In January 1937, Reinhard Spitzy, secretary to the German ambassador to Britain, Joachim von Ribbentrop, got a big surprise while visiting the Berghof for the first time. Hitler and Ribbentrop were pacing around the Great Hall, lost in conversation, when the heavy velvet curtain in front of the living room opened, and a young woman announced that they should sit down to dine. The guests could no longer be kept waiting. “It was like being hit by lightning,” Spitzy reported. “Who would dare to speak to the Führer like that? Who was this woman? Where did she come from?” After the meal, Spitzy put these questions to Wilhelm Brückner and was told: “Our Führer also has a right to a private life, and I would advise you never to tell anyone about what you have seen and heard in this regard…It would be best for you yourself to forget it. Otherwise…” The threat was unmistakable, and Spitzy “loyally joined the conspiracy of silence,” as he put it in his memoirs.60
In addition to a gagging order on staff and guests, a series of other measures were taken to try to keep Hitler and Braun’s liaison a secret. During official receptions and visits by foreign guests, Braun would withdraw to her private quarters.61 Albert Speer remarked that Hitler apparently considered Braun “only partially suitable for polite society.”62 But Speer misunderstood what was likely the primary motivation for Hitler—wanting to keep his private life out of the public eye in order to maintain the myth of the Führer sacrificing himself day and night for his people. That was the main reason Braun was not allowed to appear at Hitler’s side at public events. She travelled to the Nuremberg rallies with Heinrich Hoffmann’s party or with other members of Hitler’s entourage, and she never stayed in the same hotel as Hitler.63 There was only one published press photo showing the two of them together. It was taken during the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and shows Braun sitting two rows behind the dictator. Anyone who did not know better would never conclude from looking at the image that the two were involved in an intimate relationship.64 And when Hitler went abroad, for instance during his state visit to Italy in May 1938, she—unlike the wives of the other high-ranking Nazi officials—travelled separately from the inner circle and never took part in official functions.65
Yet despite all the secrecy, there were many rumours about the Führer’s alleged mistress. His assistant Nicolaus von Below, who met Braun when he visited the Berghof for the first time in November 1937, remembered that Hitler’s private life had been a “topic of conversation” when he was subsequently invited to the home of War Minister von Blomberg. Hans Baur also recalled that Munich was full of gossip about Hitler being involved in “hanky-panky” with Braun.66 In the autumn of 1937, a Czech newspaper published a photo of Braun taken in Berchtesgaden with the caption “Hitler’s paramour.” A friend of the Braun family had bought the paper while on a business trip to Vienna and showed it to Eva’s father Friedrich, who accused his daughter of immoral behaviour.67 But the German public took no notice of this publication. Only a small circle of people knew about Eva Braun’s true status. Most Germans remained unaware that Hitler had a mistress until the end of the Second World War.68
The character of Hitler’s relationship with Braun remained opaque even within his most intimate circles. Officially she was part of the Berghof staff, working as his “private secretary,” and when others were present, Hitler tended to treat her with “awkwardly maintained distance,” strictly avoiding any displays of intimacy or tenderness.69 Like everyone else at the Berghof, Braun addressed Hitler as “my Führer,” while he referred to her towards others as “Fräulein Braun” or Fräulein Eva,” only occasionally calling her his “Tschapperl,” an Austrian word meaning “small, cutely naive child.” Initially, the two used the formal form of address “Sie” when others were around, although they gradually adopted the informal “du” in front of other Berghof regulars.70 “If you were not in the know,” Below observed, “it was almost impossible to tell that Braun and Hitler had a special relationship with one another.”71
It is no wonder that after 1945 speculations were rampant about Hitler and Braun’s sex life. Even people who claimed to have known Hitler well disagreed radically. Contemporary eyewitnesses can hardly be trusted on this issue, however, and historians are well advised to view their statements with extreme scepticism. Albert Speer, for instance, contradicted himself on a number of occasions. At his first interrogation at Kransberg Castle in the summer of 1945, he testified that Braun was Hitler’s true love and that the Führer had always been faithful to her. “She meant a great deal to him,” Speer said, “and he spoke of her with enormous respect and inner admiration.”72 But in Spandau prison in March 1949, Speer already voiced doubts as to whether Hitler was “even capable of honest feelings of friendship, gratitude and loyalty” towards Braun.73 In his memoirs, published in 1969, three years after his release from prison where he’d written much of them, Speer’s doubts had become certainties. Speer depicted Hitler as an emotionally raw, ruthless despot who had, in Braun’s presence, made statements like: “Very intelligent people should make sure they get a primitive, stupid woman.”74 In conversation with Joachim Fest, who assisted him with publishing his memoirs, Speer offered a very simple explanation for Hitler’s relationship with Braun: Hitler had “kept” her “exclusively for certain biological needs…so to speak for the regulation of his hormones.”75 But Speer gave no indication of why he was so certain.
