Germany’s association of teachers has said an annotated edition of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf should be taught in senior high school to help “inoculate” teenagers against political extremism. The Nazi leader’s antisemitic diatribe has not been printed in Germany since the end of the second world war, but an annotated and critical edition is due to be published next year.

The rights to the book have been held for 70 years by the state of Bavaria, which has refused to allow reprints, but the copyright runs out at the end of 2015. German authorities still plan to prosecute publishers of unedited reprints on charges of inciting racial hatred.

However, Munich’s Institute of Contemporary History plans to publish Hitler, Mein Kampf: A Critical Edition in January, which adds context to the hateful rant with historical commentary in 3,500 annotations.

As reported in the online edition of business newspaper Handelsblatt, the teachers’ association proposed that selected passages from the book should be taught to students aged 16 and over. Educators could not ignore the inflammatory text anyway, said the association’s head Josef Kraus, citing the lure of the forbidden for young people. Instead, the propaganda pamphlet should enter the curriculum and be presented “by savvy history and politics teachers”, as that could help “inoculate adolescents against political extremism”.

Prominent German Jewish community leader Charlotte Knobloch opposed the idea, telling the newspaper that using the “profoundly anti-Jewish diatribe” as teaching material would be irresponsible.



The educational policy spokesman for the centre-left Social Democrats, lawmaker Ernst Dieter Rossmann, supported the teachers’ body. “Mein Kampf is a terrible and monstrous book,” he told the Handelsblatt. “To historically unmask this antisemitic, dehumanising polemical pamphlet and to explain the propaganda mechanism through appropriately qualified teachers is a task of modern education.”

In times of rising rightwing populism, teaching humanist values and democratic principles is indispensable, he argued. “A critical analysis of Mein Kampf – this antithesis of humanity, freedom and openness to the world – can strengthen resistance against these temptations and dangers.”