Eva Braun

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Eva Anna Paula Braun, later Eva Hitler (February 6, 1912 – April 30, 1945) was the longtime companion of Adolf Hitler and briefly his wife.

Contents 1 Background 2 Relationship and turmoil 3 Lifestyle 4 Marriage and suicide 5 Further Reading 6 External link

[edit] Background

Born in Munich, Germany, Eva Braun was the second daughter of school teacher Friedrich "Fritz" Braun and Franziska Kronberger, who both came from respectable Bavarian families. Her elder sister Ilse was born in 1908 and her younger sister Margarete (called "Gretl") was born in 1926. Eva was educated at a lyceum, then for one year at a business school in a convent where she had average grades, a talent for athletics and is said to have had the "dreamy beauty of a farmer's daughter." She worked for several months as a receptionist at a medical office, then at age seventeen took a job as an office and lab assistant for Heinrich Hoffmann, the official photographer for the Nazi Party. She met Hitler there in 1929. He had been introduced to her as "Herr Wolff" (a childhood nickname he used during the 1920s for security purposes). She described him to friends as a "gentleman of a certain age with a funny moustache, a light-coloured English overcoat, and carrying a big felt hat." Both of their families were strongly against the relationship and little is known about its first two years. Her father had both political and moral objections, while Hitler's half-sister, Angela Raubal, refused to address Eva other than as a social inferior.

[edit] Relationship and turmoil

Hitler saw more of Braun after the alleged suicide of Angela's daughter and (possibly) Hitler's alleged mistress Geli Raubal in 1931 (some historians suggest Raubal killed herself because she was distraught over Hitler's relationship with Braun, while others speculate Hitler killed her or had her murdered). Meanwhile, Hitler was seeing other women, such as actress Renate Müller, whose early death was also termed a suicide. Braun too attempted suicide in 1932 by shooting herself in the neck, and attempted suicide a second time in 1935 by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. After Braun's recovery, Hitler became more committed to her and arranged for Hoffman photo studio royalties of his pictures to pay for a villa in Wasserburgerstrasse, a Munich suburb. This income also provided her with a Mercedes, a chauffeur and a maid. Her sister, Gretl, also enjoyed this largesse due to Hitler's popularity and moved in with her.

In 1936 Braun was allowed to come to Hitler's household at the Berghof near Berchtesgaden whenever he was in residence there. Several times her parents were invited for dinner also. Her political influence on Hitler was minimal as she was never allowed to stay in the room when business or political conversations took place. However, some historians have inferred she was aware of at least some sordid details concerning the Third Reich's inner workings as she accepted stolen loot belonging to deposed royal families of Europe as gifts. By all accounts she led a sheltered and privileged existence and seemed uninterested in politics. She tried to cultivate romantic relationships in Munich but when Hitler would find out about it, the hapless man would either be found mysteriously dead, beaten up, or if a German soldier, transferred to the Russian front to die soon.

Hitler and Eva never appeared as a couple in public and there is some indication that this, along with their not having married early in their relationship, was due to Hitler's fear that he would lose popularity among female supporters. Other historians imply the reason is that Hitler did not want to incite jealousy with his other lovers, who have never been clearly identified for this period in his life because as he grew more powerful, his personal security increased. The German people were entirely unaware of Eva Braun and her relationship with Hitler until after the war. According to the memoirs of Albert Speer, Eva Braun never slept in the same room as Hitler and was always given her own bedroom at the Berghof, in Hitler's Berlin residence and in the Berlin bunker. Speer commented:

Eva Braun was allowed to be present during visits from old party associates. She was banished as soon as other dignitaries of the Reich, such as cabinet ministers, appeared at the table ... Hitler obviously regarded her as socially acceptable only within strict limits. Sometimes I kept her company in her exile, a room next to Hitler's bedroom. She was so intimidated that she did not dare leave the house for a walk. Out of sympathy for her predicament I soon began to feel a liking for this unhappy woman, who was so deeply attached to Hitler.

[edit] Lifestyle

Even during World War II Braun apparently lived a life of leisure, spending her time exercising, reading romance novels, watching films and early German television (at least until around 1943) along with later helping to host gatherings of Hitler's inner circle. Unlike other Germans, she was free to read European and American magazines and watch foreign films. Her affection for nude sunbathing (and being photographed at it) is known to have infuriated him. She had a lifelong interest in photography and their closest friends called her the Rolleiflex Girl (after the well-known camera model). She did her own darkroom processing and most of the extant colour stills and movies of Hitler are her work.

Otto Günsche and Heinz Linge, during extensive debriefings by Soviet intelligence officials after the war, said Braun was at the centre of Hitler's life for most of his twelve years in power. It was said that in 1936,

He was always accompanied by her. As soon as he heard the voice of his lover he became jollier. He would make jokes about her new hats. He would take her for hours on end into his study where there would be champagne cooling in ice, chocolates, cognac, and fruit.

