Eva Braun’s Photo Album, Found In Hitler Bunker, Sold at Auction
A photo album featuring candid shots of some of the most awful people ever to walk the Earth has been snapped up for $41,000 by an anonymous buyer at an auction in England.
The album, found in the bunker bedroom of Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler’s mistress, features Hitler and henchmen including Heinrich Himmler and Josef Goebbels in lighter moments, the Telegraph reports. Some of the 73 photos can be seen on the auction site, including one of Hitler relaxing in the Alps. C&T Auctioneers says the photo album was taken from the bunker as a souvenir by British wartime photographer Dixie Dean, who sold it to a collector in 1983.
Auction house owner Matthew Tredwen tells the New York Times that it is clear that the photos were taken by a member of Hitler’s inner circle. “The photographs had to be taken by someone who was very close,” he says. “All photographs of Adolf Hitler were very much controlled because obviously they did not want photographs coming out that made him look bad. They would not have been made for the general public.”
Tredwen adds that in his years of dealing in Nazi memorabilia and other military history items, he has never met anybody who actually supports Nazi ideology. “People are fascinated by how evil the Third Reich were,” he says. (There is a dispute over whether “Hitler’s personal phone” is the real thing.)