Hitler's Bath Photo

On April 30, 1945, the photojournalist Lee Miller took a bath in Hitler's tub. A correspondent for British Vogue, Miller had posted up in the Führer's abandoned apartment in Munich along with. They also accompanied the first Allied troops to see Hitler's Alpine retreat in Berchtesgaden.

According to Penrose, the bathroom portrait was a loaded image. Lee Miller was covering WWII for Vogue, and working alongside David E. Scherman, a Life staffer.

Scherman took the above photo of Miller in the bathtub of Adolf Hitler's house in Munich - the very house where Neville Chamberlain had signed away Czechoslovakia six long years earlier. The photo was taken on the night after the duo visited Dachau, on April 30, 1945. The apartment belonged to Adolf Hitler.

Lee Miller learned photography from Man Ray, reported from the battlefield in Europe, and took an infamous photo in a Munich bathtub. He's seen in the photographs playfully washing his hair, and even though Hitler's picture remains in the frame, it's partially hidden behind a soap dish, suggesting a subtle shift in power dynamics. Miller and Scherman's staged bathing in Hitler's tub was not merely an act of irreverence.

The bathtub? Adolf Hitler's. The beauty in the tub? Lee Miller, an American-born model, artist, photographer, and wartime photojournalist for British Vogue. The framed photo of Hitler.

The nude statuette. The bather's clothes on the chair. The boots.

The bathmat. The mud prominent on the bathmat. The simplest interpretations argue that Miller enters the bath and washes away the dirt, still visible on her boots, from Dachau.

Lee signaled the end of the Reich in a more subtle way, both symbolic and playful, by being photographed by Scherman washing off the war-in Hitler's own bath. Former LIFE photographer David E. Scherman talks about taking his famous picture of Lee Miller in Adolf Hitler's bathtub in 1945 Munich.

David E. Scherman and Lee Miller, "Lee Miller in HItler's Bathtub," Munich, 1945. "Lee Miller, published by Hatje Cantz." Exhibition catalog for Albertina and NSU Art Museum.

Most controversial war photograph. Woman in HItler's bathtub. Famous photojournalism.

It is a photo, carefully staged it would seem, of Lee Miller, an accredited war photographer, taking a bath on April 30, 1945. It is a picture of a beautiful woman in a mildly intimate situation but that is not the central appeal of the picture. It is that she is bathing in Hitler's Munich apartment.