‘Dear Uncle Adolf’: documentary details fan letters sent to Hitler

LONDON - A new documentary has detailed tens of thousands of surviving letters fans sent to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler during the Second World War.

‘Dear Uncle Adolf’ is said to be the first documentary detailing these letters that lay undiscovered in Russian archives till 2007.

On discovery, they formed the basis of a German book called ‘Letters to Hitler’.

Last night, according to The Telegraph, Austrian-born Hitler’s grip over Germany was unveiled as actors read out the letters.

They were letters that often accompanied gifts, in the case of Margarethe Wagner, a pair of socks sent in 1938 after Hitler occupied the Czech Sudetenland border region.

“I knitted these for you as you freed us,” she wrote.

Frau Troeltzsch of Berlin was another fan. She sent Hitler three silk handkerchiefs with pictures of Hitler sewn into them which Hitler deputy Rudolf Hess sent back saying “you do not have permission to send handkerchiefs with pictures of Herr Hitler!”

Such women were later put under Gestapo monitoring as Hitler feared that his cult of personality could lead to a destabilisation of home life in the Reich.

As he climbed further up the ladder of power, so the tempo of the letters increased.

So large was Hitler’s fan following that a special department was created in the postal services in both Munich and Berlin to deal with the tsunami of paper wending its way to him every day. (ANI)