Italian newspaper criticised after giving away copies of Hitler's book

An Italian newspaper has been giving away copies of Hitler's book. Credit: Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch

A newspaper in Italy has been criticised for giving away free copies of an annotated version of Hitler's book 'Mein Kampf'.

Il Giornale, a centre-right daily newspaper owned by the family of former premier Silvio Berlusconi, distributed the Nazi leader's book with a paid supplement to Saturday's edition.

Il Giornale on Saturday started selling an eight-volume history of the Third Reich, with the annotated copy of Mein Kampf free for readers who buy the first volume.

Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Twitter that the paper's giveaway was "squalid" and expressed solidarity with Italy's Jewish community.

But Il Giornale said the decision to distribute the edition of the text, which includes critical notes by an Italian historian, aimed "to study what is evil to avoid its return."

Acknowledging the controversy in an editorial, editor-in-chief Alessandro Sallusti said nobody could suspect the move to be an apology for Nazism and the global Jewish conspiracy posited in the book, written between 1924 and 1926.