Germany sees 'overwhelming' sales of Hitler's Mein Kampf | Hacker News Reader

Germany sees 'overwhelming' sales of Hitler's Mein Kampf

bbc.com

24 pointsrgbrgb23 comments

The article covers the why...it's not terribly surprising.

"While the Bavarian regional government held the copyright, reprinting of the book was banned. But the copyright expired a year ago."

So, a book that was banned, is no longer banned, and...

"Mein Kampf (My Struggle) is an expensive academic text, and is being bought by libraries, schools and history academics."

Basically, not much to see here. Libraries and schools are buying a book they should probably have, for historical purposes. The swell in sales is because they couldn't buy it before now.

Guess almost anyone who wants to actually read it just downloads the text.

You can also easily buy it in second hand bookstores.

Even in Germany. The book itself wasn't banned, only the reprinting was suppressed by copyright.

Seemed like this wouldn't be enough buyers to make this many sales - so I did a brief search. There are about 54,000 schools in Germany and 6,000 libraries. There are plenty of buyers.

Also from the article:

> "For a German non-fiction book sales of 85,000 are not bad. But the figures don't indicate a runaway hit."

> "The current biggest non-fiction seller is The Hidden Life of Trees, a book about the ecosystem of woodland, which has sold half a million copies so far."

Okay, so it doesn't seem to me like that is evidence that there is some "overwhelming" revival of Nazi ideology after all, especially if most of the sales are academic.

I just finished reading "Mein Kampf" last month. It's not very good. It's about 20% racist rants. He talks about some legitimate grievances German had at the time and from their history, and military strategy. I didn't walk away feeling like Hitler was brilliant or anything like I did with Trotsky after reading "Terrorism and Communism".

Yeah, there are better books to spend your time on than those two...

I have a similar reaction when someone suggests Ayn Rand.

Except, you know, Ayn Rand's writings haven't resulted in genocides and mass human rights violations.

You could make the same argument that this is why it should be read. Especially with the right being on the rise across the west, there's still much to be gained in understanding how the "average man" was led down this path "last time". "doomed to repeat it", etc.

I view Rand's work as being instrumental in the development of my worldview... and I can't recommend that most people read most of it.

She was a terribly novelist, but wasn't really trying to be a great one. She was using the novel format as a scaffold to hang her ideology upon for easier access to the masses. She did that passably in "The Fountainhead", which is at least a decent story. She failed utterly in "Atlas Shrugged".

If you're interested enough in Objectivism to read AS, I suggest you read "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" and "The Virtue of Selfishness". If you're still interested, AS provides additional insight and might be worth the slog.

Books are for eggheads; you need to see him live, man. According to a witness at the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch:

I cannot remember in my entire life such a change in the attitude of a crowd in a few minutes, almost a few seconds ... Hitler had turned them inside out, as one turns a glove inside out, with a few sentences. It had almost something of hocus-pocus, or magic about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch

> 'Not a runaway hit' ...

That quote is followed by explanations why being #1 on the non-fiction best seller list isn't meaningful. Maybe not.

But sane, non-extremist humans seem to have an unending desire for normalcy so strong that they delude themselves every time. They will grasp at it no matter how clear the signs. When Adolf Hitler himself ran Germany, he was supported by organized violent gangs, brutally suppressed the opposition, promoted and executed a program of vicious hatred and religious discrimination, built up an army, conquered multiple neighbors, and was an obvious psychopath ... could he make the signs more clear for everyone? ... yet UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was widely supported when he said could negotiate with this monster and obtain "peace in our time" - he really said that. Churchill, who called for opposing Hitler and preparing for war, was a political outcast. Leading Americans supported and did business with Hitler; the U.S. Congress blocked the President from supporting Hitler's victims and foes; boatloads of refugees from Hitler's terror were sent away from U.S. shores, many to their deaths.

So I'm not comforted at all by these claims that it's not a big deal. Either people will confront the fearful reality and stand up and fight the reborn monstrosities of racism, nationalism, and other prejudice, or those monstrosities will continue to advance unhindered.

