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'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 current English edition is actually peppered with footnotes calling out every time Hitler lies or exaggerates. It's like a side by side refutation.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
You know who else liked to suppress books they considered dangerous or "un-German?" The Nazis.
Seriously, you don't even need annotations. Everyone with enough brain cells to rub together will start rolling their eyes in the first chapter already.
Hitler reinterpreted his whole life to match his ideology to such a degree it just becomes hilariously stupid to read... and boring, by the way.
And frankly, those who lack the necessary brain power to recognize the inherent worth (or lack thereof) of the book will not be dissuaded by annotations, true as they may be.
It's not so much that Germany has done a good job about that, but the US did an excellent job of reeducating Germans after the Second World War. They treated the general population fairly and helped them survive. But they also had a reeducation scheme in which they forced groups of ordinary people to look at piles of dead bodies found at concentration camps, etc.
The Soviet Union, in contrast, had a different scheme that did not work. Essentially it amounted to drawing as much profit from the country as possible and torturing random people. This is why nazism is very strong in the east of Germany even today, long after reunification.
Unfortunately, the US seems to have lost the knowledge of how to deal with a conquered nation. In Iraq, for example, they behaved essentially like the Soviet Union did in East Germany.
German politicians are not interested demystifying Hitler or the Nazis, they did their best to stop any publication of old Nazi propaganda, that includes almost any scientific text about them. Even mentioning that not all Hitler did was downright evil gets you labeled as a Nazi, that Hitler needed a more or less functional country to fulfill his plans and that evil(TM) is not enough to run a world war are things that are best not mentioned. If a German politician wants to end a discussion quickly he will just mention that the Nazis did it that way.
I would not be surprised if they use the new publication to claim that everyone else selling "Mein Kampf" or related texts violates the copyright of the new (possibly censored) edition. (IAAGVDAGP - I am a German voter demystified about German politicians).
In contrast to many people I believe it is a crime to forget the past (especially if it is something our politicians do their best to make us forget ).
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.
If a German politician wants to end a discussion quickly he will just mention that the Nazis did it that way.
That works on the internet, too.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If the book had been readily available, there would be fewer neo-nazis in Germany.
I've read it (my parents own a copy, from their grandparents, as Mein Kampf was regularily given as presents at weddings, etc.). It's interesting in parts and revolting in most. It's also pretty badly written. As an author, Hitler was much worse than as a speaker.
There was a comedian here in Germany, of turkish origin, who read from Mein Kampf for school classes and other audiences. He got attacked pretty badly, but in every discussion, he leaves his critics in the dust with his wit and intelligence. In one, he told a former MinisterprÃsident (our equivalent of american governors) that her anti-nazi initiatives had pretty much no effect whatsoever on the youth, because the young people distrust authoritarian stuff that's being forced down their throats. But his readings had a profound effect. Oh and also, the neo-nazis hated him for it, up to death threats.
You can not resolve history by hiding it, only by discussing it.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The mere fact that a book written by someone nearly 70 years ago is still under copyright is ridiculous
Count on Slashdot to turn a story about naziism into an anti-copyright rant.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
At this point in history, it is bound to be more enlightening than dangerous.
My high school education in the subject of Nazi Germany was likely more intellectual than most because I had a teacher who was brave enough to stand up and claim that the holocaust wasn't the most important feature of the 20th century. Instead, that teacher claimed, the genocides that came afterwards should play a stronger role in history courses because they are both more contemporary (thus more relevant) and demonstrate how society needs to make a much more concerted effort to learn from the mistakes of our past.
The publication of Mein Kampf in Germany at this stage of history is important for a couple of reasons. One is that access to primary sources will allow the general population to more directly learn what the mistakesh of Nazi Germany were. But this will only work out because we have had a handful of generations to sort out why such policies represent an unforgivable evil. Both reasons are essential, because we need both information and a temporal/emotional distance to evaluate things rationally.
Publishing this work in this day in age isn't an apology to the Nazis. It does not represent a forgiveness due to social relativism, nor any other extremist ideology. It simply acknowledges that the only way to learn from the past is to understand the past from their perspective.
Crazy talk. Germany is a big country and its people work hard and smart. They exercise economic leadership as a consequence; it's to be expected.
It's an iron law of nature, is that sometimes the big kids get to tell the little kids what to do. Compared to China, I'll take Germany any way, because by and large, they innovate, play fair and work hard.
Although Hitler was a human, indeed he was a monster. It is human to unfairly dislike something sometime in your life. I am sure most of us may have at one point in our past had a muttering of dislike for a particular race/religion/etc. However, what makes a monster is taking that dislike, then acting on it and killing over a million Jews and other undesirables in the clinical and orchestrated manner he and his cronies did it in.
AS for the German people, yes they need to shoulder some of the blame for supporting him at the time, but weigh in the fact that they were at the time suffering the effects of the Allies excessive sanctions and punishments of World War 1, and the failure of the Wiemar Republic. A form of Stockholm Syndrome occurred, and they saw Hitler as a savior. It is the mark of most "popular" monsters to be able to convince their citizens to follow their madcap means. Also remember many Germans did see through Hitler and tried to fight back, and most paid with their lives (see the white rose group).
Going back to the topic, I agree that this book should be published, so that people can see how a monster is formed, and with the disturbances currently going on in Europe and the world, maybe its a warning to prevent the same thing that happened in the past happening again. We do not know* of any monsters on the scale of Hilter since he died, but that doesn't mean we will never see one again, and maybe the next one will be worse.
