Sales of Mein Kampf unexpectedly soar in Germany

Best seller: A new version of Mein Kampf has become a best-seller in Germany
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Patrick Grafton-Green3 January 2017

Sales of a new annotated edition of Mein Kampf have unexpectedly soared in Germany.

Hitler, Mein Kampf: A Critical Edition has sold about 85,000 German-language copies since it launched a year ago.

The copyright of the book had been owned by the state of Bavaria, which prevented new editions from being printed, but this expired at the end of 2015 - 70 years after the end of the Second World War.

Publisher Andreas Wirsching, director of the Munich-based Institute of Contemporary History (IfZ), said "the figures overwhelmed us".

He added at the end of January the IfZ will launch a sixth print run.

The 1,948-page book contains notes by scholars which are said to provide context.

And unlike the Nazi-era editions, the IfZ's Mein Kampf has a plain white cover - without a picture of Hitler.

The IfZ edition of Mein Kampf
AFP/Getty Images

The decision to republish the Nazi manifesto, originally published in 1925, has been criticised by Jewish groups.

However Mr Wirsching said the IfZ had obtained solid legal advice before republishing on a limited scale, while the scholarly edition was aimed partly at pre-empting any editions put out by Nazi sympathisers.

He said: "It would be irresponsible to just let this text spread arbitrarily.”

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