Hitler in Lederhosen
A photo of a knobbly-kneed Adolf Hitler that he later tried to ban has been unearthed in an album taken as a souvenir by a British soldier more than 70 years ago.
The black and white snap depicts the dictator sat crossed legged on a chair wearing lederhosen and knee-high socks with his bare legs on display.
It was taken in the 1920s at a time when Hitler wanted to portray himself as a man of the people.
But after he came to power in 1933 he tried to suppress the embarrassing picture as it went against his image as a hardened, iron-fisted ruler.
The photo album was found in the former home of prominent Nazi Viktor Lutze by a British army officer who was billeted there at the end of the Second World War.
Lutze’s son, Viktor Jnr, served in the German army and the album contains a picture of him as a teenager with Hitler taken before the war.
Lutze, who was the leader of the notorious ‘Brownshirts’- the paramilitary wing of the Nazi party – died in a car crash along with his daughter Inge in Potsdam, Germany, in 1943.
In the album there are numerous family photos of Lutze with his children and wife Paula.
Other snaps show the henchman being treated as a VIP at Nazi rallies. One picture shows him quaffing a goldfish bowl-sized glass of red wine.
The photos have now come to light by the son of the army officer who spirited them out of Lutze’s old house in Bevergern in western Germany in 1945.
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