Heinrich Hoffmann (1885 – 1957) served as Adolf Hitler’s official photographer from when Hitler took control of the Nazi party in 1921 until his death in 1945. Hoffmann estimates he took over half a million photographs of Hitler over the course of his career. His portraits were the most significant source of Nazi propaganda materials published over the course of close to 25 years, everything from postcards, posters, magazines, postage stamps and picture books. Click on eachtheme below to see a complete photo albumdevoted to that particular event or topic.
It was 89 years ago today that Adolf Hitler launched his Night of the Long Knives, purging the SA and ordering the execution of his close friend Ernst Röhm. Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, jealous of Hitler’s close relationship with the SA leader, had used the Gestapo and the SS to create false evidence of treason by Röhm, and he was arrested personally by Hitler on 30 June 1934. He was executed the very next day, ending a 15 year friendship that had begun when their paths had first crossed in Munich on 7 March 1919 at a German Worker’s Party (DAP) meeting. Like Hitler, Röhm had been assigned by the Army to investigate radical political groups to see if they posed any threat to the state. They became instant friends due to their shared hatred of communism, and both joined the DAP after having spied on their meetings. Röhm was able to use his army contacts to attain weapons for the DAP, and paired with Hitler’s oratory gift, this duo swiftly brought the Nazi Party into full power.
Adolf Hitler, Julius Schaub and Ernst Roehm at the 1932 Gautag of Gau Essen on 30 October 1932. Adolf Hitler spoke at the Westfalenhalle in Dortmund on this day as part of the 1932 election campaign. After the National Socialists seized power, the Westfalenhalle was often used for propaganda purposes. Adolf Hitler with Ernst Roehm circa 1931.Ernst Rohm talks with Adolf Hitler at the SA Aufmarsch Gruppe Nordmark rally in Kiel on 7 May 1933.Adolf Hitler goes to the tribune with his staff at the SA Aufmarsch Gruppe Nordmark rally in Kiel on 7 May 1933. Behind him: Chief of Staff Ernst Röhm.
Set of 3 photographs taken of Adolf Hitler’s speech at the SA Aufmarsch Gruppe Nordmark rally in Kiel on 7 May 1933.
Reichsparteitag Rally 1933 in Nuremberg, Germany – Reich Minister Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler and commander of the SA (Sturmabteilung) Ernst Röhm attend the party congress in Luitpold Hall at the Nazi party rally grounds.Prinz Auwi stands behind Adolf Hitler and Ernst Roehm as he reviews notes in the Luitpoldhalle at the Nuremberg Congress in September of 1933.Adolf Hitler visits an SA Reichsführerschule with Ernst Roehm. The Tyr rune, the black arrow on a red background seen on the wall in top right of the photo (also known as the battle rune), was an insignia of the NSDAP’s Reichsfuhrer schools. It was also worn as a badge of loyalty by graduates of the Reichsfuhrer Schools.Adolf Hitler and Ernst Roehm visit Die Reichsführerschule im Schloss Harnekop in 1934. Schloss Harnekop was destroyed along with many other manors by the communists around 1946. Hitler and Roehm at the NSDAP Reichsparteitage Nürnberg 1933. Hitler and Roehm at the NSDAP Reichsparteitage Nürnberg 1933. Hitler and Roehm at the NSDAP Reichsparteitage Nürnberg on 3 September 1933. Hitler and Roehm at the NSDAP Reichsparteitage Nürnberg on 3 September 1933. Hitler and Roehm at the NSDAP Reichsparteitage Nürnberg on 3 September 1933.Adolf Hitler with Hermann Goering and Ernst Roehm at the Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, 30 November 1932.Adolf Hitler with Hermann Goering and Ernst Roehm at the Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, 30 November 1932.Adolf Hitler with Ernst Röhm and SA-Standartenführer Heinrich Philippi.Adolf Hitler gives a speech to the SA while the SA Chief of Staff Ernst Röhm stands behind him in Berlin’s Sportpalast on 8 April 1933.Amazing photograph of Adolf Hitler giving a speech at Berlin’s Sportpalast on 8 April 1933, Ernst Roehm stands in the background to the far right.Adolf Hitler and Ernst Röhm at the closing of the festival at the Hall of Liberation in Kelheim on 22 October 1933. The Hall of Liberation stands at the top of Mount Michelsberg in the Bavarian town of Kelheim. The Befreiungshalle is a magnificent 18-sided rotunda which was completed in 1863 by the renowned German