Above you see a rare book cover from Australia’s Horwitz Company for Jim Kent’s Gestapo Atrocity, an effort that falls broadly into a category of sleaze fiction (and cinema) sometimes called “nazisploitation.” Kent was prolific in this area, and in the realm of war sleaze in general, writing such evocatively titled books as Butchers of Vilna, Officer’s Love Slaves, Women of Landau, and Women of Stalingrad. He also wrote as Thane Docket and Cleve Banner. The rear cover of Gestapo Atrocity succinctly supplies the set-up, and you can read that below. By the way, we’re kidding about that “conduct unbecoming a publisher” crack in the subhead. We just needed something to put there and that was all we could think of. Horwitz published mounds of World War II fiction, nazisploitation being a subset, and all of it sold well to an eager Aussie public. We don’t think it would sell very well today, but you never know—a competent writer and good marketing can put anything over. Gestapo Atrocity was published in 1971, and the art is by Col Cameron.
1980—John Lennon Killed
Ex-Beatle John Lennon is shot four times in the back and killed by Mark David Chapman in front of The Dakota apartment building in New York City. Chapman had been stalking Lennon since October, and earlier that evening Lennon had autographed a copy of his album Double Fantasy for him.