PARIS – A new, heavily annotated version of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" was published in France on Wednesday, aiming to break down his hate-filled, anti-Semitic ideology with expert analysis and a new translation that better conveys the original text's muddled prose.
Published by Fayard, a French publishing house, the book — "Historicizing Evil: A Critical Edition of Mein Kampf" — runs to nearly 1,000 pages, with twice as much commentary as text. Scholars, researchers and teachers are the main target audience.
"Mein Kampf," or "My Struggle," the Nazi leader's manifesto and memoir, first appeared as two volumes in 1925 and 1927 and was banned in Germany by the Allies in 1945. It was not officially published again there until 2016, when scholars and historians released a nearly 2,000-page edition with thousands of annotations after a copyright held by the state of Bavaria expired.
The version published in France on Wednesday is an extended adaptation of that edition, with contributions from more than a dozen experts and historians led by Florent Brayard, a French historian specializing in Nazism and the Holocaust, and Andreas Wirsching, director of the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich, which had led work on the German version.
Each of the 27 chapters is prefaced by an introductory analysis, and Hitler's writing is meticulously annotated, line by line, with commentary that debunks false statements and provides historical context.
Fayard called it a "fundamental source to understand the history of the 20th century."
It will be available only by special order in bookstores for about $120, with all proceeds and profits going to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation.
