Eva Braun

by Heike B. Görtemaker

  18. See Schmidt, Karl Brandt, pp. 50 and 51.

  19. See Schroeder, Er war mein Chef, pp. 173f. and 265; Schmidt, Karl Brandt, p. 51.

  20. See Albert Schweitzer, Die Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben: Grundtexte aus fünf Jahrzehnten, 8th ed. (Munich, 2003), pp. 50ff. See also Schmidt, Karl Brandt, pp. 76ff. and 83f.

  21. Karl Brandt, “Das Problem Hitler, Nr. 2,” September 27, 1945, p. 6, in Kleine Erwerbung 441–3, BA Koblenz, pp. 75 and 80. See also Ulrich Herbert, Best: Biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft 1903–1989, 2nd ed. (Bonn, 1996), pp. 42–45.

  22. See Volker Hess, “Die Medizinische Fakultät im Zeichen der ‘Führeruniversität,’ ” in Die Berliner Universität in der NS-Zeit. vol. 1, Strukturen und Personen, ed. Christoph Jahr (Stuttgart, 2005), pp. 46f.; Schmidt, Karl Brandt, p. 73.

  23. See “Gruppenbild der Hochzeitsgesellschaft mit Hitler in Uniform, Göring, Wilhelm Brückner und dessen Freundin, der Münchner Künstlerin Sofie Stork,” in Heinrich Hoffmann Photo Archive, hoff-8918, BSB Munich.

  24. See Schmidt, Karl Brandt, pp. 95ff. The decision to make Brandt his accompanying physician came after Hitler’s visit to Italy to see Mussolini in 1934. From that point on, Brandt accompanied Hitler’s travels. See U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, APO 413, Interview No. 64, Dr. med. Karl Brandt, 17./18. Juni 1945, p. 456, in Irving Collection, ED 100, vol. 1002, USSBS: Interrogation Reports, vol. 2, IfZ Munich.

  25. See Speer, Albert Speer: Die Kransberg-Protokolle 1945, p. 145; Schmidt, Karl Brandt, p. 131.

  26. See ibid., pp. 104f. Later, Brandt moved into the Bechstein Villa in the spring of 1935 and Speer moved there that summer. At the end of May 1937, Speer moved into a studio building near the Berghof that he had designed himself (Inside the Third Reich, p. 84). See Ulrich Chaussy und Christoph Püschner, Nachbar Hitler: Führerkult und Heimatzerstörung am Obersalzberg, 5th ed. (Berlin, 2005), p. 91.

  27. Speer later commented that he was “happy to have been granted so obvious a distinction and been admitted to the most intimate circle,” even if life in a fenced-in compound was not to his taste (Inside the Third Reich, pp. 84 and 149). See also Hamann, Winifred Wagner oder Hitlers Bayreuth, pp. 424 and 557f.

  28. See Karl Brandt, “Das Problem Hitler, Nr. 2,” September 27, 1945, p. 5, in Kleine Erwerbung 441-3, BA Koblenz. See also Winfried Süss, Der “Volkskörper” im Krieg: Gesundheitspolitik, Gesundheitsverhältnisse und Krankenmord im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland 1939–1945 (Munich, 2003), p. 93; Fest, Die unbeantwortbaren Fragen, p. 200. In Spandau: The Secret Diaries Speer says, in an entry dated July 28, 1949, that Hitler had “forfeited all claim on [his, i.e., Speer’s] loyalty; loyalty to a monster cannot be” (p. 134).

  29. See Schmidt, Karl Brandt, pp. 118ff.

  30. Ibid., pp. 154ff. and 159ff.

  31. Ibid., pp. 177ff. According to Schmidt, there are practically no documents about the conversations between Brandt and Hitler; almost all Hitler’s instructions were given verbally (p. 224).

  32. See Rüdiger Hachtmann and Winfried Süss, eds., Hitlers Kommissare: Sondergewalten in der nationalsozialistischen Diktatur, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus, vol. 22 (Göttingen, 2006), pp. 12f. and 19ff. See also Willems, Der entsiedelte Jude, pp. 77ff. 182ff.

  33. Cf. Schmidt, Karl Brandt, p. 72: “they chose to be” unaware of the truth. According to Schmidt, “ignorance was at the core of” both Eva Braun’s and Karl Brandt’s “relationships with Hitler.”

