War Correspondent Elizabeth "Lee" Miller soaking in Hitler’s bathtub just hours after she returned from Dachau, her muddy boots staining his bath mat. The picture was taken inside the Führer's Munich apartment on April 30, 1945
Miller arrived in Normandy in July 1944, a month after the Allies launched their invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. No female war correspondents had been allowed to accompany the Allied Expeditionary Force during the initial phase of the invasion. Her first assignment was to report on American Army nurses working in a field hospital near Omaha beach, one of the two American assault beaches.
Miller also accompanied Allied forces as they advanced into Germany in early 1945. It was here they discovered the horrors of Nazi atrocities at Buchenwald and Dachau. Miller's photographs of the German concentration camps are some of her most powerful and the scenes she witnessed there left a lasting impression on her.
The photograph of Miller in Hitler's bathtub was taken on 30 April 1945, just hours after Miller returned from Dachau. A portrait of Hitler, who committed suicide that day, rests on the edge of the bath and her boots, still covered in the mud of Dachau, are deliberately left on Hitler's bathmat.
Miller rarely spoke of her wartime experiences, which took a severe emotional toll on her. Lee Miller died in obscurity in 1977, her contribution to photography having been largely forgotten, and she herself having wilfully repressed any knowledge – even within her own family – of her astonishing past.
Lee Miller in steel helmet specially designed for using a camera, Normandy, France 1944
