Hitler's Mistress
Jennifer Wilding

It is only many years after death that Eva Braun is finally becoming a public figure. During all the years she lived with Adolf Hitler as his mistress and, briefly, his wife she was one of Germany's best kept secrets. Indeed, until after the war many Germans were almost completely unaware of her existence.

It is difficult today to imagine the odium attached to the term "mistress" during Eva's lifetime. It implied a sin of such magnitude that one was almost certainly eternally dammed. One was socially ostracized and, very frequently, cast out by one's family. Why, then, did a Catholic girl, convent educated, agree to such an illicit relationship?

Certainly the answer does not lie in Eva's upbringing, for it was entirely conventional. Daughter of a middle class Catholic school teacher and the second of three girls, Eva was born in Munich on February 6, 1912. She went to a regular public school for the bulk of her education and seems to have been a perfectly ordinary girl with friends, average grades and a talent for athletics. When she finished school at 16 Eva went as a boarder to a convent school run by English nuns. Her studies included bookkeeping and economics.

When the blonde, pretty Eva returned home in 1929 she took a job as office assistant to the photographer Heinrich Hoffman, official photographer of the Nazi Party. She eventually became a lab worker, processing and developing films and generally acting a photographic assistant. It was there that she met Adolph Hitler, she was seventeen years old.

It is not known when Eva Braun and Hitler began dating, became lovers or even exactly when she moved into his Munich flat. What is known is that the relationship was strongly opposed by both families. Eva's father disapproved of the arrangement on both personal and political grounds, it was neither a moral nor an ethical liaison. Angela, Hitler's sister was so violently disapproving that she and her brother remained on very bad terms for a number of years. It was noted that she never addressed Eva in the respectful mode of speech, but only in the familiar, as one might do to one's social inferiors or a person one wished to insult.

Hitler does not seem to have been an attentive lover. In 1932 Eva shot herself in a suicide attempt, apparently prompted by the fact hat Hitler had no time for her. He was, of course, busy with politics and becoming Chancellor of the still democratic Germany. He claimed he couldn't marry Eva because a family would interfere with his commitment to building the Third Reich. It was also felt that becoming a married man would cost him a portion of female votes that he needed to attain his goals.

There was an apparent attempt on Hitler's part to cement their relationship after a second suicide attempt (by sleeping pill) in May 1935. He rented a flat close to his own for Eva and her younger sister Gretel. The nightly visits to this flat were starting to cause talk, and in 1936 bought her a rather luxurious house.

It is not clear what Eva spent her time doing while living with Hitler. She was not interested in politics and did not act as his hostess when he entertained political or military guests other than his very closest friends. Indeed, her diaries tell of dinner parties where she was confined to her own suite of rooms in order to keep her presence secret. She almost never appeared in public with him and had little or no social life of her own. When they did appear in the same place there was little or no contact between them and observers reported that they appeared to be ill at ease. Eva was, however fond of movies and television and kept up her interest in sports and photography. She did her own darkroom work and most of the color photographs and film footage of Hitler available today was Braun's work. Her entire existence revolved around Hitler and she was completely subordinate to him.

The photography seems to have been Eva's only involvement in the war. She did not make speeches, campaign or do war work. It is as if she lived in a complete vacuum, an extraordinary fear considering the devastation all around. Perhaps this was Hitler's doing, an effort to provide himself with an oasis of tranquility in the midst of a world blown apart.

By 1940, eleven years after they first met, Hitler finally decided to acknowledge Eva to his more intimate associates. They appeared together at private parties and their living arrangements became less secretive. There a number of pictures of Eva, Hitler and friends from this time still extant. In these photos Eva appears pretty, fresh and well groomed. Hitler appears ill and aging as the war progresses.

Eva's devotion to Hitler was total. After the failed assassination attempt of July 1944 she wrote to him that she lived only for his love, and would follow him into death. It is interesting to note that Eva's own father had died in November 1939, during an earlier attempt to assassinate Hitler.

By April 1945 it was clear that the Third Reich was not going to last a decade, never mind the millennium Hitler has boasted of. As Russian troops entered Berlin Hitler ordered Eva to evacuate to a location where he believed she would be safe. He entered his bunker and Eva, contrary to her orders, went with him, claiming that she was the only person still loyal to the Fuhrer.

As the war drew to a close Eva Braun was granted a long-held desire, and given a chance to fulfill a passionate vow.

Adolph and Eva were married on April 20, 1945. She was finally Frau Hitler. The next day she followed him into death, swallowing a poison capsule about two minutes before Hitler shot himself.

They were cremated together in the garden behind the bunker.