  34. See Fest, Speer, p. 65; Fest, Die unbeantwortbaren Fragen, pp. 54 and 86. But even Fest, in the end, cannot avoid remarking that Speer was clearly “among Hitler’s most radical followers” (p. 28).

  35. See “Brandt. Report on Hitler,” in Headquarters Military Intelligence Service Center, U.S. Army, APO 757, OI Special Report 36, “Adolf Hitler: A Composite Picture (2 April 1947),” F135/4, p. 6, in David Irving Collection, “Adolph Hitler 1944–1953,” vol. 4, IfZ Munich, p. 692. Speer quotes this sentiment of Hitler’s, which he supposedly also expressed in Eva Braun’s presence, in Inside the Third Reich, where he says Hitler told him: “A highly intelligent man should take a primitive and stupid woman” (Inside the Third Reich, p. 92).

  36. Karl Brandt, quoted in Schmidt, Karl Brandt, p. 72.

  37. See “Originalnotizen von P. E. Schramm über Hitler, gemacht während der Befragungen von Hitlers Leibärzten, Haus ‘Alaska,’ d. h. Altersheim für Lehrerinnen im Taunus, Sommer 1945 in USA-Kriegsgefangenschaft,” p. 169, in Kleine Erwerbung 441–3, BA Koblenz. Under “Eva Braun,” Schramm notes: “Annoyance among entourage”; “has got nothing in life”; “had to be there”; “taste, discreet”; “absolutely no pol[itical] influence”; “runs people down”; “she hated Hoffmann”; “disapproved of Morell.”

  38. See “Gruppenbild auf einer Tribüne: Anni Brandt, Eva Braun, Erna Hoffmann, Viktoria von Dirksen (in der Reihe dahinter Unity Mitford), Reichsparteitag der NSDAP 6.–13. September 1937, Hauptmarkt Nürnberg,” in Heinrich Hoffmann Photo Archive, hoff-16020, BSB Munich.

  39. See Lang, Der Sekretär, pp. 49ff.

  40. See ibid., p. 52.

  41. See Martin Bormann, Leben gegen Schatten (Paderborn, 1996), pp. 12f.

  42. For example, there is the following passage in a book by her father (Walter Buch, Des nationalsozialistischen Menschen Ehre und Ehrenschutz, 5th ed. [Munich, 1939], p. 15): “The National Socialist has recognized that the Jew is not a human being. The Jew is a putrid sign of decay.”

  43. Fest, Das Gesicht des Dritten Reiches, p. 366. See in this regard Gerda Bormann to Martin Bormann, Obersalzberg, February 7, 1945, in Martin Bormann, The Bormann Letters: The Private Correspondence between Martin Bormann and His Wife from January 1943 to April 1945, ed. Hugh Trevor-Roper (London, 1954), pp. 176f.

  44. See Speer, Albert Speer: Die Kransberg-Protokolle 1945, pp. 136ff.

  45. See Akten der Partei-Kanzlei der NSDAP, Teil I, Regesten, vol. 1, pp. viii ff.

  46. See Schmidt, Karl Brandt, p. 298.

  47. Darré, Aufzeichnungen, p. 295.

  48. Schroeder, Er war mein Chef, pp. 30ff.

  49. See “Aufzeichnungen des Reichspressechefs Dr. Dietrich” (copy), in Kleine Erwerbung 441–3, p. 16, BA Koblenz.

  50. See Robert Ley, “Abschied,” in “Aufzeichnungen in Nürnberg 1945,” p. 1, Robert Ley Papers, N 1468/4, BA Koblenz. See also Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936, p. 476.

  51. See Robert Ley, “Gedanken um den Führer,” in “Aufzeichnungen in Nürnberg 1945,” pp. 13ff, Robert Ley Papers, N 1468/4, BA Koblenz.

  52. See Hoffmann, “Mein Beruf,” p. 59.

  53. See Robert Ley, “Gedanken um den Führer,” pp. 13ff.

  54. Cf. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, pp. 87 and 93; Gun, Eva Braun, p. 136; Lang, Der Sekretär, pp. 108f.

