It is thus hardly surprising that Viktoria von Dirksen provided access to the Nazi elite to the nineteen-year-old relative living with her in Berlin. The young woman had herself spent the year 1932–1933 in the “Alliance of German Maidens” (Bund Deutscher Mädel, or BDM), the girls’ branch of the Hitler Youth—which was not yet obligatory—and she would join the NSDAP in 1938.137 The young blonde was, the servant Heinz Linge later said, one of the “most beautiful women” around Hitler, and Hitler invited her to “all festive occasions.” For example, she appeared amid the Nazi leadership on May 1, 1934, when a “National Day of Celebration of the German People,” designed by the government to allude to a German popular spring festival, was conducted in an enormous propaganda spectacle at Tempelhof Field. As one of the women who represented the government in public, she did have a certain importance, a fact of which Hitler was clearly aware: he selected such candidates personally, with an eye to their visual effect.138 As late as March 1939, Laffert was among the guests invited to a state dinner in the Chancellor’s residence.139 It is certainly possible that Eva Braun in Munich, forbidden from such appearances, heard about the rumors going around Berlin in early 1935.
In addition, Hitler’s health was in poor shape. Since the start of the year he had suffered from nervous tinnitus at night and hoarseness, and was afraid of dying of throat cancer, as the German emperor Friedrich III had in 1888. On May 23, 1935, only two days after his second so-called Peace Address in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin, which had attracted attention abroad as well (in it, he finally paved the way for German-English alliance talks), he underwent an operation in the Reich Chancellery. The doctor who treated him, Carl Otto von Eicken, a professor at the Charité in Berlin and an expert on throat cancer, removed a polyp from the vocal folds and recommended four weeks of recovery. Years later, an article in Time magazine dated November 14, 1938, reported an interview with Eicken, who was at a convention in Philadelphia, and stated that the simple medical procedure had given rise to great concern at the time. Hitler, after being given anesthetics, had slept for fourteen hours straight.140 Hitler waited three months before he spoke again in public, in Rosenheim on August 11, 1935.
Adolf Hitler and Sigrid von Laffert with Joseph and Magda Goebbels in the dignitaries’ box at the German Opera House in Berlin, December 1935. To the left, Hitler’s personal assistant Wilhelm Brückner. (Illustration Credit 5.8)
Under political stress and in impaired health as he was, it is hardly surprising that Hitler did not find time for the young Munich girl. But Eva Braun clearly took his behavior personally. On May 28, five days after his operation and while the Chancellery was working full steam preparing for the upcoming German-English arms negotiations, Eva Braun, for the second time in three years, attempted suicide in Munich. This time it was not her father’s revolver but an overdose of sleeping pills that was supposed to, as her diary-fragment put it, “make ‘dead sure’ ” of the situation.141
Did Braun really want to die? Was it an act of despair or a blackmail attempt? She had, if we believe the “Diary,” sent Hitler a “decisive” letter on the day of the attempt, but the question of whether the letter told him of her suicide must remain unanswered since the letter no longer exists and there is no other evidence for its having existed. In any case, the events of May 28, 1935, remain unclear. The suicide attempt is attested to only in Nerin E. Gun’s account, based on an interview with the Braun family but not documented with a historian’s thoroughness. According to Gun, Ilse Braun, as in Eva’s first suicide attempt, found Eva unconscious that night. She gave first aid and called a doctor. It was also Ilse Braun who found her sister’s diary on this occasion and removed the relevant pages, in order to keep the second suicide attempt and its causes secret. There is no mention of this incident in the memoir literature. Whether Hitler himself, who was in Munich at the time, ever even heard about it is not recorded.142 The events of the following months, however, suggest that he did.
