Rare Hitler photographs set to go on sale

HUNDRED of never-seen-before photographs of Adolf Hitler are expected to fetch a six-figure sum when they go under the hammer, an auctioneer said yesterday.

The photographs, along with negatives, were taken by the Nazi leader’s personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann during the party’s rise to powers before the Second World War.

Believed to have been passed on by the photographer himself, they will go under the hammer at a sale in January.

Auctioneer Jonathan Humbert, of JP Humbert Auctioneers, said they were a previously-unseen view of Hitler during his rise to power.

“We’ve got somewhere around 800 negatives and maybe 600 stills, some from these negatives and other stills that don’t have a negative that they were developed from,” he said.

“They were all taken by Hitler’s personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, who was part of the Nazi propaganda machine.”

He said the photos are all pre-Second World War, with images captured at “party days”, including one at Nuremburg in 1934.

There are also pictures of Paul von Hindenburg, president from 1925 until his death in 1934 when Hitler took over as head of state.

“There’s also images of a meeting with Mussolini in Munich and the winter and summer Olympics of 1936 and also more sinister images of Hitler attending an SS officers training school,” Humbert said.

“It’s all effectively the Nazi Party plotting and gaining strength and all the way Henrich Hoffmann is taking up close and personal pictures.

“These are not shots from the crowd, these are amazingly high resolution for the time stills in black and white.

“They are absolutely fresh to the market, they are privately entered by a gentleman who was left them by another elderly gentleman who I understand used to live in Germany.

The pictures are due to go under the hammer at a sale at the auction house’s showroom in Towcester, Northamptonshire, on January 18.