An album containing never-before-seen candid photos of Nazi party leader Adolf Hitler and party members will be auctioned on Wednesday, according to Britain's C&T Auctions. The photo album, found in April 1945 in the bedroom of Hitler's longtime companion Eva Braun, could fetch up to 15,000 pounds ($18,000), said C&T Auctions consultant Tim Harper. The auction will take place at Royal Tunbridge Wells, a town in Kent, England. "The pictures are very personal," Harper said, noting that the album is owned by an unidentified collector. Harper said Hitler had kept tight control over what information could be released publicly in order to protect his and the Nazi party's mages. "Hitler's image, particularly his photographs, were controlled. They had to be approved," Harper said. "The shots you are seeing in this album are natural, relaxed. A number of them are amusing and almost certainly they would not have been allowed to be published. They are quite revealing." The album includes photos of Hitler alongside other leading members of the Nazi party such as Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler. There are also photos of Hitler traveling in his motorcade past crowds of cheering and saluting people. One of the images shows Hitler smiling next to a group of cheerful children. The swastika symbol is seen in many of the photographs. "They had to be taken by someone who had clearance to get close to the fuehrer and close to that inner circle," Harper said. The album was discovered by British photographer Edward Dean and English broadcaster Richard Dimbleby, who both entered Hitler's bunker in April 1945. "A Russian soldier very obligingly took them around and they broke into a room which was Eva Braun's bedroom, and the Russian soldier pried open her drawer and got the album from there," Harper said.
