AUTHOR DECLARES HE IMPERSONATED HITLER

NEW YORK, March 2--(UP)--One of the most fantastic of underground stories travelling around Europe--that Adolf Hitler is dead--appears in book from today with publication of "The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler."

It is anonymous, but the publishers assert that it was written by Maximilian Bauer, a soldier of fortune, who resembles Hitler and who, for that reason, was admitted into the inner Nazi circles about the time the Fuehrer came into power six years ago.

Bauer's yarn is this:

Because of his likeness to Hitler he was arrested by German police in 1933 but saved because the Nazis came into power the next day and the late Ernst Rochm was struck by the possibilities of using him later. Eventually, he says, the Nazis found four doubles for Hitler.

Bauer served as a bodyguard for the Fuehrer by wearing a wig and other-wise disguising himself but meanwhile was continually studying to impersonate Hitler.

On one occasion he made a speech following the German occupation of the Rhineland and Hitler later congratulated him on it.

The book leads up to the 1938 European crisis and to the eve of the meeting of Hitler, Chamberlain, Mussolini and Daladier at Munich. On that night, Bauer writes, Goering, Goebbels, Von Ribbentrop and others, including the author, dined together. And at that meal, he says, Hitler was poisoned with a South American drug. The poisoning was arranged by high officials within the Nazi party, he says.

When Hitler died a few minutes later, the book adds, the Nazi leaders decided to carry on with the Fuehrer's impersonators.