Eva Braun's Private Photos

[tonmestrom]

<p><a href="http://www.life.com/image/first/in-gallery/57511/rare-eva-brauns-private-photos#index/0"><strong>link</strong></a></p>

[riz]

<p><strong>Requiem for a dream...............</strong></p>

[William Kahn]

<p>Not a dream, a nightmare.</p>

[stp]

<p>Such an ordinary woman, doing such ordinary things as so many women of her age and time were doing. But......</p>

[Hector Javkin]

<p>I won't spend time to look at them.</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>All images of historical importance are worth seeing, and re-interpreting in the context of what we know today. If you can see it, "Love Hate and Propaganda" is a fine TV series that shows how photography influenced mass perceptions, for good or for evil.</p>

[john_bellenis]

<p>Basically a bunch of very normal looking snap shots - the context and background though was so indescribably horrendous and evil that we look at them in a different way.</p>

<p>Maybe the point here is that the context of images - not merely the content - affects the way we look at them and how they should be perceived?</p>

[steve_levine]

<p>She should have shot with a gun, not a camera.</p>

[tonmestrom]

<blockquote>

<p>I won't spend time to look at them.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>of course one can't fault anyone who decides not to look at them for whatever personal reason but the fact remains that they are interesting from a historical point of view.</p>

[GBarrington]

<p>I think context is everything in art and in any other communications of any sort. And it isn't just the artist's context, but ours as well. In that sense, there IS no 'wrong' or 'right' response to art, there is only a response.<br /><br />As to the photos in question, they've all been floating about for years so that web site isn't really publishing anything new. <br /><br />My reaction to the specific photos is that these are sad people. They could only live a life that came close to resembling a happy normal life as long as they were in absolute control of the world around them. They chickened out and killed themselves once the world not only rejected their control but got close to regaining a balance. <br /><br />It turned out that the Nazi's had created a chicken-sh!t outfit that resembled their own character, one that was all style and no substance. Evil can create great chaos and suffering in the world, but the pillars that support it have no strength and always fall to resistance.</p>

[pnital]

<p>Chilling how "normal" depiction of her life, her photos are, in the middle of the genocide...</p>

[dave_s]

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banality_of_evil">*click*</a></p>

[riz]

<p>People please take it easy, there is no harm in appreciating the photographs - keeping aside the history thing.</p>

[leicaglow]

<p>It is intriguing how normal everything looks. It leads one to wonder how a society could go so far off its rails.</p>

[jason]

<p>That woman was way more than you all know. Pure evil. The fact it looks normal doesn't mean it was.. Like the Duke of Windsor and his woman. Again the love of all the evils of Nazism.</p>

 

[benbangerter]

<p>Depictions of the banality of evil...</p>

[ingemar_lampa1]

<p>The "normality" in the pictures is what makes them so scarey. The fact that all the evil was concocted by people, adults, who had "friends", kids, threw dinner parties, took pictures, worked, many as "ordinary" civil servants in high positions and did the same things me and you generally do. Yet, they were capable of planning and putting in to motion a cataclysm of never seen proportions, affecting 100's of millions of people and killing 40 million of them in the process. Had they been overt monsters and madmen/women it would have been easier to brush aside. Easier to explain. But the fact is, these seemingly "normal" people were capable of such unspeakable horror and who says therefore it can not happen again by other "normal" people? <em>"Those who ignore or do not learn from history are destined to repeat it"</em> as the saying goes.</p>

<p>Hitler could never had done all the evil himself. Without the train driver, maybe a father himself, the trains to the camps would never have moved. Without the civil servant stamping the forms and requisitioning the necessary logistics, people could not be moved. Without the factory worker, turning metal in to shells and bombs, there could be no artillery barrage, and so on. All of them were "normal" people just doing their job - just like me and you.</p>

<p>This to me is what the pictures convey. And what makes them so scarey.</p>

[tholte]

<p>I am reading The Third Reich at War by Richard J. Evans. It is the best book on what Germany was like during the war that I have read to date. It would be a great thing if everyone was required to read it, especially the Holocaust deniers. </p>

[charlesheckel]

<p>People are contrasting the apparent normalcy of the pictures with the horrors committed by the people in them. I think Ingemar's response is probably the most insightful. New guards in the concentration camps were conditioned into casual brutality by being required to walk on the bodies of prisoners to get their paychecks. </p>

<p>Shortly after the war, an psychologist named Pribram hired perfectly normal everyday American assistants to give electric shocks to test subjects behind a screen when they gave wrong answers. The "assistants" were actually the test subjects, and Pribram's real confederates behind the screen would give more and more bloodcurdling performances as the ersatz voltage went up, begging, pleading, screaming, pounding on the barrier.</p>

<p>Some "assistants" were quite concerned and objected, and were informed quietly and authoritatively that they were expected to carry out the reinforcement protocol no matter what. And they did, applying ever-intensified "shocks" on schedule, even when there were no answers at all--only a ghastly silence behind the screen.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>All of them were "normal" people just doing their job - just like me and you.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes, indeed. And yes, the pictures are scarey, and yes, we too are scarey.</p>

 

[gulfbeach47]

<p>I was noting the great quality of some of the images and the design of the rooms etc... a fascinating look at a space in time.<br>

Just found this.... <strong>Life magazine ‘duped’ over Eva Braun’s private photos</strong><br>

Ooops... http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/952127--life-magazine-duped-over-eva-braun-s-private-photos</p>

[wpahnelas]

<p>history is written by the winners. will subsequent generations look at photos of george w. bush and his cronies smiling and enjoying everyday life with similar revulsion?</p>

[dan_south]

<p>The photos seem to be OF Eva Braun, not BY her. Which leads me to wonder who was taking them.</p>

[leicaglow]

<blockquote>

<p>history is written by the winners. will subsequent generations look at photos of george w. bush and his cronies smiling and enjoying everyday life with similar revulsion?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>William, You're comparing President Bush to Hitler? Really?</p>

[User_4136860]

<p>I agree With Michael " history is written by the winners", and who are war criminals is decided by the victors, and although in WW11 the allies committed many crimes against humanity like the fire bombing of Dresden, and the American fire bombing of Japan in which many more civilian died than the total killed by the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki no western leaders were ever tried for war chrimes.</p>

[tonmestrom]

<p>with all due respect but that is a rather simplistic view of historical facts.</p>