Parachute to Berlin (1945)
Handsome First Edition of an International Correspondent's Tale of Parachute-Jumping into Berlin and Repeatedly Escaping the Nazis
Bennett, Lowell. Parachute to Berlin. New York: Vanguard, 1945.
Octavo. Hardcover. 1st Edition.
First edition of this exciting memoir about an international correspondent who was dropped into Germany from a damaged bomber and who repeatedly found himself forced to escape German captivity. American Lowell Bennett was one of a unique breed of war correspondents determined to enter war zones. When the bomber he was flying over Berlin in succumbed to enemy fire, Lowell was forced to jump into the heart of Nazi Germany. Thus began a game of cat and mouse, with the Germans (including the Gestapo) repeatedly capturing and imprisoning Lowell, only for him to escape. His experience of repeated imprisonment only ended when he was liberated by the Soviets at the end of the war. "Lowell Bennett did not write as a journalist but in the honest and human prose of the best in memoirs, a work well received in 1945 that still takes the reader on a great adventure today. The author raises blunt questions about the failure and waste of the allied air campaigns that might also be asked of the United States in Korea and Vietnam years later" (New York Journal of Books). The first edition of this book is nearly unattainable; it was finally reprinted post-2000. Book fine, dust jacket near-fine with only light rubbing and toning to extremities. An unusually handsome copy.