Eva Braun on the Obersalzberg, ca. 1937 (Illustration Credit 9.3)
From the start, Hitler showed no political restraint or secretiveness around his two young secretaries, either. They had accompanied him to his headquarters at the front, and while eating breakfast or having an afternoon coffee with them, he explained “what a great danger Bolshevism posed to Europe” and that, if he had waited another year, “it would probably have already been too late.” Christa Schroeder wrote in a letter to a friend that the women “first heard what the boss had to say about the state of affairs” over breakfast. Then, “around one o’clock,” they went with him “to the general briefing” that took place in the map room, where either the chief-adjutant of the armed forces, Colonel Rudolf Schmundt, or Hitler’s army adjutant, Major Gerhard Engel, gave his “situation report.” These “briefing lectures,” in which Bormann, Morell, and Schaub also took part, were “extremely interesting” to Christa Schroeder.74 The military officers, in contrast, disliked such loose conduct on the part of their commander in chief, and put a stop as soon as they could to Hitler’s bringing his secretaries along to military meetings. Nonetheless, Christa Schroeder described “evening discussions with the leader” in July 1941, which “always [went on] insanely long.”75 And on August 20, after nine weeks in the “Wolf’s Lair,” she put Hitler’s raw and unadulterated views, as she had internalized them, in a private letter:
There is nothing I want more deeply than for the English to propose peace once we’ve taken care of Russia…. I just can’t understand why the English are being so unreasonable. Once we’ve spread out to the east, we won’t need their colonies. It’s much more practical, too, to have everything nice and contiguous, it seems to me. The Ukraine and Crimea are so fertile, we can grow what we need there, and get everything else… in trade with South America. It’s all so simple and makes so much sense. Please God, let the English come to their senses soon.76
The goals of this deliberate war of exploitation and annihilation against the Soviet Union, in all its contempt for humanity, could not have been formulated any more clearly and unambiguously. Incidentally, this contemporaneous letter from Schroeder also proves something else: the claim made later that Hitler never touched on political topics in the presence of women was merely another self-protective lie.
The Beginning of the End
Presumably, Eva Braun and Hitler did not see each other during the next five months. Only twice—in October, shortly after the start of the great offensive against Moscow, and in November—did he leave his wooden barracks in the Rastenburg swamps, and only for one day each time, to travel to Berlin and Munich. In early December 1941, he stayed for about a week in Berlin.77 The New Year’s party that always took place at the Berghof, with its accompanying group photograph, did not happen for New Year’s 1941–1942: Hitler stayed in East Prussia. He apparently phoned Eva Braun in Munich every night at around ten.78 The blitzkrieg had meanwhile failed; the air war against England was lost; and Hitler had declared war on the United States after the Japanese attack on the American Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor, without being forced or even obliged by treaty to do so. By late April 1942 when he once again traveled to the Bavarian capital and the Berghof for a few days, more than a million German soldiers had fallen in battle. The SS murdered almost as many civilians in mass shootings in the occupied territories by the end of the year. In spite of the enormous losses, lack of reserve troops, and shortages of matériel on the German side, a new summer offensive was supposed to reach Stalingrad and bring about a final decision in the war.79
In Munich and on the Obersalzberg, however, there was not yet any sign of the war in spring 1942. While Lübeck, Rostock, Cologne, Essen, Bremen, and other major German cities had already undergone nighttime carpet bombing from the British Royal Air Force, the “capital city of the movement” had not experienced a single air attack. Hitler thus met undisturbed with August Eigruber, the NSDAP Gauleiter of the Upper Danube, on April 27 and 28 to discuss the “construction of an operetta theater” in Linz and to determine the “street profile of the grand boulevards” there, which were to have arcades and upscale businesses on all sides. “The most ideal stroll in the world will be in Linz,” he enthused, stressing to Eigruber that he, Hitler, was first and foremost an architect and master builder. Even his “military operations” would not have succeeded had he “not [remained] primarily an artist”: that was the only way it had been possible “to survive this winter and emerge victorious.” Hitler believed that he alone had prevented a military disaster in the winter of 1941–1942, by managing everything himself;80 in fact, to his generals’ annoyance, he had constantly interfered in operations despite having hardly any insight into larger strategic considerations. In the First World War, after all, he had been only a private.
