Revealed: How an imprisoned Hitler wrote to a Mercedes dealership begging for a car loan



Adolf Hitler wrote to a Mercedez-Benz dealership while he was in jail asking for a loan or advance towards the 11/40 model he had his heart set on



He would one day control a huge chunk of the world – but in 1924 a struggling dictator-in-waiting wasn’t beyond a little bit of pleading to get what he wanted.

A letter from Adolf Hitler seeking a loan to buy a Mercedes limousine is to be auctioned in Germany next month.

It was written from his cell at Landsberg Fortress jail where he was imprisoned that year after his nascent Nazi party tried, and failed, to seize power in Munich.

In jail he wrote Mein Kampf, the blueprint for power that would make him rich. But when he wrote to Jakob Ferlin, owner of a Mercedes-Benz dealership in Munich, he had little money.

Hitler, who later owned a fleet of Mercedes cars, had his heart set on the 11/40 model which at the time cost 18,000 Reichsmarks.

‘But the hardest thing for me at the moment lies in the fact that the biggest payment for my work is not expected until the middle of December,’ he wrote in September 1924.

‘So I am compelled to ask for a loan or an advance.

‘Naturally something in the order of several thousand marks would be a big help.’

Hitler was freed from his five-year jail sentence in December 1924. But it is not known if the car dealer did business with him.

The letter was found at a flea market and authenticated by the Bavarian State Archive in Munich.

It was the copy of Hitler’s letter kept by the prison; the original went to Herr Ferlin and has been lost to history.



It is to be auctioned in Fuerth near Nuremberg in the first week of July and is expected to go for several thousand pounds.



Other documents up for sale will include prison papers which describe Hitler as: ‘mature, calm and rational. He is not expected to act against the state.’



‘He is modest and polite,’ added a note from his prison governor.



