An album featuring never-before-seen photos of Adolf Hitler has sold for £34,000 ($41,707).

That’s almost double its £18,500 ($22,438) estimate.

The album, belonging to wife Eva Braun, was removed from her bedside table in the Fuhrerbunker in 1945.

It headlined the Ephemera, Books and Photographs sale at C&T Auctions on March 15.

Among the strangest photographs is this one showing Hitler performing the salute from Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator

The album contains shots of Adolf Hitler and other top-ranking Nazis looking relaxed and cheerful, in contrast to how the German media portrayed them.  

Their jovial demeanour is unnerving given the horrors they were unleashing on the world.

It was given by a Russian soldier to press photographer Edward "Dixie" Dean, who was one of the first people to enter the bunker. 

Tim Harper of C&T Auctions told the Telegraph newspaper: "Eva Braun was the ‘first lady’ of the Third Reich and without question this was with her at the last stages of the war in the Fuhrer Bunker in Berlin in 1945.

"Very few significant artefacts liberated from the Fuhrer Bunker in 1945 exist today in the open market...

"Photographs of Hitler were very carefully controlled to ensure they fitted in to the image the Nazis were trying to project of him.

"So it is rare to come across easy-going photographs of him that wouldn't have got through the censorship, especially during the height of the Second World War.”

The sale also included an archive of photographs taken by a member of Winston Churchill’s staff towards the end of the second world war.

Hart's photographs show Churchill engaged on official business

It realised £4,600 ($5,640) against a £1,200 ($1,471) estimate.

Brenda Hart was secretary to chief of staff General Hastings Ismay from 1943 until 1945.

The collection includes photographs of major conferences, including the 1945 Potsdam Conference, as well as Hart’s detailed recollections of events in the form of letters.

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