'Mein Kampf' To Be Republished In Germany 462
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.'"
Demystification (Score:4, Insightful)
They should have started demystifying it 67 years ago.....
You know who else... (Score:5, Insightful)
You know who else liked to suppress books they considered dangerous or "un-German?" The Nazis.
Let them read it (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Let them read it (Score:2, Insightful)
Better annotate it then.
Re:Demystification (Score:5, Insightful)
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 ).
well, on reflection, it's not a real godwin (Score:4, Insightful)
the point of godwin's law is to point out the essential wrongness of comparing someone's opinion to something hitler or a nazi would do. it's just derails an argument into hysteria and absurdity
however if someone were to get really upset here and yell and scream that what the bavarian government is doing here is something hitler or a nazi would do... well, yeah
and i just learned a great phrase: "Reductio ad Hitlerum"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum [wikipedia.org]
which sounds like a spell voldemort would cast
Re:You know who else... (Score:5, Insightful)
And the Americans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification#Censorship_in_the_American_zone [wikipedia.org]
Re:Let them read it (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Mel Brooks understood it best. Ridicule and parody are really the most powerful weapons we have against tyranny, hatred, violence, and terror.
When someone or some group commits atrocities that are unbelievably horrific as a means to paralyze reason and incite fear, and when society reacts with predictable anger, disgust, and outrage, we play into their sick game, for that's precisely the response they hope for. That's what al Qaeda, Hitler, Charles Taylor, and Anders Behring Breivik all share in common. Sociopaths do what they do in order to provoke, knowing full well that no amount of justice or outrage could make up for what they've done, while their ascension in notoriety helps disseminate their cause.
But when we LAUGH at them, when we are able to rise above the hatred they wish to foment by turning their ideals into the butt of jokes (and you gotta admit, "Springtime for Hitler" from The Producers is a masterstroke of comedic genius), that's how we win. We win by taking their manifestos and turning them into fodder for stand-up comedy. To be sure, we aren't trivializing the destruction and deaths they cause, but rather, we mock the basis for their crimes, we take their self-importance and sense of empowerment and simply brush them aside with a dismissive sneer. That's what Breivik, for instance, would hate the most--not to be judged fairly under Norwegian law, or to be jailed, or even to be executed. He himself has stated he hates the idea of being labeled "insane." And the reason is because in his view, insane = not to be taken seriously.
No , sorry (Score:3, Insightful)
You're not going to get away with a fatuous statement like that. The communist idea that all should work for the good of the state and put the good of the state above their own wellbeing is indelibly part of the way places such as North Korea work.
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Re:Oh, this'll be interesting. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Demystification (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Demystification (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It took them 43 years (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Demystification (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Doesn't sound right... (Score:4, Insightful)
Definitely not required reading in school. Would be no point in doing that anyway, since the whole book is just crap, nothing to learn there except that Hitler was not good at writing :-) Maybe some excerpts are used in history class somewhere to show how delusional Hitler was.
The book could not be bought anywhere because of the mentioned copyright, but it never was any problem getting your hands on an old version of it - basically every household back then in Germany had one, and many of those books survived to this day on some grandma's / grandpa's bookshelf. I know that my grandmother had one (she said that most people threw theirs away after the war, but she kept hers because it had an autograph in it), I think my uncle has it now.
Re:Demystification (Score:1, Insightful)
And reading comments such as this one reminds me that some people will say anything to try to win an argument on the Internet, even if their throwaway comparisons are completely ridiculous. Unless you have evidence that Apple is engaged in a system of organized mass murder that only incidentally involves working a small percentage of its victims to death, while outright murdering the vast majority, you should probably sit back and drink a giant cup of STFU. The two situations are not remotely comparable.
Re:Copyright.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:The English version is good for this (Score:5, Insightful)
I came here to say the same thing. Banning publication is a service to anyone who, like me, might have the misguided belief that they'd learn something by reading it. Other than that Hitler was a semi-literate drooling moron with a god complex, I mean, which can be learned from other far less painful sources.
Why do people insist on calling him a moron? Hitler was a homicidal sociopath, a racist and a right wing fanatic but he was also an astute politician, quite intelligent and strangely enough, judging from statements by people who met him, he was also very charming. Just because somebody is a Nazi doesn't make them stupid. The French and the British made assumptions about Hitler and it turned out to be an expensive mistake. If this publication helps to dispel myths about Nazism I'm all for it. Strangely enough there is now an effort being made to pronounce the Nazis a left wing movement which is pretty funny if you know anything about the Freikorps, Anton Drexler and the rest of that ilk. Nazism was an attempt to create a right wing counterpart to communism.
Re:The English version is good for this (Score:5, Insightful)
It's interesting that you mention left wing, because already when you said right wing, I wondered what you meant by it. I'm often fuzzy regarding what should be called one or the other (if the terms are at all relevant outside the French revolution), so I'm collecting samples of how other people use the words. Today, I'm sampling you. :-) What do you have in mind when you call Hitler the movement right wing? (Amusingly, we're talking about the National Socialist German Workers' Party, but what's in a name?) Supporting the crown and the estates? Dismantling the state ("taxation is theft")? Encouraging capitalism? Belief in Christian ideals? Those are traits that I see as characterising the Right in one context or another. (Though I don't see them as particularly representative of the Nazis.)
