Those who're suggesting that to reject this would constitute censorship or disrespect for 'scholarship' are missing the point. If Apple treated apps much like Amazon treated books, the presence of this app/book at the iTunes store would mean no more than the fact that Amazon sells also copies of it, including two English-language Kindle editions which can also be read on iPhones. Amazon, for all its faults, is at least consistent about its no censorship policy, when it doesn't run afoul of laws like those in Germany.

But by rejecting some apps and tagging others for their content, like it or not Apple is asserting that those who do pass muster meet some set of standards that they have set. Apple is claiming that this horrid book, in some sense responsible for tens of millions of deaths, isn't as bad as the numerous apps they've rejected. Arguing for genocide, in their scale of values, isn't as bad as VoIP over AT&T cellular was. That is why they're rightly in trouble for this app/book.

Note also Apple's rather mild rating for it: "9+ for the following: Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes." I assume that's for the passages where Hitler rants about Jews targeting young blond women for seduction. That rating does suggest that this app didn't simply slip by Apple's checkers unseen and unread. Someone who knows Spanish at least browsed through the book, noting those sexually tinged passages. That person, and thus Apple itself, were simply clueless about the real evil that Mein Kampf expresses. And given that the application has a swastika logo, it's not like the book's real theme was that well hidden.

My own take is that Apple's app examiners seem to be a rather strange mixture. There are the bean counters, who are focused on excluding anything that might threaten the revenue streams of Apple or AT&T. They recently got a smack-down over Google's application. There are the literalists, who enforce Apple's policies mechanically. Just this week MacWorld described their clash with a member of that group and his obsession with Apple's app naming policy.

And finally, there are those we might call the uber-bourgeois, who're upset by any s**-tinged content, but clueless about any other moral issues. Propriety and property seem to be the only two values they understand. Albert Speer, Hitler's armaments minister best expressed their point of view. He ran a slave labor program so brutal, some 10% of its workers died each year. He had no problem with that, but he did become upset when Hitler ordered that German factories and mines were to be destroyed before they fell into Allied hands. That, he wrote, offended his bourgeois morality. Don't destroy property and, if you cheat on your spouse, don't let the children find out about it, are the two chief values of the uber-bourgeois.

Finally, keep in mind that the evil doesn't lie in the availability of this book in German or in translation. One reason for British unpreparedness for the war was that a complete and accurate translation of it was not available in English until the late 1930s. The n**** weren't fools. They knew Hitler had revealed a bit too much about his expansionist schemes in the book and did their best to keep the British uninformed about them. The evil lies in not making clear what someone is getting when they get this book/app. In short this book, like Karl Marx's similar Das Kapital, needs to be sold with a strong warning label.

Amazon's own treatment of this book is mixed. Both Kindle apps have relatively high ratings, just over 1,000 for one and just over 3,000 for the other. Amazon does warn readers what they are getting for one of the two with a Amazon.com review that starts with, "The angry ranting of an obscure, small-party politician..." Unfortunately, the other contains nothing but the book's table of contents. Amazon is half-wrong in how they treat this book. Apple is all wrong. Both also need to be consistent (but politically incorrect) and treat communism for what is was, a evil just as murderous as Nazism. The fact that both have been tossed into history's dustbin doesn't mean that both should be branded for what they are.

--Michael W. Perry, editor of Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements that Led to Nazism and World War II

If Apple bans it, then they will be criticized for lack of free speech and people will criticize the closed nature of the app store yet again. If Apple keeps it, places like CNN will report on the offensive apps allowed into the app store (like the shake a baby one) and they'll be criticized for poor quality control. Their QC is sorta bad if they allowed the app in the first place and now it causes problems

If this book and swastika symbol are not prohibited in Spain why should Apple ban those? Especially when you can buy printed version anyway.

Also, I fail to see a lack of clarity in Apple's app submission guidelines. It is clearly stated that offensive apps are no go, however, (and that's what causing all the controversy) you may get lucky and push your piece of whatever to the store, because "offensive" is a highly subjective term. So, if you push your luck don't blame Apple when you got unlucky.