The annotated edition of Mein Kampf, available for the first time since 1945, has sparked such public interest in Germany that a new edition of Adolf Hitler's propaganda book is being prepared, the institute said on Thursday. has been charged with its publication.
"It's true," the demand is huge, Simone Paulmikl, spokeswoman for the Institute of Modern History (IfZ) in Munich (southern Germany), which published this critical edition, told AFP. Those who have ordered the two-volume book should "expect some delay in receiving their copy," he added.
The IfZ had originally predicted 4.000 copies of Mein Kampf, but since the first day of its release, last Friday, "15.000 copies had been ordered from bookstores."
He was unable to say how many copies of the two-volume book, which costs €59 in total, have been sold to date.
"According to the reports that the bookstores give us, there are many historians or scientists who want to get this book for educational reasons. "But it also appeals to a wider audience of customers who are interested in politics and history in general and want to know what the Nazi dictator, who is responsible for the extermination of six million Jews, wrote," Paulmikle said.
He assured, however, that there is "no indication at all" that this increased demand could come from Third Reich nostalgics or neo-Nazis, recalling that the book comes with 3.500 historical and critical explanatory notes.
As of Jan. 8, "Mein Kampf," which Hitler wrote in 1924 and 1925 while in prison for an attempted coup, is available in Germany for the first time since the end of World War II.
Its reissue was made possible because the rights to the book, held by Bavaria since 1945, went into the public domain on January 1.
The publication of "Mein Kampf," even in an edition of nearly 2.000 pages annotated by historians, has raised reservations in Germany and elsewhere, particularly in the Jewish community.
After the end of the war, incitement to antisemitism was not prohibited in Germany but the Bavarian authorities were against any reissue.
Nazism's founding text, Mein Kampf, which (also) refers to the plan to exterminate the Jews, is the only book written by the Führer.
Source: website www.koolnews.gr