If there was anyone close to Hitler who knew about sexual relations between him and Eva Braun, it would have been the Berghof staff: the couples who managed the place, the servants and the maids. But when they were questioned after the war, their answers were contradictory. House manager Herbert Döhring testified that neither he nor his wife had “gone out of their way to inspect the bed sheets,” but that they would have seen indications, had there been intimate contact between Hitler and Braun. The relationship was not even a “true friendship,” Döhring asserted, but rather an “amiable acquaintance.”76 Heinz Linge, by contrast, had no doubts that Hitler loved Braun and that the two had been intimate. He even maintained that he had once seen them in a “deep embrace.”77 Gretel Mittelstrasser, the wife of Döhring’s successor, also assumed that Hitler and his girlfriend slept together. She even told her niece Anna, the maid, that she had procured medications so that Braun could delay her period when the Führer came to the Berghof.78
There is a fair amount of evidence to suggest that, behind his façade of inhuman inapproachability, Hitler maintained a normal romantic relationship with Braun. But there is no saying for sure, and biographers should beware of titillating readers with through-the-keyhole fantasies. “The duty of the chronicler must halt before and respect the most personal spheres of a human being,” as Otto Dietrich once remarked.79
There is one definitive indication that Braun occupied an important position in Hitler’s private life and was more than mere “decoration” or a “shield to ward off other female advances.”80 On 2 May 1938, seemingly concerned that something could happen to him on his imminent trip to Italy, Hitler personally wrote out his will and testament. It began by specifying that “Fräulein Eva Braun of Munich” was in case of his death to receive “1,000 marks a month, or 12,000 annually, for the rest of her life.” His half-sister Angela Raubal and his sister Paula, who were to receive the same amount, were mentioned second and third.81
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Who was admitted to the Berghof society and who was not? The most important criterion for inclusion was not party rank, but Hitler’s personal likes and dislikes, and this depended, among other things, on how well a given individual got on with Eva Braun and accepted her role at the mountain manor. At the Berghof, Hitler wanted to surround himself with people—men and women in equal numbers—in whose presence he felt at ease and in whose company he could relax. In contrast to the Chancellery in Berlin, the Berghof circle on the Obersalzberg was far more familial, which was down primarily to the greater presence of the female element.82
That explains why Göring, although
he too owned a house in the vicinity, was not part of the Berghof circle. He appeared at official events, but Hitler had no private contact with him. The same was true of Himmler: Hitler valued him as the unscrupulous organiser of a Reich-wide apparatus of terror and repression, but in private he also made fun of the Reichsführer-SS’s cultish worship of everything Germanic.83 The situation was no different with Ribbentrop, whom Hitler made Reich foreign minister in 1938 but whom he consciously kept at a distance from the Berghof. By contrast, Ribbentrop’s liaison to Hitler, Walter Hewel, was invited to the Berghof because Hitler liked him personally.84
Hess only appeared at the Berghof in his official function. He had lost the exclusive position he enjoyed prior to 1933 as Hitler’s private secretary when he became deputy to the Führer. His place was taken by Bormann, who had earned the dictator’s favour with his tireless work on the construction on the Obersalzberg and his discreet handling of all the financial issues connected with it. He further ingratiated himself with Hitler by paying special attention to Braun, a point upon which, as Otto Dietrich noted, Hitler was “extraordinarily sensitive.”85 Bormann was Hitler’s constant shadow at the Berghof, while his wife Gerda, who was the daughter of the “uppermost party judge” Walter Buch and whom he kept regularly pregnant, was only allowed to visit as a guest by her power-hungry husband.86 Goebbels’s situation was rather in-between. He and Magda were frequently invited to the Obersalzberg for private visits, but unlike in Berlin, here they were not part of Hitler’s standard entourage. Most of their visits only lasted a few days, and during that time they were housed a short distance from the Berghof in the Bechsteins’ villa, which had been used since 1935 as a guest house for Nazi elites.87
