E-readers have appetite for Mein Kampf

Digital versions of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” top the e-book bestseller list. Author and journalist Chris Faraone says that the surge in the sales is due to the fact that the people can download the digital copies and read in the “privacy of their own ipads”. There are currently six e-book versions of “Mein Kampf” whereas the print sales have diminished in years.

Faraone claims that “more than a dozen free English-language versions of Mein Kampf have been downloaded in excess of 100,000 times from the nonprofit Internet Archive alone”, writing on the website Vocativ.com. According to him, people might not want to buy Mein Kampf or display or read it in public; but like the fact that the digital versions can be accessed quietly, perused and then deleted.

As of Wednesday, two online versions ranked twelfth and fifteenth in the Politics and Current events section of the Apples iTunes book store and has been rated number one in the Propaganda & Political psychology section on Amazon. Michael Ford, President of Elite Minds, the California-based publisher who has brought out the best-selling $0.99 version of Mein Kampf, cited academic interest as a reason for the popularity of the book. The edition sits in eleventh place in Amazon.com’s World War II charts. In UK, another version retailing for 99p, tops Amazon.co.uk’s propaganda and spin chart and its fascism and Nazism chart, and also ranks second in its political science and ideology bestseller list.

Hitler dictated “Mein Kampf” to Rudolf Hess while in prison following the failed attempt of the then-fledgling Nazi party to seize power in Munich in 1923. It became the most popular book in Germany after Hitler became Chancellor in 1933 making him rich and serving as a recruiting tool for the Nazi Party. Its anti-Semitic themes and racial ideas became the blueprint for National Socialist ideology. The book was first published in turkey in 2005 selling 100, 000 copies in two months alone say guardian reports.

Infoeditor