6. THE MYTH OF THE “FÜHRER,” OR HERR HITLER IN PRIVATE
The first piece of circumstantial evidence in this regard is the fact that Eva Braun moved out of her parents’ house on August 9, 1935, and with her sister Gretl and a Hungarian maid moved into a three-bedroom apartment at 42 Widenmayerstrasse, rented for her by Heinrich Hoffmann. Hitler, whose apartment on Prinzregentenplatz was only five minutes away, had suggested the arrangement and paid for the apartment via his agent, Hoffmann.1 By giving Eva Braun material support and thereby giving her a clear sign of his affection, Hitler was obviously trying to avoid wider attention and especially the scandal that would certainly have been unavoidable after a successful suicide attempt on his lover’s part. He also allowed her closer contact with him. She was even permitted to appear at public events, which until then she had been strictly forbidden to attend.
At the 1935 Party Convention in Nuremberg
For example, in September 1935, four months after her second suicide attempt and four weeks after moving into the apartment of her own that Hitler paid for, she attended an NSDAP convention for the first time, in Nuremberg.2 This annual event, with its marches, torchlight processions at night, parades, and roll calls, had no purpose other than propaganda and was centered from start to finish on Hitler, whom hundreds of thousands of supporters welcomed and celebrated like a messiah. In 1935, the convention lasted from September 10 to September 16 and had as its motto “Convention of Freedom,” in reference to Germany’s (at least partial) liberation from the Versailles Treaty and regaining of room to maneuver militarily.3 In addition, the session of Parliament that Hitler convened during the convention and summoned specially to Nuremberg passed, on September 15, the so-called Nuremberg Laws, hastily drawn up the previous day, which expelled Jewish citizens from the “Volksgemeinschaft” and robbed them of their civil rights.4
There is no authenticated information about the extent to which Eva Braun knew of these proceedings, or even when exactly she arrived in Nuremberg. There are, however, suggestions that she traveled to Nuremberg together with her boss, Heinrich Hoffmann, and Hoffmann’s wife and son, along with other employees of his firm, “Heinrich Hoffmann: Publisher of National Socialist Pictures.”5 Hoffmann’s business had turned into a major concern, with sales in the millions, and since he was obviously at the convention from the beginning, in his capacity as “Reich Photographic Correspondent of the NSDAP,” we can presume that Eva Braun was there on the first day as well, when Hitler was driven through the city in an open car and was welcomed in the Nuremberg Historical City Hall by the mayor.6 Ernst Hanfstaengl, who had the task of welcoming the international press in the great hall of the Cultural Union building on the afternoon of September 10, recalled that Braun had come to the convention “inconspicuously,” but in an “expensive fur.”7 She probably also saw the impressive propaganda spectacle staged by Albert Speer on the zeppelin field located five kilometers southeast of the city center, where, on September 12 at 10 a.m., a roll call of the Reich Labor Service took place with an accompanying march “past the Führer”; on the following day came the roll call of the political leaders; and on the last day, September 16, starting at 9 a.m., the presentation of the armed forces, ending that night with a ceremonial tattoo.8 In 1935, though, the zeppelin field was still bare—the well-known monumental stone architectural features, including the gigantic gilded swastika, were built only two years later. The tribunals, speaker’s platform, and colossal eagle lit with several spotlights were still made of wood in 1935; Speer’s idea of a “cathedral of light,” created from the beams of antiaircraft spotlights, was tested out for the first time this year, but not yet put into full effect.9
For Eva Braun, meanwhile, the convention meant a further development in her relationship to Hitler. For the first time, she was allowed to take part in an official NSDAP event along with the wives of leading Nazis—Ilse Hess, Margarete “Marga” Himmler, and Gerda Bormann, among others. Her presence apparently met with resistance from some of the women, though, espec
ially Hitler’s energetic half-sister, Angela Raubal, who kept house for him in Berchtesgaden. Herbert Döhring, the later manager of the Berghof household, recalled after the war that “Frau Raubal and Frau Goebbels and all these ministers’ wives” were “completely shocked” that “this young, capricious, and dissatisfied-looking girl was sitting there on the VIP rostrum.”10 Döhring, twenty-two years old at the time and thus slightly younger than Braun, was a member of the “Führer protection command” stationed in the Deutscher Hof hotel and responsible for Hitler’s personal safety; he could hardly have learned anything of the conflicts among the women on the VIP stage from his own experience. He had possibly not even met Eva Braun by that point in time. His judgment must therefore have been based partly on rumors, partly on his later experiences at the Berghof.
