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Eva Anna Paula Hitler (née Braun; 6 February 1912 – 30 April 1945) was the longtime companion of Adolf Hitler and, for less than 40 hours, his wife. Braun met Hitler in Munich when she was 17 years old, while she was working as an assistant and model for his personal photographer, and began seeing him often about two years later. She attempted suicide twice during their early relationship. By 1936, she was a part of his household at the Berghof near Berchtesgaden and lived a sheltered life throughout World War II. Braun was a photographer, and many of the surviving colour photographs and films of Hitler were taken by her. She was a key figure within Hitler's inner social circle, but did not attend public events with him until mid-1944, when her sister Gretl married Hermann Fegelein, the SS liaison officer on his staff.
As the Third Reich collapsed towards the end of the war, Braun swore loyalty to Hitler and went to Berlin to be by his side in the heavily reinforced Führerbunker beneath the Reich Chancellery. As Red Army troops fought their way into the neighbourhood on 29 April 1945, she married Hitler during a brief civil ceremony; she was 33 and he was 56. Less than 40 hours later, they committed suicide together in a sitting room of the bunker, she by biting into a capsule of cyanide. The German public was unaware of Braun's relationship with Hitler until after their deaths.
Born in Munich, Eva Braun was the second daughter of school teacher Friedrich "Fritz" Braun and Franziska "Fanny" Kronberger, who had worked as a seamstress before her marriage.[1] Her elder sister, Ilse, was born in 1909 and her younger sister, Margarete (Gretl), was born in 1915. Braun's parents were divorced in April 1921, but remarried in November 1922, likely for financial reasons (hyperinflation was plaguing the German economy at the time).[2]
Braun was educated at a Catholic lyceum in Munich, and then for one year at a business school in the Convent of the English Sisters in Simbach am Inn, where she had average grades and a talent for athletics.[3] At age 17 she took a job working for Heinrich Hoffmann, the official photographer for the Nazi Party.[4] Initially employed as a shop assistant and sales clerk, she soon learned how to use a camera and develop photos.[5] She met Hitler, 23 years her senior, at Hoffmann's studio in Munich in October 1929. He had been introduced to her as "Herr Wolff".[6] Eva's sister, Gretl, also worked for Hoffman from 1932 onward, and the women rented an apartment together for a time. Gretl accompanied her sister on her later trips with Hitler to the Obersalzberg.[7]
Relationship with Hitler
Hitler lived with his half-niece, Geli Raubal, in an apartment in Munich from 1929 until her death.[8][9] On 18 September 1931 Raubal was found dead in the apartment, shot with his pistol, an apparent suicide. Hitler was in Nuremberg at the time. The relationship was important to him, likely the most intense of his life. [10] Hitler began seeing more of Braun after the suicide.
Braun herself attempted suicide on 10 or 11 August 1932 by shooting herself in the chest with her father's pistol.[11] Historians feel the attempt was not serious, but was a bid for Hitler's attention.[12][13] After Braun's recovery, Hitler became more committed to her and by the end of 1932 they had become lovers.[14] She often stayed overnight at his Munich apartment when he was in town.[15] Braun worked as a photographer for Hoffmann from 1933 on.[16] This position enabled her to travel—accompanied by Hoffmann—with Hitler's entourage, as a photographer for the NSDAP.[17] Later in her career she worked for Hoffman's art press.[18]
According to a fragment of her diary and the account of biographer Nerin Gun, Braun's second suicide attempt occurred in May 1935. She took an overdose of sleeping pills when Hitler failed to make time for her in his life.[19] Hitler provided Eva and her sister with a three-bedroom apartment in Munich that August, [20] and the next year the sisters were provided with a villa in Bogenhausen.[21] By 1936, Braun was at Hitler's household at the Berghof near Berchtesgaden whenever he was in residence there, but she lived mostly in Munich.[22] Braun also had her own apartment at the new Reich Chancellery in Berlin, completed to a design by Albert Speer.[23]
Braun attended the Nuremberg Rally for the first time in 1935, as a member of Hoffman's staff. Hitler's half-sister, Angela Raubal (the dead Geli's mother), took exception to her presence there, and was later dismissed from her position as housekeeper at his house in Berchtesgaden. Researchers are unable to ascertain if her dislike for Braun was the only reason for her departure, but other members of Hitler's entourage saw Braun as untouchable from then on.[24]
Hitler wished to present himself in the image of a chaste hero; in the Nazi ideology, men were the political leaders and warriors and women were homemakers.[25] He believed that he was sexually attractive to women and wished to exploit this for political gain by remaining single, as he felt marriage would decrease his appeal.[26][27] He and Braun never appeared as a couple in public; the only time they appeared together in a published news photo was when she sat near him at the 1936 Winter Olympics. The German people were unaware of Braun's relationship with Hitler until after the war.[12] According to Speer's memoirs, Braun never slept in the same room as Hitler and had her own rooms at the Berghof, in Hitler's Berlin residence, and in the Berlin bunker. Speer later said, "Eva Braun will prove a great disappointment to historians."[28].
Biographer Heike Görtemaker notes that women did not play a big role in the politics of the Third Reich.[29] Braun's political influence on Hitler was apparently minimal. She was never allowed to stay in the room when business or political conversations took place,[25] and was sent out of the room when cabinet ministers or other dignitaries were present.[30] She was not a member of the Nazi Party.[31][32] Her main interests were sports, clothes, and the cinema. By all accounts, she led a sheltered and privileged existence and seemed uninterested in politics.[33] One instance when she took an interest was in 1943, shortly after Germany had fully transitioned to a total war economy. Among other things, this meant a potential ban on women's cosmetics and luxuries. According to Speer's memoirs, Braun approached Hitler in "high indignation"; Hitler instructed Speer, who was armaments minister at the time, to quietly arrange for production of women's cosmetics and luxuries to cease rather than instituting an outright ban.[34]
Braun continued to work for Hoffmann after commencing her relationship with Hitler. She took many photographs and movies of members of the inner circle, and some of these were sold to Hoffmann for extremely high prices. She received money from Hoffmann's company as late as 1943, and also held the position of private secretary to Hitler.[35] This guise meant she could enter and leave the Chancellery unremarked, though she used a side entrance and a rear staircase.[36][37] Görtemaker notes that Braun and Hitler enjoyed a normal sex life; Braun's friends and relatives described Eva giggling over a 1938 photograph of Neville Chamberlain sitting on a sofa in Hitler's Munich flat with the remark: "If only he knew what goings-on that sofa has seen."[29]
On 3 June 1944, Braun's sister Gretl married SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein, who served as Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler's liaison officer on Hitler's staff. Hitler used the marriage as an excuse to allow Braun to appear at official functions, as she could then be introduced as Fegelein's sister-in-law.[33] When Fegelein was caught in the closing days of the war trying to escape to Sweden or Switzerland, Hitler ordered his execution.[38][39] He was shot for desertion in the garden of the Reich Chancellery on 28 April 1945.[40]
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