If you wait to act until the evil people to announce they are evil and tell you their secret plan, like in the movies, you'll find yourself passively, quietly herded to whatever end they have in mind for you.

Hitler told the world his 'secret plan', in advance, with Mein Kampf.

And, unlike most politicians, he did his level best to fulfill the promises he made before coming to power.

So, it's hard to escape the conclusion that a substantial proportion of the German people understood and supported his program, no matter how evil he was and it was.

This isn't really true, unless that book from the 1920s spoke of some things generally. When the events were actually happening the late 1930s, multiple times Hitler said he was not interested in further conquests, promising normalcy and peace. Remember he signed a treaty with Chamberlain saying so, and also another with Molotov (which Hitler also violated). The Holocaust was hidden so effectively from the world that the Allied powers plausibly denied knowledge of it. Germans living in nearby towns denied knowledge of it.

EDIT: Some edits to qualify statements that were too absolute

> The Holocaust was hidden so effectively from the world that the Allied powers plausibly denied knowledge of it.

I don't believe this assertion. The Holocaust was reported in great detail by those fleeing Nazi rule, and the Allied powers absolutely knew what was happening. The general population knew as well, if they were paying attention:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/11370972/Ho...

> Germans living in nearby towns denied knowledge of it.

While it's true that they denied knowing of the existence of extermination camps, it's an idea that has been widely rejected.

See for yourself - here's a video of German residents of Weimar being forced to tour Buchenwald after liberation. Do these people looked surprised and mortified to you?

https://www.ushmm.org/online/film/display/detail.php?file_nu...

Yes, I agree. To be clear, I chose my words carefully:

* plausibly denied knowledge on the part of the Allied powers (i.e., their leaders)

* denied knowledge on the part of the nearby Germans

I agree with you that in truth, both parties likely knew. But today many/most believe that the Allied leaders did not know, and thus the denial is factually 'plausible'.

But my point remains: Hitler did not announce the Holocaust to the world, but hid it. Which supports my point that if you wait for the evil-doers to step forward, don a red cape, and announce their evil plans and actions, you will be waiting forever and meanwhile they will manipulate you like a herd of sheep.

The large extermination camps were not in Germany, they were outside of Germany, built by Germans:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_camp

There were no nearby German towns.

Knowledge about them was not that widespread, many jews were brought there not knowing what to expect.

Buchenwald was not an 'extermination camp' like Auschwitz-Birkenau.

There were many concentration camps in Germany with many people being killed there. Many people knew about the Holocaust and what happened. But the biggest industrialised killing happened outside Germany in these extermination camps (over 3 million victims), and that knowledge was much less widespread. Some of those extermination camps were closed and deconstructed before the end of the war, for example Treblinka and Belzec.

From what I recall, U.S./UK/French/etc. forces liberated at least several camps, so those would have been in Germany (not France or Benelux, and not on the Eastern Front). Also, they compelled local Germans to tour the camps, so there would have been German towns nearby.

On such an important topic, it would be great if you could provide citations beyond Wikipedia (arguably the godfather of 'post-truth' information ...).

Again, extermination camps were not in Germany. Not one. US/french/forces can't have liberated anyone from those extermination camps, since their troops were not there. Only the soviet army reached the extermination camps - those camps who were still there and not closed earlier.

Concentration camps were also in Germany. Many. Sure the US/UK/French army liberated people from there.

The Wikipedia articles on these topics are actually quite good. Don't spread FUD.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/extermination-camp

It's sad that our discussion turned ugly; it's usually a good time to move on.

EDIT: Edited it.

85K sales in a country of 85M is not very interesting. I bought a copy in the US, basically because I could, and what a snoozer. I certainly didn't bother to finish it. Ditto The Communist Manifesto. 85K can easily constitute some institutional purchases (as others have commented in this thread) plus just some curious book readers ("What was all the fuss about anyway?"). I'm sure most libraries with a significant history collection had a copy already.

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