Mein Kampf set for German reprint

ADOLF Hitler’s book Mein Kampf is to be published in Germany for the first time since 1945, the Munich-based Institute of Contemporary History (IfZ) has announced.

Hitler’s propagandistic work, the title of which translates as “My Struggle”, has been banned from publication since World War II.

Under the post-1945 German constitution, the dissemination of Nazi philosophy has been a crime punishable by fines and imprisonment.

But historian Edith Raim of the IfZ said the book can be published again from 2015, when the copyright expires 70 years after Hitler’s death.

The institute plans to produce an annotated version of Mein Kampf, with academic references to the text which was first published in two volumes, in 1925 and 1926.

The Finance Ministry in the state of Bavaria, where the text is deposited, objected to the planned publication and said it had not given the IfZ its agreement.

Mein Kampf became a better seller than the Bible in the Third Reich.

Hitler became a multi-millionaire through royalties while newspapers around the world serialised his work. Hitler wrote it in jail when he was sentenced to five years for attempting to overthrow the government in 1924. It is filled with rants against the Jews, whom he would soon attempt to eliminate altogether.