Signed copies of Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' auctioned for $64,850
Bought at more than $40,000 above asking price, two copies of Hitler's book find new home after eleven bidders fight for controversial memorabilia
Copies of Adolf Hitler's manifesto "Mein Kampf" signed by the German Nazi leader sold for $64,850 at an auction on Thursday in Los Angeles, auction house Nate D. Sanders said.
The autographed copies of the two-volume work steeped in anti-Semitism are inscribed as Christmas gifts to Josef Bauer, an officer in the German SS during World War Two and a participant in Hitler's failed Munich coup in 1923.
Eleven people bid during an online auction that ended on Thursday evening for the signed books, which were estimated to sell for between $20,000 and $25,000, the auctioneer said. The winning bid includes a buyer's premium, also known as commission fees.
Nate Sanders, owner of Nate D. Sanders Auctions in Los Angeles, says he knows he'll catch a lot of flak for putting rare 1925 and 1926 editions of the racist screed up for bid.
"But it is a piece of history. It is a very rare item," he explained.
The same Bauer books fetched $25,000 in a sale at Bonhams auction house in London in 2012.
In the two-volume "Mein Kampf" (My Struggle), Hitler lays out his vision for a resurgent Germany after World War One along with his racist National Socialist political ideology.
"Mein Kampf," unlike Nazi insignia and some Nazi films and songs, is not banned in Germany. Its German copyright has been owned by Bavaria since the end of World War Two, and the southern German state has prohibited sales and printing.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