Still, Julius Schaub, Hitler’s personal adjutant and close associate of many years, who followed the Nazi leader “like a shadow,” in Christa Schroeder’s words, also claimed that there was “a rather tense relationship” between Raubal and Braun at the convention.11 Schroeder herself, a secretary in the “Führer’s personal staff” in the Reich Chancellery since 1933, remarks that Angela Raubal could not stand Eva Braun from the beginning, and that Raubal expressed to her brother her disapproval of Braun’s, in her view, “very conspicuous” behavior in Nuremberg. Schroeder said that Raubal later had to “leave the mountain”[8] on Hitler’s wish, and “all the other ladies” who made themselves noticeable “with disparaging remarks” were not permitted “to enjoy” the “hospitality of the house” for long.12
Angela Raubal did in fact leave the Obersalzberg on February 18, 1936, after more than seven years there, but she returned, it seems, for occasional visits. In any case, on May 22, 1936, she wrote in a letter to Rudolf Hess from Dresden that she was planning to accompany her husband on a study trip at the end of June that would pass through Munich and Berchtesgaden. She added: “Especially since my brother was here in Dresden and I spoke to him again after such a long time and he promised to come over to see us for coffee soon, I have been so wildly happy, I am afraid the gods will envy me.”13 Apparently Hitler had reestablished contact with his half-sister after only a few months. It is no longer possible to ascertain whether Eva Braun was the only reason for Raubal’s departure.14 The recollections of the members of Hitler’s personal staff clearly show, however, how dramatic Eva Braun’s rise seemed from the point of view of the staff and the servants. The sudden departure of Hitler’s half-sister clearly showed them that anyone who dared to criticize Eva Braun or her relationship with Hitler would have to reckon with being laid off. As a result, the young woman’s position in the inner circle became practically untouchable.
The Unnoticed Climb
Nonetheless, even in Nuremberg, only a few initiates knew who Eva Braun actually was. On the record, she remained invisible, and she did not stay at Hotel Kaiserhof like the wives and other female guests, such as Hitler’s architect Gerdy Troost, Marga Himmler, and Gerda Bormann. (Like all lodgings in the city during the convention, Hotel Kaiserhof could be entered only with a “residence pass” given out by the management.) Instead, it is very probable that Braun, along with Marianne (Marion) Schönmann, a friend she had brought along from Munich, moved in Heinrich Hoffmann’s circle as his colleague.15 So it cannot be ruled out that she, like her boss, stayed with Hitler’s entourage in the Deutscher Hof on the Altstadtring, across from the Opera House, where Hitler occupied the second floor of the hotel, as per tradition, during his stay in this “most German of all cities.” Hitler had personally prohibited the wives of other Party members from being housed there, so he may well have presumed that Eva Braun, accompanied by Hoffmann, would arouse the least attention there.16
A photograph taken on the occasion of Hoffmann’s fiftieth birthday on September 12, 1935, in Nuremberg, shows that Hoffmann’s circle at the time included not only Braun and Schönmann, his family, and other colleagues, but also Max Schmeling and the photographer Atto Retti-Marsani.17 Presumably, Braun also received complimentary tickets to the various events at the convention through Hoffmann. In general, tickets for the convention, which were sent out from the Braune Haus (Brown House) in Munich in the “Führer’s” name and signed by Rudolf Hess, were extremely sought-after and hard to come by. Ilse Hess, loyal to the Party line as always, decisively rejected a relative’s request in the run-up to the convention as follows: “Unfortunately, the tickets are in such short supply that even many old comrades-in-arms in the movement are having to stay away. In these circumstances, it is even less possible for me to give preference to a relative who is not among the long-standing Party faithful.”18 Eva Braun, meanwhile, was able to remain discreet, with Hoffmann’s help, even though she became a fixture in Hitler’s innermost circle from then on. Within a year—with or without a suicide attempt—she had managed to decisively change the circumstances of her life with Hitler, entirely to her benefit.