  8. LIFE ON THE OBERSALZBERG

  1. See Reinhard Spitzy, So haben wir das Reich verspielt: Bekenntnisse eines Illegalen, 4th ed. (Munich, 1994), pp. 128f.

  2. See Henriette von Schirach, Frauen um Hitler, p. 227.

  3. See Horst Möller et al., eds., Die tödliche Utopie: Bilder, Texte, Dokumente, Daten zum Dritten Reich (Munich and Berlin, 1999), pp. 62f.; Chaussy and Püschner, Nachbar Hitler, p. 45.

  4. See Schroeder, Er war mein Chef, p. 166. The rumor circulated among the staff that Eva Braun’s and Hitler’s rooms were connected by a “hidden door”: Eva Braun “had a room that was connected to Hitler’s bedroom by a secret door” (Therese Linke, unpublished handwritten memoir, no year [from the 1950s], in ZS 3135, vol. 1, IfZ Munich, p. 9).

  5. Albert Speer to Werner Maser, n.p., January 30, 1967 (carbon copy), in Albert Speer Papers, N 1340/37, BA Koblenz. Cf. Speer, Albert Speer: Die Kransberg-Protokolle 1945, p. 146.

  6. Martin Bormann to Dr. Friedrich Wolffhardt, Führer Headquarters, December 27, 1941, U.S. National Archives, Washington National Records Center, Suitland, MD, quoted in Beierl, Geschichte des Kehlsteins, p. 8.

  7. Ibid., p. 9.

  8. Starting in 1934, Department 1 of
the Reich Security Service (Reichssicherheitsdienst, RSD) and the SS-Begleitkommando under SS-Standartenführer Johann Rattenhuber were responsible for Hitler’s security. See Möller, ed., Die tödliche Utopie, p. 67; Chaussy and Püschner, Nachbar Hitler, p. 130. See also Peter Hoffmann, Die Sicherheit des Diktators: Hitlers Leibwachen, Schutzmassnahmen, Residenzen, Hauptquartiere (Munich and Zürich, 1975).

  9. See Schroeder, Er war mein Chef, pp. 16 and 171.

  10. Therese Linke, unpublished handwritten memoir, p. 9.

  11. See Chaussy and Püschner, Nachbar Hitler, pp. 146ff.

  12. Speer, Albert Speer: Die Kransberg-Protokolle 1945, p. 100.

  13. Christa Schroeder to Johanna Nusser, Führer Headquarters, August 30, 1941 (original), in ED 524, IfZ Munich. Fritz Wiedemann similarly states: “There were always the same people, proof of the consistency of the company at table” (undated notes, including “Obersalzberg,” (transcription), in Fritz Wiedemann Papers, Kleine Erwerbung Nr. 671, vol. 4, BA Koblenz.

  14. Fritz Wiedemann, as cited in note 13, above. Hitler, according to Wiedemann, never worried about his own personal security. He repeatedly used to “rush off on a drive somewhere or another, or even to a play, without telling his security staff.”

  15. Fritz Wiedemann, undated notes, as cited in note 13, above.

  16. See Schroeder, Er war mein Chef, p. 186.

  17. Fritz Wiedemann, undated notes, as cited in note 13, above.

  18. Ibid. Wiedemann first mentioned Eva Braun as well only in his memoir published in 1964: Der Mann, der Feldherr werden wollte: Erlebnisse und Erfahrungen des Vorgesetzten Hitlers im 1; Weltkrieg und seines späteren Persönlichen Adjutanten (Velbert, 1964), p. 79.

  19. See Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, pp. 50f.

  20. State Secretary and Head of the Chancellery (Lammers) to the Minister of Finance (Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk), Berchtesgaden, September 11, 1936 (copy), in R 43/4326, Bl. 5 u. 6, BA Berlin.

  21. See Thamer, Der Nationalsozialismus, pp. 183f. See also Akten der Reichskanzlei, Regierung Hitler 1933–1945, vol. 5, Die Regierung Hitler 1938, ed. Historischen Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften und dem Bundesarchiv (Munich, 2008).

  22. See Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945, p. 32. The “Private Chancellery of the Führer and Chancellor,” run by Albert Bormann, Martin Bormann’s brother, was Chief Department 1 of the “Chancellery of the Führer.” It lost its significance, as did the “Chancellery,” when the “Party Chancellery” run by Martin Bormann (a renaming of the “Deupty Führer’s” staff after Rudolf Hess’s disappearance) was established in 1941.

