Editing Lee Miller (section)

===World War II===
[[File:War correspondents (cropped).jpg|thumb|Miller in 1943 with other female war correspondents who covered the U.S. Army in the European Theater during World War II; from left to right: [[Mary Welsh Hemingway|Mary Welsh]], [[Dixie Tighe]], [[Kathleen Harriman Mortimer|Kathleen Harriman]], [[Helen Kirkpatrick]], Lee Miller, and [[Tania Long]]]]
At the outbreak of [[World War II]], Miller was living at [[Downshire Hill]] in [[Hampstead]], London with Penrose when [[Nazi Germany|Germany's]] aerial bombardment of the city began. Ignoring pleas from friends and family to return to the U.S., Miller embarked on a new career in [[photojournalism]] as the official [[War photography|war photographer]] for ''Vogue'', documenting what became known as [[the Blitz]]. Because the British Army would not let her accompany them, she managed to be accredited with the [[United States Army|U.S. Army]] instead as a [[war correspondent]] for [[Condé Nast Publications]] from December 1942.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.the.me/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/lee_miller_biography_beautiful_young_thing_audacious_muse_photographer_3l.jpg |title=Lee Miller's war correspondence I.D. card |website=Messynessychic.com |access-date=November 12, 2021 |date=December 30, 1942 |archive-date=November 12, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211112112519/https://www.the.me/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/lee_miller_biography_beautiful_young_thing_audacious_muse_photographer_3l.jpg |url-status=live}}<!-- https://www.messynessychic.com/2018/03/30/the-mad-mad-love-of-man-ray-lee-miller/ https://the.me/lee-miller-biography-from-beautiful-young-thing-to-audacious-muse-and-above-all-photographer/ --></ref> Miller's first article for [[British Vogue|British ''Vogue'']] was on nurses at an army base in [[Oxford]].<ref>{{Cite web |date=April 12, 2022 |title=Lee Miller: Nurses |url=https://www.fitzroviachapel.org/lee-miller-nurses/ |access-date=May 10, 2022 |website=The Fitzrovia Chapel |archive-date=May 1, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220501161937/https://www.fitzroviachapel.org/lee-miller-nurses/ |url-status=live}}</ref> She took portraits of nurses across Europe, including those on the front lines and prisoners of war.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Jansen |first=Charlotte |date=April 29, 2022 |title=Lee Miller and the nurses of the Second World War |work=Financial Times |url=https://www.ft.com/content/1a5ecaa1-cf59-4030-ab0f-b42a446087cc |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221210/https://www.ft.com/content/1a5ecaa1-cf59-4030-ab0f-b42a446087cc |archive-date=December 10, 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |access-date=May 10, 2022}}</ref>

Following the [[D-Day]] invasion of France in 1944, Miller was tasked with reporting on what she was told was the newly-liberated town of [[Saint-Malo]]. She traveled there only to find that the town was still being heavily fought over. Miller's military accreditation as a female war correspondent did not allow her to enter an active combat zone, but rather than leave she decided to stay, and spent five days on the front lines photographing as much of the [[Battle of Saint-Malo]] as she could.<ref name="JMackrell">{{Cite web |url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/sep/11/now-i-owned-a-private-war-lee-miller-and-the-female-journalists-who-broke-battlefield-rules|title='Now I owned a private war': Lee Miller and the female journalists who broke battlefield rules|author=Judith Mackrell |website=The Guardian |date=September 11, 2024 |access-date=September 12, 2024}}</ref> Her photographs included the first recorded use of [[napalm]]. When the military authorities realized where she was, they put Miller under temporary [[house arrest]] and placed strict limits on her movements.<ref name="JMackrell"/>

While she was working with ''Vogue'' during World War II, Miller's goal was to "document war as historical evidence".<ref name="Hilditch">Hilditch, L. "Believe It! Lee Miller's Second World War Photographs as Modern Memorials." ''Journal of War & Culture Studies,'' July 3, 2018, 11(3), pp. 209–222.</ref> Her work provided "context for events"<ref>Zelizer, Barbie. ''Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory Through the Camera's Eye.'' Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998, p. ??.</ref> and "an eye-witness account" of the casualties of war.<ref name="Hilditch" /> Miller's work was very specific and surrealist, like her previous publications and modelling with ''Vogue''. She spent time composing her photographs, famously framing some from inside the [[Holocaust trains|cattle trains]] that had transported thousands of Jews to [[Extermination camp|Nazi death camps]]. Miller's work with ''Vogue'' during wartime was often a combination of journalism and art, sometimes manipulated to evoke emotion.<ref name="Hilditch" />

