Adolf Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' sold in Germany for the first time since WW2

Jewish groups fear it may incite hatred and German authorities are making it clear they still won’t tolerate any new Mein Kampf without annotations

The book has been published in other countries including the US and is held for research purposes by German librarie (AFP)

Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi manifesto, will be available to buy in Germany this weekend for the first time in more than 70 years, after copyright restrictions lapsed yesterday.

Bavaria’s state finance ministry, which took over the book’s German copyright after the Nazi leader’s suicide in a Berlin bunker in 1945, is now powerless to prevent its publication in the country Hitler once ruled.

A new 2,000-page edition of the anti-Semitic tome, with a critical commentary that is the product of several years’ work by a publicly funded institute, will be available next week, priced at €59 (£43).

Although historians say it could help fill a gap in Germans’ knowledge of the era, Jewish groups fear it may incite hatred and German authorities are making it clear they still won’t tolerate any new Mein Kampf without annotations.

The book has been published in other countries including the US and is held for research purposes by German libraries. Many argue that withholding it from publication merely generated additional mystique. The Munich-based Institute for Contemporary History, which is behind the new version, was denied permission to produce an edition in the mid-1990s when it published a volume of Hitler’s speeches.

Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”) after he was jailed following the failed 1923 coup attempt known as the Beer Hall Putsch. Millions of copies were printed after the Nazis took power in 1933. It set out the ultra-nationalist, anti-Semitic and anti-communist ideology of his Nazi party.

AP