“So rarely have so many millions of people longed with such ruthlessness for the death of one man” – The American magazine TIME conclusively reporting (after rumors circulated regarding his fate) – Hitler is dead – May 7, 1945. On the cover a portrait of Hitler with an X in red painted across his face, by American illustrator Boris Artzybasheff. Early reports on the horrors of the Nazis in the death camps as discovered by the Allied forces liberating the camps. One of the most important issues of the iconic TIME magazine ever published.
The title page article reads:
“One dictator lay dead in the public square of Milan, his head on the breast of his dead mistress, his body cursed and spat upon…as Radio Hamburg reported last week. For him too the curtain had rung down. The European war was over, with force firmly alongside the winners, and the defeated were stripped of all honor…”. Hitler committed suicide a week before this publication, on April 30, 1945. The article discusses at length the rumors swirling around President Truman in previous days regarding what secret he held about Hitler’s fate.
In an extensive article about Hitler himself is written:
“Fate knocked at the door last week for Europe’s two fascist dictators. Mussolini, shot in the back and through the head by his partisan executioners, lay dead in Milan. Adolf Hitler had been buried, dead or alive, in the rubble of his collapsing Third Reich. Whether or not he had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage (as reported from Stockholm), or had “fallen in his command post at the Reich chancellery” (as reported by the Hamburg radio, which said that he had been succeeded as Führer by Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz), or was a prisoner of Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Hitler as a political force had been expunged. If he were indeed dead, the hope of most of mankind had been realized. For seldom had so many millions of people hoped so implacably for the death of one man….His war of absolute extermination against non-German humanity ended in absolute defeat. Around him the Third Reich, destined to last 1000 years, sank to embers as the flames merged above its ruins cities. The historic collapse of what had been Europe’s most terrifying state resounded in the death rattles of dying men…”. The article discusses at length Hitler’s rise and fall, and also the horrors revealed to the Allies with the liberation of Dachau concentration camp, and the shock that seized Allied soldiers in their first encounters with survivors, learning firsthand all that was done there.
The title page illustrator – Boris Artzybasheff [1899-1965] was best known for his magazine illustration art. He illustrated major American periodicals like Life, Fortune, and Time. Artzybasheff illustrated no less than 219 Time covers from 1942 to 1966, including portraits of Dmitri Shostakovich (July 20, 1942), Louis Armstrong (February 21, 1949) and Dave Brubeck (November 8, 1954). Due to the pioneering designs of this era it is referred to as the “Golden Age of Time Covers”.
Complete issue. 105 p. Rare copy without a subscription label(!). In the bottom right corner of the last page is a paper reinforcement. Very good condition.
