New Delhi: A new UK documentary has exposed the secrets of Adolf Hitler's hidden fortune, which is estimated to be worth more than £3bn.
Channel 5's The Hunt For Hitler's Millions reveals that the Nazi dictator hid away a sizeable fortune amassed from image rights, personal appearances and his refusal to pay £1.75 million in income tax.
The documentary also reveals that Hitler levied a royalty on German stamps that used his image and hid the money away in secret bank accounts.
It appeared to vanish completely after his death, along with his substantial art collection.
Experts also claim the dictator wrote a secret will on the morning of his death, hoping to trick the German people into believing his humble claims.
In it he dedicated five pages to a political diatribe against the Jews and just three to his personal will.
He presented himself as almost penniless, writing: ‘What I own belongs, as so far as it is of any value at all, to the party.'
There was no further mention of his wealth, only that his relatives should be given enough ‘to sustain a simple middle-class life'.
From his earliest days in the Nazi Party, Hitler realised that people would pay to hear him.
He used to say he took no fees for speeches - he brushed off the taxman's queries on official forms by saying it was entirely a matter for the party not him personally - and insisted he had no bank account.
Imprisoned for nine months in 1923, he wrote the unwieldy manifesto Mein Kampf which would contribute hugely to his fortune.
It was published in 1925 and he received a royalty of around 10 per cent from every sale.
Initially released in an expensive volume that sold only modestly, it was then reissued in a budget edition that transformed Hitler's fortunes.Once he rose to power in the 1930s, he decreed every newlywed couple in Germany should be given a copy - with the state footing the bill and the author receiving his royalty.
By 1938 his unpaid tax bill was 400,000 Reichsmarks, equivalent to £1.75million at today's prices.
