Hitler’s Propaganda Pilgrimage

The famous image of Hitler in Paris has become one of the most iconic images of the Second World War. However, Hitler only spent a few hours in Paris before heading to Flanders to revisit the sites of the battlefields where he had served during the Great War. He was on a propaganda mission to publicize his own war service and a full photographic record of Hitler’s visits to France and Flanders was produced by Heinrich Hoffman, Hitler’s personal photographer. Those photographs from 1940 have now been collected together for the first time and are reproduced here along with all of the most important surviving images of Hitler in the Great War.

Featuring rare and previously unpublished images of Hitler in France and Flanders from 1914 to 1940, this important photographic study documents a vital but often overlooked chapter in the story of Adolf Hitler.