Hitler at Home

September 6, 2015 4:43 AM

In the years preceding World War II, news outlets from home magazines to the New York Times ran profiles of the Nazi leader that portrayed him as a country gentleman — a man who ate vegetarian, played catch with his dogs and took post-meal strolls outside his mountain estate. These articles were often admiring — even after the horrors of the Nazi regime had begun to reveal themselves, says Despina Stratigakos, an architectural historian at the University at Buffalo. Her new book, “Hitler at Home,” will be published Sept. 29 by Yale University Press... She notes that while many historians have dismissed Hitler’s personal life as irrelevant, his private persona was in fact painstakingly constructed to further his political ends.

How media ‘fluff’ helped Hitler rise to power

Stratigakos's book, Hitler at Home, can be found on Amazon and on the Yale University Press site.
Also featured in Altas Obscura, whose writeup has a few more details on American media coverage of Hitler's home decor.

posted by Spinda (70 comments total)

More on this: The Role of Décor in Hitler’s Life at the NYT, and a Yahoo Homes article has a couple more images (kind of oddly, really – it's bizarre seeing this alongside stuff like, "11 Totally Unexpected Uses for IKEA Furniture" and "Don't Make These 7 Bedroom Design Mistakes.")
posted by taz at 5:16 AM on September 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

Invoking Hitler immediately ends any argument about home decor.

Probably confirmation bias, but I can't help comparing this with my own list of active despots and would be despots. Then I think about all the people who aren't even remotely despotic at all who get soft news puff pieces written about themselves and suspect that maybe it isn't a useful line of thinking in the modern world at all because everyone does it.

That guy who nude-wrestles bears though. That guy...
posted by Artw at 5:22 AM on September 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

it's bizarre seeing this alongside stuff like, "11 Totally Unexpected Uses for IKEA Furniture" and "Don't Make These 7 Bedroom Design Mistakes."

5 New Ways You Can Make Fun of Hitler on MetaFilter! Click to find out!
posted by Fizz at 5:25 AM on September 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

Homes & Gardens 1938 Hitler's Mountain Home
posted by robbyrobs at 5:52 AM on September 6, 2015 [10 favorites]

You know who else got fluff pieces in the media?

... wait.
posted by Naberius at 6:00 AM on September 6, 2015 [30 favorites]

It seems odd to me that these articles (and presumably the book) discuss Hitler simply having used architecture and design to project an image of himself as warm and having good taste. I'd always been under the impression that it was more about the specific taste he was broadcasting. He wanted to embody and promote a style (which no doubt he actually personally liked as well) that was distinctly, and correctly, German, harkening back to a mythic simple, fairy tale time of hearty hard-working volk, hand-hewn houses and flaxen-haired hausfrauen. Modern politicians have done the same, perhaps not with the goal of reinventing an entire society but more to resonate with a target audience: Bush, in a Stetson and big belt buckle, clearing brush on his ranch for example.
posted by Flashman at 6:13 AM on September 6, 2015 [46 favorites]

I was just thinking that, like Trump, Hitler must have seemed pretty funny to a lot of Germans in the early days. Mustache jokes instead of hair jokes. Before it stopped being funny.
posted by haricotvert at 6:17 AM on September 6, 2015 [37 favorites]

He wanted to embody and promote a style (which no doubt he actually personally liked as well) that was distinctly, and correctly, German, harkening back to a mythic simple time of hearty farmers, hand-hewn houses and flaxen-haired Hausfrauen. Modern politicians have done the same, perhaps not with the goal of reinventing an entire society but more to resonate with a target audience

*cough*
posted by Fizz at 6:19 AM on September 6, 2015 [11 favorites]

Modern politicians have done the same, perhaps not with the goal of reinventing an entire society but more to resonate with a target audience

We see individual contemporary politicians doing this all the time as part of their image management or rebranding. But I can't think of any political party or movement in the US, recent or historical, that had the Nazi's attention to design, architecture, and physical detail, from uniforms to buildings to film to the household puff pieces discussed in this FPP. There is a holistic quality to Hitler's use of this that extends far past what most politicians attempt or are even aware of.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:31 AM on September 6, 2015 [4 favorites]

We see individual contemporary politicians doing this all the time as part of their image management or rebranding.

