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Hitler's Forgotten Library: The Man, His Books, and His Search for God

Atlantic, The,  May, 2003  by Timothy W. Ryback

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Did you know that today is Hitler's birthday?" the attendant said as he handed me Adolf Hitler's personal copy of Mein Kampf , a tattered red-leather volume (a special second edition issued in 1926) with the title and author's name embossed in gold on the spine. The young man, clean-cut and dressed in a sweatshirt bearing the skull and crossbones of the Curry College Rugby Football Club, explained that he knew this fact only because his sister shared a birthday with the Nazi leader.

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"You remember something like that," he said. On this particular Friday (April 20, 2001, Adolf Hitler's 112th birthday) the rare-book reading room of the Library of Congress—a high-ceilinged space elegantly appointed with brass lamps, heavy wooden tables, and thick carpet—hummed with subdued activity. At one table a heavy-set woman in a bright paisley blouse wore white gauze gloves to leaf through a fragile tome titled Histoire ...