| Original caption: “The Führer’s soldiers in the field before Warsaw.” A solitary Polish man sits in the remains of his home after it was destroyed in the fighting on the road to Moscow. A sign erected by the Heer (“Nazi German Army”) proclaims “to the front.” Hugo Jaeger (January 18, 1900 – January 1, 1970), a photographer, worked for Führer und Reichskanzler (“Leader and Reich Chancellor”) Adolf Hitler’s (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945) personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann (September 12, 1885 – December 16, 1957), from 1936 to 1945. This gave him direct access to the Führer and his entourage. He was a pioneer of color photography, working with Agfa film and developing chemicals. After the war, he managed to hide around 2,000 negatives near Munich, which he sold to LIFE magazine in the 1960s. In addition to private and public photographs of Adolf Hitler, there are surviving photographs of the German invasion of Poland, the destruction of Warsaw, the Jewish city of Kutno, and the Warsaw Ghetto. Jaeger is the uncredited author of the album Die Soldaten des Führers im Felde (“The Führer’s Soldiers at the Front”), which contains a series of propaganda 3-dimensional stereoscopic photographs depicting the war in Poland in September 1939 and the capitulation of Warsaw. The album was published by Raumbild-Verlag Otto Schonstein Kommanditgesellschaft. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0755.jpg |
| Image Size | 336.52 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2110 x 1424 |
| Photographer | Hugo Jaeger |
| Photographer Title | |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | September 1, 1939 |
| Location | |
| City | Warsaw |
| State or Province | Warsaw |
| Country | Poland |
| Archive | Die Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek |
| Record Number | 1987/91.57 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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