Looking Back At The Return of Mein Kampf In Germany

Last year a heavily annotated academic edition of Hitler's antisemitic tome, Mein Kampf, was published amidst controversy in Germany. The book became an unexpected bestseller, mainly among academics and history buffs, and won an academic prize. 

Below is a longer version of an article that I wrote in advance of its publication, examining the contrasting opinions about the book's re-emergence in Germany, 70 years after the death of its author.

Many wish that Adolf Hitler's hate-filled manifesto, Mein Kampf, would simply disappear. However, with the book about to enter the public domain in Germany in 2016, the country is again having to confront one of the most charged remnants of its Nazi past.

  

Since 1945, the state of Bavaria, which took over Hitler's estate after the US occupation, has been able to prevent publication of the tome as the copyright holder. But that control will cease when the copyright expires, 70 years after the author's death, on December 31st. 

The idea of anyone being able to publish their own German-language edition of Hitler's brutal text actually in Germany has, inevitably, provoked heated debate over how the situation should be handled, and whether it is appropriate, safe or moral for the dictator's self-mythologising and virulently anti-Semitic screed to go on sale in the cradle of the Third Reich. Dr. Charlotte Knobloch, President of the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, is in no doubt about what the book represents, or what should happen to it. 

“Mein Kampf is the most evil anti-Semitic pamphlet ever published, and its repercussions were catastrophic,” she tells me by email. “It was the handbook for THE crime of the Nazis: the cold-blooded extermination of European Jews. This book needs to be locked away permanently.”

Knobloch acknowledges that the book's availability on the internet – including to Germans, who can download it from servers abroad; while anyone claiming academic research interest can buy a copy legally from an antiquarian bookshop – means that total suppression is not an option. Even so, she believes that making it widely available in print would be a step too far. 

“It should not be published in Germany, the country on whose behalf this unprecedented crime was committed. Mein Kampf was and is Pandora's Box – once opened it's impossible to re-close it, and the the evil escaping it will be impossible to trap again.”

Concerned about the potential impact of raw copies flooding the market after the December deadline, the Bavarian government gave 500,000 euros to Munich's highly respected Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ), in 2012, to help fund a critical edition that will attempt, Dr. Christian Hartmann, the historian leading the project, has said, to “defuse” Mein Kampf. 

The good intentions of the state were not enough to satisfy everyone, and Bavaria's premier, Horst Seehofer, found himself under pressure to rethink its participation. Following a trip to Israel with Knobloch, he announced that he was withdrawing funding. More outcry followed, this time from supporters of the work. Seehofer responded by withholding the government's seal of approval, but left its money to be funneled it into other IfZ research projects and replaced with funds from the institute's regular budget. IfZ will now publish the book independently.   

Asked why the government had changed its position, Hartmann says by email: “I think the state actors should answer this question by themselves. In fact, they didn't inform us on their motives when they changed their course. The state government later justified the withdrawal by stating that they didn't want to serve as 'political publisher' of a new edition of Mein Kampf."  Knobloch refers me to a December 11, 2013, story from the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in which Seehofer pointed out the difficulty of putting the government's seal on Mein Kampf after calling for a ban on Germany's far-right NPD party. 

Neil Gregor, a professor at the University of Southampton and the author of How to Read Hitler, as well as other books on the Nazi era, identifies two main fears fueling the debate about re-publishing Mein Kampf: “The first is the obvious fear that the book will become an inspiration for the far Right once again. The second is that republication will send the wrong symbolic message about contemporary Germany’s relationship to the Nazi past: that it may give the impression that the German state sees this as distant history, part of Germany’s deep past, and no longer an issue in any meaningful contemporary way.”

Since neo-Nazis have long had access to Mein Kampf, he believes that the first fear, whilst not unfounded, has been “overstated”. Hartmann, likewise, says he “wouldn't overrate the danger of Mein Kampf; the book is, in many ways, the product of a very specific historical situation and many references are not understood any more. Nevertheless, the brutal anti-Semitism in Mein Kampf demands a decisive answer.” 

