Hitler Was My Friend

Heinrich Hoffmann was the photographer to kings, princes, and the glitterati of the first half of the 20th Century. His archive of images ran into the millions and he grew to be rich and moderately famous. An assistant in London to Emil Otto Hoppé, the undisputed leader of pictorial portraiture in Europe at the time, Hoffmann returned to Germany, progressed through the tumult of WWI into the chaos of the Weimar, and there he came into contact with an idealist with a growing following—Adolf Hitler. As official ‘court’ photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann played a critical role in the painstaking cultivation of Hitler’s public image and the glorification of the Third Reich. However, his influence stretched far beyond the realm of propaganda: not only was he present during many of the key moments in the history of the Third Reich, he was also a close, personal friend of the Führer, with exclusive and intimate access to Hitler’s inner circle and to the man himself. It was Hoffmann who introduced Hitler to Eva Braun, his studio assistant. It was also Hoffmann with whom Hitler was on a trip from Munich to Hamburg when the Führer received word that his beloved niece, Geli Raubal had committed suicide. Hoffmann took over two million photographs of Hitler and published several books, including The Hitler Nobody Knows (1933). At the end of the war, Hoffmann was arrested by the U.S. military, who seized his photographic archive, and was sentenced to imprisonment for Nazi profiteering. These memoirs were first published in English in 1955, four years after his release from prison, and represent a crucial eyewitness source for the historian and general reader alike.