3rd Reich - Life Magazine's Lost Pictures

dekuda

For those too young to know and those too old to forget!

These pictures were taken by a Life photographer between 1939 and 1940 in Berlin and were lost for over 50 years because the American photographer disappeared at the beginning of the war along with his Roliflex camera.

Shown here are the originals (Used at that time in the production of magazines). The majority are 6" X 9". They were found by a nurse in a Berlin hospital, who kept them put away during all these years. After her death her daughter returned them to the current editors, who retain the copyrights to Life Magazine, which has not been published since the early '70s
http://sz0016.ev.mail.comcast.net/service/home/~/RarePhotos3

eReichRevue.pps?auth=co&loc=en_US&id=125801&part=2

dekuda

Sorry, I was having trouble with the pictures slideshow. Clink link below and and click "Download PPS Slideshow" and open. Click on pictures.They are amazing pictures.

http://www.emailjokez.com/more/46104_3rd-Reich--Life-Magazines-Lost-Pictures.htm

messiah

Wow! Thanks dekuda, those pics are amazing.

John30_30

Dear God. Mass insanity.

shack

Lasareath wrote:

BTW - the hot girl in the photo with Hitler was his niece Uli Geller.
He had an affair with her and when she got preggers, he shot her and it was made to look like suicide.

Not according to Life. Here is a screen shot of a similar picture and the caption from the Life.com website stating the woman is Gertrud Forster.



The picture from the slideshow.



The neice you may be referring to is Angelika ("Geli") Raubal.

Geli Raubal, the daughter of Leo Raubal and Angela Raubal, was born in Linz on 4th June, 1908. When Adolf Hitler rented a house in Obersalzberg he asked his half-sister, Angela Raubal, now a widow, to be his housekeeper. She agreed and in August 1928 brought Geli with her to stay with Hitler.

Hitler, who had now turned forty, became infatuated with Geli and rumours soon spread that he was having an affair with his young niece. Hitler became extremely possessive and Emil Maurice, his chauffeur, who also showed interest in Geli, was sacked.

The couple lived together for over two years. The relationship with Geli was stormy and they began to accuse each other of being unfaithful. Geli was particularly concerned about Eva Braun, a seventeen-year-old girl who Hitler took for rides in his Mercedes car.

Geli also complained about the way Hitler controlled her life. On September 8, 1931, Hitler left for Hamburg after having a blazing row with Geli over her desire to spend some time in Vienna. Hitler was heard to shout at Geli as he was about to get into his car: "For the last time, no!" After he left Geli shot herself through the heart with a revolver.

When he heard the news Hitler threatened to take his own life but was talked out of it by senior members of the **** Party. One consequence of Geli's suicide was that Hitler became a vegetarian. He claimed that meat now reminded him of Geli's corpse.

Rumours about Geli's death spread quickly amongst Hitler's enemies. It was said that Geli had been badly beaten up by Hitler before she shot herself. Another story involved Geli committing suicide because she was expecting Hitler's child. Some people claimed she was murdered by Heinrich Himmler because she was threatening to blackmail Hitler. Little evidence has been provided to support these suggestions and the reasons for her death remain a mystery.

shack

Enjoying photography as I do, I have been a huge fan of Life photography for quite some time...so I was familiar with their site. I had never seen the story behind the slideshow that the OP posed. Again...According to Life.com...the story is not accurate. Those photos are by Hugo Jaeger. The story behind them is just as good as the OPs...just not quite the same.

Hugo Jaeger: Photographer to Hitler

Between 1936 and 1945, German photographer Hugo Jaeger was granted unprecedented access to Adolf Hitler, traveling and chronicling, in color, the Fuhrer and his confidants at small gatherings, public events, and, quite often, in private moments.

Jaeger's story -- and the story of how LIFE came to own his photographs of Hitler -- is nothing short of astonishing. In 1945, when the Allies were making their final push toward Munich, Jaeger found himself face to face with six American soldiers in a small town west of the city. During a search of the house where Jaeger was staying, the Americans found a leather suitcase in which Jaeger had hidden thousands of color photo transparencies. He knew he would be arrested (or worse) if the Americans discovered his film and his close connection to Hitler. He could never have imagined what happened next.