neoclassical architect Leo von Klenze.Adolf Hitler and Ernst Röhm in Kelheim on 22 October 1933. Adolf Hitler and Ernst Röhm at the closing of the festival at the Hall of Liberation in Kelheim.Adolf Hitler gives a speech at the Befreiungshalle in Kelheim on 22 October 1933. The Befreiungshalle or ‘Hall of Liberation’ is a stunning neoclassical rotunda sitting atop Mount Michelsberg in the southern German town of Kelheim. It was completed in 1863 and commemorates Germany’s victory over Napoleon in the 1813-15 Wars of Liberation.Postcard showing Adolf Hitler at the Sachsentreffen Gauparteitag Leipzig (regional party congress for Saxony) held in Leipzig on 16 July 1933. Ernst Roehm stands with Hitler in front of saluting soldiers at Leipzig’s Völkerschlachtdenkmal (Monument to the Battle of the Nations) during the Horst Wessel Lied (anthem of the NSDAP). Hitler delivered a speech this day to 140,000 men of the SA and the Stahlhelm.On September 24 in 1933, 30,000 people paraded on the Maschwiesen in front of the New Town Hall in Hanover for Stahlhelmtag. Adolf Hitler personally attended the event. “Der Stahlhelm” was incorporated into the SA shortly after this event. Der Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten (German: ‘The Steel Helmet, League of Front-Line Soldiers’), commonly known as Der Stahlhelm (‘The Steel Helmet’), was a German WWI veteran organization that existed from 1918 to 1935.Photograph taken on the ‘Stahlhelm-Tag’ in Hanover on 24 September 1933. Adolf Hitler is among the honored guests at the Reich leaders meeting in the town hall, On the right aside is the Federal leader Franz Seldte and the leader of NS Motor Corps (NSKK) Adolf Huehnlein, behind left: SA Chief of Staff Ernst Roehm, Hitler’s personal adjutant SS officer Julius Schaub and the chief SA Leader in Hanover Viktor Lutze – 24.09.1933 – Photographer: Presse-Illustrationen Heinrich Hoffmann – Published by: ‘Berliner Montagspost’ 25.09.1933 Vintage property of ullstein bild “Adolf Hitler with SA Chief of Staff Ernst Röhm among the audience at a concert organized by the SS in the Berlin Sportpalast on 31 January 1934.
Bonus Photos:
These are not Heinrich Hoffmann photos but very interesting to place into perspective on this timeline. The first one below was taken on the day right before the “Roehm Purge”, where Hitler had flown up to Essen to be a witness to the wedding of Josef Terboven & Ilse Stahland. The second photo is taken at the end of the three day murder marathon when Hitler flies to meet President Hindenburg at his estate in East Prussia, having fabricated a story that Roehm was planning a coup against him in order to justify the mass slaughter. An ailing President Hindenburg bought into the entire tale and congratulated Hitler on the efficiency with which he acted against the ‘traitor’ Roehm and the ‘threat’ of the SA to the German government.
Adolf Hitler on the day before the disempowerment of the SA, as a witness to the bride and future wife of Josef Terboven, Ilse Stahl (former secretary of Joseph Goebbels), in the Essen Cathedral Church on 29 June 1934.
(*I have had the above photograph in my collection for ages and could finally place it into some context here. It is an absolutely wonderful picture – especially for daydreaming purposes – countless hours of contented bliss are somehow captured and contained in just this one captivating snapshot!)
Adolf Hitler on the Marienburg airfield in East Prussia on 3 July 1934, in the background is Hitler’s Junkers Ju 52 airplane. His plan is to meet with Reich President Paul von Hindenburg at his Neudeck estate to explain his successful suppression of the “Roehm Putsch”. Heinrich Hoffmann is third from the right.
I love history and have always been infatuated with the design and style of the 1920’s. Unfortunately I can’t time travel back to this era, so I live vicariously through books, movies and photos.
Noooooooo 😭😭😭😭😭 This is devastating!!! I look at her site every single day and get so many fantastic photos and inspiration there – this is a tragedy I wonder if WordPress is taking down AH related sites or if she just needed a break and will restore it later??? I’m crushed 🥺
Many people had reached out to her over the years but she said she couldn’t give out her real name or email address due to her job, certainly understandable given the sensitivity of this subject. I believe she was on Reddit though, I will try really hard to track her down!!
