HITLER IN LOVE
Uncover the lives of the women who fell in love with one of the most hated men of the 20th century
Hitler In Love Who were the women who fell for the Führer and what do we know about his personal life?
It was a Saturday morning when the body was found face down on the floor in the Munich apartment. A bullet wound near the 23-year-old’s heart had killed her, and the 6.35mm Walther pistol lay on the sofa nearby. It had belonged to the man who owned the apartment – a man who was known across Germany and who was beginning to garner attention around the world. His name was Adolf Hitler, and the apparent suicide of his half-niece would change him forever.
The young woman was Geli Raubal, and she had been full of life. A music student, she was known among Hitler’s inner circle as an ‘enchantress’ and a ‘princess’, and the burgeoning politician often had her on his arm at meetings and events, eager to show off his half-sister’s daughter to all who would pay attention. Neither had thought that their relationship would come to such an abrupt, violent end – after all, their affair had started inconspicuously enough.
“there was a hole in Hitler’s life where the vivacious young woman had been”
In 1929, Hitler moved back to Munich, taking a flat on Prinzregentenstraße and bringing Geli along with him. The rumours of a relationship between the two of them skyrocketed, but neither party seemed to care for a while.
Ernst Hanfstaengel, a close friend of Hitler’s, commented that Geli was the “one woman in [Hitler’s] life who went some way towards curing his impotence”, and the pair seemed good together. Hitler enjoyed showing his half-niece off, and Geli didn’t mind the attention. The soonto-be politician even encouraged his paramour to receive weapons training, and insisted that she carried a loaded pistol with her for protection. Feeling like she was in a Western, Geli loved it. But what was lying underneath the surface of this seemingly loving relationship?
Violence, jealousy, aggression and perhaps sadism were all part and parcel. According to both Hanfstaengel and Otto Strasser, Geli had complained about strange and downright disgusting things she had been asked to do in the bedroom, and she was looking for a way out of Uncle Alf’s grip. Hitler wouldn’t let her see other people – although apparently that didn’t necessarily stop her when he was away. Rumours spread that she was sleeping with Emil Maurice, Hitler’s chauffeur. They weren’t far off the truth. Geli told her friend Henriette, daughter of Hitler’s official photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, “Being loved is boring, but to love a man, you know, to love him – that’s what life is about. And when you can love and be loved at the same time, it’s paradise.” She wasn’t speaking of her uncle – those words were all about Maurice.
But there were other whispers around Munich about what Geli was up to. Some evidence suggests that she was in a relationship with a man in Vienna, and that she planned to meet him there and they were to marry until Hitler put a stop to it, apparently with the support of his half-sister, Geli’s mother. Some said that the man was Jewish, and that she was pregnant with his child. In fact, the day before Geli’s body was found, that was what their latest argument had been about.
“You say you have to go to Vienna? Is it to see that filthy Jew, the one who claims to be a singing teacher? Is that it? Have you been seeing him secretly again? Have you forgotten I forbade you to have anything to do with him? Tell me the truth now. Why do you want to go to Vienna?” Hitler had roared.
Geli’s response was simple and to the point: “I have to go to Vienna, Uncle Alf, because I’m going to have a baby.”
Blazing rows weren’t out of the ordinary for the pair – the neighbours didn’t bat an eyelid. Hitler left for Hamburg that evening, off on the campaign trail, and Geli was desperate. She couldn’t leave, not with both her uncle and her mother so vehemently against the idea, but staying was torturous.
Residents in neighbouring flats apparently heard a short cry that evening, but they thought nothing of it. Why would they? The terrible truth would be uncovered the next morning when
Georg Winter, the husband of the housekeeper, found the door to the room locked. He opened it with a screwdriver, only to find the 23-year-old, once so vivacious, face down on the floor. Near her was an unfinished letter addressed to someone in Vienna, detailing how she would meet them there. Only she would never make it.
