If you put in Munich photos at the Getty picture site and wade through them with the modifier` David e. Scherman', you find several previews that are not really labeled but quite recognizable to the familiar eye. A surprising one is Hitler's flat simply labeled "apartment". The Burgerbraukeller is identified, but you also see ruins of the Braun Haus anonymously visible from the Temple buildings.
On April 28th 1945 the 42nd Division and the 45th Division of the 7th Army close on and find the horrors of Dachau. (Many accounts put the capture on the 29th, but the records of the 157th Regiment make clear for them they arrive late the 28th. On the evening of April 29th, the 157th Infantry Regiment is on the outskirts of Munich, 20 km from Dachau. The next day, by late afternoon Munich has fallen after some pockets of resistance wiped out - the 45th Division record gives the time as 2200 hours the city was considered secured. The same source is explicit that after there was a race to capture the most choice quarters to lodge in and that elements of the 42nd and 45th Divisions indeed captured Munich on the 30th, Hitler's birthday. Most importantly, Lt.Colonel William P. Grace is the commanding officer of 179th Infantry Regiment and Hitler's flat at Prinzregentplatz became his Command Post either late April 30 or May 1 (haven't found a specific yet). The 45th Division leaves Munich on June 12th, after the 45th Division was transferred from the Seventh Army to Patton's Third Army, and the command post setup in Freidburg 20 km away.
The famous woman photographer Lee Miller and David E. Schernan had come with the 42nd and just left photographing Dachau hours before when they arrive at Prinzregentenplatz and the 179th Regiment's Command Post on the late afternoon of May 1. They spend the night there, and that is when she has her famous bath and takes the series of photos of several parts of the apartment. Curiously enough, Miller says she is told by one "Frau Gardner" that Anni Winter had fled three days before. Yet this same person photographed as Frau Gardner is often labeled as Anni Winter herself! (Was she pretending to be someone else or had really left?) More on that minor mystery later.
The next day, they leave and with the help of an old German who denies any real politics but seems to know where everything is (this is noticed) leads them to one major location after another. (This is how Lee Miller also ends up at Eva Braun's abandoned house, and is taking the pictures below of the Braukeller and Königsplatz and Hofbrauhaus.) This is the context of these snaps. Lee Miller's book (Getty captions are not using it) gives some interesting details which have added to each. It mentions the upper part of the Hofbrauhaus blown open by bombs. Afterward, the photographers will arrive late in the evening at the still burning Berghof after it is fired on May 4 and still burning.*
* This date is a little imprecise. Lee Miller mentions being there when hears the surrender signed. But she arrived in time to see the "fire set by the SS" coming from the windows of the chalet. Taken as written, it suggests the evening of May 4.
https://www.gettyimages.com/
Burgerbraukeller being looted. Lee Miller commented that a division had just pulled out of it, and civilians and pillagers started swarming in undisturbed. Presumably carting off what beer remained and anything else. This is on May 2 as they begin to tour the ruined city.
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- Munich-8.jpg (68.22 KiB) Viewed 8290 times