Also, celebrities and corporations.
posted by Fizz at 6:40 AM on September 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Invoking Hitler immediately ends any argument about home decor.

I'm remodelling my bathroom at the moment, and realised that I picked a sink just like Hitler's.
posted by sobarel at 6:47 AM on September 6, 2015 [13 favorites]

Also related: The Legacy of Saddam Hussein's Architecture of Fear.
posted by Fizz at 6:55 AM on September 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

Google defeats me in trying to find similar fare for Stalin, though he too had his cribs.
posted by IndigoJones at 6:59 AM on September 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

There's a guy like Trump leading the Republican charge and it's still not acceptable to draw parallels to the mechanisms that put Hitler into power? Good luck with that.
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:05 AM on September 6, 2015 [11 favorites]

What was the deal with Communism's love of parquet flooring? I don't think I've ever been in a public building in the former USSR / Eastern Bloc that wasn't riddled with the stuff. I still shudder at the symphony of creakage that was the Museum of the Great Patriotic War in Kiev.
posted by sobarel at 7:07 AM on September 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

While the prime purpose of a free press in a democratic society is to prevent us from being duped, they just can't resist a good story that will let them sell papers or bits or whatever media they are selling.
posted by mygoditsbob at 7:12 AM on September 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

the prime purpose of a free press in a democratic society is to prevent us from being duped

According to a newspaper editor I used to know, the prime purpose of a free press is to sell six packs and four by fours.

This, just before telling his writers to put more oomph in their copy.
posted by BWA at 7:28 AM on September 6, 2015 [6 favorites]

Sounds like an excellent book.

“It was dangerous because it made him likeable,” Stratigakos said. “After reading these stories, people would feel like they knew the ‘true’ Hitler, the private man behind the Führer mask, and that maybe this person was not as bad as all of the news coming out of Europe seemed to suggest.”

This is why I try to ignore stories about the "real" politician "behind the mask," and (extending it a bit) why I.F. Stone refused to have anything to do socially with the politicians he covered. Once you become a politician, someone whose goal is to have power over other people and determine the way they are allowed to live their lives, as far as I'm concerned your "private life" ceases to be of interest. I don't care about your psychology or taste in furnishings, all I care about is how you're planning to screw people over.
posted by languagehat at 7:30 AM on September 6, 2015 [51 favorites]

Remember that Hitler was himself a failed artist. He was obsessed with architecture, design, and the arts and with defining a properly German version of all those things. He was personally involved with the design of things from buildings to uniforms. Even late into the war he wasted significant investment of the time of his top architect designing his boondoggle imperial capitol city. It is absolutely unsurprising that he would seek out the best decorators to craft the perfect image of his home life too.
posted by Bringer Tom at 7:53 AM on September 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

I was just thinking that, like Trump, Hitler must have seemed pretty funny to a lot of Germans in the early days. Mustache jokes instead of hair jokes. Before it stopped being funny.

Reiterating for the record, Hitler's toothbrush moustache was neither new nor unique to him before WWII, and would not of itself have been a figure of fun at that time.

The style first became popular in the United States in the late 19th century, from where it spread to Germany and elsewhere, reaching a height of popularity in the inter-war years . . . -- WP

After WWII, though . . .

before becoming unfashionable after World War II due to its association with Adolf Hitler. -- WP

See also:
Charlie Chaplin
Oliver Hardy
Max Fleischer
George Orwell
Charles De Gaulle
et al (including, yes, many non-Nazi German military men)

As you were.
 
posted by Herodios at 7:53 AM on September 6, 2015 [19 favorites]

As for Hitler being a joke, William Shirer spends quite a bit of ink on this sort of thing in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and it's really fascinating. Shirer lived in Germany working as a foreign radio correspondent until the start of the war, and he personally knew many of the principals and also interacted a lot with ordinary German people. One thing we really don't seem to remember well is how Hitler came across as an orator because we only have a few crappy recordings of him, but he had a reputation for being able to galvanize a crowd through the sheer force of his personality. Much of Hitler's power came from his ability to make people feel powerful and hopeful in a world that most Germans of the day felt was aligned cruelly against them. None of the riders of the 2016 clown car seem to have that gift, fortunately.
posted by Bringer Tom at 7:59 AM on September 6, 2015 [7 favorites]

Richard Herring sported a Hitler Moustache for a bit:

What gave you the idea for your show Hitler Moustache, and what was the response?

