Hitler has only got one...

Hitler - he only had one ball, you know, wrote his infamous Mein Kampf while imprisoned and now the work is nearing the end of its copyright, and anti-fascists claim publication of the book in Germany is the best way to prevent neo-Nazi groups using the book to its own ends.

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES


''Mein Kampf'' in Germany? It sounds like the ultimate taboo.

But a group of German historians is lobbying to do just that, arguing that it's necessary to get an authoritative annotated edition ready for bookshops by the time the copyright runs out in 2015, opening the way for neo-Nazi groups to publish their own versions.

The memoir has been under a de facto publishing ban in Germany since the end of World War II, with the government body that holds the rights refusing to let anybody print it.

Bavaria's Finance Ministry has rejected proposals by Munich's Institute for Contemporary History to publish the tome, but there has been growing support for the idea. This week, the state's science minister emerged as an energetic backer of printing a critical edition.

''Once Bavaria's copyright expires, there is the danger of charlatans and neo-Nazis appropriating this infamous book for themselves,'' Wolfgang Heubisch said Thursday.

Edith Raim, a historian at the Munich institute, envisions a thorough, academic presentation that places Hitler's work in historical context. She says that would be the best defense against those who might want to use the book to advance racist or anti-Semitic agendas.

Raim noted that ''if someone really wants to get a copy of the book, then he can do so anyway, for example over the Internet.''

Though widely available in the English-speaking world, the book has never been reprinted in Germany since World War II. While possession is not illegal, resale of old copies is tightly regulated, essentially limited to research purposes.

But German copyright law dictates that any author's work enters the public domain 70 years after his or her death. In Hitler's case, that is just over five years away: the Nazi dictator killed himself in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945.

After World War II, the Allies agreed to hand the rights to ''Mein Kampf'' over to the Bavarian state government.

The Munich historians tried to initiate a similar project two years ago, but the Bavarian Finance Ministry was categorically opposed.

While its position may be softening somewhat, it still isn't keen and says it hopes publication of ''Mein Kampf'' can be prevented beyond 2015 under laws against incitement to hatred. It argues that holding back the book is matter of respect for the victims of the Holocaust.