The American soldiers threw open the suitcase that held the Hitler images. Inside, they found a bottle of cognac that Jaeger had placed atop the transparencies. Elated, the soldiers proceeded to share the bottle with Jaeger and the owner of the house. The suitcase was forgotten.

After the Americans left, Jaeger packed the transparencies into 12 glass jars and buried them on the outskirts of town. In the years following the war, Jaeger occasionally returned to his multiple caches, digging them up, repacking, and reburying them. He finally retrieved the collection for good in 1955 -- 2,000 transparencies, all of them, amazingly, still in good shape -- stored them in a bank vault, and in 1965 sold them to LIFE. To date, only a fraction of the Jaeger collection has been published.

Here is the link to some of the Hugo Jaeger photos on Life.com. Many of the same photos are in both slideshows. I'm pretty sure the Life version of how they obtained the photos is the correct one.

http://www.life.com/image/first/in-gallery/27022/adolf-hitler-up-close

hearingimpared

You know, looking at those pictures one can see where a normal decent human being could be lured into the mania and mass insanity that was the Third Reich!!!

If that madman could have used his incredible powers of persuasion and organization for the betterment of mankind perhaps this world we be a lot more peaceful.

dekuda

Thanks Shack for clarifying things and adding to the story. Laereath, that is fantastic info that you were able to get on those sites. Thanks!It was amazing the quality and how close he was able to get to take these pictures. I agree hearinimpaired,the power he had and he used it for evil:( what a shame!

Bobsama

dekuda wrote: »

Thanks Shack for clarifying things and adding to the story. Laereath, that is fantastic info that you were able to get on those sites. Thanks!It was amazing the quality and how close he was able to get to take these pictures. I agree hearinimpaired,the power he had and he used it for evil:( what a shame!

Anyone with power could have used it to better their society. Unfortunately, one of his rallying points was the removal of all Jews. It's easier to consolidate power when there's a scapegoat, it seems.

hearingimpared

Bobsama wrote: »

Anyone with power could have used it to better their society. Unfortunately, one of his rallying points was the removal of all Jews. It's easier to consolidate power when there's a scapegoat, it seems.

Last night I watched, "The Making of Adolf Hitler" on the History International Channel. It was fascinating. One of the things that really blew me away was in his younger years during WWI and for years thereafter, he admired Jews and did a lot of socializing with them. He even was seeing a Jewish girl. It all changed when he realized that the one sure way to climb up the political ladder in Germany and Austria-Hungary was to adopt and promote anti-semitism. Once he started he twisted mind caused him to believe his own hype about the Jews and made it into a mania in which the **** just gobbled up.

His experience in WWI made him see human beings and the death of human beings as nothing more than, and I paraphrase "Here today, gone tomorrow" which made is heart ice cold when it came to the lives of his followers, soldiers, enimies and victims.

He was the epitome of evil. He was a lucking **** too. He survived over 40 assassination attempts all by some really freaky circumstances and stroke of luck. He used those attempts to prove to the Germans that "Providence" was looking after him and that he truly was the messiah.

John30_30

hearingimpared wrote: »

Last night I watched, "The Making of Adolf Hitler" on the History International Channel. It was fascinating. One of the things that really blew me away was in his younger years during WWI and for years thereafter, he admired Jews and did a lot of socializing with them. He even was seeing a Jewish girl. It all changed when he realized that the one sure way to climb up the political ladder in Germany and Austria-Hungary was to adopt and promote anti-semitism. Once he started he twisted mind caused him to believe his own hype about the Jews and made it into a mania in which the **** just gobbled up.

I never read or heard any of that. I know the racism card fit neatly into the mythos of the evolved Aryan people, which he and some others cobbled up with old Teutonic myths, Wagnerian mythic operas, etc. into a Manifest Destiny propaganda, much of which was borrowed from America.
The "resettlement" play was from both the American removal of the Indians, Soviet removal of ethnic groups, the Turks, etc.

