Personal copy of the political manifesto of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler “Mein Kampf” was sold yesterday for $20,655 at auction in the United States. The book, which is bound in red leather, was discovered by US soldiers who liberated Munich at the end of World War II, said Alexander Historical Auctions who organized the sale. The work was bought by an American. Hitler kept the copy for personal use or as a gift to a potential admirer, said the auction house, adding that the book was estimated between $12,000 and $15,000.
The flyleaf is signed by 11 officers from a US field artillery battalion of the 45th Infantry Division, the first soldiers to liberate Munich. “From Adolf Hitlers apartment in Munich on May 2nd 1945,” wrote one officer followed by his signature and that of 10 others.
An 2015 letter from the daughter of Captain Daniel Allen of the 45th Infantry Division says that her father, who belonged to a field artillery unit, brought the book home with him at the end of the war.
Hitler wrote the manifesto whose title means “My Struggle,” in 1924, almost 10 years before coming to power, while he was in prison for attempting a coup. In this book, he writes about Nazi ideological principles which later became the basis of Nazism.
In February 2014, two rare copies of Mein Kampf signed by a young Hitler sold at auction in Los Angeles for $64,850.
Critical edition of “Mein Kampf” has about 2,000 pages, with nearly 800 pages and about 5,000 original commentary determinant of historians and other explanatory notes.
The new book is entitled “Hitler, Mein Kampf, Critical Edition.”