Amazing photos of Nazi Germany by Hugo Jaeger using a Leica LTM??

[mynikonf2]

Thank you for providing the link. I had not seen these images before, simply fascinating seeing this era in color.
As for speaking to the distress that they cause, it would seem to be a recognition, at some level, of our present time. These images are a reminder to me that the world of politics and mankind, have not really changed very much. There are similar atrocities occurring today and there are similar political forces that continue to threaten the world with war. I fear, that if there were to appear someone who could deliver jobs for the unemployed, stability for the economy, security of the borders, and speak to the national pride, that those who benefit from these things might not find it difficult to relinquish the liberties of someone other than themselves. I like to think of myself as being morally grounded and thus different than the individuals I see in these images. What I truly find most disturbing about these images is the recognition of myself and the world around me in them, we are simply removed from them by "a twist of fate" & a mere 70 years in time.

 

[StevenJohn]

Amazing photos that really connect with me. It feels like many of these were ordinary people that got swept up in a cult of personality.

I agree, lets keep the ideology debate out of this. There have been atrocities by both ideologies when they get extreme (Nazi/Khmer Rouge).

 

[mynikonf2]

hitler wasn't an alien from mars who brainwashed a nation with zeta rays. he was a man and a man with allies in high places. and, critically, a man who connected with (many of) the men and women in his country. the human element in those pictures is helpful to anyone looking back on that time. totalitarianism is evil, genocide is evil. but it's evil perpetrated by people on other people, often through the manipulation of emotions. realizing that can only help prevent the reappearance of such horrific regimes.

Well said, very well said!

 

[peterm1]

K-Rudd charming? Seriously? Damn... I've been in this country for 7 years now and I dont think I will ever understand australian psyche.

Anyway the photos are awesome, already posted them elsewhere too.

I think if you could see through Rudd he was charming only in the sense that a rat with a gold tooth is charming - i.e. not very.

But to the average man and woman in the street he is Mr Nice. This is because this is the face he shows to them.

And as they are not terribly sophisticated (think something like Australian versions of the Americans who thought George W Bush was nice - and therefore a good President) this is all they need to know.

 

[OSFlanker]

Thanks for sharing the link, really fascinating to see photos from that era in colour.

PS : agree that politics should be left out of this thread, discussions should be about photography here as there are other avenues for political discussions.

 

[rsosa]

powerful scary images
thanks for sharing

 

[mfunnell]

agree that politics should be left out of this thread, discussions should be about photography here as there are other avenues for political discussions.

That's because, quite obviously, this guy's politics were and are of no importance:



and the impact of the photograph has nothing to do with the person, the context, the history, the politics or anything except the lens used and film and aperture chosen.
[/sarcasm]

 

[raytoei@gmail.com]

mfunnell: no flare and quite close up, perhaps a Hektor 135mm or an elmar 90/f4 lens ?

 

[semilog]

I don't find the photos objectionable, it's important we remember what happened

But these pictures were made as propaganda. As such, their very design is to elide "what happened."

It's what they don't show that one needs to keep in mind.

 

[Ken Smith]

Insider pictures from this era are stronng whether in color or black & white. We have the luxury of viewing them with hindsight while the subjects in the pictures lacked foresight of the things their actions would soon bring.

Much is said of the extremist right within America, and usually said by the Left with references to the Tea Party. We have our own extreme left that likes to "Occupy" places, and then trash them, along with a rallying cry to "Redistribute the Wealth." Russia experienced that "Redistribute" Leftist mentality which brought them the likes of Lenin and then Stalin. Let us not forget that Stalin had his own series of purges just as horrifying as anything that Hitler's crew could dream up.

Extremism whether from the Left or the Right is never a good thing.

 

[semilog]

it's not propaganda. it's history.

From Wikipedia:

Hugo Jaeger is the former personal photographer of Adolf Hitler... Jaeger began capturing Hitler in 1936 and was doing so until the Second World War ended in 1945.[2] Jaeger also specialised in taking colour photographs of the Nazi propaganda spectacles, unlike Hitler's other personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann.

Propaganda is precisely what it is.

 

[semilog]

Insider pictures from this era are stronng whether in color or black & white. We have the luxury of viewing them with hindsight while the subjects in the pictures lacked foresight of the things their actions would soon bring.

The notion that the Nazis only realized what they were doing in hindsight is ahistorical and disgusting. To say a thing like that... you should be ashamed.

The Nazis knew exactly what they were doing, and they knew it in advance -- hence their use of the phrase "final solution."

The "final solution" -- the holocaust -- was a technological endeavor that required meticulous advance planning, record keeping, and engineering. The German industrial-war machine was run largely on slave labor. These points are not controversial, and the relevant history is readily accessible from any number of authoritative sources.

