A leading historian wants 'Mein Kampf' to be republished in Germany. Copyright issues have kept it off the shelves since World War II, but in 2015 it will enter the public domain. Then, anyone will be allowed to print it -- including neo-Nazis.

A Munich historian has called for it to be republished in Germany -- as a pre-emptive strike against any neo-Nazis who might want to abuse the text for their own fell purposes.

Horst Möller, director of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, would like to see a "Mein Kampf" redux in the form of an academic edition with comprehensive footnotes. "As long as 'Mein Kampf' is not available in a carefully annotated edition, there will be no end to the oft simple-minded speculation about what is actually in the book," Möller said in an interview published Monday in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "An academic edition could break the peculiar myth which surrounds 'Mein Kampf.'"

Möller said he has repeatedly asked the Bavarian Finance Ministry, which controls the copyright, for permission to produce a scholarly edition, but has always been turned down. The Bavarian government has in the past taken legal action against attempts to publish the book in other countries, such as in Sweden in 1992 and in Poland in 2005.