*Note i said "know of" rather than outright say that such a monster does not exist. The reason is, even in the case of Hitler, the world in general only knew how much of a monster he was AFTER he was defeated.
Have a nice day!
"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
The most truly terrifying source I've read from the second world war was (a translation of excerpts from) the diary of a concentration camp guard. Simple, banal, entries about his family, the same sorts of concerns as anyone else in wartime, and the occasional entry about how many people had been 'processed' by his camp. If you'd met him, he'd probably have seemed like a friendly and reasonable person, doing a job just like any other. It just happened that his job involved working people to death. Reading statements like the recent comment by an Apple exec about how great Foxconn's ability to get people up in the middle of the night to make a change to a product design reminds me that this attitude is still alive in senior positions.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The mere fact that a book written by someone nearly 70 years ago is still under copyright is ridiculous
Count on Slashdot to turn a story about naziism into an anti-copyright rant.
The story is a copyright story. The book hasn't been banned. The book has simply not been published, because the people sitting on the copyright refused to publish it. The reason it is now about to be published is because the copyright is finally expiring.
How much more deserving can a story be of triggering anti-copyright rants than when copyright is explicitly and directly used to enforce censorship?
May we live long and die out
I have to be honest, I'm not a huge fan of the German approach to presenting the horrors of WWII. Last Christmas I visited the Dachau concentration camp outside of Munich. All the material presented there went extremely over the top to paint the Nazis as inhuman monsters that were far distanced from any sane person. But what this totally missed is that the horror of the Holocaust was that it was completely human. The vast majority of the Nazis were everyday people like you an me, and that's what makes it mindbogglingly terrible.
In contrast you have the Holocaust exhibit at the British Imperial War Museum. The whole first section is very clearly focused on the on the economic and political conditions that led to the rise of the Nazis. Through the propoganda and information presented in that exhibit you come to understand how otherwise normal people came to participate in, sanction, or at least turn a blind eye to, one of the worst attrocities in modern history. I believe that only by dissecting this information and understanding this "flaw" of human nature can we really prevent such terrible things from happening again. Mein Kampf should have been repuplished years ago for exactly this reason.
I'll get hate for saying this but WTF,lets be honest, if you wanna go by sheer numbers Hitler hated Ruskies even more than Jews but if you look at the man's record pretty much anyone not Aryan that didn't think EXACTLY like him got put on his shit list. Lets see...Poles, Jews, Russian, Gypsy, gay, communists...did I leave anybody out? lets face it the guy really wasn't THAT picky when it came to killing and if you look at those throughout history that racked up huge body counts that's something they all had in common. While its true he didn't like Jews once WWII started not liking someone wasn't really a prerequisite, he slaughtered for pretty much any old reason.
Personally I'm for printing it,not because I thought the man had any great insight, far from it and one could argue that WWII was pretty much a war with all the planning of throwing darts at a dartboard without any real thought involved on Germany's part (attacking Russia without ANY winter gear? batshit much?) but because i'm a strong believer on freedom of thought, be it the little red book or Mein Kampf or the supposed "pro pedo" book. To be frightened of words on a page is to be frightened of thought and I personally find that even more scary. If you truly fear words on a page because you think they are gonna suddenly affect large numbers of your populace? then maybe, just throwing this out there, you should teach your people to think for themselves and instead of trying to hide the words make a decent counterargument instead?
My grandfather fought in WWII and actually liberated one of the camps in Poland, not one of the big names but it was horrifying none the less, and one of the last things he taught me was not to fear words and ideas as he actually supported the Illinois Nazis right to march, even though he had suffered so much in the war and ended it with a wall dropped on him by a Werwulf squad. He said "that's what made us different, we let people speak, even if we don't agree" and I always took those and his memories he shared of that time to heart. so when i saw some neo Nazis on a street corner in Dallas in the late 80s I didn't join the protesters shouting dirty names at them, I simply bought a large piece of posterboard and made up a sign that said "My grandfather liberated one of the camps, ask me about it" and told his story, of seeing children piled like cordwood, of seeing people so starved one couldn't tell male from female, of being told NOT to feed them because they had been starved so long rich GI rations would throw their frail bodies into shock and of watching in horror because one of the other men did exactly that because he felt pity and the person went into convulsions and died. He said that was the closest he ever got to committing war crimes as he and his men were ready to execute those Nazis on the spot until one of the prisoners told them these were just some flunky recruits brought in while the monsters snuck away and they had actually been treated well by the recruits.
Well needless to say all those nasty names didn't phase those Nazis but what DID phase them was me. They even went so far as to actually complain to a cop standing there who snickered and said "you have the right to speak and so does he" and when they saw I wouldn't go away they packed up and left. It is ALWAYS better not to sweep such things under the rug but to fight it with the truth. By keeping it hidden and banned since the Americans left Germany has simply allowed those groups to grow when a much better solution would have been to simply fight them with the reality of the past IMHO.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Lots of people hate the Jews for their work in international banking. But they ended up in banking, a soiled business, because in the 1200s it was forbidden to christians and muslims by their religions.
If you're pissed about the 'dirty Jew bankers' blame your own stupid theologies for cutting you out of the action. Churches like to keep the flock poor; makes them obedient.
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.