The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #110836   Message #2329635
Posted By: Jack Campin
30-Apr-08 - 08:21 AM
Thread Name: BS: A Puzzle For Historians
Subject: RE: BS: A Puzzle For Historians
It has been in print in Turkey for decades, selling in large numbers and with considerable influence. It was used by the fascist MHP (Nationalist Action Party) in the 1970s - their death squads were used ny the NATO-backed military to attack the left in the years leading up to the military coup of 1980. They're one of the few parties never to have been banned in the years intervening, and are still very active. (I was offered a copy of the Turkish edition as a present by an MHP sympathizer in 1981). So it's in use there in exactly the way Hitler intended it to be.

But in Turkey other historical books about the Nazi era are not that widely available - you get nothing like the huge displays of WW2 military porn you find in the UK, for example. A properly annotated, affordable edition that set the thing in its historical context might have had a constructive role to play, simply by teaching about a period which is otherwise largely forgotten. (And the MHP's thugs would probably have tortured a few booksellers to death for displaying it).

The text is easy enough to find on the web. A Wikipedia-style annotation of it would be quicker to do than a print edition, could be made available in multiple languages more easily, and might have more effect. The Nazis hand *their* versions out for free.