This style of leadership, which favored the role of “chancelleries” in the political decision-making process, meant an enormous increase in power for Lammers, since he was responsible for setting the business of the day—not Otto Meissner, now head of the Presidential Chancellery; nor Philipp Bouhler, who had received the “Blood Order” (a prominent Nazi decoration) and reported directly to Hitler as head of the “Chancellery of the Führer of the NSDAP.” It was among Lammers’s duties to report to Hitler every morning, about situations in progress and tasks on the agenda.22 In addition, Hitler assigned Lammers to manage his—the “Führer’s”—bank accounts, and to run a “disposition fund” from which ministers and important Party members were remembered with tax-free gifts. Lammers himself, for his sixty-fifth birthday, received a gift of 600,000 reichsmarks along with a hunting lodge in the Schorfheide. Lammers also settled bills for the purchase of artworks meant for the “Führerbau” dedicated in Munich in September 1937, or the art museum in Linz that was planned, but never completed.23 Lammers was thus Hitler’s “right-hand man” and a powerful and influential figure for years within the National Socialist hierarchy.
This is the context in which a branch of the Reich Chancellery was established in 1937 in Stanggass-Bischofswiesen, northwest of Berchtesgaden and a little less than four miles from Obersalzberg. At the roofing ceremony on January 17, 1937, with Lammers present, Hitler made a short speech in which he said that he was “bold and gained trust and confidence” only at the Berghof, which was why his state secretary also had to “be here with the Reich Chancellery.”24 Already during the planning phase of the new service buildings, in September 1936, Lammers remarked in writing to Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, Minister of Finance, that Hitler was planning to stay in Upper Bavaria “even more often and for even longer periods in the future.”25 There was already a “Reichenhall-Berchtesgaden Government Airport” to provide a transportation connection with the capital.
Hitler now preferred to govern from the Berghof and carry out official functions there. There, and not at the actual seat of government in Berlin, was where he sketched out his decisive political and military plans in the years to come, and passed laws and decrees. The Berghof also served to receive foreign guests and gave Hitler the chance to present himself as a statesman: British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and, after his scandalous abdication, the Duke of Windsor (formerly King Edward VIII of Great Britain and Ireland) were among his most prominent visitors. The question arises whether Hitler was thereby simply escaping the prescribed course of official business, or whether his changed relationship with Eva Braun played a role as well. She was always at Berchtesgaden whenever he was. In the final analysis, Berlin was a turbulent and uncontrollable environment, where it would hardly have been possible to avoid inconvenient people and burdensome duties. On the Obersalzberg, in contrast, an atmosphere of a “closed society” held sway. In truth, Hitler’s residence after 1937, logistically as well as due to the installation of the most modern communications technology, was perfectly connected with the outside world—there was no question of “mountain solitude” in virgin nature, as the Nazi propaganda liked to claim.26 Nevertheless, many Party members and representatives of the Nazi government did have the experience of finding that the “Führer” was unreachable on the “mountain” when he did not want to be reached. After the new Berghof was finished, Fritz Wiedemann claimed, the Reich Chancellor had less and less to do with day-to-day government business. “Work hours,” previously “regulated to a certain extent,” grew shorter and shorter, so that it was “harder and harder” to “get decisions [from Hitler] that he alone, as head of state, could make.” On the Obersalzberg this situation was “even worse” than in Berlin.27
On the terrace of the Berghof (undated) (Illustration Credit 8.3)
For example, Lammers, residing in his second seat of government a few miles away, often tried in vain to be admitted to see Hitler. Daily meetings between the two men, which had been the rule in the early years of the Nazi government, no longer took place, and the head of the Reich Chancellery, despite having risen to the rank of Reich minister, now had to seek audience through Hitler’s personal adjutants, Wilhelm Brückner and Fritz Wiedemann. In 1938, after the signing of the Munich Agreement and the entry of German troops into the Sudetenland (the region of western Czechoslovakia occupied primarily by ethnic Germans and already carved off from the Czechoslovakian state), Lammers was often unable to see Hitler for weeks at a time. He wrote to Brückner on October 21 that he had not been able to give the “Führer” a “detailed report” since September 4, but now had to present to him “several laws to execute,” which “could not be postponed.” Lammers begged Brückner “most humbly to give the Führer this information” and to “communicate [to Lammers] a time when he might be received as soon as possible.” In a second letter the same day, Lammers attempted to get an appointment for Economic Affairs Minister Walther Funk,28 who had returned earlier that week from an extended trip to Yugoslavia, Turkey, and Bulgaria and now wanted to report on his successfully concluded foreign trade offensive in the southeast. SA-Obergruppenführer Brückner replied on October 24, however, that “the Führer was not prepared” to “receive” the report from Funk “on the Obersalzberg,” and that he would see the minister “only after his eventual return to Berlin.”29
In his own regard, Lammers followed up with a further request to the adjutant, informing Hitler that a meeting was “urgently necessary.”30 Now that so-called Reichsgan Sudetenland had been “annexed,” its administration had to be reorganized, and that included among other matters the “administrative persecution” of its Jewish population.31 The corresponding “Law Concerning the Reunification of the Sudeten-German Region with the German Reich,” prepared by the Chancellery, was awaiting his signature. Even then, Wiedemann recalled, Hitler was “not in the mood to see Lammers.” And so “Herr Reichsminister” waited another week, less than four miles away at the base of the Obersalzberg, before finally being permitted to set foot in the Berghof and give his “report” on October 31, 1938.32
