That, at least, was the story, which also found its way into serious literature on Hitler. Joachim Fest wrote that “for weeks Hitler seemed close to a nervous breakdown and repeatedly decided to withdraw from politics.”90 But that idea does not accord with the fact that by 24 September, Hitler was already meeting with Goebbels and Göring in Berlin. Reportedly he was more withdrawn than usual but seemed fully in control of himself. And that evening he spoke in top form to 10,000 supporters in Hamburg.91 Two days later, he travelled to Vienna incognito and laid flowers on Geli Raubal’s grave.
His niece’s death no doubt affected Hitler deeply, and his grief was real, not put on for show. He kept her room in Prinzregentenstrasse unchanged, and his servants were required to keep a fresh bouquet of flowers there at all times. Later, Hitler commissioned Munich sculptor Ferdinand Liebermann to create a bronze bust of Raubal. On the first anniversary of her death, Hitler visited her grave, accompanied by his half-sister and Goebbels. But after that, his period of mourning was over. The whole affair was never again directly mentioned in his entourage.92
The private tragedy did not put a damper on Hitler’s political plans. On the contrary, he was able to make capital out of it, stylising himself once and for all as a politician who had foresworn personal happiness on behalf of his mission to serve the German people. This trick impressed even his closest friends within the party. In late October 1931, Goebbels noted after a conversation with Hitler: “Then he spoke of Geli. He loved her very much. She was his ‘good comrade.’ He had tears in his eyes…This man, at the pinnacle of success, is without any personal happiness, devoted only to the happiness of his friends.”93 Hitler also told Otto Wagener how much he missed Raubal: “Her cheery laughter was always a real joy, and her harmless chatter was such fun.” But Hitler immediately added: “Now I’m completely free, internally and externally. Now I belong only to the German people and my mission.”94 In November 1931, Hess remarked that Geli Raubal had been Hitler’s “sunshine” and that he would surely miss the few hours of relaxation with her in his own home. “Because his mission so totally occupies him,” Hess went on, “the poor man can’t grant himself the benefit of a marriage.”95 Hitler’s strategy of cloaking himself in the aura of a man without a private life convinced not only his contemporaries. It also made its mark on history. How else to explain why all the serious Hitler biographers—from Heiden and Bullock to Fest and Kershaw—assumed that there was not much of interest to relate about the private life of this “non-person”?96
Nonetheless, as Fest wrote, Raubal’s death was “one of the key moments of Hitler’s life as an individual” which changed him, since his niece was the only woman besides his mother for whom he had felt deep emotion.97 Thus Hitler’s ability to love, if one could even use the phrase, was further limited, and Hitler himself increasingly isolated. In the words of Henriette Hoffmann, from that point on the “tender element” was missing in his life, and the “seed of inhumanity” planted.98 But this was a far-fetched interpretation, which ignored the fact that in the Hotel Kaiserhof in the late summer of 1931, Hitler met a woman with whom he began to flirt straight away: Magda Quandt.
Apparently Hitler did not know that Goebbels had already begun an affair with the ex-wife of industrialist Günther Quandt in February of that year. For Magda Quandt’s part, the attraction seems to have been mutual. Goebbels, at least, was jealous. “Magda loses herself a bit around the boss,” he complained to his diary in late August 1931. “I’m suffering greatly…I didn’t sleep a wink.” A few days later he wrote: “Magda must invite the boss home and tell him about us. Otherwise love and a silly jealousy will come between us.”99 The clarifying talk took place in mid-September, only a few days before Geli Raubal’s suicide. Magda Quandt told Hitler she intended to marry Goebbels, who noted happily: “Hitler resigned. He is very lonely. He has no luck with women…His angel, he said. He loves Magda. But he doesn’t begrudge me my happiness. ‘A clever and beautiful woman. She’ll challenge you instead of hemming you in.’ He embraced my hands, with tears in his eyes.”100
On 19 December 1931, Magda Quandt and Joseph Goebbels got married. They had come to an understanding with Hitler, who served as best man: he became part of their relationship and could bask as an oft-invited guest in their affection. In Magda Goebbels, he had also found an attractive woman who could stand by his side on public occasions and take the role of a first lady once the Nazis had risen to power.101 At the same time, Goebbels continued to ponder how he could help Hitler overcome the loss of Geli Raubal. In January 1932, the two men once again discussed “marriage questions.” Goebbels noted: “He feels very lonely. Longing for a woman whom he never finds. Touching and moving. He likes Magda a lot. We have to find him a good woman. Someone like Magda.”102
Hitler, however, reacted sensitively when he thought people were trying to pair him off with someone. “I like having beautiful women around me, but I can’t stand it when someone tries to force something on me,” he told the actress Leni Riefenstahl, with whom he had a rendezvous on the North Sea beach at Horumersiel in May 1932 and who became Hitler’s star film director after he assumed power.103 And what the Goebbelses did not know was that soon after Raubal’s suicide, Hitler had intensified his relationship with a young Munich woman whom he had known for some time. She would play the most important role in Hitler’s life of any woman, save his mother.