Miller teamed up with American photojournalist [[David E. Scherman]], a [[Life (magazine)|''Life'' magazine]] correspondent, on many assignments, including the [[liberation of Paris]], the [[Battle of Alsace]], and the horrors of the [[Nazism|Nazi]] [[concentration camp]]s at [[Buchenwald concentration camp|Buchenwald]] and [[Dachau concentration camp|Dachau]]. Scherman's iconic photograph<ref name="Bukhari" /> of Miller sitting in the bathtub in [[Hitler's Munich apartment|Adolf Hitler's private apartment]] in Munich,<ref name="LMbath">{{cite web |title=Lee Miller in Hitler's apartment at 16 Prinzregent – 2245 {{!}} LeeMiller |url=https://www.leemiller.co.uk/media/Lee-Miller-in-Hitler-s-apartment-at-16-Prinzregentenplatz-Note-the-combat-boots-on-the-bath-mat-now-stained-with-the-du/kX36YYnRPRhGQ1uHwG83hA..a |website=leemiller.co.uk |date=April 30, 1945 |quote=Note the combat boots on the bath mat now stained with the dust of Dachau; and a photograph of the previous owner of the flat propped on the edge of the tub. |access-date=February 2, 2021 |archive-date=November 8, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141108012227/https://www.leemiller.co.uk/media/Lee-Miller-in-Hitler-s-apartment-at-16-Prinzregentenplatz-Note-the-combat-boots-on-the-bath-mat-now-stained-with-the-du/kX36YYnRPRhGQ1uHwG83hA..a |url-status=live}}</ref> with the dried mud of that morning's visit to Dachau on her boots deliberately dirtying Hitler's bathroom,<ref>{{cite web |last=Beggs |first=Alex |title=Don't Let History Forget This Incredible Female World War II Photographer |url=https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/09/female-wwii-photographer-lee-miller |website=[[Vanity Fair (magazine)|Vanity Fair]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201116004238/https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/09/female-wwii-photographer-lee-miller |archive-date=November 16, 2020|date=September 30, 2015 |url-status=live |quote=After trudging through the liberated concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau... Lee Miller took off her muddy boots, making sure to wipe their horrific mud on the clean, fluffy bathmat, and posed in Hitler's bathtub.}}</ref> was taken in the evening on 30 April 1945, coincidentally the same day that [[Death of Adolf Hitler|Hitler committed suicide]].<ref name="BBC-WitHist1">{{cite web | url = https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct4x9p | title = Witness History – Lee Miller in Hitler's bath | date = 12 Jun 2023 | website = bbc.co.uk | publisher = BBC World Service | access-date = 5 October 2024 | quote = I was living in Hitler's private apartment when his death was announced. It was midnight of May Day, it was snowing, we were celebrating being there anyhow and the dry, convincing voice of the BBC was just another vague rumour. Well alright. He was dead. He'd never really been alive for me until this day. He'd been an evil machine monster all these years, until I visited all the places he'd made famous, talking to the people who knew him, dug into backstairs gossip, and ate and slept in his house.}}</ref> After posing for the bathtub photograph, Miller took a bath in the tub, and then slept in Hitler's bed.<ref name="JDGiovanni" /><ref name="BBC-WitHist2">{{cite web | url = https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct4x9p | title = Witness History – Lee Miller in Hitler's bath | date = 12 Jun 2023 | website = bbc.co.uk | publisher = BBC World Service | access-date = 5 October 2024 | quote = He had so recently been there. The private telephone wires were still operating, and one of the soldiers picked up the phone. I took some pictures of the place, and I also got a good night's sleep in Hitler's bed.}}</ref> She was also photographed in [[Eva Braun]]'s bed.<ref>{{cite web |title=Lee Miller in Eva Brauns bed |url=http://www.leemiller.co.uk/media/aNDpfu83sUQxWZ8DuzWxtg..a |website=leemiller.co.uk |year=1945 |access-date=February 2, 2021 |archive-date=February 6, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210206194809/http://www.leemiller.co.uk/media/aNDpfu83sUQxWZ8DuzWxtg..a |url-status=dead}}</ref>

During this period, Miller photographed dying children in a Vienna hospital, peasant life in post-war Hungary, corpses of Nazi officers and their families, and finally, the execution of former Hungarian Prime Minister [[László Bárdossy]]. After the war, she continued working for ''Vogue'' for another two years, covering fashion and celebrities.<ref name="2007-09-08 Guardian" />

At the war's end, Miller's work as a wartime photojournalist continued as she sent [[telegram]]s back to the British ''Vogue'' editor, Audrey Withers, urging her to publish photographs from the camps.<ref>Miller, Lee. "Germans Are Like This." British ''Vogue,'' (Features/Articles/People), June  1945, 105(10), pp. 102j, 192, 193. [https://archive.vogue.com/article/1945/06/01/germans-are-like-this Digitized] in Vogue Online Archive (registration required). Retrieved October 2, 2024.</ref> She did this following a CBS broadcast from Buchenwald by [[Edward R. Murrow]], and [[Richard Dimbleby]]'s BBC broadcast from inside [[Bergen-Belsen]].<ref>[[Edward R. Murrow|Murrow, E. R.]] (April 16, 1945). "They Died 900 a Day in 'the Best' Nazi Death Camp. Buchenwald, Germany", CBS.</ref><ref name="Hilditch" /> This was in consequence of people's disbelief at such atrocities, when these broadcasters urged photographers to do what they could to show the public what they saw.