Hartmann, who is a member of the German-Israelite Society, says their edition will analyse this aspect of Hitler's ideology “very, very thoroughly”.

As for what kind of message permitting republication would convey, Gregor says “one might argue . . . that it is a symbolic gesture, too - a gesture of faith in the strength of German democracy, an affirmation that [Mein Kampf] is part of a historical past to which Germany will not return.”

The expiration of Bavaria's copyright will not remove all the barriers for would-be publishers of  Mein Kampf.  “Out of respect for the feelings of Holocaust survivors and their families,” says Ludwig Unger, the press speaker for the Bavarian Ministry of Education and Science, “the State Government will utilise the existing legal framework to prevent the inappropriate dissemination of Mein Kampf after the 31.12.2015.” Simply reproducing the original text will qualify as Volksverhetzung, or “incitement of popular hatred”, explains Knobloch. “Hence one doesn't have to fear a mass publication in Germany.” What this means for the IfZ annotated edition, however, “remains partially unclear”, she says. 

Hartmann calls the situation “confusing”. “But nevertheless, it can be taken for granted that an annotated edition that critically contrasts Hitler's propaganda and half-truths with historical facts is far apart from being anything like Volksverhetzung." 

He believes that the decision to impose a block during the 50s, 60s and 70s, when many more people who lived through the Third Reich were alive, was “good and clever”. Today, though, the prohibition “seems to be an anachronism”, he suggests. “In a world without taboos, this ongoing ban could cause the wrong curiosity.”

The IfZ has already published an annotated collection of Hitler's speeches, containing many of the ideas promulgated in Mein Kampf, but the latter has accrued an almost mystical power in the decades since the war. Their edition, therefore, sets out to deconstruct and contextualise Hitler's words, using around 3,500 annotations and a detailed introduction. The scholars trace the sources – some of them newly discovered - that Hitler drew on for the development of his ideology, says Hartmann, and illustrate how the Nazi leader was the product of his time and place. “This shows, again, that Hitler was by far not the only person to be responsible for the crimes of National Socialism.”

Importantly, they underscore how Hitler shouldn't be taken at face value by exposing his many lies and false claims, as well as some of the many contradictions between his words and deeds. For example, Hitler reproaches the Weimar Republic for not doing enough for veterans of World War One. Hartmann says they show that German welfare legislation for the veterans was “exemplary”, in fact, while reminding readers that between four and five thousand traumatised veterans were murdered with gas as part of the Third Reich's euthanasia programme.

“We comment with a density and intensity that hasn't existed before regarding Mein Kampf,” he says. “The comments are designed to offer something new even to scientific specialists, but in a way that can be read and understood by a broad public . . . What we say is that we encircle Hitler's book like in a battle.”

Around 12 million copies of Mein Kampf were distributed, with all newlyweds receiving it as a wedding gift from the Nazi state from 1936. There is some dispute over whether many people actually read it – Hartmann believes it was often set aside quickly, “simply because it is very theoretical, very badly written and endlessly boring” – but should those who did have been able to see what Hitler intended for the Jews? Is the book a blueprint for the Holocaust? 

“Only partially,” says Hartmann. “What is becoming evident is the fact that Hitler was a brutal and fanatical anti-Semite. But the scientific research, meanwhile, shows that it is still a long and sometimes meandering way to Auschwitz.”

©Stephen Applebaum, 2017

Going Undercover With Sylvia: Tracing Blood

Saxon Logan at the world premiere in Israel

How did Sylvia Raphael, a beautiful middle-class South African with a Jewish father and Christian mother, become one of Mossad's most successful spies? 

What motivated her to put her life on the line for Israel, and how did she earn the trust of some of the most dangerous people in the Arab world at a time when Palestinian terrorism was expanding across the Middle East and into Europe? 

