IP: Mein Kampf story

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 09:50:19 -0400
To: farber () cis upenn edu (David Farber)
From: "Richard J. Solomon" <rsolomon () dsl cis upenn edu>


the interesting academic thing about this is that Mein Kampf has a concise and frightening exposition on how to do 
agit-prop, probably written by Goebbels who was Hitler's cellmate. Hitler quotes and refines Lenin's theories on 
propaganda application to a high degree. Mein Kampf is a standard citation in most textbooks on propaganda analysis. So 
do you ban such things because of the racist crap it comes wrapped in or do you study it to see how Hitler planned Nazi 
takeover and control as a warning to future generations? 

- Richard 


August 21, 1999 

Online Sale of Hitler Book Stopped 

Filed at 8:52 a.m. EDT 

By The Associated Press 

BERLIN (AP) -- German media giant Bertelsmann has stopped selling Adolf Hitler's ``Mein Kampf'' in its online 
bookstore, a spokesman said Saturday. 
BOL International's German and Dutch services never offered the book because it is banned in those countries, but its 
British and French services did, company spokesman Christof Ehrhart said. 
He said those sales were ended this week to block Germans or Dutch from buying the book, which Hitler wrote in prison a 
few years before leading the Nazis to power in 1933. 
Under German law, books espousing Nazi philosophy are banned from public display or sale, punishable by up to five 
years in prison. 
BOL's move came after German authorities said they were investigating complaints that Germans could circumvent laws 
against the sale of books such as ``Mein Kampf'' by ordering them from online booksellers in the United States. 
Bertelsmann has asked its U.S.-based Internet bookselling partner, barnesandnoble.com, not to ship banned Nazi titles 
to customers in Germany. 
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