A RARE photograph of Adolf Hitler "looking like a peasant" - that he later tried to ban - has been unearthed in an album preserved by a Brit soldier.
The black and white snap - taken in the 1920s - was found within an album lying in the former home of prominent Nazi Viktor Lutze at the end of the Second World War.
After Hitler came to power in 1933, he tried to suppress the embarrassing picture as it went against his image of a hardened, iron-fisted ruler.
Hitler can be seen sat crossed legged on a chair wearing lederhosen and knee-high socks with his bare legs on display.
Other snaps show henchman Lutze being treated as a VIP at Nazi rallies.
One picture shows him quaffing a goldfish bowl-sized glass of red wine.
The unnamed officer of the Royal Engineers brought the snaps back to Britain with him after the war and it has been kept in his family ever since.
Adrian Stevenson, of Hansons Auctioneers, who is selling the photo said: "The odd-looking picture of Hitler was taken long before he became the German Chancellor and Fuhrer.
"It was an early propaganda image and Hitler looked like a peasant to try and create the image that he was one of the people.
"But when he came to power it was entirely the wrong image to portray and he didn't want that image being used.
"He thought that a photo of him with his knees on display would harm his image."
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Mr Stevenson said the photo is extremely rare as only a few hundred were printed.
The photographs are now being sold in four lots, for around £50 each on March 19.
Lutze, who was the leader of the notorious "Brownshirts" - the paramilitary wing of the Nazi party - died in a car crash along with his daughter Inge in Potsdam, Germany, in 1943.
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