Hitler's "Mein Kampf" To Be Released In German For The First Time Since 1945

Hitler is welcomed by supporters at Nuremberg in 1933.

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Hitler's Mein Kampf will be rereleased to the public with "critical commentary" by a group of German historians next year.

The book has not been officially published in German since 1945 after the government prevented its publication using copyright laws, but on Dec. 31 the copyright will expire.

The Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, a noted center on the study of Nazism, has added 3,500 academic annotations to the controversial book.

The institute claims a critical edition will allow it to counter "Hitler’s propaganda, lies, half-truths and vicious tirades," it said in a statement:

The aim of this edition is thus to present Mein Kampf as a salient source document for contemporary history, to describe the context of the genesis of Hitler’s worldview, to reveal his predecessors in thought and mentality as well to contrast his ideas and assertions with the findings of modern research.

This critical edition of Mein Kampf also views itself as a contribution to historical-political information and education. It seeks to thoroughly deconstruct Hitler's propaganda in a lasting manner and thus to undermine the still effective symbolic power of the book.

In this way, it also makes it possible to counter an ideological-propagandistic and commercial misuse of Mein Kampf.

Each individual chapter in the book will be accompanied by introductory explanations and will evaluate Hitler's assertions through the eyes of "modern research".

In a statement released to the New York Times, a spokesman for one of Munich's Jewish leaders, Charlotte Knobloch, who survived the 1938 killing of Jews in the city, said Mein Kampf was a “disgusting incitement to hatred and the basis of the Holocaust.”

"The original text deserves neither discussion nor acknowledgment today," the statement said.

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Mein Kampf , whose two volumes appeared first in 1925 and 1927, is a combination of memoir, anti-Semitic rant, and political party guidebook.

The new two-volume edition will sell for €59 ($63). The book will be published on Jan. 1 and will be in bookshops between Jan. 8–11.