NUREMBERG

A WOKE VERSION of Adolf Hitler’s bestseller, Mein Kampf, might be available by Christmas, says a publisher who believes that the vicious tract could be made suitable for modern reading.

“The main reason we could do it now is the current rise in anti-semitism around the world, which means that many of Hitler’s sentiments can be left as is,” explains Martin B, who doesn’t want to reveal his surname. “Actually, compared to some people today, the Fuhrer’s anti-semitism sometimes seems quite mild. And of course, he was vegetarian, so there’s a plus there that’s terribly acceptable. His philosophy was National Socialism, so all we have to do is excise the national part of that and what remains is essentially a political blueprint that’s probably acceptable in large amounts of Democrat America. He ran a country with limited fossil fuels, as we all know. So an immediate plus there, don’t you think? Then there’s the drugs. For people who are mad keen to have every kind of drug made legal, Hitler is a walking advert. He was drugged up to the nines most of the time. Not to mention his snubbing of the traditional family. I mean he lived with Eva Braun right up to their last day together, when he married her for purely sentimental reasons. And they had no children. She was a modern woman, Eva, an accomplished movie maker. And, indeed, they both used Voluntary Assisted Dying, such as it was, to end their lives. So tick that box. His gender policies were supportive and protective of women – witness his championing of documentary maker Leni Riefenstahl and test pilot Hannah Reitsch – so I think we can see that he was feeling his way towards feminism, if gradually. There were obviously issues with his attitude towards gays but a large number of people in the early Nazi movement were homosexual before he had them shot, so he hadn’t completely closed that door even if the law prohibited it. A sort of don’t ask, don’t tell was common enough. As for those who ended up in the camps, well, everyone makes mistakes. And he wasn’t alone in his attitudes in those days. Look what the British did to Alan Turing. So if we take the basic text of Mein Kampf and run it through a woke AI program, I’m sure we can produce something that might be acceptable in any Christmas, or holiday, stocking. We might even improve on the rather leaden prose.”