Hitler: Strike A Pose

A collection of private photos showing Adolf Hitler looking like a complete tosser has been published.

The album features black and white images of the Nazi leader using expressive hand gestures and unusual poses taken by his personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann.

In one, he is seen raising his fist in the air while in another, he appears to be pointing to an imaginary audience. He is also seen leaning against a tree wearing lederhosen.

The photographs, taken in the late 1920s to show the dictator how he appeared to the German public, were later banned from being published by Hitler for being “beneath one’s dignity”.

But they were published in Hoffmann’s memoirs entitled Hitler was my Friend in the 1950s, which have now been re-issued in English.

Saturday Night Fuhrer?
"Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a Fuhrer, like a Woman scorn'd"
"I may look like a dumbass in these shorts but mein really kampfy"
"Jew talkin' to me?"

2 thoughts on “Hitler: Strike A Pose”

  1. Seems Herr Hitler was voguing long before Madonna. Speaking of Madonna, I sure hope her Israeli fans aren’t disappointed by an ill-timed attack on Iran before May 29th. I’m glad to see this fan group has kept everything in perspective.

  2. pictures 1,2 & 3 would appear to show Hitler rehearsing a speech. Those of us old enough may recall a little known Bertolt Brecht play called “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui”, in which Ui is a small-time, 1930s, hood in Cicero, Illinois, just south of Chicago, but planning to move into Chicago (“today Chicago, tomorrow the world!”). In one sequence, Ui is seeing rehearsing a speech in front of a mirror, and especially rehearsing the hand gestures, where necessary, looking at a gesture, rejecting it, and replacing it. This sequence is quite long (and just, in the end, as chilling as the one where Ui learns to goose-step).

    Most importantly, Brecht based the speech section on surviving snaps of Hitler undertaking just such a practise. Individually, he looks foolish, but added up to the finished article…he could be terrifying.

    And we should remember that the last words of the play are spoken when, after the curtain has fallen, the actor who played Ui comes out, removing his make-up, and says (referring to Hitler), effectively, don’t rejoice too much that he’s dead “because the bitch that sired him is on heat again”. Blackout.

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