Kim Jong Un Hands Out Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' to Officials on North Korean Leader's Birthday
On his birthday this year, Kim Jong Un reportedly gave his top officials copies of Hitler's prison memoir Mein Kampf, the Washington Post reported Monday.
Handed out at his Jan. 8 birthday party, the gift was part of a larger effort by the North Korean leader to encourage military leaders to study Germany's post-WWI economic and military reconstruction. The present also follows rumors that Jong Un studied Hitler while attending school in Switzerland. Jong Un did an in-depth study of Hitler's wife in college while the head of North Korea's secret police mentioned the Nazi Gestapo in a number of political speeches, New York Post reported.
His birthday present was recently revealed among news outlets.
Foreign language books are generally banned in North Korea. However, Mein Kampf was released as a "hundred-copy book," meaning that it was printed in limited numbers so that only highest-ranking officials in North Korea would be able to see it.
"Mentioning that Hitler managed to rebuild Germany in a short time following its defeat in World War I, Kim Jong Un issued an order for the Third Reich to be studied in depth and asked that practical applications be drawn from it," a North Korean source told New Focus International, the country's news organization that sources from defectors and volunteer citizens within the country.
North Korean readers of Mein Kampf should ignore Hitler's systemized, anti-semitic ideals and instead focus on how the Natzi leader rebuilt Germany after World War I, according to a speech the dictator gave at his birthday party.
Also on his birthday this year Jong Un gave every child in North Korea candy, according to CNBC. He turned 29 on Jan. 8.
