Zitko printed 10,000 copies, whereas the average Czech print run is 400. The German embassy in Prague asked that Zitko stop distribution. Zitko refused. The new edition contained no commentary or introduction, and the cover bore an eagle-and-swastika design. There were protests by several organisations.
Thomas Kraus , executive director of the Czech Federation of Jewish Communities, says: “To spread such a book as Mein Kampf freely in the market is even more dangerous than its availability on the web.” Fedor Gal , a Jew born in the Terezin concentration camp (known to Germans as Theresienstadt) and today a Prague publisher, is equally damning: “Using this book to make money is the publishing business at its worst and most spoiled.” The