I have been up all night fretting about Putschgirl and grieving the loss of her website, this is such a tremendous blow to our community. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to figure out a way to reach out to her, as her other accounts also appear to have been removed. More than anything I just hope she is okay. I would look at her site every morning for inspiration, I would even guess that 1 in 5 photos on here were from her invaluable resource. It’s like a library burned down, I know she had put over 35 years of research out there for all of us to enjoy. Right now you can at least type in adolfhitler33.wordpress.com with quotes and then click on images in Google and at least see thumbnail photos. I don’t know how much longer that will work though 😢
Another sleepless night, I keep checking Putschgirl’s website hoping that it’s been restored, she also had the most accurate dates and facts to be found out there, correcting all the errors that had sometimes been circulating for years. All of the photos on this post taken at the Hall of Liberation in Kelheim were hers, rare photos that she had tracked down and probably can’t be found anywhere else now. Her photo collection literally should have been donated to a museum, and all of her decades of research, this is a travesty.
Well, this is awkward. She deleted her blog because neo-Nazis were constantly posting links to her pages on hate speech forums like Incels, Neets, and Looksmax. Some people must have mass-reported the WordPress and got it taken down, or she got a visit from the feds supervising those sites. I know, as I am a neo-Nazi, and happen to be very handsome. For hate mail or confessions of love, you may contact me on Discord. 😘
Thank you so very much for letting me know what happened to her site, that is beyond unfortunate and makes me angry she had to pay the price for other people’s indiscretion. I am not a neo-Nazi and neither was she, we just happen to be part of a unique group of women that have an interest and physical attraction to this particular historical figure but wholeheartedly reject his views and deeds. I do hope she will be able to share her immense knowledge and collection with the world again in the future, it is an invaluable resource for historians and scholars and a shame any of it was used for nefarious purposes, but the internet is a place where we all should have the right to free speech, and I hope this was more an act of her own choice due to her own value system and not an act of forced censorship.
I wish I had saved that along with all her other invaluable information 😭 but unfortunately I took it all for granted that it would be there forever, and I have forgotten the name of the shampoo and the soap too (I remember it was pine scented 💚). A small ray of joy in my day starting this week though is a lady from Taiwan has started posting some extremely rare Hitler pics on DeviantArt. Please check them out, she posts several each day and I’m starting to feature some on my ‘Hitler Pic of the Day’ as I find out more information about them: https://www.deviantart.com/ah18891945
I kept checking my watch list all day yesterday I didn’t realize it was totally gone, I can barely get through a day without her posts. Why in the world did they do that – she never violated any of their rules – I suppose mine will be next 😩
Yeah they already banned 4 of my other friends on there in a mass purge a couple weeks ago, so I’ve been expecting (and now won’t be shocked) for mine to be next.
I’ll definitely let you know, I noticed the people that pay don’t ever get banned but I’m not going to subscribe to DeviantArt since I pay here. Be sure to follow my daily posts here to fill in this terrible void!!!
THANK YOU 🙏 Also I just posted 2 wonderful screenshots that I found in my photo collection from Putschgirl’s website that I’m so very grateful to still have. I wish I had more!! https://hitler-pics.com/hitler-pic-of-the-day/
Hey check this out!! The Birkenwasser lead has led me to an entire article (in Swedish) with all the great details that Putschgirl had about Hitler’s morning routine, just plug it in to Google translate… now I’ll try to find the packaging next! 😃
“No staff assisted him during the precise morning ritual. He bathed every day and washed himself with Steckenpferd-Lilienmilch soap. The shaving was always done with two razors and in two rounds, first a rough shave and then a fine shave. The punctual toilet took him a good twenty minutes and ended with application of a Pfeilring skin cream and a bath with Dralles Birkenwasser hair lotion to keep his parting of the hair in place.”
I haven’t had any luck finding that particular packaging for Hitler’s shampoo yet but I found the EXACT quote that was on Putschgirl’s site came from this book, which apparently contains illustrations, but it isn’t available on Kindle or else I’d buy it to see if the images are also included. It also mentions his pine needle scented bath water, *sigh* Hitler must have smelled REALLY nice 😊
“Living with Hitler: Compelling recollections of Hitler’s Personal Staff”
by Karl Wilhelm Krause
“The brand of his soap was Steckenpferd-Lilienmilch, the brand of his shaving cream was Peri and the brand of his skin cream was Pfeilring. His hair lotion was called Dralles Birkenwasser. At one point Hitler changed his hair lotion, but then returned to the old brand. He used to put spruce-needle-scented tablets into his bath.”
😂😅 Also I just found this shampoo ad for a different brand but it certainly looks like what I remember. And I came across Hitler’s shaving mug from his Munich apartment, custom made for him in 1932 and it recently sold at auction for $17,000!
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Heinrich Hoffmann Photo Gallery 