The world of the Upper Bavarian Alps seemed just as intact as Munich. As before, streets and estates were being built on the Obersalzberg under the aegis of Martin Bormann. Bormann’s instructions were even declared to be a “war-critical construction program of the Führer”; unlike everywhere else in the Reich, there were no shortages of labor or restrictions on construction materials, food, or objects of daily use there. This was true first and foremost for Hitler and his entourage—their stay on the “mountain” continued to be idyllic.81 What’s more, in the early summer of 1942 Eva Braun posed Hitler in front of her camera as a devoted paterfamilias and sympathetic private person. She even asked Walter Frentz, a young photographer who had worked as a cameraman for Leni Riefenstahl and had accompanied Hitler as a photographer since the start of the war, to take photographs of herself as well as her friend Herta Schneider’s young daughter, and Hitler.82 Since Eva Braun preserved these pictures in a separate photo album she started specially for them, it is reasonable to assume that she was thereby recording her own desire for a normal family life, and that, during the long periods of separation caused by the war, she took as much delight in her fantasy world on celluloid as Hitler did in his models of Linz. In addition, she herself often photographed and filmed Hitler with her school friend’s children, or the children of other visitors to the Berghof.83 Another reason she did this was apparently that it made the “Führer” appear the way she wanted him to be: pleasant, relaxed, private. At the same time, though, she sold these pictures to Heinrich Hoffmann, who then published them in his propaganda photo books. The assertion that Hitler knew nothing about her fake-family pictures is thus hard to believe.84 If nothing else, he was obviously willing to make himself available to pose for her in this way. Eva Braun, for her part, clearly got vicarious satisfaction from this constant filming, which Hitler always put up with since he could not offer her a fulfilling private life in other ways.85
Hitler and Eva Braun with her friend Herta Schneider’s children, at the Berghof, 1944 (Illustration Credit 9.4)
In the meantime, Eva Braun’s currency at Hitler’s court continued to rise. Christa Schroeder, who had no domestic life of her own since she had constantly been on call for Hitler for years, commented in her memoir that Eva Braun grew “more certain of her influence over Hitler” during the war years. She became “more self-confident,” Schroeder wrote, took a greater part in mealtime conversations, and often expressed her displeasure “when Hitler continued to discuss one of his favorite topics after the meal was over, rather than getting up from the table.” As soon as Eva Braun intervened, by loudly “asking the time” or looking rebukingly at Hitler, he brought “his monologues” to an end “on the spot.”86 Eva Braun thus seems to have been the only person who dared to put a stop to his well-known talkativeness; no other member of the mealtime group at the Berghof would have done so. But it did not gain her any sympathy from the others; it only emphasized the intimacy of her relationship with Hitler and showed up the obsequious behavior of everyone else. Not a few of them held it against her that she dimmed the “Führer’s” radiant glow by treating him like a longtime husband.
