Kentish Express Ashford & District
Hitler photos fetch £34,000
Previously unseen pictures of Adolf Hitler relaxing at home and posing with crowds sold for more than £34,000 at auction – nearly twice the estimate.
The collection was sold through Ashford firm C&T Auctions at their Tunbridge Wells auction house last Wednesday.
The mystery bidder, who is only known as “European”, bagged the collection with an online bid of nearly double the guide price.
Matthew Tredwen, one of the partners at C&T Auctions, said the collection did much better than the expected pre-sale estimate of £18,500.
He said: “It was an extremely rare item. The photo album itself is not particularly uncommon in the collectors’ world but the location of where it was found made it something else.”
The collection, believed to belong to the Nazi dictator’s mistress Eva Braun, was discovered in her bedroom in the Berlin bunker by the British photographer Edward “Dixie” Dean in 1945.
He sold the images to a private collector in the 1980s and now, 72 years after the end of the war, they have been sold.
The collection of 73 images include one of a smiling Hitler posing with children who are giving the Nazi salute, and an image of him relaxing at his Berghof mountain retreat near Salzburg.
Another striking image is of him appearing to do a Charlie Chaplin-style salute to the camera, a world away from the brutality and atrocities being committed under his rule.
The pictures also show leading Nazis such as Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring climbing into a car, and propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels being saluted by crowds.
There is a chilling picture of the fanatical SS chief Heinrich Himmler smirking. He was the man who oversaw the murder of millions during the Holocaust.
Mr Dean said the bedside cabinet of Eva Braun had to be prised open by a Russian soldier with his bayonet.
Inside was perfume, underwear and the collection. It is believed she took the pictures, as she does not feature in any of them, and the album is said to still bear the scent of her perfume.
The collection also features newspaper cuttings which speculate that Braun had an affair with one of Hitler’s bodyguards, who she had photographed. There is also an obituary to Mr Dean, a photographer for both the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror.
The auction last Wednesday also sold 240 other items, including Lord of the Rings memorabilia and paintings, but the next highest price was around £2,000.