Hitler’s Strange Love Life

This advertising poster for 1948’s Hitler’s Strange Love Life is an odd, almost surreal mix of sexuality and atrocity. This film, which was compiled by Dwain Esper after the end of World War II, exploited the horrors of the holocaust by showing newsreel footage of Nazi butchery, while occasionally finding time to add shots of Hitler’s mistress, Ava Braun, in a swim suit. All of this footage is advertised in the poster as "True, Authentic, Captured Film!" Such products captured the imagination of many Americans in the immediate Post-War years, which also saw the rise of similarly themed books such as I Was Hitler’s Doctor.

The poster, which features a nude woman being whipped by the disembodied arm of a Nazi soldier, anticipates the rise of Nazi-themed S&M sexploitation films such as Love Camp Seven (1968) and Ilsa: She-Wolf of the S.S. (1974) decades later. Notice that the poster also serves a dual function as an advertisement for the "second shock hit" Sins of the Orient, most likely an atrocity film that portrayed war crimes committed by the Japanese similar to Beasts of the East and Outrages of the Orient.