The big reason all that even appealed to the German people was the drastic level of reparation punishment, and total disarmament imposed on Germany by France and England.
If my history studies recall correctly, Woodrow Wilson strongly opposed that type of vindictiveness, but he was overruled by the Allied nations which had suffered the most drastically from the war. He may have also had his stroke around then.
The Germans were left with a broken economy that we have no concept of. They felt betrayed by their leaders, by the banks, by everyone. And then came the World Depression, brought on almost exclusively by the U.S. Congress' refusal to prop up Wall Street banks in 1929-1930.
Imagine the depression rolled up with 9/11 just going on non-stop for decades.
They were ripe pickin's for an insane dictator guy who promised them that they were being persecuted unjustly ( true enough), the Chosen Children ( Teutonic myths & German philosophers slightly edited), and the Promised Land was right over there --> (Poland, etc.)




I've got an anecdote (I'll try to fill out later if there's any interest) about a German guy who was a 13 year old Hitler Youth kid in Berlin as it was being bombed into rubble. He later emigrated to Canada, lthen came down here a spell in the 80's, and worked for me for a week before I had to let him go. He was batshit crazy, and having lived through what he did, I can see why.

Robnet Meldner

The description of the source of these photos is either a mistake or a deliberate hoax. Granted, they are interesting (and fairly rare) color photographs, but they are taken all around Germany (Berchtesgaden, Nuremburg, etc.) not just Berlin, and some of the photos date probably as early as 1934. Many of them have been previously published in Germany in the last 10-20 years. I know of no "american photographer" who "disappeared" in Germany, this sounds like bunk, though I would be glad to be disproved.

shack

Robnet Meldner wrote:

The description of the source of these photos is either a mistake or a deliberate hoax. Granted, they are interesting (and fairly rare) color photographs, but they are taken all around Germany (Berchtesgaden, Nuremburg, etc.) not just Berlin, and some of the photos date probably as early as 1934. Many of them have been previously published in Germany in the last 10-20 years. I know of no "american photographer" who "disappeared" in Germany, this sounds like bunk, though I would be glad to be disproved.

If you had bothered to read post #9 it would have told you exactly where the photos came from. Follow the link to Life.com and you will see those photographs under Hugo Jaeger's credit.

dekuda

Robnet Meldner wrote: »

The description of the source of these photos is either a mistake or a deliberate hoax. Granted, they are interesting (and fairly rare) color photographs, but they are taken all around Germany (Berchtesgaden, Nuremburg, etc.) not just Berlin, and some of the photos date probably as early as 1934. Many of them have been previously published in Germany in the last 10-20 years. I know of no "american photographer" who "disappeared" in Germany, this sounds like bunk, though I would be glad to be disproved.

Needless to say that the the story I received may have been incorrect and was corrected by skack.I posted this because of the quality of the pictures and to enable us to get a look inside .There were many of us including myself that have never seen these pictures before and I just wanted to share them and share history. I have already learned alot of history from Shack and lasareath just from this thread. Robert, welcome to CP. Read all posts in a thread before making a comment. This has been my mistake in the past. Remember,we learn from history to pray that it will not happen again!

bsoko2

Have we really learned from history? If we had, then the world would be a better place.

hearingimpared

bsoko2 wrote: »

Have we really learned from history? If we had, then the world would be a better place.

You said a mouth full Brother!!!

dekuda

bsoko2 wrote: »

Have we really learned from history? If we had, then the world would be a better place.

That is the 64 million dollar question! I do not know. But I grew up during the cold war in the 50's where people were thinking about their own bomb shelters and then the cuban missile crisis among other thinks during the volatile 60's. I know things nowadays are not much better especially after 9/11. But I remember my parents and many other parents back in the 50's and 60's fearing a WWIII with the bear.

dekuda

And has anybody heard this that Hitler may have descended from Jew or Africans?:eek:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20014645-503543.html

hearingimpared

dekuda wrote: »

That is the 64 million dollar question! I do not know. But I grew up during the cold war in the 50's where people were thinking about their own bomb shelters and then the cuban missile crisis among other thinks during the volatile 60's. I know things nowadays are not much better especially after 9/11. But I remember my parents and many other parents back in the 50's and 60's fearing a WWIII with the bear.

LOL! I bought a house in 1979 an old Polish fellow had built. It was a Cape Cod with a deep bomb shelter fully stocked with canned goods and had lead sandwiched between cinder blocks and concrete w/metal mesh. It was at least 4' below my basement and had a reinforced ceiling.

Actually it was pretty cool.