Nazi Salvage

I KNEW HITLER--Kurt G. W. Ludecke --Scribner ($3.75).

In the harassed early days when Kurt Ludecke was about the only Nazi who had plenty of spending money, his good cronies Hitler and other future Nazi big shots called him "Der Amerikaner." This nickname came from his familiarity with the U. S., his smart clothes, wrist watch, nervy wit. He was, said Hitler, half-facetiously refusing him permission to make soapbox speeches, ''too much of a swell.'' Later, when Nazi officials had limousines and champagne, the nickname still stuck--but with a shadier meaning, derived partly from Ludecke's too thoughtful awareness of U. S. anti-Nazi opinion. "A strange bird," Hitler now said, "a good head, but a dangerous brother!"

As Hitler's confidential agent. Kurt Ludecke managed the first meeting between Hitler and Mussolini, headed the first Nazi propaganda missions abroad, the Nazi press bureau in Washington, and in I Knew Hitler now recalls the late and living Nazi leaders from the days when they could barely afford paste for posters. Into his 814-page confessions Author Ludecke dumps an amazing store of uncloseted skeletons and dirty Nazi linen. He writes in English, easily, with no accent, frequent wit. His story is the most amende and grimly absorbing Nazi confession that has yet appeared in English.

Like Trotsky (also a U. S. resident in his day). Ludecke still believes in the Idea; his disillusionment is with the Leader. "Surrendering my being" to Hitler in 1922, Author Ludecke (who had just cleaned up on smart business deals with Soviet Russia) for some time could not find anything about Hitler to criticize except his sloppiness. his frightful hard collars, his heavy dandruff, a habit of munching a sausage during important conferences, for which he was always late. A first hint that his hero possessed deeper faults was when Ludecke found out. by painful experience, that Hitler abandoned comrades who got themselves in jail. When Hitler was imprisoned after the 1923 ''Beer Hall Putsch," Ludecke was sent on a begging tour of the U. S., where he negotiated -- unsuccessfully -- with Henry Ford, the Ku Klux Klan, small fry from coast to coast. On a second trip--this time to escape the still more savage intrigues of his comrades-- he hit on the idea of an "American folkic program," to be headed by Flyer Lindbergh, spread the good word about Hitler but got little money. In Detroit he married a plain, sensible librarian.

Back in Germany, Ludecke did his aggressive best to keep Hitler out of bad company (Goring, Goebbels, Hindenburg, the industrialists), thought Roehm and Strasser the likely ones to help him. This proved a bad guess, and in 1933 Ludecke found himself in disfavor. On the day that Ludecke reached Manhattan, having escaped after eight months in a concentration camp as "Hitler's personal prisoner." he read the headlines announcing the Blood Purge. The shock left him rocking precariously on the pavement. But he had salvaged his life and a profitable store of Hitlerian anecdotes.

On the public criticism of his stormtroopers' sex life said the Realmleader: ''I'd a lot rather my good SA men took the pretty women than that some fat-bellied moneybag should have them." On Roehm's noisome notoriety: "Ridiculous! I love Richard Wagner's music -- must I close my ears to it because he was a pederast?" On Ludecke: "You'd make a good ambassador--you have the equipment for it. and you know how to take the women." On the rest of the world: "I don't care what they think and write about me abroad."

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