Biography of Hitler's photographer: The propagandist of the "Führer"

When the war was over, National Socialism , the Third Reich and Germany had collapsed, Hitler's personal photographer resorted to the cheapest of possible justifications: "The photographer takes pictures, he records them, nothing more." One might consider this harmless, naive self-deception. In the case of Heinrich Hoffmann, who owed his career and his considerable fortune to Hitler and the Nazi regime and served both as a propagandist, this is a mere lie, for Hoffmann was what in other times would have been called a court toadie. Not only was he a close confidant of Hitler for over a quarter of a century, but by the end of the war he was directing a Europe-wide propaganda company and a successful publishing house of photo books and postcards with sales in the millions. He enjoyed an influential position as an art advisor, curator and art collector, whose considerable wealth in works of art and real estate was also based on "Aryanization" and directly state-organized art theft. The historian Sebastian Peters has now intensively researched Hoffmann's life and work.