Slashdot Mirror
'Mein Kampf' To Be Republished In Germany
Hugh Pickens writes "Jacob Heilbrunn reports in The Atlantic that Germany is taking a new step toward what is often called 'normalization' as the state of Bavaria has announced that in 2015 it will publish Hitler's Mein Kampf, banned in Germany since World War II. In announcing the publication of the book, Bavarian finance minister Markus Soeder says that he wants to contribute to the 'demystification' of it. In 2015, the Bavarian state's copyright to the book will expire and the idea is to publish a scholarly version that will help stem its appeal for commercial publishers. The book is not banned by law in Germany, but Bavaria has used ownership of the copyright to prevent publication of German editions since 1945. Copyright restrictions stop at the end of 2015, 70 years after Hitler's death. By publishing in 2015 before the expiry of the copyright, Bavaria hopes to make future German editions as 'commercially unattractive' as possible. 'We want to make clear what nonsense is in there,' says Soeder and to show 'what a worldwide catastrophe this dangerous body of thought led to.'"
The Federal Republic is the successor to the Weimar Republic, so the state was not "destroyed". Apparently, when an estate goes to the state, it goes to the state (Bundesland) where the deceased was last registered to live, not Germany; Hitler was registered as living in Munich. That's why it's Bavaria.
Pretty much. Like any bible, Mein Kampf isn't actually meant to be read by its believers. I tried to read it because I thought it'd be good to know what Nazis were about, and in my student activist days I spent a bit of time working against neo-Nazis. IT'S TERRIBLE! It's boring, repetitious, tedious, egowank ... so yeah, it's a perfect bible. The footnoting is the only use it has. Hitler starts bullshitting from the very first page.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
"Hitler planned and built the Autobahn. Or did he?
In reality, the first section of what would later become the legendary German autobahn network was constructed and built before Hitler came to power. Construction on the Köln-Bonn Autobahn began in 1929. During opening ceremonies on August 6, 1932, none other than Konrad Adenauer was on hand to inaugurate the 20 km (12 mi) section of autobahn running between Cologne and Bonn. Adenauer, then the Oberbürgermeister (mayor) of Cologne, proclaimed: "So werden die Straßen der Zukunft aussehen." ("This is how the roads of the future will look.") Adenauer supported the autobahn project partly as a way to create jobs during hard economic times. Later he would become West Germany's first Bundeskanzler (chancellor, from 1949 to 1963)."
From: http://german.about.com/library/blgermyth08.htm
This is a wonderful post. But what you say at the end about Germany "...keeping it hidden and banned since Americans left Germany...' may be true in the sense that Hitler/Nazi literature/paraphernalia became banned, but the facts regarding the atrocities committed by that regime were definitely not hidden. As I went through the German school system in the '70s, I recall vividly the compulsory viewing of documentaries that went into quite graphic details on what went on in the concentration camps. I actually feel that the government went overboard in this regard - a whole generation of Germans grew up with this enormous guilt complex that, IMHO, negatively impacted Germany's subsequent role in various post-war European organizations.