This incident reveals more than an “unmethodical, even negligent style” of governing. The claim that Hitler was interested only in foreign politics by that point, and considered domestic matters inconsequential, is also incorrect,33 since Lammers and Funk simply tried to promote Hitler’s aims by implementing Funk’s trade agreements concerning the Balkans, which were a preparatory step to carry out the policy of foreign expansion.34 What we see here is how the Nazi leader, surrounded by his personal staff and his closest social circle, repeatedly created a distance between himself on the Obersalzberg and his leading political associates. Hitler postponed decisions or simply refused to make them. This in no way implies that he was weak in his exercise of power, or inefficient—such was not the case.35
But why, then, did he entrench himself on the Obersalzberg? Was it a psychological way to strengthen his aura of an inapproachable, absolute ruler? Or did he simply sometimes want to avoid any confrontation with the world outside the “Grand Hotel” (Eva Braun’s name for the Berghof)?36 Wiedemann, whose memoir gives the impression that Hitler neglected his political duties after 1936, even claimed that Hitler “absolutely never” received less “important personalities” than Lammers anymore after that time.37 The truth was exactly the reverse. Speer, for example, questioned in August 1945 about Hitler’s mode of working, stated that “when [Hitler] had important decisions to make” he went to the Obersalzberg and tried “to clarify things… for himself” by means of hours-long “conversations, repeated many times over,” with his military adjutants.38 Hence, the supposedly “unimportant people” such as adjutants, secretaries, doctors, Martin Bormann, and not least Eva Braun (still largely unknown to the public), had “access to the dictator” that well-known political figures in the Nazi elite, including Göring and Hess, were denied.39
The “Royal Court”
Who were the men and women of this exclusive s
ociety, who made up Hitler’s private environment on the Berghof and met with him daily whenever he was there? Were they really, as is often maintained, normal, “simple” people, uneducated and without any political influence? How did this circle of individuals form? What were their relations with each other? And what role did Eva Braun play in the group?
Joachim Fest has argued that Hitler continued to prefer “the uncritical, dull milieu of simple people” around him, such as he had known from childhood on. Guido Knopp, too, said with respect to “everyday life… on the mountain” that the dictator’s “substitute family” consisted of obsequious “personal physicians, personal photographers, personal bodyguards, secretaries, and adjutants.”40 But this way of looking at things has since been superseded. In fact, Hitler’s close environment in no way consisted of a homogenous group of people. It remains the case that, aside from Goebbels and Speer, most of the “great and powerful men” of the Reich were not among this group. Hermann Göring—the power-hungry, second-most-powerful man in the Nazi hierarchy, commander in chief of the air force and “General Plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan,” thus a major influence on the development of the rearmament economy—owned a house of his own on the Obersalzberg, but there was no private contact between him and the Reich Chancellor. Any social invitation of Göring and his wife Emmy to the Berghof was, Speer says, “completely out of the question.”41
Heinrich Himmler, as “Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police” after June 1936, reported directly to Hitler and was responsible for terror, persecution, and genocide, but he likewise appeared in Hitler’s Alpine residence only for meetings. Himmler’s unquestioning loyalty and belief in the leader’s convictions ensured him Hitler’s favor, which he used to expand his power and define his role entirely in terms of his own personal principles of military tradition and racial selection. No connection to his “Führer” on a personal level is known, however.42 Joachim von Ribbentrop, too, whom Hitler apparently described as a “second Bismarck,” appeared on the Obersalzberg only for meetings and official occasions such as the visit of David Lloyd George, the former British prime minister, on September 4, 1936. Ribbentrop, the ambassador to London starting in that year and Foreign Minister from 1938 on—thus “the greatest warmonger other than Hitler himself”—was hated by most of the other high-ranking Party members for his high-handed manner.43 Rudolf Hess, the “Deputy Führer” who ran the Party headquarters in Munich, was also excluded from Hitler’s private circle. He had been among Hitler’s constant companions until 1933, with the reputation of being “the high priest of the Führer cult,” but by the time Hitler moved into the “new Berghof,” Hess was already estranged from the center of power. One important reason for this exclusion was probably that the former “private secretary” was seen to be a difficult person, an eccentric loner with obscure interests, unsuited to harmless diversions with others.44
Thus prominent representatives of the government and the Party were denied access to Hitler’s private sphere, however, there were at least three distinct groups with distinct functions around Hitler at the Berghof: (1) personnel, such the doctors, personal adjutants, secretaries, servants, chauffeurs, and bodyguards; (2) military adjutants and representatives of the government, the military, and the Party, including Albert Speer, Martin Bormann, Karl Brandt, Sepp Dietrich, Hermann Esser, and Franz Xaver Schwarz; and (3) a social circle, including Hitler’s lover, her family, and her friends as well as Heinrich Hoffmann and his family.45 Only Speer and Goebbels, among the Nazi Party leadership, can be considered “friends” of the otherwise unapproachable Hitler, who was “cut off from real human contact.”46
But was this circle on the Obersalzberg actually purely private in nature, as Speer claimed to his interrogators in 1945? Speer stated that Hitler had chosen a group of people there “apolitically,” out of purely personal sympathy; that he included only those who “would not disturb his thoughts with political discussions.”47 Speer’s early statements about the composition and significance of the Berghof circle thus give the impression that the people who were regularly present—including himself—were merely the dictator’s personal friends, who had nothing, or an insignificant amount, to do with the regime’s politics, at least until the start of the war. Politics, Speer said, was not a topic of discussion within the so-called private circle—a claim that everyone involved who survived the war stubbornly stuck to as well. But was it even possible to so sharply distinguish private life and politics, in a place that was the regime’s second center of power, along with Berlin? And how does this testimony fit with the widespread belief that Hitler had no private life at all?
