Eva Braun

Review by Gerhard L. Weinberg

This translation of a 2010 German publication provides a biography of the woman who became Hitler’s mistress and subsequently his wife. It is based thoughtfully and carefully on a very much broader base of unpublished and published sources than any of the prior works that have covered her life. Here the reader is provided with a good account of the first meeting of Eva Braun with the 23-years-older Hitler, and the role of Heinrich Hoffmann, her employer and Hitler’s longtime important associate, in their relationship. The author describes both the situation in post-World War I Munich and the background and members of the Braun family. As Hitler pushes for power in Germany, the relationship of the two lovers becomes ever closer even when they are geographically separated.

Whatever the true and fabricated stories about Hitler’s relations with other women, there is no doubt that Eva Braun was entirely successful in establishing herself as the important woman in his life, even if it meant a real or pretended suicide to assert her role. A particular strength of this book is that it develops with care and fairness both the roles in Nazi Germany of such other important women as Magda Goebbels and Ilse Hess and the discrepancy between the official party line on the role of women and the reality of Hitler’s private life. The reader also sees Eva Braun’s rise to dominance in the daily life and routines of Hitler and her relationship to such other intimates of the latter as Albert and Margerete Speer and Karl and Anni Brandt (Hitler’s doctor).

Since Hitler alternated during the war between his headquarters, especially in East Prussia, and the Berghof in Bavaria, the author successfully tracks the way this affected their relationship and especially their determined efforts to maintain it when separated. Görtemaker shows how and why Eva Braun comes to have a reasonably clear picture of what is actually going on and hence recognizes the reality as things turn bad for her lover’s war. The accounts of the impact of the attempt on Hitler’s life on July 20, 1944, their dreams of a post-victory home overlooking the city of Linz, and her decision to go to Berlin and die with Hitler are all convincing. For American readers the fairly retold account of the marriage of the two just before their suicide needs the closing comment that the wedding certificate is in the United States National Archives. This account of a famous couple will certainly inform and make thoughtful any with an interest in their lives and deaths.