Albert and Margarete Speer, on the other hand, were regular, privileged guests. The architect had gone to the Obersalzberg with Hitler as early as 1933, and after introducing Hitler to his wife, who apparently found the dictator’s favour, the couple was accepted into the Berghof circle.88 It was Hitler’s express wish that the Speers buy a house on the Obersalzberg, and on special occasions, such as the Führer’s birthday, their children, dressed in their Sunday best, were allowed to come along and present Hitler with bouquets of flowers. Hitler did his best with the children and tried to engage with them in “friendly, paternal fashion,” Speer recalled, but he never found the “right wholehearted manner” and soon turned his back on them “after a few words of praise.”89
The Speers were especially solicitous of Eva Braun. They took her skiing, which Hitler greeted with a furrowed brow as he feared that there would be an accident. Hitler hated snow anyway. “The cold, lifeless element was deeply foreign to his nature,” wrote Speer. “The mere sight of snow made him act irritated.”90 In his memoirs, Speer claimed to have befriended Braun, the “unhappy woman…who doted on Hitler,” because he felt sorry for her. But Heike Görtemaker has rightly questioned this idea. Like Bormann, Speer realised early on what an important role Braun played in Hitler’s life, and he knew that he could deepen his connection with the Führer if he maintained friendly relations with her.91
Karl and Anni Brandt were close friends of the Speers. It was the wife in this case who had brought her husband into the Berghof circle. Competing under her maiden name, Anni Rehborn, she had been one of the most famous female swimmers of the 1920s, winning several German championships in the 100-metre freestyle and the 100-metre backstroke and setting numerous records. Hitler, whom she first met in 1927 or 1928, immediately liked her. In the early 1930s, she introduced him to her fiancé, then an assistant physician in the Bergmannsheil Clinic in the mining city of Bochum. Both joined the NSDAP, and in June 1933, Hitler invited them to the Obersalzberg.92 When, on 15 August 1933, Wilhelm Brückner got in a car accident near the village of Reit im Winkel, Karl Brandt happened to be travelling in the car directly behind him. The young surgeon administered first aid, drove Brückner, who had a serious head injury, to the hospital in nearby Traunstein and operated on him himself.93 Hitler was impressed and offered the physician the chance to become a member of his personal staff, accompanying him on trips so that he could receive immediate medical attention should he be the victim of an accident or assassination attempt. That new status automatically made the Brandts members of the Berghof circle. Karl and Anni Brandt’s wedding in Berlin in March 1934 was attended by Hoffmann, Brückner, Hitler, Goebbels and Göring. In July 1934, Hitler invited the couple for the first time to the Bayreuth festival.94
On the Obersalzberg, the Brandts rented a suite in the Bechsteins’ villa so as to be permanently contactable by Hitler. They shared the Speers’ enthusiasm for sports, and that also gave them something in common with Braun, whom they included in their joint activities. Brandt and Speer were uncannily similar. Both were young men—around thirty—who personally owed their meteoric careers to Hitler. Both were good-looking with engaging personalities, entirely unlike the coarse “old fighters.” Both were very competent in their areas of expertise, extremely ambitious and willing to follow Hitler without scruple. It was no accident that with the start of the Second World War Hitler charged Brandt with carrying out his forced euthanasia programme.
