According to sources close to the case, the lawyer, a man named Wolfgang Kleinerschmidt, has become emboldened by recent reports of Americans abusing the Koran. Mr. Kleinschmidt sees "a potential goldmine" in legal compensation for soldiers who had their "guiding texts cruelly neglected."

Mein Kampf, presently a popular text in Turkish bazaars, was Adolf Hitler's foray into literature before he attempted world domination. The book describes the author's anguish over withered German nationalism, the "growing Jewish menace," and other assorted complaints. Many soldiers in the German Army carried the book with them into battle.

According the Kleinschmidt, captured Germans were forced to watch while American soldiers "looked at the book in a menacing manner" and also "threatened it with matches."

The Brits, meanwhile, "applied a variety sordid methods to Hitler's tome." Kleinschmidt said that Germans soldiers told of a particularly gruesome act that "involved peanut butter and scissors…and Mein Kampf didn't come out of it looking pretty."

"The British were savages with the book," one former German soldier said from his home in Rio de Janeiro. "Their toilet work puts these Guantanamo amateurs to shame."