Rare photos of Eva Braun discovered, including Braun in black face
These people almost ruled the world
At first glance, these pictures are so ordinary that they could come from anyone’s dusty old family album. There are picnics and parties, pets and silly poses — all the normal things you might associate with a middle-class family on holiday.
The most photographed figure is a young woman who sunbathes, exercises by a lake, rows a boat and poses semi-nude behind an umbrella — a young woman enjoying the prime of her life. But this is no ordinary woman.
The photographs are of the notorious Eva Braun — Hitler’s consort and, for about 40 hours, his wife.
Taken from Braun’s private albums, they were confiscated by the U.S. army in 1945 and deposited with the U.S. National Archives, where they were ignored for decades.
Recently unearthed by Reinhard Schulz, collector and curator of photography, the images include an intimate shot of Braun as a small child, posing with her sister Ilse and their family cat.
There’s an extraordinary photo of Braun blacked up and dressed as American jazz singer Al Jolson, and one of her standing alongside her lover and his aides as they celebrate on New Year’s Eve 1939.
Braun’s blind loyalty to the Führer exceeded that of even his most hardened SS aides — and lasted right up until their joint suicides in his Berlin bunker in the dying days of the war.
Crazy.