And why did an attempt to assassinate Ali Hassan Salameh - chief of operations for Black September and mastermind behind the terrorist action at the 1972 Munich Olympics that left 11 Israeli athletes dead - in Lillehammer, Norway, instead result in the murder of Ahmed Bouchikhi, the older brother of Gipsy Kings co-founder Chico Bouchikhi, leading to Sylvia's arrest, exposure and imprisonment?

A fascinating and visually arresting new documentary, Sylvia: Tracing Blood,  explores these questions by attempting to get under the skin and inside the life of Sylvia through some of the people who knew her – in some cases, like a former lover, thought they did – and weaving a thematically rich course through her world and times, haunted by the Holocaust and informed by the historic struggle of Jews to achieve safety and security.

Understanding someone who made deception her modus operandi was never going to be easy. Fortunately for the film's South African director, Saxon Logan, he was able to enlist the help of Sylvia's Norwegian widower and former lawyer, Annaeus Schjodt, who died shortly after filming, and charismatic brother David, affectionately known as Bunty, whom Logan calls her “memories keeper”. He was “so forthcoming”, the film-maker tells me on the phone from Cape Town. “And even though he admitted to a certain degree of ignorance, or lack of curiosity, he was able to really tell us the majority of the story.” 

Filming in South Africa, the UK, Norway and Israel, Logan was able to put as many of the pieces of the puzzle together as his budget and time would allow. Not that unlimited resources would've enabled him to uncover everything about Sylvia.

“She did not open up to anybody unreservedly,” he says. “She was true to her cause to the bitter end.” 

When Sylvia succumbed to leukaemia in 2005, she took her secrets to the grave. Today it's likely that only Mossad knows everything, and they're not telling. The agency helped Logan, but within limits.

“Mossad feel a huge debt of gratitude [to Sylvia], and I think that's why they cooperated in the way they did. But I was left in no uncertain terms that there would be certain stuff held back. Because, even today, other agencies can extrapolate from things she did and, perhaps, detect what they're up to in contemporary times.”

Logan is in no doubt, though, that Sylvia was exceptional in her field and devastating in her impact. “There are things that we'll never know, but it's true that she was responsible for near-enough eliminating the entire European Palestinian wing that were behind not just Munich, but many other outrages that took place.”

According to Eitan Haber, who served as Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin's media advisor at the time of what became known as the Lillehammer Affair, in the film, if people knew what Sylvia had done for them and future generations, they would “visit her grave and place flowers on it until they reach the sky.” This so moved some of those at the documentary's world premiere in Israel, that they travelled to kibbutz Ramat Hakovesh, where Sylvia's ashes are interred, to pay their respects. “It was a significant act on their part,” says Logan. “And I am sure others will visit her grave when the film is widely shown.” 

Although Sylvia was already known to Israelis, Logan is quietly critical of the way that her story has been embellished by the likes of her Mossad recruiter, Moti Kfir, and journalist Ram Oren, in their 2014 book, Sylvia Rafael: The Life and Death of a Mossad Spy. The documentary “sets certain points straight”, he says, including an anecdote about a supposedly influential visit Sylvia's family received from a paternal uncle who said he'd seen family members murdered by the SS. Despite the story being widely repeated, Bunty confirms that it is, in fact, untrue. 

Logan has some sympathy for Kfir. “I think being a former Mossad operative, he felt duty bound to be circumspect in telling her story, and then felt, or had been misled into thinking, that certain things happened that simply didn't happen.”

He suggests that Sylvia herself may have sometimes been the source. “She was a top bullshitter. She was very theatrical. We bumped into fellow scholars from her boarding school in South Africa and they remember her literally prancing down the corridors, spouting Shakespeare. She wanted to be an actress, and I think that also is key to how she was able to do what she did.”

Sylvia was born on April Fool's Day, 1937, and raised in Graaf-Reinet, in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, in her mother's religion. Her entrepreneur Jewish father was an atheist, and apparently so assimilated that he was the only Jew allowed in the Graaf-Reinet Club.

