The tech giant was punished by a Russian court for refusing to remove ‘Mein Kampf’ from its Apple Books application

A Russian court has ordered Apple to pay an 800,000 ruble ($8,915) fine for refusing to remove Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ from its Apple Books application, Russia’s TASS news agency reported on Tuesday.

The verdict was handed down after a closed-door hearing at the Tagansky District Court of Moscow. Apple requested that the case be heard in private in order to safeguard trade secrets, TASS noted.

Written in 1924 while the future Nazi dictator was imprisoned in Bavaria, ‘Mein Kampf’ chronicles Hitler’s experience of the First World War and his disillusionment with the postwar Weimar Republic. In the book, Hitler outlines his belief in the supremacy of the Germanic race and attributes Europe’s ills to the Jewish people. 

The distribution of ‘Mein Kampf’ was outlawed in Russia in 2010, after a court deemed it extremist. However, it was still available to Russian readers via Apple Books. 

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Apple pays 1.2bn ruble fine in Russia

Tuesday’s ruling came a day after Russia’s Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) announced that Apple had paid a 1.2 billion ruble ($13.5 million) fine for breaching Russian antitrust laws. 

According to the FAS, Apple broke these laws in July 2022 by banning app developers from informing customers about purchase options outside its App Store. 

Apple also found itself before the Tagansky District Court last August, when it was fined 400,000 rubles ($4,200) for failing to remove podcasts that contained false information on Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, as well as information that was “aimed at involving minors in illegal activities in order to destabilize the political situation in the Russian Federation.”