| Original caption: “German Army marching into Greece.” German infantrymen march through the mountains in Northern Greece during Operation Marita. Germany’s invasion of Greece was launched to support its inept Italian partners. Field Marshal List’s 12th Army attacked the Greeks’ Metaxas and Aliakmon Lines on April 6 1941. By the 23rd, Greech had surrendered and the British and Commonwealth forces supporting its efforts had evacuated or been captured. Note that most soldaten have their stalhelm on their packs and carry Karabiner 98k bolt-action rifles. This unit is on the march and not expecting combat. These are probably soldaten of XVIII.Gebirgskorps (“Eighteenth Mountain Corps”) under the command of General der Gebirgstruppe Franz Böhme (April 15, 1885 – May 29, 1947). XVIII.Gebirgskorps consisted of the 2nd Panzer Division, 5th and 6th Mountain Divisions, 72nd Infantry Division, and the reinforced 125th Infantry Regiment. These troops moved into assembly areas in southern Bulgaria opposite the Greek frontier before crossing the border to attack the Metaxas Line. At the cost of heavy casualties, XVIII.Gebirgskorps led the offensive to break the Greek defenses. Photo by Hugo Jaeger (January 18, 1900 – January 1, 1970), 1 of Führer und Reichskanzler (“Leader and Reichchancellor”) Adolf Hitler’s (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945) personal photographers. Jaeger was 1 of the few photographers who were using color photography techniques at the time. Born in Munich in 1900, he was 14 when he received the only gift he ever got from his parents: a camera. He took to it immediately, and in World War I served as a very young photographer at the front. After the war, he joined a fascist group that proved to be an incubator for the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP – “Nazi National Socialist German Workers’ Party”), but continued with his camera, developing an interest in color and stereo pictures. In 1930, he befriended Chief of Staff of the Deputy Führer Martin Bormann (June 17, 1900 – May 2, 1945), who would become a powerful figure in the 3rd Reich when he assumed the office of Personal Secretary to the Führer in April 1943. In 1936, in Berlin, Bormann introduced Jaeger to Adolf Hitler, who was impressed with both Jaeger’s ideology and his photography. Although at 1st Hitler didn’t like Jaeger’s color work (“a poor technical imitation of nature,” he opined), the clarity of the images soon won him over so that the Führer told jaeger to stick with color: “Be totally rock-hard convinced that German industry and science will steadily perfect it.” Hugo Jaeger travelled with Hitler in the years leading up to and throughout World War II and took around 2,000 color photographs of the German Führer and various events connected with criminal policy of Nazi Germany during the World War II. Hitler gave Jaeger a pass that essentially allowed him to go wherever he wanted to take his pictures. During the invasion of Poland, Jaeger photographed Polish soldiers resting after surrendering in battle against Germans, the destruction of Warsaw and persecution of Jews by the German Nazis in Kutno Ghetto during the Holocaust; and even infamous color photos of the Warsaw Ghetto. On weekends, he was often invited to Hitler’s home to show his slides to guests. Ironically, Jaeger’s sharp-eyed work was never used as propaganda, which is a real surprise. Things were rapidly growing bleak in Germany, and his color photos would have done wonders for morale on the home front. Instead, Jaeger’s work served only to entertain Hitler and his private circle. In 1945, when the Allies pushed towards Munich, the photographer found himself face-to-face with 6 American soldiers and feared he would be arrested when they found the thousands of color negatives he had hidden in a leather suitcase. Instead, the soldiers threw open the case to discover a bottle of cognac, which they eagerly opened and shared with Jaeger, ignoring the transparencies beneath. To preserve the photos, he buried them in 12 glass jars on the outskirts of Munich, returning over the years to check on them, repack and rebury them. In 1955, Jaeger finally retrieved all 2,000 transparencies and stored them in a bank vault. Jaeger hid his work till after the war, then in the late 1950s he sold it to Look Magazine, and to LIFE Magazine in 1965. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0693.jpg |
| Image Size | 475.90 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2017 x 1362 |
| Photographer | Hugo Jaeger |
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| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 6, 1941 |
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| Country | Greece |
| Archive | LIFE Magazine |
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| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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