Brandt was not the only physician in Hitler’s entourage. In the spring of 1936, Hanskarl von Hasselbach, an NSDAP member since 1932, was hired as Hitler’s second travelling doctor. He was a university friend of Brandt and transferred with him in November 1933 from Bochum to the university clinic in Berlin. He remained a member of Hitler’s entourage, even if his relationship with the Führer was more remote than his colleague’s.95
Another doctor appeared over the course of 1936. Fifty-year-old Theodor Morell ran a practice, frequented above all by screen and stage stars, near the Memorial Church on Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm. His patients included Hoffmann, who recommended him to Hitler. During the tense months after the remilitarisation of the Rhineland, Hitler suffered from stomach complaints and eczema on his legs. Among other things, Morell prescribed Mutaflor capsules to restore Hitler’s intestinal bacteria, and the treatment was a success. A former ship’s doctor, Morell seems to have known how to exploit Hitler’s hypochondria to ingratiate himself. In any case, Hitler swore by Morell’s abilities, remarking privately: “He saved my life! Wonderful, how he helped me!”96 As of 1937, Morell and his wife, the actress Johanna “Hanni” Moller, were an integral part of the Berghof society. The couple were also clever enough to court Braun’s favour, and she smoothed their way.97 Towards Hitler, Morell acted like a selfless assistant whose only wish “was to keep Germany’s greatest man free of physical complaints for a long time.”98 In reality, he not only craved attention but had an excellent head for business. He exploited his privileged status of “the Führer’s personal physician” for material gain, for instance in the form of lucrative shares in pharmaceutical companies.
Otherwise, the corpulent new arrival did not have many friends within the Berghof circle. Karl Brandt in particular was none too pleased about the appearance of a rival, whom he considered a loudmouth and a quack.99 But as long as Morell enjoyed Hitler’s favour, he could feel secure. As a gesture of his appreciation in December 1938, Hitler appointed him a professor, and he told members of his entourage to consult his personal physician at the first sign of any complaint. Braun was also a patient of Morell, even though, if we believe Speer’s memoirs, she once complained after an examination how “disgustingly dirty” he was.100 Morell’s body odour was no secret to Hitler either, but he answered jibes on that score from his entourage by saying that Morell was not there “to be smelled” but to keep him healthy.101
The only one of Hitler’s old pals from Munich to become a regular at the Berghof was Heinrich Hoffmann. He usually visited with his second wife, Erna Gröbke, the daughter of a classical singer from the northern German city of Schwerin, whom he had married in April 1934. Hoffmann was a welcome guest not only as the man who visually documented the Third Reich and as a kind of court prankster. He also advised Hitler on art and purchased paintings for
him. In June 1937, Hitler charged him with selecting the pictures to appear in the Great German Art Exhibition in Munich’s House of German Art, after sacking the twelve-head-strong panel of judges whose work had displeased him. Assisted by Gerdy Troost and House of German Art Director Karl Kolb, he also curated exhibitions in the years that followed as the Führer’s personal agent. Hitler appointed him a professor in July 1938.102
Hoffmann particularly enjoyed playing jokes on Morell and exposing him wherever possible to ridicule. For Hitler’s personal physician, the photographer was “the evil spirit of the company at table.”103 Hitler had a soft spot for Hoffmann and ignored the fact that his old ally was a bit too fond of alcohol. The dictator’s enormous faith in him was reflected in the fact that he asked Hoffmann to handle the finances for renting the apartment for Eva Braun and later purchasing her house. Hoffmann set up a small darkroom at the Berghof for her, and the Führer’s mistress turned into a passionate amateur photographer and maker of home movies. Armed with a 16-millimetre Agfa-Movex camera, Braun made numerous films that, together with photos taken by cameraman Walter Frentz, provide an intimate look at everyday Berghof life. Occasionally Hoffmann bought photographs from his former employee, paying—no doubt on instructions from Hitler—relatively large sums of money for them.104
As a kind of compensation for not being allowed to appear at official functions, Hitler permitted Braun to invite guests of her own to the Obersalzberg, and rooms were set aside for that purpose. Among them were her constant companion and sister Gretl, who had begun working for Hoffmann as a clerk in 1932, her oldest and best friend, Herta Scheider (née Ostermeier), and Marianne (Marion) Schönmann (née Petzl), whose mother, the opera singer Maria Petzl, Hitler had heard perform during his days in Vienna. “With her lively manners and witty charm, she was typically Viennese,” wrote Karl Brandt of Marion Schönmann in his essay “The Women around Hitler” in August 1945, and that explains the attention the dictator paid to this friend of Braun in particular. Hitler and Braun were among the small number of guests when Schönmann married a Munich construction magnate in August 1937.105
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