This is not the least significant re
ason why Eva Braun was later called capricious, spoiled, and “very much focused on trivialities.” Baldur von Schirach, for example, a member of Hitler’s inner circle from the age of eighteen who continued to visit the Obersalzberg occasionally until 1943 with his wife, Henriette, said after the war that Eva Braun sometimes supplied the people at the table “with the latest gossip and scandal from the film world for hours on end.” And if she “couldn’t get a word in with her gossip stories,” Schirach said, “she acted bored and complained about migraines, and Hitler worriedly patted her hand again and again while he was talking with his associates.”87 They now addressed each other with the informal “du,” and the rest of the guests could relax from the “formal fireside gatherings” only when Hitler and Braun withdrew upstairs together at night.88
Eva Braun and Martin Bormann were the only people in Hitler’s private world who became more and more important to the Nazi leader in these years. Bormann had taken over for Rudolf Hess after Hess’s bizarre flight to Scotland on May 10, 1941, and now ran the “Party Chancellery of the Führer.” Hess had apparently intended to conduct negotiations on his own in order to secure peace in the west for Hitler’s upcoming war against the Soviet Union in the east, but he was now regarded as a traitor. For months, Bormann mercilessly pursued every suspected “collaborator in this act of insanity,” on Hitler’s orders.89 But while Hess’s adjutants and others in his circle were arrested, his wife, Ilse Hess, was more or less left alone, notwithstanding a lot of harassment from Bormann. She owed this consideration in large part to her National Socialist attitudes, about which no one had any doubt. But Eva Braun, too—nicknamed “Everl” in a postwar letter of Ilse Hess’s—seems to have spoken up for her and supported her.90 It is doubtful that she did so without Hitler’s knowledge—“behind Hitler’s back,” as Albert Speer later claimed—since Ilse Hess continued to be in direct contact with Hitler. For example, she wrote to a friend in early August 1941 that “the Führer” had permitted her to write to “the big” (as she called her husband) in England.91 Hitler’s paranoid suspicions thus seem to have remained within limits in the case of his fugitive deputy’s wife.
Hitler and Eva Braun at the dining table in the teahouse on Mooslahnerkopf, 1940 (Illustration Credit 9.5)
Even though it was possible to get around Bormann in this case, Bormann became, with Hitler’s increasing isolation in his various headquarters, Hitler’s primary connection with the outside world. He was almost entirely unknown to the German public but was constantly with Hitler, as the most influential relayer of his orders and a liaison whom no one could bypass—not even Eva Braun.92 Still, she apparently found her own way to get a hearing with Hitler from afar. From time to time in the headquarters, according to Speer, “letters from Eva Braun gave rise to the most annoying interruptions.” She wrote from Munich about, among other things, “cases of blatant stupidity on the part of officials,” which “would send Hitler into a fit” every time until he finally ordered Bormann to investigate her accusations.93
Hitler in his airplane, 1942/1943 (Illustration Credit 9.6)
Hitler left the Berghof again for several months on June 20, 1942, to command the planned summer offensive against the Soviet Union—“Operation Blue”—and Eva Braun left the next day for her last trip to Italy.94 It is no longer possible to reconstruct how she traveled, and with whom. Christa Schroeder later claimed that at any given time Eva Braun had always had only one “favorite” among the women at the Berghof who then also accompanied her on her annual trip to Portofino.95 This time, as in previous years, Eva Braun stayed in Italy for almost four weeks, returning to Germany only on July 17.96 In the middle of the war, such long pleasure trips abroad were unusual and, above all, expensive. They had to be reported to the authorities in advance, and approved; a passport, visa, and travel permit were all needed, and so was foreign currency, since it was forbidden to take German currency out of the country—in the case of normal tourism, the limit was set at only ten marks, a measure that made it impossible to leave the country unchecked. The German Workers’ Front, which organized Mediterranean cruises on its own KdF steamships (for example, a “cruise around Italy” from January 22 to February 1, 1939, on the Wilhelm Gustloff), allowed its guests to bring up to 100 reichsmarks in coins, but it was “absolutely forbidden” to bring paper money.97 Eva Braun, in contrast, kept all her travel privileges intact, and she could hardly have realized at the time that she would never again visit the south in her life.
