Chilling images from SS officer’s photo album reveal the Nazis’ rapid rise to power as Hitler basks in the adulation of his fanatical supporters
CHILLING early photographs of the Nazi party showing Adolf Hitler basking in the adulation of his fanatical supporters and Jews being persecuted have been unearthed.
The previously unseen images from an SS officer's photo album date from 1931 to 1935 and cover the period of the Nazis' rise to power and the first two years of the dictatorship.
The disturbing album was recovered by US Army officer Philips Parks Ramsey at the end of the Second World War and had been in his family ever since.
His direct descendants have now decided to put it up for auction and it is tipped to sell for £1,500.
In one image, Hitler and his deputy Rudolf Hess are receiving salutes from dozens of members of the Hitler Youth and civilians at a railroad station, while another image shows Hitler making a speech.
Also included in the collection are photographs of early meetings and marches by SS members, a Yule feast, a pro-Hitler campaign march and mass rallies.
The disturbing snaps capture early examples of antisemitism including protests outside Jewish stores with banners urging Germans to 'buy from Germans' and avoid 'Jew shacks'.
One photograph shows the Nazi occupation of department store Wolf-Krimmer in March 1933.
There also also snaps of SS members going through field exercises, a talk given by SS head Heinrich Himmler and a trip to the beach where the men are dressed in full uniform.
The photo album belonged to SS member Erick Brack, the brother of the notorious SS Oberfuhrer (member of parliament) Viktor Brack who organised the Nazi euthanasia programme where more than 70,000 disabled Germans and Austrians were murdered.
In total, there are 165 original photographs - which measure three inches by five inches and are laid out chronologically - in the album plus a few SS-themed postcards.
The images are housed in a cloth-covered album bearing a printed swastika on the cover.
Robert Barnum, specialist at US based Alexander Historical Auctions who are auctioning off the photo album, said: "Eric Brack's SS album was recovered by a US Army officer and translator named Phillip Parks Ramsey, as one of the multitude of items taken from Germany by Allied troops as souvenirs during the course of the war.
"The album was consigned to us by a long-time collector who regularly sends material to us to sell on their behalf.
"The main significance of the SS album lies in the unpublished photographs of Hitler, Himmler and other SS members.
"They were taken by someone who was obviously very well-placed in the SS hierarchy and was present to witness and document the organisation at a time when both the SS and the Nazi party as a whole were gaining massive amounts of influence and power in Germany.
"The juxtaposition between some of the earlier images in the album, depicting the kind of bare-bones, grass roots politicking used by the nascent NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party), and the later images featuring huge, jubilant crowds greeting Hitler and large-scale paramilitary demonstrations by the SS highlights this swift rise."
The auction takes place on February 18.
Hitler’s autobiography Mein Kampf, in which the Nazi leader laid out his warped vision for the future of Germany, is one of the most notorious books in history.
A new version of the extensive work, whose title translates as ‘My Struggle’, has become a bestseller in Germany after selling 85,000 copies since being published a year ago.