About three minutes into reel No. 2, Adolf Hitler appears on the terrace of his mountain chalet in a white double-breasted jacket and black trousers.

His shoes are shined, and he is wearing a red armband with a black swastika.

But the swastika is backward, Criss Austin said as she ran the footage in a National Archives film room.

After World War II, she said, a piece of original film was mistakenly spliced in backward, resulting in the flawed copy.

It was fixed digitally, she said, and was a crucial step in the Archives’ project to create the best version to date of the famous home movies shot by Hitler’s girlfriend Eva Braun.

Now the job is almost done and should be completed this month, said Austin, a film preservation supervisor.