Description
The first edition of I Knew Hitler: The Story of a Nazi Who Escaped The Blood Purge by Kurt G.W. Ludecke, in the publisher’s scarce dust jacket.
Octavo, xiv, [2], 814pp, [2]. Brown cloth, title stamped in silver on spine and front cover. Swastica stamped in blind on cover. The first printing, with “Scribner’s A” on the copyright page. Top edge dyed pink. Light rubbing to tips of spine, some offsetting to endpapers, solid text block, a near fine example. Complete with frontispiece portrait of Hitler, and nine illustrated plates. In the publisher’s scarce first state dust jacket, $3.75 on front flap, archival tissue repairs to rear hinge, a few closed tears, light sunning to spine, a very good example.
I Knew Hitler by Kurt Lüdecke, his memoir published in 1937, provides one of the first intimate profiles of the early Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler himself. The New York Times characterized the book as “a historical document” and “indispensable” to people wishing to understand the rise of fascism in Germany. Historians have been split on the reliability of Ludecke’s account, noting that it should be read with “extreme caution.” Ludecke escaped to America in 1933, after briefly being sent to a concentration camp by Hitler. He returned to Germany after the war and died in 1960. This memoir was released in London the following year by Jerrolds Publishers, Limited.
