As many of us know, Mein Kampf is Official Nazi Shithead Adolph Hitler’s sadboy “autobiography,” which served as a tool to found the German Worker Party (DAP), which later became the Nazi party. The state of Bavaria acquired the copyright for Mein Kampf after Hitler’s death, since his official residence was in Munich, Germany. The Bavarian government refused to reprint the book so long as it held the copyright to it. The copyright expired in December, and now an annotated version of the book is on Der Spiegel’s best seller list.
Hitler started to write his struggle-book in a Landsberg prison, a town located in the state of Bavaria.
David Zoubek, a German (and a friend of mine), grew up 30 minutes from Landsberg. The book has been effectively banned his whole life. I asked him what he thought about its reemergence.
Did you/do you think Mein Kampf should be banned?
No. We live in an age of mass information and education. It’s not like back in 1930, where you might have read the newspaper, but all you really had was your buddies at the pub who talked about bullshit.
Also, I don’t think anyone who would be convinced by the content of the book would actually pick up a book and read it in the first place.
Is other Nazi stuff banned?
You can’t buy swastika stuff. You can’t even really hang a swastika flag inside your room. Some people claim the stuff they have as WWII memorabilia, but you’re not supposed to have it in the first place. I mean—you remember that game Wolfenstein? Even though you kill a bunch of Nazis in that game, in Germany they had to make a special edition where they removed the swastikas. And the enemies weren’t called Nazis, they were called something else.
Did you ever want to read Mein Kampf?
If I ever saw it lying around I may have been interested in what was in it. I don’t have an inherent desire to read it. It’s going to say what I assume it says, some crazy ideology stuff from Adolf. I doubt I’ll be surprised.
I am interested in the rhetoric he used in the book, though. I’d want to compare it to the rhetoric that right wings politicians are using now.
You mean like Trump?
Yep.
Are there still Nazis in Germany?
Yeah, there’s Neo-Nazis. But there’s only a small number of them. There’s a larger gray area of people who live in rural areas who wouldn’t say that Hitler was a great dude, but at their core they don’t like people who are different from themselves. But at the same time, they probably wouldn’t support deportation camps.
They’re also anti-EU. They want the borders back up. They don’t want the Euro. We have a name for them: “Wutbürger.” It means something like “anger citizen.” This kind of person has a good life, basically, and they don’t have any real issues. They might have to wait in line at the supermarket for far too long or something and then they start shouting about putting the borders up.
We still have the National Democratic Party of Germany, a very right wing party. Everybody knows they’re a bunch of fucking Nazis—I say that jokingly. They are tolerated because at least we can see them. They’re not underground. This way they can entertain a belief that they can have a chance in the political elections. In the former east German states they enjoy something like 10% support.
What is your reaction to Mein Kampf being on Der Spiegel‘s best seller list?
I find it a little odd, but I don’t draw any crazy conclusions from it. Could be a bunch of universities and libraries ordering the books. It’s a piece of history, no matter what you think of what it says. I would be concerned if it stays on the best seller list—then some red flags might go up.