Geli’s death is still a mystery today. Had she killed herself, as everyone believed? Nazi
propagandists came out in force claiming that she had killed herself because she was ‘nervous’ about an upcoming music recital, giving that as a reason for her actions. However, she was given a Catholic funeral, a rite that was denied to those who committed suicide, and was buried at the Zentralfriedhof Cemetery in Vienna on 23 September 1931. And why would she start writing a letter saying she’d meet someone in Vienna, only to end her life halfway through?
There are some who saw her death as an accident – perhaps she had been playing with her uncle’s pistol when it suddenly went off, the bullet tearing into her chest. Maybe in the shock she had thrown the gun onto the sofa before sinking to the ground, her life slipping away from her. A few people came up with the idea that a jealous woman had come into the flat during the night, hellbent on killing her – the Nazi Party was particularly keen on this story.
Hitler was away that night, but that didn’t stop rumours spreading that he had done it. He just couldn’t let Geli go to Vienna, or have the baby she was supposed to be carrying. Others claimed that he had hired someone to murder her and make it look like an accident.
Whatever the truth, the aftermath of her death was certainly shady. Her body was taken for an autopsy but disappeared out of a side door and was shipped off to Vienna. The corpse was gone before the Monday morning papers. If Hitler’s political career was to gather speed, he needed the scandal of a woman dying under his roof to rapidly shrink away into the background.
But despite public appearances, Hitler was distraught. Geli’s death left him heartbroken – there was a hole in his life where the vivacious and confident young woman had been. After seeing her face splashed across every newspaper, he couldn’t bear it any more and so headed to an
isolated cottage on the shore of Tegernsee, Bavaria. There he ranted and raved to Rudolf Hess, yelling about how his political career was over and that his life was no longer worth living. According to one story, Hess had to grab a pistol out of his friend’s hand before he killed himself.
Geli may not have been Hitler’s first infatuation, and certainly not the first of his lovers to attempt suicide (although very little is known about these earlier women), but it was her death that affected him the most, with some even blaming it for some of Hitler’s darker policies. Nonetheless, time heals most wounds, and Hitler would soon move on. It just so happened that his next love would be someone he had already met.
In 1929, Heinrich Hoffman had a young assistant in his studio. Just 17, she was a keen worker and eager to please as both an assistant and a model. Then, on one November day, Eva Braun’s life changed forever. There at the door of the photography studio was a man who introduced him as ‘Herr Wolf’, and the rest, as they say, was history.
It’s impossible to know much about the early years of their relationship as all of Hitler’s personal correspondence was burned the week before his death in 1945. What we can infer, though, is that she became jealous – after all, she was only 17 and the man she wanted was obsessed with another woman: Geli. His half-niece took up his spare time, but that didn’t stop Eva from flirting with Hitler, and he brought her gifts when he visited the photography studio, and even sometimes took her to the opera.
In 1930, things seemed to be going Eva’s way. Hitler invited her to dinners at Osteria Bavaria, his favourite restaurant, along with others from his inner circle, and it’s thought that while Hitler was jealous of the company Geli was keeping, the feeling may have been mutual. Theirs was a strange, mixed-up relationship, after all. The man who was showering her with affection – however distasteful his bedroom requests may have been – was shifting his attention to a girl just one or two years her junior.
Hitler’s ‘type’ was clear – he once commented: “A girl of 18 to 20 is as malleable as wax. It should be possible for a man … to stamp his own imprint on her. That’s all the woman asks for.” He didn’t like girls who argued with him, or who were more intelligent than him, and with both of his main relationships being with girls in their late teens and early 20s, it certainly seems that dominance was important to him. At the beginning, Geli didn’t resist, and neither did Eva.
After Geli’s death it seemed as though Hitler would never be able to get over her. Her room in Munich was never touched while the dictator lived, and his grief was deep and real. But it didn’t last for long. Eva, still living in Munich, was about to turn 20, and she was eager to grow up. She spent her nights at cafes, nightclubs and the cinema, staying out until the early morning. She was enjoying everything the city had to offer, but there was just one problem – she was still obsessed with Hitler.