“The Afrikaners were largely antisemitic,” says Logan, “and to some of their leaders' disgrace, sympathised with the Nazis.” 

One day, Sylvia witnessed some local boys pushing a Jewish girl in a wheelbarrow and chanting, “We're going to take you to Hitler.” She was so distressed that her family sent her away to a private girls' school.

I suggest to Logan that her father's ability to thrive may have provided the future undercover spy with an early example of how to survive in a potentially hostile environment.

“Exactly that,” he agrees. “How to cope. How to get on. How to get under that little gap that's presented.” 

Sylvia moved to a kibbutz after breaking off her engagement to a South African when his drinking became a concern, following a move to London. She was a passionate believer in Israel's right to exist, and enthusiastically joined Mossad when approached.

They gave her a new identity, “Patricia Roxborough”, using a passport that its Canadian owner had unwittingly promised to an agent as they'd drifted through a Tunnel of Love, and trained her as a photojournalist. She moved to Vancouver to learn to speak French with a Canadian accent and create a plausible cover story as a freelance photographer, and then relocated to Paris, the centre of Mossad's operations in Europe.

Bunty recalls Sylvia talking about embassy parties in Switzerland where she'd pretend to be antisemitic, allowing her to get close to Arab-based anti-Zionist movements. And she was constantly dicing with death: when top Mossad spy Eli Cohen was publicly hanged after the discovery of his high-level infiltration of the Syrian regime, Sylvia took over. “In those days the Syrians would never have guessed Mossad would use a woman,” says Logan. She also became one of the first agents to penetrate the bases of the PLO in Jordan and Lebanon when Arafat was beginning his terrorist attacks.

Following the Munich massacre, Sylvia became part of the Wrath of God operation to hunt and kill members of Black September and the PLO, and is believed to have been involved in a number of assassinations. However, success turned to failure when Salameh set a trap for Mossad in Lillehammer, designed to damage the organisation's reputation for infallibility. 

Sylvia had studied Salameh closely and knew they'd been led to the wrong man. She admonished her commander to abort the mission but he sent in the “wet-workers” - Mossad's name for their hit-men – anyway, and Ahmed Bouchikhi was shot dead, in front of his pregnant wife. When Salameh heard about the murder, says Logan, “he just laughed and said, 'To think Mossad shot a pool attendant.'” 

In the film, Chico Bouchikhi describes the devastating effect of the murder on his family and how he'd hoped in vain that Israel would apologise during his mother's lifetime. Today, he promotes a message of peace and talks about forgiveness as a step towards healing. 

By contrast, Yaakov Armidror, a former major general and National Security Advisor, explains how the size, position and Jewish character of Israel mean that she can never afford to be complacent. If Israel were ever to lose one war, he says, it would be the end of the Jewish State. 

“They know that they will never be accepted within the Security Council,” says Logan, who while not Jewish is an ardent Zionist. “They know that they are up against billions of people that wouldn't really blink an eyelid if you told them that Israel had fallen, and they're surrounded by many millions that want to do just that, and they are determined that that will never happen.” 

Sylvia knew this and one of the most affecting aspects of making the film, says Logan, was seeing it dawn on Bunty that what she was really committed to was preventing a repeat of history. 

“I'm sure there were all kinds of different appendages to that particular motive,” he says, “but I think her principle motive was to ensure that what occurred in Europe would never, ever happen again.” 

Balanced, thoughtful and haunting, Sylvia: Tracing Blood is thus not only a powerful testament to the courage and skill of its mysterious heroine, but also to the strength of the Jewish people and their will to endure.

 The UK premiere of Sylvia: Tracing Blood, including a Q & A with Saxon Logan, will take place at JW3, on Sunday 7th May, in aid of the charity Habaid. For more information go to http://www.habaid.org/sylvia-tracing-blood