Eva Braun

Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler.

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

Background

Born in Munich, Germany, Braun was the daughter of a school teacher from a respectable Bavarian family. She 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 and is said to have slipped a love letter into his pocket. 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.

Relationship and turmoil

Hitler saw more of Braun after the alleged suicide of Angela's daughter and (possibly) Hitler's former 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 bought her a villa in Wasserburgerstrasse, a Munich suburb, providing her with a Mercedes and a chauffeur.

Braun and Hitler on the veranda of the Berghof

In 1936 Braun came to Hitler's household at the Berghof near Berchtesgaden. Her political influence on Hitler is unknown, but is generally presumed to have been minimal. However, some historians have inferred she was aware of at least some sordid details concerning the Third Reich's inner workings. By all accounts she led a sheltered and privileged existence and seemed uninterested in politics.

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. 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.

Lifestyle

Sketch of Eva Braun by Hitler

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. 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.

Also in 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.

Marriage and suicide

By early April 1945 Braun had driven to Berlin from Munich to be with Hitler at the Führerbunker. She refused to leave as the Red Army closed in, insisting she was one of the few people loyal to him left in the world. Hitler and Braun were married on April 29th, 1945 during a brief civil ceremony witnessed by Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann; the bride wore a black silk dress.

With her marriage her legal name changed to Eva Hitler. When Eva signed her marriage certificate, she first wrote her family name Braun, then lined this out and replaced it with Hitler. 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 has never been any evidence to support this claim. Braun and Hitler committed suicide together on the 30th, by swallowing a cyanide capsule. She was 33. Their corpses were burned with gasoline in the Reich Chancellery garden.

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, before being exhumed in 1970, completely cremated and dispersed in the Elbe river (see also Hitler's death).

The rest of Eva Braun's family survived the war, including her father, who worked in a hospital and to whom Braun 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.