This was of course intentional, but you incorrectly claimed that

    > To their credit they've also relaxed a bit over the years. For example, 
    > they lifted the ban on Mein Kampf

This just never happened. No ban was ever lifted. This does not show some change in the German mindset towards being more tolerant of Nazi speech, as you insinuate. The copyright expired - that is all.

If you'd like another example where German citizens are being subjected to less censorship, the restrictions on Nazi images in video games have been somewhat lightened. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45142651

As mentioned above, the USK cannot "censor" games, it is responsible for deciding which games (or other pieces of media) are considered "harmful for the youth" (and by the way, it is a public-private partnership, not a government body). Games considered "harmful for the youth" (i.e. games that are, colloquially, "auf dem Index") may by law not be distributed or advertised to minors. They may still be imported, sold, and otherwise distributed, as long as care is taken that they are only distributed to people of age.

Because it's essentially impossible to ensure that any particular advertisement will only be seen by adults, this however means that games not approved by the USK may practically not be publicly advertised at all. Because game publishing companies have a strong incentive to be allowed to advertise their games, they will often self-censor to ensure USK approval. This is done for commercial, not legal reasons; if the companies didn't want to advertise their games, they wouldn't have to abide by USK guidelines.

It is also illegal to advertise tobacco in Germany, and it is also illegal to sell tobacco to minors. Unless you believe that this constitutes a "tobacco ban" in Germany, it is hard to argue that video games are "banned" under this law.

That said, the 2018 change in USK policy that allows video games showing anti-constitutional symbolism to still be approved as long as the message is clearly anti-nazi is still perfectly reasonable, and probably a good development, as it aligns USK policy in this regard with policy that it previously took on other media.

> This is done for commercial, not legal reasons; if the companies didn't want to advertise their games, they wouldn't have to abide by USK guidelines.

That's a ban by any reasonable standard. That's like saying that a requirement that churches be built on the moon wasn't banning churches, or a requirement that Jews who own businesses pay a 95% tax isn't a ban on Jews owning businesses. In some technical sense it's not a complete ban, but if the government says that if you do X, you face so many restrictions that you'd go broke, that's defacto a ban. It's an excuse made by people who like to pretend that they're not getting their hands dirty by literally banning something, while banning it in practice.

There's a huge difference between regulating drugs or the ad industry and censoring artistic works and Germany has a long history of censoring artistic works including video games intended for adult audiences. They can call it whatever else they want but when the people of Germany are unable to access art in its original form, if they are even able to access it at all, strictly because of what that art depicts that's censorship.

In the US we have our own problems with censorship. I've had to track down copies of video games released overseas to get uncensored versions myself. Censorship in art is a huge problem, but it's a lot more dangerous when people can't even recognize when it's happening.