THIS IS SICK! Never Released Colored Photos of Hitler!

Between 1936 and 1943, German photographer Hugo Jaeger was granted unprecedented access to Adolf Hitler, traveling and chronicling, in color, the Fuhrer and his confidants at small gatherings, public events, and, quite often, in private moments. Here, and in several other galleries on LIFE, we present never-before-published photographs from Jaeger’s astonishing — and chilling — collection.

Hugo Jaeger in 1970. Twenty-five years earlier, in 1945, when the Allies were making their final push toward Munich, Jaeger found himself face to face with six American soldiers in a small town west of the city. During a search of the house where Jaeger was staying, the Americans found the leather suitcase in which Jaeger had hidden thousands of his color negatives. He knew he would be arrested (or worse) if the Americans discovered his film and his close connection to Hitler. But what happened next astonished him.

Inside the suitcase that held the Hitler images, Jaeger had also placed a bottle of cognac. Happy with their find, the soldiers proceeded to shared the bottle with Jaeger and the owner of the house. The suitcase was forgotten.

After the Americans left, Jaeger packed the slides into 12 glass jars and buried them on the outskirts of town. In the years following the war, Jaeger occasionally returned to his multiple caches, digging them up, repacking, and reburying them. He finally retrieved the colllection for good–2,000 transparencies, all of them, amazingly, still in good shape — and in 1965 sold them to LIFE.