  23. See State Secretary and Head of the Chancellery (Lammers) to Retired Captain Wiedemann (adjutant to the Führer), Berlin, August 18, 1938 (copy), in Rep. 502, NG-1465, Bl. 739, State Archives, Nuremberg. Lammers writes that he has ordered payment of the “41 receipts” that Weidemann sent over from the Munich art dealer Maria Almas, totaling 284,550 reichsmarks. See also Hanns Christian Löhr, Das Braune Haus der Kunst: Hitler und der “Sonderauftrag Linz” (Berlin, 2005), p. 35; and Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, Staatsbankrott: Die Geschichte der Finanzpolitik des Deutschen Reiches von 1920 bis 1945, geschrieben vom letzten Reichsfinanzminister (Göttingen, 1974), pp. 241f.

  24. See Völkischer Beobachter, January 19, 1937, in R 43 II/1036, Bl. 103, BA Berlin. See also Franz Alfred Six, ed., Dokumente der deutschen Politik: Das Reich Adolf Hitlers, vol. 5 (Berlin, 1940).

  25. State Secretary and Head of the Chancellery (Lammers) to the Minister of Finance (Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk), Berchtesgaden, September 11, 1936 (copy), in R 43/4326, Bl. 6, BA Berlin.

  26. See Chaussy and Püschner, Nachbar Hitler, p. 132.

  27. See Wiedemann, Der Mann der Feldherr werden wollte, pp. 68f. This was also a try for Party work, according to Otto Dietrich (12 Jahre mit Hitler, p. 45).

  28. Reichsminister and Head of the Chancellery to the personal adjutant of the Führer and Chancellor (SA-Obergruppenführer Brückner), Berchtesgaden, October 21, 1938 (copy), in R 43 II/888b, F 1, Bl. 42, BA Berlin.

  29. Reichsminister and Head of the Chancellery to Economic Minister Walther Funk, Berchtesgaden, October 24, 1938 (copy), in R 43 II/888b, F 1, Bl. 43, BA Berlin.

  30. Reichsminister and Head of the Chancellery to the personal adjutant of the Führer and Chancellor (SA-Obergruppenführer Brückner), Berchtesgaden, October 21, 1938.

  31. See Jörg Osterloh, “Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung im Reichsgau Sudetenland 1918–1945” (dissertation, Munich, 2006), p. 13.

  32. See Reichsminister and Head of the Chancellery to the personal adjutant of the Führer and Chancellor (SA-Obergruppenführer Brückner), Berchtesgaden, October 25, 1938 (copy), in R 43 II/886a, F 3, Bl. 128f., BA Berlin. On Bl. 129, there is a handwritten note mentioning resubmission on October 27 and 31. Lammers, who clearly still had not received an answer from Brückner after two days, let his assistants remind him twice, presumably to try to get an answer by phone.

  33. See Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936, p. 535; Hitler 1936–1945, p. 186; The “Hitler Myth”: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford, 1987), p. 121. Kershaw writes that Hitler, from 1935–1936 on, withdrew more and more from domestic government activities and turned over political business to “chancelleries, ministries, and special plenipotentiary organizations.” Cf. Martin Moll, ed., “Führer-Erlasse” 1939–1945 (Stuttgart, 1997), p. 11. Moll maintains that this claim is based not least on a “giant gap in the sources with respect to civilian matters.”

  34. See Wilhelm Treue, “Das Dritte Reich und die Westmächte auf dem Balkan,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 1 (1953), no. 1, p. 61. Cf. Dilek Barlas, Etatism & Diplomacy in Turkey: Economic & Foreign Policy Strategies in an Uncertain World, 1929–1939, The Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage, vol. 14, (Leiden, 1998), pp. 188f.

  35. See Moll, “Führer-Erlasse,” pp. 26ff.

  36. See Gun, Eva Braun, p. 126.

  37. Wiedemann, Der Mann, der Feldherr werden wollte, p. 69.

  38. Speer, Albert Speer: Die Kransberg-Protokolle 1945, p. 100. How this process of reaching a decision and converting it to action actually played out remains unexplained. See in this regard Moll, “Führer-Erlasse,” p. 26.