Re:The English version is good for this (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to read it in the original Deutsche though. There is no perfect Bible. Even the bible must be researched from the original languages and translations, compared to Archeological facts and Socialogical history before it can be defined into a version that seems to meet someones dogma. That is why there are so many translations and editions. Politics and Church Politics play a great role in all this. That is why it is terribly important that there be a scholars neutral edition( which doesn't exist,guess why?). We would find that the "resilient" inherit the earth.( Early church wanted meek parishioners as they are easier to control than resilient ones)
The temple priests used cannabis rather than "calmus" as an unguent. Scattered throughout are warnings for man to follow Gods governance rather than mans, even that bit about "rendering unto Caesar" gets misconstrued as instruction to obey mans governance rather than highlight the unimportance of earthly joys compared to the everlasting glory, which is what it was meant to do until "politically modified".
So, my longwinded point is, Get your hands on the original and ignore annotations of the politically motivated.
Re:The English version is good for this (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do people insist on calling him a moron?
Judging by his writing style, which is incoherent, rambling, and in a lot of places just plain wrong. He was charismatic, but from what I've read about the Nazis most of the successes (e.g. the invasion of most of Europe and the militarisation of Germany) were either orchestrated by other people, were blind luck (and failed miserably when he tried to repeat them), but most of the disasters for them (e.g. the invasion of Russia) happened when Hitler overrode the opinions of the people he'd previously let get on with running the empire.
The allies didn't underestimate Hitler so much as underestimate the ability of competent people to ride the coat tails of a charismatic leader. If he'd been assassinated in the late '30s, most of Europe would probably be speaking German now...
Re:Demystification (Score:2, Insightful)
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 [...] AS for the German people, yes they need to shoulder some of the blame for supporting him at the time
Pop quiz: How many Jews did Hitler kill?
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Re:Demystification (Score:4, Insightful)
There's nothing knee-jerk about the German policy. It's easy for Americans to pretend to be superior and allow "free" speech to extremist minorities when there's no chance that they can be taken seriously nation-wide, but the Nazi and fascist ideologies have been *proven* to be dangerous and *proven* to be realistic alternatives if given the chance to spread.
The idea that Germany isn't allowing discussion of the Nazi past is ridiculous. The only thing it isn't allowing is the Nazi side a free voice in the matter, but there are plenty of discussions about Nazism and everything related.
For slashdotters, the closest present analogy is probably the teaching of intelligent design in schools. The intelligent designers should *not* be given a voice in the school science curriculum, as doing so 1) legitimizes their delusion, and 2) it confuses school children on the *actual known facts*.
Similarly, giving the Nazis a free voice in Germany would lead to lies being spread as fact, thereby confusing people and weakening the historical consensus in the public mind.
No, there is, and there should continue to be, plenty of discussion of Nazism. However, the Nazis themselves and their sympathisers don't deserve a place in that discussion. They can rot on the sidelines - they lost the war, and that is part of the penalty - it's still better than being "disappeared" or shot in the night, which is what they did with minorities who didn't think like them.
Re:Heil (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:The English version is good for this (Score:2, Insightful)
Right Wing: Kill Jews because they don't believe in the right God. .
it's the same god as christians and muslims....you know ,that god of Abraham they all revere ~sighs~
Re:German approach (Score:2, Insightful)
The German approach is very sadistic agreed. Their can't be any discussions of the motives, whether some things were right in Nazi politics etc. No it's become a religion to blame themselves for the war to the point of pissing away billions of euros to help out other EU countries that run themselves like idiots because Germany can't be seen as being aggressive or just say "not my problem" about anything now can they?
Re:Heil (Score:4, Insightful)
I quite agree. I don't think there's any inherent flaw in character of the German people. I find it a little queer that the question can even be asked with a straight face, much less answered affirmatively three-to-one.
Let me go way out on an idealistic limb here, though: I'd like to think that reflection on the horrors of the past can help lessen horrors of the present and future. Even if the conclusions reached by those reflecting are often little nonsensical. At any rate, it certainly better than whitewashing atrocities, or sweeping them under the rug.
Germans have been held to task for WWII's military aggression, xenophobia, and genocide. Other nations, even those with atrocities of similar scale (though talking about the "scale" of genocide seems petty), have not. There are still plenty of war-waging bullys in the world, but Germany's not among them. I'm not trying to say that Germany's all rainbows and butterflies, we know better -- plenty of racial problems, etc. But the general disinclination towards war and violence is real, and if it takes a guilt complex, so be it.
(Oh, and I can second the recommendation for Die Welle!)
Re:The English version is good for this (Score:2, Insightful)
Right wing: tending toward fascism [wikipedia.org]. Left wing: tending toward socialism [wikipedia.org]. Since both ideologies are dedicated to crushing personal freedom it is easy to confuse the two. It's *how* they want to crush your freedom that distinguishes them.
Except that fascism and socialism are relatives, ideologically speaking. Fascism was spawned from socialism. Benito Mussolini was a socialist as a young man. He didn't leave socialism. He mutated it into another form. He saw Fascism as the next logical step of political evolution, with socialism the previous iteration. It still had collectivist impulses, and deference to the state.