The various people at the Berghof were not, of course, all equal in status—or of the same gender—but the boundary between the social circle and the two official groups was extremely fluid. Hitler was the center around whom everyone revolved, and the dividing lines would dissolve and be redrawn according to the various degree of favor and trust each person found himself or herself in. Once the Alpine residence was sealed off in 1935, a kind of community of purpose developed, in which everyone ate lunch together, spent the evenings with one another, went on excursions, celebrated holidays, and—in changing permutations—could be seen on the VIP platform at Party conventions.48 There were also trips together: Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Hoffmann, Karl Brandt, and their families flew to Greece in fall 1936, for example, for a semiofficial eight-day visit; they were received by George II, the reinstated king, and his prime minister, Ioannis Metaxas. Eva Braun, meanwhile, had joined Heinrich Hoffmann Jr. and others on a purely private trip to Italy a few weeks earlier, visiting Venice and Milan, among other places.49
Among the regular guests on the Obersalzberg, who considered spending time with Hitler to be an “exciting experience,” were to be found, after 1937–1938, Nicolaus von Below, a twenty-nine-year-old colonel of the Luftwaffe assigned to Hitler as an adjutant, and his nineteen-year-old wife, Maria. Below later recalled that he had entered the Chancellor’s private circle as early as four weeks after his first assignment on June 23, 1937. His explanation of how this was possible so quickly was that they had immediately discovered a common interest in classical music. Certainly Hitler’s appointments outside of work hours did not lie within Below’s purview. The four military adjutants, one from each of the four branches of the armed forces, unlike the personal adjutants, were on call in alternation and scheduled meetings pertaining only to military matters, in the broadest sense, including “petitions and pleas for clemency from soldiers and their family members.”50 Still, we may presume that Hitler developed a certain sympathy for the strapping young air force adjutant from the first moment he saw him, since the Belows were included on his personal invitation list to the Wagner festivals in Bayreuth as early as July 27.51
Nicolaus von Below was around the same age as Brandt and Speer, and was friends with them as well.52 Like them, Below accompanied the Nazi leader not only officially but also on personal trips. Ever since Hitler had disenfranchised the previous commanders of the military and taken over sole command of the armed forces in early February 1938, he required constant accompaniment by military adjutants. Thus Below went regularly with Hitler to his private apartment in Munich, as well as to the Obersalzberg, from then on. At 16 Prinzregentenplatz, the adjutant later recalled, the housekeeper was “in constant contact with Eva Braun” and had “a telephone connection to her ready for Hitler” immediately upon his arrival.53 Then, in summer 1939, Below went along to the “Reich Theater Week” in Vienna, an event organized by the Ministry of Propaganda that since 1934 had taken place in various cities of the Reich, including Linz. Afterward, at the Berghof, Below (alternating with Speer) followed Hitler in “long walks up and down the great hall” and was impressed by the “Führer’s” thoughts circling around the “extermination” of “Jewish Bolshevism.” As he later confessed in his memoir, the argument that “the German People could not live in peace… under this constant threat” had convinced
him.54
Soirée in the great hall at the Berghof, 1944 (Illustration Credit 8.4)
Maria von Below, a landowner’s daughter whom Hitler first invited to the Berghof for Easter 1938, stated in 1985, in very similar terms, that Hitler did not win the “loyalty” of those around him “by telling them his plan was murder.” Rather, he persuaded everyone “because he was fascinating.” “Even the early years” at the Berghof were in no way “horribly boring,” she said in this interview with Gitta Sereny; Hitler held everyone in his grip by means of his personality, and his “phenomenal” “knowledge of history and art.” Thus Maria von Below presented herself as unable to understand the retroactive dismissal of the Berghof society in Speer’s publications. How could he have forgotten “how exciting it was for all of us? And how often we were happy there?”55
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