The interrogation report adds that when Hitler was too busy for her, "Eva would often be in tears."

Linge said that before the war, Hitler ordered an increase of the police guard at Braun's house in Munich after she reported to the Gestapo that a woman had said to her face she was the Führer-whore.

Hitler is known to have been opposed to women wearing cosmetics (in part because they were made from animal by-products) and sometimes brought the subject up at mealtime. Linge (who was his valet) said Hitler once laughed at traces of Braun's lipstick on a napkin and to tease her, joked, "Soon we will have replacement lipstick made from dead bodies of soldiers."

In 1944 Braun invited her cousin Gertraud Weisker to visit her at the Berghof near Berchtesgaden. Decades later, Weisker recalled that although women in the Third Reich were expected not to wear make-up, drink, or smoke, Eva did all of these things. "She was the unhappiest woman I have ever met," said Weisker, who informed Braun about how poorly the war was going for Germany, having illegally listened to BBC news broadcasts in German. Weisker also claimed neither of them knew anything about the concentration camps, although both were keenly aware that Jews in Germany were severely persecuted.

On June 3, 1944, Eva Braun's sister Gretl married a member of Hitler's entourage, Hermann Fegelein, who served as Heinrich Himmler's liaison. Hitler used the marriage as an excuse to allow Braun to appear at official functions. When Fegelein was caught in the closing days of the war trying to escape to Sweden with another woman, Hitler personally ordered his execution. By the time of her husband's death Gretl Fegelein was eight months pregnant. After the end of the war she gave birth to her daughter, Eva Fegelein (in remembrance of her beloved sister).

[edit] Marriage and suicide

In early April 1945 Braun had riden in her chaueffeur driven Mercedes-Benz to Berlin from Munich to be with Hitler at the Führerbunker. He had told her not to come but she came anyway. During this long trip the chaueffeur had to stop the car several times and they had to run to bomb shelters due to intense Allied bombing raids. After arriving at the bunker complex, Eva refused to leave as the Red Army closed in, insisting she was one of the few people loyal to him left in the world. She also had seen, during her recent trip from Munich, that Germany was completely bombed out and there was no safe refuge nearby. She was offered military plane flights out of Berlin. Hitler and Braun were married on April 29, 1945 during a brief civil ceremony with several other couples being married at the same time, witnessed by Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann; the bride wore a black silk dress.

With Braun's marriage her legal name changed to Eva Hitler. When Eva signed her marriage certificate she wrote the letter B for her family name, then lined this out and replaced it with Hitler.[1] Moreover, although bunker personnel were instructed to call her Frau Hitler, Adolf Hitler himself continued to call Eva Fräulein Braun.

There was gossip among the Führerbunker staff that Eva was carrying Hitler's child, but there is no evidence she was ever pregnant.

Braun and Hitler committed suicide together on April 30, 1945 at around 3:30 in the afternoon behind closed doors with no witnesses. The remaining occupants of the bunker heard a gunshot and someone eventually went into the room. She swallowed a cyanide capsule (most historians have concluded Hitler used a combination method, shooting himself in the right temple while simultaneously biting into a cyanide capsule). Braun was 33 when she died. Their corpses were burned with diesel fuel beyond recognition in the Reich Chancellery garden just outside the bunker's emergency exit. No first party witnesses who went into the death scene room itself were ever interviewed after the war, but the survivors in the bunker who claimed to see two wrapped up dead bodies carried outside to be burned, were interviewed and interrogated over the years and gave similar but slightly conflicting accounts. Much controversy surrounds the verification of this incident because the Russians were technically in charge of this region of Germany at the time and there existed a cultural and political barrier between them and the Germans due to war atrocities. Some of the potential witnesses were missing, dead, imprisoned by the Soviets, British or Americans in different prisons and it was feared that due to political brainwashing some of the witnesses might still be loyal to Hitler and wanted to protect his escape and/or legacy. DNA testing was not available at the time to resolve the lurking identity questions.

Their charred remains were soon discovered by the Russians and secretly buried at the SMERSH compound in Magdeburg, East Germany along with the bodies of Joseph and Magda Goebbels and their six children. All of these remains were exhumed in April 1970, completely cremated and dispersed in the Elbe river (see also Hitler's death). [2]

The rest of Eva Braun's family survived the war, including her father, who worked in a hospital and to whom Eva sent several trunks of her belongings in April 1945. Her mother, Franziska, died aged 96 in January 1976 having lived out her days in an old farmhouse in Ruhpolding, Bavaria.

[edit] Further Reading

• Lambert, Angela The Lost Life Of Eva Braun: 2007--St. Martin's Press

[edit] External link

• A collection of rare home movie footage of Eva, via Youtube