Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

NAZIS

‘Mein Kampf’ sells out as publisher rushes to print more

The publisher of a new critical edition of Mein Kampf has said that more copies of the Adolf Hitler manifesto will have to be printed due to enormous demand.

Published: 14 January 2016 10:01 CET

'Mein Kampf' sells out as publisher rushes to print more

File photo: DPA

“It's available like any other book, but because of the special circumstances there is a certain waiting time,” a spokeswoman for the Institute of Contemporary History (IfZ) in Munich said.

The IfZ published its annotated version of Hitler's infamous text at the start of this year, saying that it wanted to make sure a critical version was available as soon as the copyright expired.

Until now, the work had been owned by the Bavarian state government, which prevented any new editions being published in Germany for the standard term of 70 years after the death of the author.

But demand was already high in advance of the IfZ version going on sale on January 8th.

Director Andreas Wirsching said that his colleagues had received 15,000 pre-orders for the Hitler book – far exceeding the 4,000 copies in the first print run.

Many booksellers offer customers the chance to pre-order the book, but some individuals sought to profit from its current scarcity.

Copies were being offered for sale on Amazon for up to €600 – ten times the cover price of €59 – while on eBay the book was priced at up to €685 by Thursday morning.

Amazon said that it will remove over-priced copies of the book from its online store and that all profits from sales of Mein Kampf will go to organizations that support victims of the Nazis.

SEE ALSO: German teachers want 'Mein Kampf' on syllabus

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.

Become a Member to leave a comment.

France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

More than 200,000 Algerians fought with the French army in the war that pitted Algerian independence fighters against their French colonial masters from 1954 to 1962.

At the end of the war, the French government left the loyalist fighters known as Harkis to fend for themselves, despite earlier promises it would look after them.

Trapped in Algeria, many were massacred as the new authorities took revenge.

Thousands of others who fled to France were held in camps, often with their families, in deplorable conditions that an AFP investigation recently found led to the deaths of dozens of children, most of them babies.

READ ALSO Who are the Harkis and why are they still a sore subject in France?

French President Emmanuel Macron in 2021 asked for “forgiveness” on behalf of his country for abandoning the Harkis and their families after independence.

The following year, a law was passed to recognise the state’s responsibility for the “indignity of the hosting and living conditions on its territory”, which caused “exclusion, suffering and lasting trauma”, and recognised the right to reparations for those who had lived in 89 of the internment camps.

But following a new report, 45 new sites – including military camps, slums and shacks – were added on Monday to that list of places the Harkis and their relatives were forced to live, the government said.

Now “up to 14,000 (more) people could receive compensation after transiting through one of these structures,” it said, signalling possible reparations for both the Harkis and their descendants.

Secretary of state Patricia Miralles said the decision hoped to “make amends for a new injustice, including in regions where until now the prejudices suffered by the Harkis living there were not recognised”.

Macron has spoken out on a number of France’s unresolved colonial legacies, including nuclear testing in Polynesia, its role in the Rwandan genocide and war crimes in Algeria.

Url copied to clipboard!