The BBC is to air a documentary about an extraordinary woman who went from working as a fashion model to capturing the liberation of Europe at the end of the Second World War as a photojournalist.

Lee Miller: A Life On The Frontline will tell the story of the New York fashion photographer who appeared in American Vogue – then witnessed first hands the horrors of Nazi Germany.

Miller, who was born in 1907, buried the record of her remarkable life in boxes in the attic of her home in Chiddingly, east of Lewes, and they were not found until after her death by her son, who was able to chronicle her achievements, according to the BBC.

The biographical film features modern day artists and models reflect on Miller’s work as a 1920s cover girl, to working with surrealist artists in Europe and also her photojournalism career.

Miller was among the most important photographers to record the 20th century.

She could move effortlessly from one side of the camera to the other, being both the consummate professional model and a highly successful photographer, who at one point ran her own studio.

She honed her skills under the guidance of the great photographers of her day, including Man Ray, who became her lover during the early 1930s.

When Lee returned to New York from Europe in October 1932, newspaper reporters were waiting to greet her as her ship docked. Disembarking in a smart beret and fur-collared coat, she smiled for the journalist from the New York World-Telegram.

She felt photography was “ideally suited to women as a profession, for it seems to me that women are quicker and more adaptable than men. And I think they have an intuition that helps them understand personalities more quickly than men”.

After a stint living in Cairo, she returned to Paris, where she met the British surrealist painter and curator Roland Penrose, who would go on to teach the use of camouflage in the Second World War.

And for Miller too, the conflict that engulfed Europe would prove a defining point in her career. Living in Hampstead, north London, with Penrose when the bombing of the city began, she decided to embark on a new career in photojournalism as the official war photographer for Vogue, documenting the Blitz.

Her work would later take her across the whole of Europe, working for the Allied Forces and teaming up with fellow American photographer David E Scherman, a correspondent for Life magazine.

Her collection includes incredible photos she took documenting the end of the war.

She witnessed the liberation of Paris, the Battle of Alsace, and the horrors of the first soldiers arriving at Nazi concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.

While visiting Germany, David Scherman took a photograph of Miller lying in the bathtub of Adolf Hitler’s apartment in Munich, with its shower hose looped in the centre behind her head, resembling a noose. The image became one of the most iconic of their partnership and showed off her infamous modelling skills.

It is believed Miller had kept the address of Hitler’s apartment in her pocket “for years”, hoping to be one of the first to arrive during the invasion. After taking the bathtub picture, Miller slept in Hitler’s bed.

She spent the later years of her life in England where she died in 1977, aged 70.

In the documentary, to be aired on Saturday, modern day artists and models reflect on Miller’s work.

The BBC said: “Lee Miller is one of the most remarkable female icons of the 20th century. A model turned photographer turned war reporter, Miller chose to live her life by her own rules.

“This film celebrates a subject who defied anyone who tried to pin her down, put her on a pedestal or pigeonhole her in any way.

“It tells the story of a trailblazer, often at odds with the morality of the day, who refused to be subjugated by the dominant male figures around her.”

Lee Miller: A Life On The Frontline will be broadcast on BBC Two on Saturday at 10.30pm.