Germany:The shelves of German bookshops creak with hundreds of volumes on the second World War, with one notable exception: Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf(My Struggle) - the book that started it all.
The pre-war bestseller, once a standard text in German schools, has been absent since the end of the second World War, when the Allies awarded the copyright to the state of Bavaria.
It has consistently refused to reissue the book in the German language. Now a German historian has appealed to the state to allow him publish a new academic edition before 2015, 70 years after Hitler's death, when the copyright runs out and the work enters the public domain.
From that date on anyone, including neo-Nazi groups, can publish their own copies of the work.
"As long as Mein Kampfis not available in a carefully annotated edition, there will be no end to the often simple-minded speculation about what is actually in the book," said Prof Horst Möller, director of Munich's Institute for Contemporary History. "An academic edition would break the peculiar myth which surrounds Mein Kampfand demonstrate it as a work of poor quality yet effective in concoction."
Other leading historians as well as Jewish groups back the current position of the Bavarian government. The work is available online, as a book from online retailers or as a free download.
"It's easier to get a copy of Mein Kampfin Germany than a joint," said Rafael Seligmann, a commentator on Jewish affairs.
"Democracies like the US, Britain or Sweden survive without a ban. Why do we Germans not have such confidence? Are we still afraid of the brown beast in our brains?"
Hitler dictated Mein Kampfduring his imprisonment following the failed "Beer Hall Putsch" of 1923; a second volume followed in 1926. The book lays plain his political ambitions: overthrow the Treaty of Versailles, war in Europe followed by a push eastwards: "Today, Germany belongs to us, tomorrow the whole world!" The work returns time and again to the "race question", in particular the future dictator's belief in the "Jewish peril" and his "God-given mission" to combat the "eternal parasite" of international Jewry.
Hitler earned an estimated 7.6 million Reichsmarks in royalties on the book by 1945: how many of the 10 million copies in circulation were actually read is another matter, as every married couple and soldier received a free copy.