The idea came out of a Collings and Herrin podcast. I was away writing in a remote cottage and Andrew was going to come out to stay the night and do a podcast. With all the homoerotic tension that I attempt to cultivate, I thought it would be quite funny to shave down to a Freddie Mercury-style moustache and see how he responded.

We ended up discussing what would be the weirdest moustache to have, and decided it would be a Hitler one. This got me thinking about why this moustache is no longer allowed and what would happen if I grew one. I had some ideas for material about racism and prejudice and this seemed the obvious hook for the show.

The strangest reaction was the lack of one. I'd expected to get into trouble, or at least get a lot of comments, but I was ignored by the vast majority of people. Although a white van man congratulated me and told me I was a man after his own heart, which was the most sinister and unpleasant moment of the year.
posted by Artw at 8:03 AM on September 6, 2015 [12 favorites]

Ron Mael. For some reason.
posted by ostranenie at 8:03 AM on September 6, 2015

Slight derail: Hitler's toothbrush moustache

Hmm, interesting, I've always heard it termed as a "box" moustache, this is the first instance I've ever heard it described as a "toothbrush".

Also, I always assumed that Chaplin adopted that moustache as a type of parody of Hitler. He was very much against the politics of Hitler and Nazism.
posted by Fizz at 8:07 AM on September 6, 2015

I was just thinking that, like Trump, Hitler

The internet needs a term for the urgent need to mention Trump in any discussion of Hitler.

Godwigging?
posted by chavenet at 8:07 AM on September 6, 2015 [12 favorites]

I still remember when Huckabee was on the Daily Show and Wait, Wait as the "fun" politician because he liked rock music or whatever BS. Ugh.
posted by kmz at 8:09 AM on September 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

I always assumed that Chaplin adopted that moustache as a type of parody of Hitler.
posted by Wolof at 8:19 AM on September 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

A little googling and wiki and I have my answer:

Charlie Chaplin was one of the most famous wearers of the toothbrush moustache, first adopting it sometime after 1914 for his Mack Sennett silent comedies. In a 1933 interview, Chaplin said he added the moustache to his costume because it had a comical appearance and was small enough so as not to hide his expression. Adolf Hitler was a fan of Chaplin, but "there is no evidence (though some speculation) that Hitler modeled his 'stache on [Charlie Chaplin]." Chaplin took advantage of the noted similarity between his on-screen appearance and that of Hitler, such as in his 1940 film The Great Dictator, where he wore the moustache as part of two new characters that parodied Hitler

posted by Fizz at 8:23 AM on September 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

In advance of doing some reading - how much of this particular aesthetic was actually Hitler's doing, and how much was Goebbels', who is always understood was the prime mover behind the aesthetic of the Nazi state itself?
posted by cromagnon at 8:24 AM on September 6, 2015

Yeah, tough to see the parallels between Trump and Hitler. Trump is just a megalomaniacal demagogue and bully who scapegoats minorities and promises to make a failed nation great again. And Hitler didn't get into real estate until AFTER he was in power.
posted by haricotvert at 8:25 AM on September 6, 2015 [36 favorites]

Yeah, tough to see the parallels between Trump and Hitler.

You know who else was voted into power....oh shit....
posted by Fizz at 8:42 AM on September 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

For a look at Hitler and his being an artist / aesthetician see Frederic Spotts's book Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics. (Guardian review) Quite an interesting read. When I was walking out of the Art Academy in Vienna, I had this weird thought that WWII was caused by art teachers. Hitler was rejected from being a student there because though he could render buildings pretty well, he couldn't draw people.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:47 AM on September 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

This condition described persists till this very day and is one that the Onion bullseyes, as usual.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 9:01 AM on September 6, 2015 [8 favorites]

It seems appropriate to refer to the media as the national fluffer.
posted by Alter Cocker at 9:06 AM on September 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

From the Atlas Obscura article: People actually wrote in, taking Life magazine to task for treating Hitler sarcastically," says Stratigakos. "One of the letters I remember reading even says something along the lines of, 'you know, Hitler's house is far more tasteful than Roosevelt's.'

