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Goebbels Book Banned for Extremism

Goebbels, Reich minister for propaganda in Nazi Germany, awarding a Hitler Youth with the Iron Cross in 1945.

Moscow's Basmanny District Court has banned the sale of a semiautobiographical novel by fascist ideologist Joseph Goebbels after ruling that the book offers justifications of Nazism.

The court on Wednesday ordered the Justice Ministry to put the 1929 book, titled "Michael: A German Fate In Diary Notes," on the federal list of extremist materials, Interfax reported.

The book, which was being sold at an unknown number of bookstores around the city, is both autobiographical and a tribute to Goebbels' friend Richard Flisges who fought in World War I.

A criminal case has been opened in connection with the book's publication and circulation on charges of inciting ethnic hatred, which carry a maximum term of two years in prison.

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