Should Germans read "Mein Kampf"?

But with the funding in hand, the institute is proceeding. Its edition will serve a political purpose, countering the negative impact on Germany’s image and political culture of raw reprints of the book that might flood the market. Whether it impedes such publications or not, the academic edition can always be held up as authoritative, especially in schools and universities. This is a good thing. Sixty-nine years after World War II, it no longer makes sense for Germans not to have unfettered access to the same book that can be easily bought in other countries. Keeping Hitler’s dreary and often incomprehensible diatribe under wraps, out of misplaced fear of a Nazi revival, is a vast overreaction: Germany’s only pseudo-Nazi party received 1 percent in the recent European Parliament vote; in France, the far right received nearly 25 percent.

In 1959, West Germany’s first postwar president, Theodor Heuss, recommended republishing “Mein Kampf” as a cautionary document for the German people. Not yet ready for such a confrontation, the political establishment ignored him. Today, 55 years and 10 presidents later, Heuss’s good idea is finally coming to fruition.