'Mein Kampf' to be available in Germany again for the first time in 70 years

Since WW2, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf has been banned in Germany; the state of Bavaria, holder of the rights to the book, has prevented it from being republished. But at the end of this year, those rights cease, and a new edition is planned, albeit annotated and presented as an academic work rather than a hate book; some 4,000 notations will expand a 700-page book into a 2,000-page one stretching across two volumes, the New York Times reports. The annotations will reject Hitler's racist arguments, but that hasn't prevented deep concern.

"This book is too dangerous for the general public," says a library historian, while an advocate against anti-Semitism wonders: "Can you annotate the Devil?" Further complicating the issue, the new edition is being published by a historical society financed by taxpayers, the Postnotes; the society doesn't want the book to become a commercial publication, the Times reports. A sample sentence describes Jews as "the eternal parasite, a freeloader that, like a malignant bacterium, spreads rapidly whenever a fertile breeding ground is made available to it.” A Jewish leader in Munich worries that the book "is a Pandora’s box that, once opened again, cannot be closed.” Such fears are particularly pronounced at a time when anti-Semitism in Europe is once again rearing its head; two weeks ago hundreds of Jewish graves were defiled in France.

Ironically, the first people to ban Mein Kampf were Nazi authorities in occupied France during WW2: they felt that Hitler's description of Germany and France as "natural enemies" was not a good message.