  39. See Hans Mommsen, “Hitlers Stellung im nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftssystem,” in Hirschfeld and Kettenacker, eds., Der “Führerstaat,” pp. 43–72; Carl Schmitt, “Der Zugang zum Machthaber: Ein zentrales verfassungsrechtliches Problem,” in Verfassungsrechtliche Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1924–1954, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1973), pp. 430ff.

  40. See Fest, Hitler, p. 718; Knopp, Hitlers Frauen, p. 45.

  41. Speer, Albert Speer: Die Kransberg-Protokolle 1945, p. 144.

  42. See Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler: Biographie (Munich, 2008), pp. 760ff. Longerich likewise attributes to Himmler an “emotional void” due to insecurity and a deficient emotional life (p. 763).

  43. See Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945, p. 104; Speer, Albert Speer: Die Kransberg-Protokolle 1945, pp. 233f.

  44. See Peter Longerich, Hitlers Stellvertreter: Führung der Partei und Kontrolle des Staatsapparates durch den Stab Hess und die Partei-Kanzlei Bormann (Munich, 1992), p. 109.

  45. See Evans, David Irving, Hitler, and Holocaust Denial, electronic edition.

  46. Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945, p. 34.

  47. Speer, Albert Speer: Die Kransberg-Protokolle 1945, p. 144: “This strict separation between politics and private life on the Obersalzberg” lasted until the end of the war. Meanwhile, Speer claims in his memoir that the other “close associates” of the Nazi leadership stayed away from the Obersalzberg (Inside the Third Reich, p. 92).

  48. See “Anni Esser, Hanni und Theodor Morell sowie Eva Braun auf einer Tribüne am Nürnberger Marktplatz, 10. Reichsparteitag der NSDAP (5.–12. September 1938),” in Heinrich Hoffmann Photo Archive, hoff-20423 and hoff-20447, BSB Munich.

  49. See Heinrich Hoffmann Photo Archive, hoff-14083 and hoff-50118, BSB Munich.

  50. Below, Als Hitl
ers Adjutant, p. 35.

  51. Ibid., pp. 22f.

  52. Hitler named Below Speer’s “liaison man to Hitler” on May 22, 1944. Below’s assignment was “to keep [Speer] constantly informed about the Führer’s remarks” (Inside the Third Reich, p. 350n).

  53. Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, p. 81.

  54. Ibid., pp. 166ff. Below admitted after the war that he heard about the Einsatzgruppen security forces’ murder of Jews in 1942, in Hitler’s Ukrainian headquarters in Vinnytsia; see KV Anklage, Interrogations, Rep. 502 VI B51, Nicolaus von Below, Interrogation 2786a of Nicolaus von Below, March 24, 1948, p. 10, State Archives, Nuremberg.

  55. Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, p. 96. See also Maria von Below, quoted in Sereny, Albert Speer, pp. 113ff., and Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945, p. 33. Another woman in Hitler’s private circle, Winifred Wagner, expressed similar outrage over Speer’s Inside the Third Reich. No “opponent of Hitler’s” could have written worse things, she said; Hitler was “always [portrayed] as a despot along petit-bourgeois lines” while Speer “completely overlooked his genius—what was in my view his demonic side as well” (quoted in Hamann, Winifred Wagner oder Hitlers Bayreuth, p. 592).

  56. Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, p. 95. See in this regard Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945, pp. 136f. and 65f.

  57. Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, p. 370.

  58. Junge, Bis zur letzten Stunde, p. 74.

  59. Schroeder, Er war mein Chef, p. 196.

  60. See Sofie Stork, questionnaire from May 17, 1946, as well as Sofie Stork’s testimony from August 11, 1947, before the Munich Fourth District Court, in Denazification Court Records, box 1790, State Archives, Munich.

  61. See the biographical details from the “Akten des Polizei-Präsidiums zu Berlin” of July 21, 1931 (copy), in N 26/2504, BA Berlin.

  62. Wagener, Hitler aus nächster Nähe, pp. 198f.

  63. Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936, pp. 432f.

  64. See Albert Bormann to Rudolf Hess, Berlin, June 9, 1938 (original), in Rudolf Hess Papers, J 1.211 (–) 1993/300, vol. 7, file 98, BA Bern.