X-Raying Hitler

Aurora, Mo: Murphy Publishing Co, 1941. First edition. An "uncensored and unexpurgated" biography of Adolf Hitler, which paints Der Führer in a less-than-flattering light. The author's alleged source was an over-exuberant Rudolf Hess, Hitler's Deputy Führer, who spoke openly about Hitler's life in an effort to win converts among his English-speaking guests. The biography briefly describes Hitler's upbringing, his bitter rejection from the Vienna School of Arts and his stay at a derelict lodging house; his war record and subsequent service as a "tool and decoy" of the military clique in post-war Germany; his relationships with the publisher, Max Amann, and the photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann; his abnormal sex life; and the author's estimation of his mind and character. The tone of the biography is one of antipathy for Hitler and certainly reads like salacious journalism rather than historiography.

According to The Catalog of Copyright Entries, Vol. 39, No. 7 (1942), John Bond was a pseudonym for W. Stephen Bush. Bush is largely forgotten today, but from 1908 to 1916, he was a notable film lecturer and critic and served as reviewer and editor of the "The Moving Picture World," one of the first motion picture trade papers published in the U.S. By 1920 he had inexplicably disappeared from the film circuit, so it's conceivable that he, as described in the booklet's preface, made his way to Germany in 1923 as a journalist "to make a survey of post-war conditions."

Stapled wrappers (5" x 7"), 39 pp. Some toning, else Fine. Besides turning up in the Catalog of Copyright Entries, this booklet appears unrecorded. No record in OCLC, although we note a copy in the Library of Congress' "Pamphlets on fascists and fascism and anti-fascist responses. Part 3". Scarce.