A Comic Book Recalls a Journalist’s Efforts to Expose the Evils of ‘Mein Kampf’

The 70-year copyright on Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” expires on Thursday in Germany. And a comic book released this month sheds light on a legal battle over the book that occurred in America in 1939. The comic, “The Book That Hitler Didn’t Want You to Read,” tells the story of how Alan Cranston — then a journalist, and years later a California senator — produced his own version of Hitler’s book, only to be sued by Hitler.

“I was aware of the efforts of young Alan Cranston to warn the free world of the dangers that Hitler represented,” said Rafael Medoff, the director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington, which produced the comic. “It seemed to me that Cranston’s story could be an effective vehicle to convey the new controversy over ‘Mein Kampf’ that would be starting after Dec. 31.”

The Cranston book is the first in a series of educational comics produced by the Wyman Institute that will focus on America’s response to the Holocaust and other genocides. Next up is “Karski’s Mission to Stop the Holocaust,” about Jan Karski, a courier for the Polish underground who gave firsthand accounts of atrocities to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and another, “Condemned by the President,” about Japanese internees and Jewish refugees.