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Eva Braun was born on 6 February 1912 as the middle of three daughters of the schoolteacher Friedrich Braun and his wife Franziska, a seamstress.104 The household was affluent, and the children were baptised and raised as Catholics. From 1918 to 1922, Eva went to primary school; afterwards she attended the high school for girls on Munich’s Tengstrasse. In 1928, she had a year of finishing school in the prestigious “Institute of English Fräuleins” in the town of Simbach on the German–Austrian border. There she not only learned how to run a household, but also typing and accountancy. In September 1929, she responded to a newspaper advertisement and was promptly taken on as an intern at Heinrich Hoffmann’s atelier, Photohaus Hoffmann. In his memoirs, Hoffmann described her as “of medium build and very watchful of her waistline…Dark blond hair framed her round face. With her blue eyes, you could say that she was attractive, if somewhat doll-like. A standard sort of beauty like you see in popular advertisements.”105
Probably in October 1929, several weeks after joining Hoffmann, Eva Braun met Hitler. Later, Braun described the meeting to her sister Ilse. One evening, as Eva climbed up a ladder to file away some documents, her boss appeared with a gentleman who stared quite directly at her legs. “I climbed down, and Hoffmann introduced us: ‘Herr Wolf—our good little girl Eva.’ Then he said: ‘Do us a favour, Fräulein Braun, and fetch us some beer and meat loaf from the restaurant on the corner.’ ” While he ate, the stranger continued to devour her with his eyes, and after he left, Hoffmann asked her: “ ‘Did you not guess who Herr Wolf really is? Don’t you ever look at our photos?…It’s Hitler himself, our Adolf Hitler!’ ‘That was him?’ I replied.”106
It is unclear whether this account is fact or fiction, but there is no doubting that the 40-year-old Hitler felt instantly drawn to Hoffmann’s 18-year-old assistant. She may have reminded him of “Mimi” Reiter, and as he had done with her, Hitler turned on the paternal charm, paying Eva Braun compliments, giving her small gifts and taking her out every once in a while.107 It was not until Geli Raubal’s death that their relationship intensified, and opinions differ as to when and if Eva Braun became Hitler’s lover. Christa Schroeder, who considered her boss to be an asexual being, always believed that the relationship was just for show. She even claimed that Braun had told her hairdresser that she had never had sex with Hitler, but that strains credibility.108 Henriette Hoffmann, on the other hand, was convinced that the “love affair” started in the winter of 1931–2, only a few months after Raubal’s suicide. Hoffmann also offered up a couple of details about their early days together: �
��After Geli’s death, Frau Winter was in charge of Hitler’s apartment, and she was a stickler for morals. Hitler had to do what a high school student does who wants to take a girl to his room in his parents’ house. He had to get Frau Winter and her husband tickets to the theatre so he could enjoy a private hour with Eva.”109 But if Hitler tried to keep his affair secret from his housekeeper, he had no success. After the war, Anni Winter repeatedly testified that Braun and Hitler became intimate in the early months of 1932.110 And if anyone would have known for sure, it was her. Eva Braun’s biographer Heike Görtemaker has also uncovered evidence to suggest that a love affair commenced in early 1932.111 But nothing is absolutely certain.
