BIOGRAPHY: CARLA KINGreviews Eva Braun: Life With HitlerBy Heike B Görtemaker, translated by Damion Searls Allen Lane, 324pp. £25
DESPITE A MASS OF literature and film about Hitler, his partner of 14 years, Eva Braun, has remained a somewhat shadowy figure. Albert Speer described her in a memoir as “a pretty, empty-headed blonde, with a round face and blue eyes”, while the English historian Richard J Evans characterised her as “a naive and submissive young woman”. This perception may have chimed with Nazi assumptions about women’s intellectual inferiority, and with Braun’s relative youth and insecure status as mistress rather than wife, but Heike Görtemaker’s account challenges traditional dismissive assumptions about her subject.
It is no accident that so little is known about Braun. For most of her years with Hitler she was kept firmly out of the public view. Hitler believed it essential to his image that he remain a bachelor in order to win the loyalty of German women. While seeking to portray himself as the “superfather” to the German nation, privately he shunned the commitment that marriage and a family might have involved. Thus Braun was only rarely permitted to attend public events – and then only incognito – and was omitted from public photographs and banished to her room when there were important visitors outside Hitler’s immediate circle. When travelling in his entourage she did so in the official position of a photographer or as a private secretary.
Even after her and Hitler’s joint suicide at the end of the war, Görtemaker argues, the surviving members of their former circle, motivated by a combination of loyalty and self-justification, provided heavily edited recollections. Thus an image emerged of a lively but completely apolitical woman, unaware of and therefore largely exonerated from implication in the frightfulness of Nazism.
Born in Munich, Braun was a schoolteacher’s daughter. Her first job was as an assistant in a photography studio owned by Heinrich Hoffmann, an ardent Nazi and propaganda photographer to the party. She and Hitler met in the studio in October 1929, and for years Hoffman served as a go-between and discreet cover for their relationship. The affair was traumatic for Braun, however, who attempted suicide twice – in 1932 and in 1935 – and eventually she was permitted to join Hitler at his residence, Berghof, on the Obersalzberg. Here, behind barriers and guarded fences, Hitler’s circle enjoyed a privileged existence well into the war, when ordinary Germans, not to mention countless other Europeans, were suffering privation. Hitler preferred to govern from this base in Bavaria, surrounded by loyal followers, rather than from the German capital. Over time Braun gained a secure position as lady of the house when Hitler was there, shooting films and taking photographs, which she sold to Hoffmann, dining, swimming, watching films and skiing. It was, as Görtemaker points out, a highly political world, and her subject likely shared in full the political ideology of the Hitler circle. She argues that the claim that Hitler never touched on political topics in the presence of women “was merely another self-protective lie”, emphasising that “the persecution of the Jews was no secret in the Berghof circle”.
In deteriorating health in the late 1930s, Hitler diverted himself from the nightmare he was planning for Europe with a fantasy about retirement to the Austrian city of Linz, which he planned to rebuild and retire to with Braun and his dog. He continued to nourish this dream even when it was clear the war was lost and he and some remaining followers were holed up in the Führerbunkerin Berlin. While he toyed with his plans for Linz, she held little parties among the remaining inhabitants of the Bunker. One detail from James P O'Donnell's study The Bunker: The History of the Reich Chancellery Groupcasts light on her character. Her brother-in-law, Hermann Fegelein, deserted from the bunker in the last days and phoned Braun, encouraging her to abandon Hitler and save herself. Apprehended and accused of plotting against his leader, he was executed close by just an hour before Braun and Hitler's wedding. She appears not to have batted an eyelid.
This book in no sense seeks to justify Braun or to make her likeable; rather, it aims to flesh out the details of her life and role in relation to Hitler. The portrayal of her as more intelligent and political than traditional accounts brings with it fuller responsibility for her own actions. Görtemaker is scrupulous in indicating where evidence is absent or suspect, and she meticulously dissects several of the memoirs by survivors of Hitler’s circle. Where direct information on Braun is lacking, she provides accounts of other leading members of Hitler’s circle, and it is no surprise to learn that she is now working on a study of this important if highly unpleasant group. Although she tracks Braun’s increasing self-confidence in her role, she never quite succeeds in assessing how much power and influence Braun exerted within Hitler’s circle. Throughout the book Braun is described as Hitler’s “partner” whereas the old-fashioned term “mistress” describes her situation better, reflecting her dependence, both financial and in terms of status.
Perhaps anxious not to seek sympathy for her subject, Görtemaker portrays Braun as more manipulative and less put-upon by Hitler’s domestic tyrannies and control than Joachim Fest’s account in his biography of Hitler. Nevertheless, it is possible that she was both victim and a willing participant in Hitler’s appalling regime. It is an intriguing read.
Carla King lectures in modern history at St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, in Dublin