For in the summer of 1942, Hitler continued to be confident, even optimistic, about the progress of the war. While his girlfriend enjoyed the Italian sun, he ordered Army Group B to march on Stalingrad with the Sixth Army under General Friedrich Paulus. But on November 22, the Sixth Army, with more than 250,000 soldiers, was trapped in Stalingrad by Soviet troops. Paulus capitulated in late January 1943, and ended up as a Soviet prisoner of war along with more than 110,000 soldiers. Hitler then withdrew to the Obersalzberg in spring 1943, for three months in total, through late June.98 The young secretary Traudl Humps experienced “the decampment and relocation of a massive organization in the last days of March, 1943,” and recalled: “We were supposed to arrive in Munich around noon. It was nine. I quickly got dressed and went to breakfast. People were talking about the Berghof and about Eva Braun. I was curious to meet her. She was going to get on the train in Munich and come with us to Berchtesgaden.” Humps’s future husband, Hans Hermann Junge, an SS member since 1933 and one of Hitler’s orderlies, explained to her that Eva Braun was “the mistress of the Berghof and tacitly recognized as such by all the guests.” She went on: “I needed to prepare myself for the fact that this was the Führer’s private household, that we all had to see ourselves as his guests, and that everyone would eat meals together. But all this was true for only a very small circle.”99
The mood at the Berghof was entirely different than it had been in the previous year. After the “catastrophe on the Eastern Front” as Joseph Goebbels noted, premonitions of downfall and death began to spread on the “mountain” for the first time.100 Meanwhile, Munich, too, had been bombed. Eva Braun’s house at Wasserburger Strasse and Hitler’s private residence at 16 Prinzregentenplatz were damaged. Hitler continued to present himself to others as certain of victory, but he barely ever appeared in public anymore. Even the “Führer Address” that took place every year on the anniversary of his having been named Chancellor was omitted in 1943, for the first time in ten years. Hitler was already contemplating a possible catastrophe and the “ending of his own life” that would then be necessary. Bormann, too, unsure what “turn” the war was going to take, discussed the consequences of his own possible death in a letter to his wife, Gerda. According to Hitler’s orders, Bormann wrote, the widow of a Reich minister or Reich chancellor was not permitted to keep her husband’s official residence. Thus, in the case of his own death, she would have to leave the house in Pullach immediately—their formal villa in the neighborhood of the Party elite, built in 1938. She would also need to vacate the house on the Obersalzberg, since she would have to reckon with harassment from Eva Braun.101 This letter reveals how strong the rivalry was between Braun and Bormann, and how poisoned the atmosphere in Hitler’s innermost circle must have been with suspicion and enmity.
Goebbels, on the other hand, who had proclaimed “total war” in a fanatical speech in the Berlin Sportpalast on February 18, 1943, painted a positive picture of Hitler’s girlfriend in his “Diaries.” He mentions Eva Braun there for the first time in an entry dated June 25, 1943, noting that she was “extraordinarily well read, extraordinarily clear and mature in her judgment on aesthetic questions,” and made “the best impression” on him. She would certainly be, he wrote, “a valuable support for the Führer.”102 Apparently Eva Braun’s status had risen so high that Goebbels finally could refer to her by name in the document he was preparing for posterity, after having kept silent about her existence until then. Ultimately, the Minister of Propaganda was trying to
expand his own position and power in the immediate environment of the shattered leader.103 Thus his diary returned to Eva Braun again, six weeks later, in the course of recording his judgment on everyone in the Nazi elite in view of the military “crisis.”
Allied troops landed in Sicily in July 1943, and Mussolini was deposed and arrested. At almost the same time, the last army offensive on the Eastern Front, ordered by Hitler, failed.104 Now, according to Goebbels, the Nazi leader was “generally thinking about who could replace whom, if someone should fall.” In this context, Goebbels recorded Hitler’s dissatisfaction, even indignation, with Baldur von Schirach and his wife, who were said to be attending “a social gathering” in Vienna that was “anything but National Socialist.”105 In fact, the break between Hitler and the Schirachs had come in June, when Baldur von Schirach told the Nazi leader that he had to end the war. Hitler commented to his adjutant Below: “How could he imagine that? He knows as well as I do that there is no longer any way except to put a bullet in my brain.”106 Henriette von Schirach even claims in her memoir (which is, however, thoroughly self-justifying from start to finish) that she brought up the “deportation of Jewish women” from Holland during one of the evening gatherings at the Berghof; Hitler supposedly screamed, “You are being sentimental! What do you care about Jewish women in Holland!”107
Eva Braun Page 24