The World's Kampf with "Mein Kampf"

According to a post by Sarah Wildman on the Latitude blog of the New York Times, in 2015, the state of Bavaria loses its copyright on the infamous novel Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler. To recap on history, let's explore the implication of this book on Germany in the decade before the outbreak of WWII. In an article entitled "How 'Mein Kampf' Changed the World", Heather Whipps breaks it down:

"[In Hitler's book,] chief among his ideas was the absolute, innate superiority of the Germanic race, which Hitler called Aryan. "Mein Kampf" singled out Jews as a source of many of Germany's ills and a threat to Aryan dominance. The Aryans had a duty to restore Germany's former glory and enlarge its territory.

"Mein Kampf" gained enormous readership in the early 1930s and became the de facto Nazi bible. Every new married couple received a free copy on their wedding day, and every soldier had one included as a part of his gear. At the outset of World War II, the book had been translated into 11 languages and sold 5 million copies."

That number has since grown to 70 million copies. What does this mean? Well, after this point, any efforts to prevent the publishing or sale of this book will be futile because it will belong to the public domain. Also, Germany's previous efforts to prevent all promotion of Nazi paraphernalia will be undermined in a huge way, with the novel "that started it all" falling outside their jurisdiction. Still, there might be actions that can be taken to further the ban on this book starting in 2015, but they would make many people around the world (even in the US) cringe, appearing to be ardent infringements on the rights of free press.

Is this a problem? It depends on how you see it. Historian Jean-Marc Dreyfus put it best when he said:

"There are those who say, oh, it's passé... But my students tell me they find it engaging. It still 'speaks' in the psychoanalytic sense of the word... It still sells."

I hope this issue can be resolved as some have proposed, by respecting the copyright's expiration, but by publishing only annotated versions of the book which outline the terrible power of the words reflected on the pages. The world (especially Germany) will have to be ready to again receive a dirty part of global history.

Regardless, this whole hullabaloo brings up an a slew of questions: what will the world be like in 2015, just a few short years away, but seventy years after the end of WWII?

I've always gone through school and life believing that this was a war that could never be forgotten, yet everyday, more and more survivors, people with direct memories of that time, are dying. If Mein Kampf goes into the public domain, will it even matter, or is the issue truly passé, like some people believe? How will the way people relate to each other and their history change when the people teaching and learning about the Holocaust weren't alive for it? When my children's children learn about WWII, they will be the child of a child of a child of a child of a Holocaust survivor. Will they even feel a connection to this part of their past like I do and like my mother does? Will WWII even be a part of the world's memory anymore?

Thoughts? Comments? I'd love to hear them!