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The two journalists and authors that published this rare Nazi photo book, Dr. Otto Kriegk and Alfred-Ingemar Berndt, both worked for Dr. Joseph Goebbels at the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda.

Berndt's career was especially interesting, Deputy of Reichspressechef der NSDAP Otto Dietrich in 1933, in charge of the Press Department at the Nazi Propaganda Ministry, and after volunteering for Wehrmacht duty he fought in France in 1940 and became Erwin Rommel's aide-de-camp in North Africa (and with Dr. Goebbels is widely credited and being one of the creators of the Rommel 'Desert Fox' myth which the British loved).

Wir erleben die Befreiung der Saar (How we Experienced the Liberation of the Saar Region) covers the important historical events surrounding the reunification of the Saarland with Hitler's Nazi Germany in 1935. After an introduction by the publishers, the book contains six chapters written by six different well-known authors.

Dr. Otto Kriegk wrote the background history about the period of 1919 - 1934 in the Saarland (Treaty of Versailles and the Saar being part of France), Hanns Manfred Grosser wrote about the population of the region, diplomat Verena Gräfin Erda Rödern covered the non-Germans living in the area, Karl Bartz wrote about the plan for how to get the region back from France, Karl Mages wrote about the 'battle', and Alfred-Ingemar Berndt wrote about the results of the 9 January 1935 referendum and victory.

Following 82 pages of text, the 6-1/8 x 9 inch soft cover book has 50 pages with 75 photos, 6 illustrations and a map showing the Saar, its largest cities, and French fortifications on its western borders. The photos are unique to this book and show historic buildings in the Saar, coals industries, scenery, the border, border crossings, men of the British Occupation Forces, Hitler's commissioner for the Saar Joseph Bürckel, Gauleiter Bürckel's right-hand man Jakob Pirro, the day of the Saar Plebiscite, citizens of the Saar welcoming back returning Volksgenossen who had left their homeland, counting election ballots, the ballot commission (made up of people from Sweden, Switzerland, the US, and Holland, no Germans) and jubilation after the results of the elections became public: 90% of voters opted for reunification with Nazi Germany (9% voted for the status quo as a League of Nations mandate territory and less than half of 1% opting for unification with France).

Photos show streets in different cities and towns in the Saarland decorated with tens of thousands of swastika flags, Hitler during a radio address to the people of the Saar from Berchtesgaden, and the population celebrating their reunification with Hitler's Germany: Deutsch ist die Saar. Six pages have illustrated charts showing Saarland statistics about population, industries and agriculture.

Wir erleben die Befreiung der Saar is dedicated to SA-Gruppenführer Wilhelm Weiss, who in 1935 was deputy editor-in-chief of the the Völkischer Beobachter, the official newspaper of the NSDAP and in charge of the content of the extremely anti-Jewish magazine Die Brennessel, and main editor at the Central Publishing House of the NSDAP, Franz Eher.

This very rare 82 year old book has the blue label of an SS archive on its spine (shown above next to the cover photo of the book). On the front flyleaf is an additional book property stamp of the Schulungsamt der Waffen-SS with its archive number as well as a stamp of the Alfred Rosenberg charity book drive that raised money for the Wehrmacht. This is a very rare book that the Allies decided needed to be destroyed at the end of World War II. We have done an intensive search of the internet and failed to find a single example of this book for sale anywhere in the world, and only a couple of examples in very large library collections. It is that rare.

The book is complete and in good, used condition with dozens of rare images not found elsewhere. No offensive odor.