You know what they say...never read the letters to the editor.
posted by mubba at 9:13 AM on September 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

*hmmm, let's put the dining room under the motor pool and install big windows that open, Troost?
posted by clavdivs at 9:54 AM on September 6, 2015

sobarel: I'm remodelling my bathroom at the moment, and realised that I picked a sink just like Hitler's.

As long as you don't prop a framed portrait of him on the ledge of tub, like in the upper left of that photo, visitors are unlikely to notice.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:58 AM on September 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

What was the deal with Communism's love of parquet flooring? I don't think I've ever been in a public building in the former USSR / Eastern Bloc that wasn't riddled with the stuff. I still shudder at the symphony of creakage that was the Museum of the Great Patriotic War in Kiev.

Seems to have started with Peter the Great:

"The foreign architects and masters invited to Russia by Peter the Great brought with them the latest artistic ideas and technologies. This concerned wooden patterned floors in particular, which were just coming into fashion. "
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:04 PM on September 6, 2015

As long as you don't prop a framed portrait of him on the ledge of tub, like in the upper left of that photo, visitors are unlikely to notice

For the record, I wouldn't be surprised if that was moved there for the staging of the photo. On the other hand, I highly support multiple soap dishes and the other wall-mounted holders-of-things. A good idea is a good idea.
posted by rhizome at 12:20 PM on September 6, 2015

> Hmm, interesting, I've always heard it termed as a "box" moustache, this is the first instance I've ever heard it described as a "toothbrush".

Interesting indeed— I've always heard it called a "toothbrush" mustache, and this is the first time I've seen it called a "box." I wouldn't even have known what that term meant.

> You know who else was voted into power

I hate to be the "Actually" guy, but since it's reasonably important: Actually, Hitler was not voted into power, he was appointed.
posted by languagehat at 12:22 PM on September 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

I hate to be the "Actually" guy, but since it's reasonably important: Actually, Hitler was not voted into power, he was appointed.

Well, he was the leader of the party that won a plurality in the Reichstag, so his appointment made a certain democratic sense. Which is the real danger of parliamentary systems: it's easier for a party supported by only, say, 35% of the voters to gain executive power.
posted by dis_integration at 12:27 PM on September 6, 2015

Metafilter: The 'Actually" guy

(Sorry Hat, I had to)
posted by Herodios at 1:29 PM on September 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

Hitler mustache is also the male equivalent of the Brazilian. :-P
posted by brujita at 1:43 PM on September 6, 2015

In my high school art class, we had three or four huge stacks of back issues of National Geographic -- the photos were excellent reference work for anatomical sketches, lighting studies, etc. One day I was going through the issues toward the bottom of one stack and discovered the February, 1937 issue, the cover story of which was titled 'Changing Berlin.' The entire article was about the great work Hitler was doing to turn the country around, complete with gorgeous National Geographic photos of Nazi parades and swastika banners covering the city. There was, IIRC, a smidgen of a paragraph noting that some world leaders had expressed concern about Hitler's more nationalistic/antisemitic rhetoric, but overall the article was extremely glowing and positive and absolutely gave me the willies.
posted by shakespeherian at 1:49 PM on September 6, 2015 [12 favorites]

Addendum: And after googling, it appears that the author of the article was likely on Goebbel's payroll.
posted by shakespeherian at 1:50 PM on September 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

I don't see any argument in the article that the media fluff actually helped Hitler rise to power. It is possible that the sympathetic presentation gave people a soft spot. It's also possible it didn't.

Maybe it just reflected, rather than caused, readers' failure to grasp how bad the Third Reich was. I think that's more plausible.
posted by andrewpcone at 1:54 PM on September 6, 2015

Readers of National Geographic must have been thoroughly confused when they ended up on the Jews' side at the end of the war.
posted by ethansr at 1:57 PM on September 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Hitler mustache is also the male equivalent of the Brazilian. :-P

Hence the1978 movie.
posted by Artw at 1:59 PM on September 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

That second picture in the Atlas Obscura story: "Can't sleep - Hitler will eat me..."
posted by lagomorphius at 2:01 PM on September 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

When I was a kid I bought a gigantic pile of old Reader's Digests at a garage sale and plowed through them all. I was surprised at the, if not exactly positive, neutral tone taken toward Hitler on the run-up to WWII. The Pennsylvania Turnpike was a big deal for a while, and there were articles pointing out connections between it and "Hitler's Autobahn."
posted by lagomorphius at 2:04 PM on September 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

I was surprised at the, if not exactly positive, neutral tone taken toward Hitler on the run-up to WWII.

