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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
World
Caroline Mortimer

New Mein Kampf to be released - and it will debunk all of Hitler's lies

A new version of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf will be published in Germany next month for the first time in 70 years.

The edition will include 3,500 academic notes to challenge his anti-semitic rantings. 

The book, which translates as "My Struggle", was first written in 1924 while Hitler was in prison for a failed coup against the new German Republic. 

It is widely regarded as the future dictator's political manifesto in which he details his hatred for Jewish and Slavic people and his plan to expand Germany to the east. 

The book formed the blueprint for the genocidal regime which followed after the Nazis came to power in 1933. 

A team of four academics from the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich has spent three years to producing the 1,948 page edition.

A 70-year-old copyright owned by the state of Bavaria - which has banned the book over fears of exploitation by far-right and neo-Nazi groups - will expire next month and anyone will be able to reproduce it. 

Dr Christian Hartmann, who lead the team of academics, said if anyone could reproduce Hitler’s words it was better to have a scholarly version which refuted his lies.   

He told the Times: “It was important to us to reach many people so we have tried to create a very reader friendly edition.

An early edition of Mein Kampf on auction in New York in 2010

“We firmly connect Hitler’s text with our comments, so that both are always on the same double page. I could describe it in martial terms as a battle of annihilation — we are encircling Hitler with our annotations.

“Our principle was that there should be no page with Hitler’s text without critical annotations. Hitler is being interrupted, he is being criticised, he is being refuted if necessary.”

But Jewish leaders remain unconvinced. 

Levi Salomon, spokesman for the Berlin-based Jewish Forum for Democracy and Against Anti-Semitism said in February: “I am absolutely against the publication of ‘Mein Kampf,’ even with annotations. Can you annotate the Devil? Can you annotate a person like Hitler?

“This book is outside of human logic.”

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