In contrast to Geli Raubal, Eva Braun was not allowed to accompany Hitler to public events, and from the very beginning Hitler was very discreet about the relationship, even amongst party friends. On the one hand, he felt this was necessary due to the sudden interest in his private life that his niece’s suicide had whipped up. Moreover, the visible presence of a lover would have undermined his attempts to portray himself as a Führer who sacrificed his private life on behalf of his ceaseless service to the German nation. “I have another bride: Germany,” he proclaimed over and over. “I am married: to the German people and its destiny.”112 His role model for this persona was most likely Wagner’s operatic hero Rienzi. In Act Five of the opera, the popular tribune reacts to his sister Irene’s accusation that he has never loved with the words:
Well I did love, too, oh Irene
Don’t you remember my love?
I loved painfully my exalted bride
Because I saw her deeply humiliated
Outrageously mistreated, horribly disfigured
Rejected, dishonoured, abused and scorned!…
My life I devoted only to her
Only to her, my youth and strength as a man
For I wanted to see her, my exalted bride
Crowned the queen of the world
Know this: My bride’s name is Rome!113
Part of Hitler’s strategy of self-concealment was his private and perhaps honest admission to his inner circle that he had “overcome the need to possess a woman physically.”114 Eva Braun was probably the ideal woman for the female role Hitler envisioned: she seemed to be willing not just to meet his sexual needs but also to play along with the masquerade. For Hitler, this was an easy relationship, initially without much commitment. When asked by his former superior officer and later assistant Fritz Wiedemann whether he did not find the bachelor’s life troublesome, Hitler allegedly responded with a smile: “It has its advantages. And as far as love is concerned, I keep a girl in Munich.”115
The year of decisions—1932—was full with election campaigning anyway. For long stretches of time, Hitler resided in Berlin’s Hotel Kaiserhof near the Reich Chancellery, which he was soon to take over. He had little time for his girlfriend in Munich. Eva Braun felt neglected. In the latter half of the year, she allegedly tried to commit suicide with her father’s pistol. Her sister Ilse claimed that Eva had been found on her parents’ bed but that she had been able to summon a doctor, a brother-in-law of Heinrich Hoffmann, herself. He had her taken to hospital.116
Did Eva Braun really try to kill herself? Heinrich Hoffmann reported that Hitler, who had hurried to her sickbed, had asked the doctor the same question, and when the answer came in the affirmative, Hitler vowed to take better care of her in the future: “You heard it, Hoffmann. The girl did this out of love for me.”117 Christa Schroeder saw the incident as “blackmail”: Eva Braun wanted to tie Hitler more closely to herself by faking a suicide attempt.118 If that was Braun’s intention, she succeeded. On the verge of gaining power, Hitler could ill afford another scandal casting a dubious light on his private life. He began spending more time with Braun.
On 1 January 1933, Braun and Hitler attended a performance of Wagner’s Meistersinger in Munich’s National Theatre, accompanied by Hess and his wife, Hoffmann and several other members of Hitler’s entourage. Afterwards, they all celebrated at the Hanfstaengls. Ernst Hanfstaengl recalled that Hitler was “bright-spirited and entertaining as in the early ’20s.” In the Hanfstaengls’ guest book, Hitler wrote “On the first day of the new year,” and he assured his host: “This year belongs to us. I’ll give you that in writing.”119
11
Bids and Bluffs
“The endgame for power has begun,” Joseph Goebbels wrote on 7 January 1932. “It may continue for the entire year. A game that will be played to the end with tempo, cleverness and a bit of finesse.” These oft-quoted sentences are contained not in Goebbels’s diary, but in his book From the Hotel Kaiserhof to the Reich Chancellery, published by Eher in 1934.1 In substantially altering and stylising his original notes, Goebbels—the chief promoter of the Führer myth—tried to suggest that Hitler’s inspired political instincts alone manoeuvred the NSDAP to power on 30 January 1933. Hitler’s press director took the same line in his essay “With Hitler to Power,” published by Eher Verlag in the autumn of 1933. Otto Dietrich praised the Führer as a “one-of-a-kind and unique personality” blessed with “instinctive anticipation.” Hitler, Dietrich maintained, planned all his steps, maintained “absolute calm,” and “wore down and quashed the opponents facing him with his iron will” until there was no longer anyone denying him his just deserts—the German chancellorship.2
