Adolf Hitler Wanted These Photos To Be Destroyed - Here’s Why

Hitler thought that the set of photographs shown below were so embarrassing that he wanted them destroyed for being ‘beneath one’s dignity’.

But the photographer disobeyed the young Hitler - and the images offer an insight into the young politician’s energy… and his vanity.

Shown off this year by German magazine Focus, the images were captured in 1925, when Hitler had been released from prison after an attempted coup in Munich, described as the ‘Beer Hall Putsch’.

In prison, Hitler had written Mein Kampf, and in these images he is seen practising the public speaking skills which would catapult him to power.

By this stage, Hitler was already showing off his talents as an orator in beer halls - and asked his personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffman, to take pictures of his gestures so he could see which ones ‘worked’.

Hitler asked Hoffman to destroy the images - but the photographer kept them in his studio, and published them in his 1955 memoir Hitler Was My Friend.