 

[ZivcoPhoto]

I notice Admiral Erik Raeder in a few of the shots taken in a harbor, also Admiral Doenitz (Raeder's replacement) in one shot also.

The 3-d effect is quite pronounced in many of the shots....may very well be Leica glass.

Always interesting to get a peek into the past....regardless if it is of a good memory or a catastrophic event as is recorded in these photos.

Good point by Tom A.....will digital files still be around in 70 years....or will film still be the source future historians use to reference our times.

 

[semilog]

guys, let's keep politics out of this excellent photographic thread....

These photographs are the most political artifacts imaginable, and you would reduce them to colored shapes on pieces of paper.

Why?

Would you similarly say that we should "keep politics out of" a discussion of these photographs?

 

[akptc]

eerie.. I think I will have nightmares in full color..

 

[raytoei@gmail.com]

ZivcoPhoto: Yeah, I noticed the 3D effect ... I think it could be the summitar,
first introduced in 1939 and has a somewhat 3-D effect. I do not think the Summitar
vignettes at f2 unlike the Summar. let me check the images.

 

[raytoei@gmail.com]

the reason why we *should* keep to photographic topics is that in the
past when emotive topics were discussed and had nothing to do with
taking a picture, the discussion got heated up pretty quickly and the
moderators had to step in and lock the thread up.

 

[semilog]

the reason why we *should* keep to photographic topics is that in the
past when emotive topics were discussed and had nothing to do with
taking a picture, the discussion got heated up pretty quickly and the
moderators had to step in and lock the thread up.

If that's to be the policy, perhaps we should stick to discussing photographs of flowers and kittens. Or sheets of newspaper (taken from slow-news days, of course). Or brick walls (but not the walls of crematoria).

If we stuck to flowers, kittens, sheets of newspaper, and brick walls, the technical discussion would not suffer, correct?

More seriously: I think that we should look closely at these photographs, and we should discuss their content and the political setting within which they were made. We should bear witness. We should not look away. We must try to understand. That is the essential argument of Susie Linfield's excellent and persuasive book, The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence. Short review here.

 

[peterm1]

There are in fact a few collections of nazis in color photos on the internet although the ones that started this thread are amongst the best technically. For example


http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?151191-Old-pictures-Nazi-Deutschland-WWII

http://www.scribd.com/doc/12588702/Nazi-Germany-Color-Photos-from-LIFE-archive

Am I alone in this or does Hitler look like he has just messed his nice brown trousers? 😱 (From the first set linked above.)

 

[Roger Hicks]

Purely photographically, from logic and internal evidence, I'd suggest that quite a lot of the pictures were shot with a 73/1.9.

First, whether he was using Kodachrome or (as I think more likely) Agfacolor Neue, which was fractionally slower than ASA 10 Kodachrome (!), he'd have needed all the speed he could get.

Second, a 73 would give the combination of intimacy and convenient working distance that we see in so many of these pictures.

Third, the softness looks very like the softness of a 73 Hektor at full bore.

As for keeping politics out of the discussion, this is risible: cf mfunnell, post 90. It's also quite handy to see people's definitions of 'right' and left', which tend to depend on where they live, and how much they know about history. Bear in mind too that the National Socialist Democratic Workers' Party specifically called itself socialist, and that probably, many National Socialists regarded themselves as moderates. As do many on this forum who are regarded as gibbering right-wing or left-wing loonies by those who disagree with their politics.

@ Semilog -- "The Nazis knew exactly what they were doing, and they knew it in advance -- hence their use of the phrase "final solution."

The "final solution" -- the holocaust -- was a technological endeavor that required meticulous advance planning, record keeping, and engineering."

Well, sort of. But the whole regime was such a shambles of bureaucratic empire building, with different ministries trying to steal power from one another, that it is sometimes hard to see how anything ever happened. My own view is that they made it up as they went along, but that once something got under way against all the obstacles, it gained its own impetus and was hard to stop. This is arguably one definition of the Fuehrerprinzip: if you can get something done, no-one is going to stop you.

And @Semilog again: Yes, I saw that exhibition in Arles in 2009. Plenty of people would like that one swept under the carpet. From http://www.rogerandfrances.com/subscription/arles 2009.html

"Nor were all the exhibitions necessarily memorable for artistic merit. Without Sanctuary was a collection of postcards of lynchings -- hangings and burnings-alive -- in the United States, up until the 1920s. Almost as horrifying as the images themselves was the fact that these pictures had been made into postcards and sent through the mails, with cheery messages about 'necktie parties' and 'barbecues' on the backs."

R.