Eva never let up in her flirting, and eventually it paid off. An invitation to the Troubadour, one of Hitler’s favourite cafes, turned into more nights at the opera. Then it was a full-blown affair – or so we think. Any primary evidence of their relationship – letters, documents, photographs – were destroyed in 1945, so figuring out what happened has been a lot of guesswork and interviews with Hitler’s inner circle after the war. For instance, it’s unclear if their relationship had a sexual element or not (although Eva’s biographer claims they were definitely sexually active), and we’ll never know just how emotionally attached they were to one another.
What we do know, however, is that while Eva didn’t like to take money from her lover, she
“He didn’t like girls who argued with him, or who were more intelligent than him”
did end up with a house in Munich as well as apartments at the Berghof and the Old Reich Chancellery. We also know that she wasn’t a member of the Nazi Party, although she must have agreed with their ideas as she had been photographed at least one rally.
But the relationship did cause one problem – Hitler had a very specific image that he had cultivated, and that was one of a lonesome and god-like man who had sacrificed his personal life for the good of his country. He was married to the Fatherland, not a 20-something-year-old Bavarian. As such, they were never seen together in public. Hardly any pictures were taken of the two of them together, unless they were away from the public eye in places like the Berghof.
The Eva we remember today was a happy, blonde-haired girl who enjoyed the frivolous things in life, but her diary spins another story.
The only part that survives covers 6 February to 28 May 1935, but it tells the tale of a woman who had given everything to the man she loved, only to receive nothing in return. It tore her apart, and she spiralled deeper and deeper into despair. Leaving Hitler wasn’t an option – as far as we know, it didn’t really occur to her – but she saw another way out.
It wasn’t the first time that Eva had attempted suicide – there had been an attempt in 1932, although the event had been covered up – but the seriousness of the situation cannot be understated. Eva was clearly reaching the end of her patience with Germany’s chancellor, and it seemed as though the overdose of sleeping pills provided a wake up call for him. They became closer, even though Hitler disapproved of her smoking and use of make-up.
Eva stayed away from politics, which suited Hitler just fine – he had never wanted a woman to interfere with his work. However, since the end of World War II there has been some discussion about just how much the Fuhrer’s mistress knew about the policies and atrocities that took place under the Nazi government. Did she know about the Holocaust? Did she realise what was going on in Germany and beyond? Regardless, her loyalty to her lover was absolute, even when their final test came.
As Berlin crumbled around him, Hitler and his inner circle took refuge in the Fuhrerbunker under the Reich Chancellery. There they commanded the final weeks and days of the war effort as the Soviets closed in on the city. Hitler had ordered Eva to leave Berlin, make a break for freedom, but she refused. Instead, she joined the Fuhrer in his underground hideout, unwilling to leave him, even at the cost of her own life.
In the early hours of 29 April 1945, Eva’s dream was finally realised – she married the man she loved as they sheltered from the enemy. The ceremony was conducted by Walther Wagner, a minor official from the Propaganda Ministry, with the marriage certificate signed by Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann. It was a reward for Eva’s near-unwavering loyalty, and as she signed the marriage document, she wrote ‘Eva B’ before crossing it out and writing ‘Eva Hitler, born Braun’.
The intent had always been that the newlyweds would die in a double suicide after the wedding; Hitler wrote in his will that “at her [Eva’s] own desire she goes as my wife with me into death”. They had one day together as man and wife before they made their way to their private room. There, they took cyanide, and the Fuhrer shot himself in the head with a 7.65mm Walther pistol.
Eva had made it clear that she would follow her lover to the ends of the Earth, and she did so. Hitler had a pull on her that she couldn’t deny, no matter how toxic their relationship may have been in the beginning, or indeed at all. What mattered to them was that they left the world together, believing in the dream of the Third Reich. But it does make one wonder – if Geli had still been alive, would it have been her lying next to the Fuhrer? Hitler’s hold over these two women was extraordinary, even if it was for the worse.
“eva had made it clear that she’d follow her lover to the ends of the earth”