1939–1945 · Bostadsort
London
1944
With David Scherman: the liberation of Paris
Miller teamed up with the American photojournalist David E. Scherman, a Life correspondent, on many assignments, including the liberation of Paris and the Battle of Alsace. Her aim was to “document war as historical evidence”, combining journalism with Surrealist composition.
1944
The siege of Saint-Malo: the first napalm on film
After D-Day Miller was sent to report on what she was told was the newly liberated town of Saint-Malo, only to find it still heavily fought over. Her accreditation did not allow a woman correspondent into an active combat zone, but she stayed and spent five days photographing the battle for Saint-Malo, including the first recorded use of napalm; when the military realised where she was, they put her under temporary house arrest.
1945
The death camps: “I implore you to believe this”
With Scherman, Miller photographed the horrors of the Nazi camps at Buchenwald and Dachau, framing some shots from inside the cattle trains that had carried Jews to their deaths. She cabled the British Vogue editor Audrey Withers, “I IMPLORE YOU TO BELIEVE THIS IS TRUE”, and American and British Vogue ran her reports under the headlines “BELIEVE IT” and “GERMANS ARE LIKE THIS”.
c. 1945
Vienna, Hungary — and a return scarred by war
After Munich Miller photographed dying children in a Vienna hospital, peasant life in post-war Hungary, the corpses of Nazi officers and their families and, finally, the execution of the former Hungarian prime minister László Bárdossy. Back in Britain from central Europe, she suffered severe episodes of depression — post-traumatic stress disorder, her son believes — and began to drink.
30 April 1945
The photograph in Hitler's bathtub
On the evening of 30 April 1945 — the very day Hitler killed himself — David Scherman photographed Miller in the bathtub of Hitler's private apartment in Munich, the dried mud of that morning's visit to Dachau on her boots deliberately dirtying the bathroom. Afterwards she bathed in the tub, slept in Hitler's bed and was also photographed in Eva Braun's bed.