Trivia / Mein Kampf

• Banned in China: Banned in many countries. Note that, unlike Nazi iconography and music, it is actually not banned by law in Germany: a 1979 legal decision declared that it could not be subject to laws against "unconstitutional propaganda" as it was first published before the introduction of the (then West) German constitution. However, until its copyright term ended with the year 2015,^note German copyright law states that any copyright expires with the end of the year 70 years after the year of death of the author — so a work by an author who died in 1951 will enter public domain according to German law on New Year's Day 2022. the Free State of Bavaria, which owned the rights to the book^note Due to German law on probate, as Hitler and Eva Braun left all their property to one another but then both killed themselves. The Nazi Party's publishing division which owned the rights to the book had its seat in Munich so the State of Bavaria stepped in as "inheritor". refused to allow any copying or printing of it. In January 2016, the first post-Nazi edition of the book to be published in Germany was released, with much negative critical commentary added and at the high price of 59 euros.
• Completely Different Title: The French 1938 translation was called Ma doctrine ("My doctrine").
• Creator Backlash: Hitler came to regret writing Mein Kampf after he became Chancellor.
  • He said the following to his lawyer and later Governor-General of the Polish Government-General, Hans Frank:
    Oh, what a beautiful Italian Mussolini speaks and writes. I can't do that in German. I just can't maintain coherence of my thought while I write.
    
    If in 1924 I imagined I would get to be Chancellor of the Reich, I would have never written [Mein Kampf].
  • According to Albrecht Koschorke, author of On Hitler's Mein Kampf: The Poetics of National Socialism, compared to Mussolini's writings, Mein Kampf:
    ...looked to him like a mere exercise in fantasy behind bars, little more than a series of articles written for Völkischer Beobachter [the Nazi Party's official newspaper], [which led Hitler to conclude:] "I'm not a writer".
  • In Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life, Timothy Ryback comments that Hitler is known to have kept only two copies of his own book.
  • Not that this stopped Hitler from making big money with the book (from royalties), as copies of it were offered at various events like official ceremonies, marriages, baptisms or graduation ceremonies, as well as to every soldier fighting in the front. It was also in heavy demand in libraries and quoted in other publications. All this was paid for with taxpayer money. This was far from the only aspect of the Nazi regime that was just naked, corrupt grift.

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