Mein Kampf Signed by Adolf Hitler to be Auctioned in Los Angeles

Copies of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf Nazi manifesto, signed by the man himself, are to be put up for sale at an online auction in Los Angeles.

The rare signed copies of the renowned work were copies given as gifts to Josef Bauer, a German SS officer during World War Two and a participant in Hitler's failed Munich Putsch in 1923.

The online auction is to take place at Nate D Sanders auction house and the bidding will begin at $20,000 (£12,000) with both expected to sell for $25,000 when the auction closes at 0300GMT Friday morning.

The Bauer books were sold for $25,000 at an auction at Bonhams in London in 2012.

Nate D Sanders, of Jewish faith, said his auction house is not afraid to sell memorabilia linked to some of history's most condemned figures.

"I think it's very heinous," Sanders said, "but it is an auction item, it is a memento, it's a piece of memorabilia, and a piece of history."

Mein Kampf, translated as "My Struggle", details Hitler's vision of a future Germany and is laced with anti-Semitism.

The work is not banned in Germany, unlike Nazi films, song and symbolism, but the book is prevented from being reprinted and resold by Bavaria, the German copyright holders.