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The Return of Mein Kampf and the Crisis of Bourgeois Democracy: Fascism, Historical Memory, and the Political Economy of Reaction
In 2016, when Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf reappeared on Germany’s bestseller charts after the Bavarian state’s copyright expired, the German political scene responded with pride and complacency. The annotated edition by the Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) was celebrated as a democratic milestone, seen as an educational achievement that would help the public engage with the origins of National Socialism under expert guidance. The book’s commercial success was viewed not as a sign of political risk but as a sign of civic maturity—suggesting Germans were now prepared to read Hitler “critically.”