Well, as clearly awful as Hitler and the Nazi party were from the start, they hadn't committed their WWII atrocities yet. We can cut the American public of 1938 some slack for not knowing what was coming.
posted by 3urypteris at 2:30 PM on September 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Well, there was a good chunk of America that wanted to stay out of the war once it started, or join in on the German side - see Lindbergh et al.

Post-war "premature anti-fascist" basically became a code word for commie or otherwise suspect.

The UK was not exactly lacking in people who admired that nice Mr. Hitler until quite late on as well.
posted by Artw at 2:47 PM on September 6, 2015

Was Lindbergh et al really a "good chunk of America?" I'm no scholar, but while prewar anti-Semitism was a much bigger thing than is typically acknowledged, joining the German side is basically a new one to me.
posted by rhizome at 2:51 PM on September 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

you know that guy who was kicked out of the Ukraine? I really liked his home. And his home petting zoo. And his wooden boat for pirate parties in the garden! Like michael jackson, moderated by being an actual grownup
posted by maiamaia at 3:38 PM on September 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

i mean i actually bookmarked images of his home online with tags like 'ideal home'
posted by maiamaia at 3:39 PM on September 6, 2015

in 2000 all the UK newspapers published centenary selections, viz a pull-out black and white 8-page supplement, usually a decade per week, and where i was working i read other people's left over ones, and there were so many small articles from the 1930s about torture camps and concern about them, that if you were the sort of person who reads something besides the headlines or gets your news somewhere besides the works canteen, you'd have known if you wanted to
posted by maiamaia at 3:42 PM on September 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

clarify: the papers published excerpts from their own archives of their paper, not from other sources
posted by maiamaia at 3:43 PM on September 6, 2015

Any talk of Hitler and aesthetics should mention Leni Riefenstahls's Triumph of the Will. For some reason, I had never bothered to take a look at it, until a couple of days ago. even though it has probably been on YouTube forever. It is chillingly warmly beautiful. Check it out. It is one of the two films most notorious for using cinematic excellence in the service of egregious propaganda (the other one being The Birth of a Nation). Check it out.
posted by kozad at 3:43 PM on September 6, 2015 [4 favorites]

+1 to Triumph of the Will. Beautiful film.

Note: I got marked down a grade at university for a paper I wrote on the film...because I just wrote about the cinematography, direction, composition of shots, and did not remark that it was "propaganda."
posted by CrowGoat at 4:24 PM on September 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

Here's a timeline of the major Nazi pre-Holocaust moves from Hitler's appointment in 1933 that were for the most part widely reported and known. His overseas sympathisers, of whom there were many, may have downplayed or tacitly approved some or all of these, but what was going on was open, and open-ended.

Had the man not decided to kick off his expansionism when he did - fortunately,too early - who knows when anybody would have cried 'enough'?
posted by Devonian at 4:25 PM on September 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

Antisemitism in North America in the 1930s
posted by Artw at 4:45 PM on September 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

I got marked down a grade at university for a paper I wrote on the film...

'Triumph of The Will' is a centerpiece of Classic Cinema History because of it's aesthetic and technical uniqueness, and also because of it's context. This film is actually a distinctive test-case in the nature of aesthetics relating to the importance of context. If you leave any mention of the context out, then your grade should be... "?".
posted by ovvl at 5:02 PM on September 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

You know who else got fluff pieces in the media ?

Martha Stewart ?
posted by y2karl at 5:21 PM on September 6, 2015

Note: I got marked down a grade at university for a paper I wrote on the film...because I just wrote about the cinematography, direction, composition of shots, and did not remark that it was "propaganda."

"THE END. P.S. HITLER WAS BAD"
posted by rhizome at 5:46 PM on September 6, 2015 [8 favorites]

FWIW I've been doing some reading recently on journalists covering Europe for US & UK newspapers from central Europe between the world wars.