Eva Braun now lived in her own apartment, and a few months later would move with her younger sister Gretl into her own house, with a garden, in Bogenhausen, a neighborhood in Munich filled with aristocratic villas. In addition, she was a constant presence at the Berghof from 1936 on, and received Hitler in his refuge on the Obersalzberg, which became her second residence along with Munich. She even occasionally traveled abroad with him. Since she was concealed in his retinue as a “private secretary,” outsiders had no idea that this young blond woman might be the lover of the unmarried dictator. Eva Braun’s “constant presence,” which made such an impression on Hanfstaengl, was apparent only to those who themselves had, or had once had, close personal contact with Hitler.19
A “Lost Life”?
It is true that the formal status of lawfully wedded wife remained unattainable for Braun, but did that make her life a “lost” one, as the British biographer Angela Lambert put it right in the title of her book The Lost Life of Eva Braun?20 What was the actual difference between Braun’s own mode of existence and that of other wives or girlfriends of high-ranking National Socialist politicians? Did it correspond to the typical role of women in her time and social class, or had she taken on, with her tie to Hitler, an “undignified courtesan’s role”? Is it true that she lived like a slave and was allowed to leave Munich only with Hitler’s or Bormann’s permission?21
Ernst Hanfstaengl, who made these claims after the war, was himself strongly under Hitler’s spell and had, despite his upper-middle-class family background and education at Harvard University, supported the NSDAP as early as 1922. After his failed putsch on November 8–9, 1923, Hitler fled first to a house in Uffing am Staffelsee in the Upper Bavarian Alpine foothills some forty-five miles from Munich owned by the Hanfstaengl family. And during Hitler’s following yearlong prison term in Landsberg am Lech, Hanfstaengl was among the faithful supporters who visited him many times in jail.22 Hanfstaengl’s intimate knowledge of Hitler’s personal relationships was limited, though, to the 1920s and early 1930s. By the 1935 convention, he had been cut off from personal contact with Hitler for more than a year. Having fallen into disgrace, he flew to Great Britain in 1937 and tried, unsuccessfully, to achieve rehabilitation with Hitler as a “patriot and Party comrade,” via Hans Heinrich Lammers, head of the Reich Chancellery, and Julius Streicher, Gauleiter of Nuremberg.23
Years later, the fact that Hanfstaengl had once been in close personal contact with Hitler unexpectedly turned out to work to his advantage. During the war, he was set free from the Canadian prisoner of war camp where he was being held as an enemy alien deported from Great Britain, and promoted to a position working for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the American secret service. Under the name “Dr. Sedgwick,” he provided John F. Carter, President Roosevelt’s adviser and news analyst, with information about how it would be possible to break the political power of the National Socialists in Germany.24 Hanfstaengl’s later assessment of Hitler’s relationship with Eva Braun reflects, first and foremost, the cultural norms current in the 193
0s, along with the church practices and civil laws, according to which extramarital sexuality was considered unnatural and immoral. Hanfstaengl’s characterization of Braun’s presence in Hitler’s inner circle as shameful and disruptive also testifies to his unbroken perpetuation of the myth of a “Führer” who could not be judged by human standards, and whom Hanfstaengl (himself a notorious ladies’ man) did not want to see undermined by a relationship that was inappropriate on any terms.25
Hitler and the Braun Family
In the context of the restrictive sexual morality reigning in Germany, and Eva Braun’s education by Catholic nuns, it is no wonder that Eva’s parents, Friedrich and Franziska Braun, disapproved of their daughter’s lifestyle at first. We do not know when and in what circumstances they first learned of her relationship with Hitler. It does seem rather implausible, however, that they learned of it only in the late summer of 1935, after Eva Braun moved out into her own apartment, and after they met her with Hitler, supposedly by accident—and still less plausible that they knew of their daughter’s connection to the Chancellor only in 1937.26 The only way the idea of such a relationship could have failed to occur to her parents was if they attributed their daughter’s unbourgeois habits and behavior of many years—the sudden appearance of a phone line; the irregular coming and going; the nights spent out—to her work for Photohaus Hoffmann.
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