This narrative had little to do with reality. Hitler’s path to power was hardly an inevitable and triumphal march. It was a contest that could have ended either way. The National Socialists had declared 1932 to be “the year of decisions,”3 and in five major elections the party had the opportunity to demonstrate its organisational and propagandistic strength. The NSDAP again achieved major successes, becoming by far the largest party in the Reichstag in the elections of late July 1932. The chancellor’s office on Wilhelmstrasse did indeed seem ripe for the taking. But by inflexibly insisting on all-or-nothing and refusing to share power with anyone else, Hitler also sent his party down a dead-end street. In the elections of early November, the NSDAP suffered significant losses for the first time. Its aura of invincibility was tarnished, and the party’s trust in its leadership shaken. The NSDAP went through its worst crisis since the ban on the party of 1923–4. By the end of 1932, the German economy also showed initial signs of recovery. The depths of the Depression seemed to lie in the past. Thus, there were good reasons to think that the danger posed by the Nazis could have been averted. “The development of this, the German year of 1932, will be an object of most intense study for future historians and politicians,” the left-wing journalist Leopold Schwarzschild wrote in his weekly Das Tage-Buch on 31 December. Only with the benefit of hindsight, Schwarzschild predicted, would humanity be able to understand “what historic miracle deflected the line [of events] at the last minute.”4
At the start of the year, Hitler had encouraged optimism. In his New Year’s address, he contended that Germany was preparing “to go National Socialist with great rapidity.” The party had fifteen million supporters—“a triumph without parallel in the history of our people.”5 In an interview with the Japanese newspaper Tokyo Asahi Shimbum on 3 January, he said he was confident that his party “would soon seize power in Germany…and found a new, Third Reich.”6 Hitler, knew, however, that he was dependent on support from others, including business circles. In the autumn of 1931, as Hess reported, he had already put a lot of effort, “with great success,” into “undermining the remaining pillars of support for the current government in the industrial and banking worlds.”7 In fact, it was Chancellor Brüning’s misguided policy of deflation, which worsened the Depression, that had cost him support from big business, but that did not mean that the NSDAP immediately profited. Many entrepreneurs remained deeply sceptical about a movement whose leading representatives spoke with forked tongues where economic policies were concerned. To improve his party’s image and recommend himself as a future head of government, therefore, Hitler accepted an invitation on 26 Jan
uary 1932 to speak to the Industrial Club of Düsseldorf, the meeting point for the economic elite of Rhineland-Westphalia.8
Some 700 people packed the large ballroom in Düsseldorf’s Park Hotel. Hitler himself had to enter through a side door because Nazi supporters and opponents were clashing violently in front of the building. To fit in, he had swapped his brown uniform for a dark frock coat and striped trousers. Anyone who expected him to talk about what measures a Hitler government would introduce to end the Depression came away sorely disappointed, however. In his two-and-a-half-hour speech, Hitler merely reiterated what he had said on similar occasions, for instance to Hamburg’s National Club of 1919: that only a strong state could set the parameters for a flourishing economy, and that whoever believed in the concept of private property had to reject the idea of democracy. “It is nonsense to build upon the concept of achievement, the value of personality and thus personal authority in an economic sense,” Hitler told his audience, “while rejecting the authority of personality and replacing it with the law of greater numbers—democracy—in a political sense.” Hitler once again summoned the bogeyman of Bolshevism, which, if it continued to be successful, “would subject the world to a transformation as total as Christianity had in its day.” The National Socialist movement was the only force that could prevent Germany from sinking into “Bolshevist chaos.” Hitler added: “And if people accuse us of being impatient, we proudly embrace that charge. We have made an undying vow to pull out the last roots of Marxism in Germany.” Hitler studiously avoided any openly anti-Semitic pronouncements and only hinted at his ambition of conquering “living space” in Russia. On the contrary, he ended his speech by stressing that a revitalised Germany under his leadership would be prepared to live in “friendship and peace” with its neighbours.9
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