Japanese Withdraws Controversial Book on Hitler

TOKYO — A Japanese author has withdrawn a book he wrote praising Adolf Hitler’s political strategies while neglecting to mention the Nazi dictator’s crimes against Jews.

“Hitler’s Election Strategy: A Bible for Sure Victory in Modern Elections” stirred debate just as the former World War II Allies were commemorating D-day, the Western offensive that led to Hitler’s defeat.

Jewish groups around the world objected that author Yoshio Ogai had portrayed Hitler in a favorable light.

Peppered with small cartoons of the Nazi dictator, the book does not mention the atrocities against Jews.

Ogai is spokesman for the Tokyo office of the opposition Liberal Democratic Party, the conservative party that ruled Japan for 38 years before being ousted last summer by a reformist coalition.

He was out of town and could not be reached, office director Nobuyuki Akiba said Wednesday.

But Akiba confirmed that Ogai had asked the publisher, Chiyoda Nagata Shobo, to withdraw the book from circulation and stop printing it. The initial run of 3,000 copies sold out at major Tokyo bookstores.

“He did not mean to say that he supported Hitler, but it was taken that way,” Akiba said. “So he decided that if it was going to cause trouble and hurt people’s feelings he should withdraw it.”

The book did not make a splash when it was first published in early May. Many Japanese have stereotyped opinions of Jews, and books purporting to expose various Jewish conspiracies have sold well in recent years.

Responding to criticism, Ogai said last week that he was “not neo-Nazi, or an admirer of Hitler. I want people to know his other sides.”

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, said it was “almost beyond belief” that such a book could come out so close to the D-day celebrations.