At first Amazon touted that with books, it would sell “the good, the bad, and the ugly.” However, the company has decided that Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf was a bridge too far. So now Amazon UK has banned sales of most editions in Britain since it violates its code of conduct.

However, if Brits want to read der Führer’s racist ranting, Amazon’s UK store will sell them a specialized German-language edition. Published in 2016, A Critical Edition includes scholarly annotations by historians. It’s huge, and it’s pricey. But when it first appeared on the German book market it caused a lot of anxiety as well, especially since it spent 35 weeks on the best-seller list.

Nevertheless, in the United States, one can still purchase an English-translation of Mein Kampf from Amazon. Both a paperback and a Kindle version are available.

Why did Amazon decide to remove the book from its UK store? Moreover, will the same thing happen in the United States?

Since the 1990’s, Jewish groups and Holocaust charities have been pushing Amazon to remove the book. But Amazon has staunchly refused to censor its book sales. Yet why censor now?

Personal collection/Photoshopped.

Amazon would not comment to Britain’s The Guardian on its reasons, although it did issue this banal statement:

“As a bookseller, we provide customers with access to a variety of viewpoints, including titles that serve an important educational role in understanding and preventing antisemitism. . . .”

Amazon’s book banning on all things Nazi — both here and abroad — began in February, when the behemoth bookseller quietly removed books by former KKK member David Duke. It also removed books by George Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party.

Amazon is able to eliminate these books because the company has become the most powerful online leviathan in the world. It takes full advantage of that power to wield control over the books that buyers might read. In fact, Amazon now controls about two-thirds of the US book market, including digital, new, and used editions. That’s a lot of influence from one company, which should alarm Americans.  So is Mein Kampf next on the chopping block?

Ironically, with Amazon Prime’s own dramatic series “The Man in the High Castle” — which features Nazis and swastikas galore — the company has cleaned up its book about the series. When it published The Man in the High Castle: Creating the Alt World in November, it eliminated swastikas and eagle crosses from the volume. Where you once saw a swastika on actor Rufus Sewell’s Nazi jacket, you now see a blue circle.

However, Amazon self-righteously explained it all away:

“We respect, in this book, the legal and ethical responsibility of not perpetuating the distribution of the symbols of oppression.”

Now let’s be clear: National Socialism was a vile curse upon the world. It violated every code of decency that classical liberalism developed in the West. Plus, it propelled the entire world into carnage that has not been seen since. National Socialism should never be honored, and it should never surface again.

However, how about Soviet socialism? Or Maoist socialism? Mao Tse-tung, in fact, murdered more people than Hitler and Stalin combined with his form of communism.

But academics and the media tend to overlook the brutal details of Stalin’s Holodomor or Mao’s Great Leap Forward. Adolph Hitler is the boogie man who must be banished from history.

Or should he? Shouldn’t we use the words of one of history’s most evil men to hopefully avoid such butchery in the future? Whatever happened to “Never again?” Never again what? Especially when so many Americans — ignorant of history — don’t even know about the Holocaust.

Featured image: personal collection.