Some time after Hitler came to power, a couple of them, John Gunther & Mike Fodor, made a little visit to Hitler's hometown in Austria and poked around asking questions of his various shirttail relatives, schoolteachers, acquaintances, and such. As simple and basic a journalistic exercise as this seems, no one had got around to doing it before.

The resulting article was so unflattering of Hitler, and so at odds with the official, carefully constructed version of his background and history, that both Gunther and Fodor ended up on a Gestapo death list.

That wasn't such a big deal for Gunther, who was an American citizen and left Austria long before the Anschluss. But Fodor was a Hungarian citizen at that time, living permanently in Vienna. He barely escaped Austria for Czechoslovakia as the Nazi troops rolled in to Austria. Then just a few months later he was forced to flee from Czechoslovakia as well, and then just 8 months later from Belgium and France. (He ended up in the U.S. for the duration of the war.)

Reading about all this, I had only a vague idea of what the official propaganda version of Hitler's background, history, and home life would have been, and why Hitler would have considered it so important as to personally ensure that a couple of journalists made it onto the Gestapo list just for doing a bit of basic research that put the lie to it. Of course, this article fills it in exactly. Really interesting.

FYI John Gunther is the author of the still-oft-read book, Death Be Not Proud. He made his name with the 1934 book Inside Europe, which consisted in large part of intimate portraits of the main personalities that were driving the continent towards WWII--Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini. The Hitler portrait was based on these early visits to the Braunau relatives and acquaintances and other similar fact-finding he and other journalists had done during the 1920s and early 30s.
posted by flug at 7:37 PM on September 6, 2015 [21 favorites]

Whoa! This is a tangent, but I took an art history class from Despina Stratigakos about fifteen years ago! I don't remember too much about it, but I enjoyed it a lot. It's really cool to see her name pop up in an FPP, and the book sounds fascinating (though I'm reluctant to buy it because I'd feel really weird owning a book called "Hitler at Home").

She also helped create Architect Barbie. Neato.
posted by Metroid Baby at 9:52 PM on September 6, 2015 [4 favorites]

the cover story of which was titled 'Changing Berlin.'

Time makes fools of us all. Is, before children destroyed all my spare time and mental capacity, a pretty avid reader of nat geo, and I still recall the glowing piece a few years ago about Assad heralding a new age of enlightenment and prosperity in Syria.
posted by smoke at 5:18 AM on September 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

Afaik, that toothbrush moustache became quite popular during WW1, as men who couldn't quite completely part with their moustaches shaved off the sides so that the gas masks would fit better.

Also, I always assumed that Chaplin adopted that moustache as a type of parody of Hitler. He was very much against the politics of Hitler and Nazism

Chaplin had that moustache long before Hitler, who at the time of WW1 looked like this.

If I remember well, Chaplin actually was a bit annoyed that this funny little madman had copied his trademark 'stache.

As for the bathroom photo, that's Lee Miller, American war correspondent, who put that photo there as a kind of throphy.

But yes, the Nazis were quite well in public relations. At that time, "propaganda" was used quite unpolitically in the meaning of advertisement, so the Nazis were the first party to have a PR department, Goebbels realising the importance of mass media.

a little visit to Hitler's hometown in Austria and poked around asking questions of his various shirttail relatives

For what is known about Hitler's family, it's a total mess, even with some suggestions of incest. Today one would call them probably white trash. So no wonder they made the death list...
posted by ojemine at 7:18 AM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

When I was a kid I bought a gigantic pile of old Reader's Digests at a garage sale and plowed through them all. I was surprised at the, if not exactly positive, neutral tone taken toward Hitler on the run-up to WWII.

I remember a stack of old RD's at the back of our classroom, including pre-war! There was an article about the wonders of ersatz, and how self-reliant and strong the Germans were becoming. Even at age 8, that was pretty chilling.
posted by Mogur at 7:23 AM on September 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

For those curious about the photo of Lee Miller in Hitler's bathtub, mentioned a couple of times upthread, here is some of the backstory, more photos from that day, and many more photos by and of Miller--including a photo of Miller in Eva Braun's bed. These are sort of the 'after' photos of the Hitler at Home series . . .

And much more about Lee Miller here--she lived a pretty incredible life.
posted by flug at 2:54 PM on September 7, 2015 [1 favorite]