At home with Hitler

In 1945, Lee Miller photographed the Nazi leader's abandoned Munich apartment for Vogue. On the eve of a major new exhibition of her work, we revisit her images and diary entries from that assignment

No 16 Prinzregentenplatz was Hitler's private apartment in Munich. Lee Miller reached it, with fellow photographer David Scherman, in 1945 at the denouement of the war, and was there when Hitler's death in Berlin was announced. It was occupied by American soldiers.

"It was an ordinary semi-corner old-fashioned building on a platz," Miller wrote in her diary. "Almost anyone with a medium income and no heirlooms could have been the proprietor of this flat. The place was in perfect condition, including electricity and hot water and heat available and [an] electric refrigerator. It wasn't empty enough to be 'sub-let' as it stood, but a quarter of an hour's clearing cupboards would have made it ready for any new tenant who didn't mind linen and silver marked AH."

Miller and Scherman spent the night in the apartment, "using Hitler's toilet and taking his bath and generally making ourselves at home." The place was full of "bad dull art", Miller wrote. "It was mediocre, as were the paintings on all the walls." But in the hallway the pair found cupboards holding crystal and china, a rubber plant and a black plaster eagle with folded wings. "Here," Miller realised, "was Hitler's real home - and his armed headquarters in every city of Europe ... his physical as well as spiritual home."

Interior of Hitler's apartment, showing King George VI mug The mug - which played the national anthem when it was lifted up - was a gift to Hitler from the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, in November 1938. The radio 'was a masterpiece', according to Miller. There is a British passport on the table, but its origins are unknown.

Sergeant Arthur Peters reading Mein Kampf and using the 'hotline' in Hitler's apartment Peters is lying on Hitler's bed, holding his private field phone, which wasn't connected. 'His bedroom was hung with chintz and the bed was upholstered in the same material,' wrote Miller. Note the large, cream-coloured safe in the corner, and the plaster cast of Hitler's hands on the table.

Lee Miller in Hitler's bath Miller audaciously stripped off and got into Hitler's tub. Note the portrait of Hitler on the side. The boots on the bath mat, says V&A curator Mark Haworth-Booth, 'had walked through the horror of the Dachau death camp earlier the same day.'

· These photographs feature in The Art Of Lee Miller at the V&A, London, from September 15 2007; January 6 2008; 020-7942 2000 for details (vam.ac.uk).

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