Hitler and short sleeves

[Helloworld]

Mussolini enjoyed strutting around shirtless but to my knowledge there are no photos of Hitler even with short sleeves. Even when it was hot I guess he never wore them, why?

[michael mills]

He did not want to reveal his heavily tattooed arms?

[Wordsworth]

Hitler was notoriously prudish, didn't display much of his body and was probably self-conscious about his image and how he looked.

[michael mills]

Hitler was notoriously prudish, didn't display much of his body and was probably self-conscious about his image and how he looked.

Hitler had no problem about displaying his bare legs, since he had himself photographed wearing short pants, the Bavarian Lederhosen.

That was because short pants were a traditional German garment, whereas short-sleeved shirts were not. In his "Table Talk" he expatiated on the health benefits of wearing short pants that exposed the legs to the fresh air, and boasted about how he as a youth had worn short Lederhosen even in the depths of winter.

In support of his ideas about the health benefits of wearing short pants, Hitler referred to the kilt-wearing Highland regiments of the British Army and the alleged invigorating effect of cold air on the sensitive parts of the male anatomy. He even floated the bizarre idea of outfitting a Waffen-SS unit in Lederhosen!

Hitler was certainly self-conscious about his facial features, in particular his asymmetrically large and broad nose overshadowing a concave upper lip. The reason why he retained his ridiculous-looking and much-parodied iconic mustache is that it filled in his concave upper lip and balanced the excessively large nose.

If you look at photographs of Hitler's face from the side, you will see that his mustache does not protrude in front of his lips, but merely fills in the concavity of his upper lip.

Getting back to the topic of short sleeves, it needs to be borne in mind that in Hitler's lifetime short sleeves were rarely worn by men in public, and were regarded as a feature of female rather than male costume. Have you ever seen photos of political leaders of that time wearing short sleeves, let alone strutting around shirtless a la Mussolini? Men did not even take their jackets off in public, no matter how hot the weather.