Heike Görtemaker - Eva Braun

227. Speer, Albert Speer: Die Kransberg-Protokolle 1945, p. 219.

228. Joseph Goebbels, quoted in Frank Omland, “Du wählst mi nich Hitler!” Reichstagswahlen und Volksabstimmungen in Schleswig-Holstein 1933–1938 (Hamburg, 2006), p. 132.

229. “Besprechung zwischen Mr. Albrecht und Frl. Paula Hitler,” Berchtesgaden, May 26, 1945, as cited in note 185, above.

230. Hitler, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941–1944 , p. 158. See also Rissmann, Hitlers Gott, pp. 176ff., and Dietrich, 12 Jahre mit Hitler , pp. 168f. Hitler, according to Dietrich, believed in “the existence of a higher being and the prevailing of a higher purpose, in a sense that he never explicitly defined.”

231. See “Gruppenbild, u. a. mit Helene Bechstein, Erna Hoffmann und Eva Braun in der zweiten Reihe hinter Otto Dietrich, Adolf Wagner und Hitler sitzend,” in Heinrich Hoffmann Photo Archive, hoff-12309, BSB Munich.

232. Hitler, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941–1944, p. 356.

233. Title page, Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung , August 24, 1919, in Weimar in Berlin: Porträt einer Epoche , ed. Manfred Görtemaker and Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Berlin-Brandenburg, 2002), p. 186.

234. Hitler, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941–1944 , p. 356.

235. RMdI, 7. Juni 1935, H 101 13805–09, in Akten der Partei-Kanzlei der NSDAP , p. 59.

236. “Der Chef des Reichssicherheitsdienstes, Himmler, an die Aussenstelle Garmisch-Partenkirchen der Bayerischen Politischen Polizei, z. Hd. Herrn Hauptmann der Schutzpolizei Staudinger, Berlin, 29. Januar 1936. Betr. ‘Sicherungsdienst bei Besuchen der Olympischen Winterspiele durch den Führer’ [Head of the Reich Security Office, Himmler, to the Garmisch-Partenkirchen Branch of the Bavarian Political Police, attn. Capt. of the Uniformed Police Staudinger, Berlin, January 29, 1936. Re: Security for the Führer’s Visit to the Winter Olympic Games]” (original), in ED 619/vol. 1, IfZ Munich. See also Wolfgang Fuhr, ed., Olympische Winterspiele 1936: Die vergessene Olympiade von Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Agon, 2006).

237. See David Clay Large, Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936 (New York, 2007); Arnd Krüger and William Murray, eds., The Nazi Olympics: Sport, Politics and Appeasement in the 1930s (Urbana and Chicago, 2003).

238. See Heinrich Hoffmann and Ludwig Hayman, Die Olympischen Spiele 1936 (Diessen, 1936).

239. Rudolf Hess to his father, n.p., June 8, 1936 (carbon copy), in Rudolf Hess Papers, J 1211, 1989/148, vol. 13, file 57, folder 18, Swiss Federal Archives, Bern. Only Angela Lambert claims the opposite, without providing any proof, in her unreliable, basically novelistic Braun biography ( The Lost Life of Eva Braun , pp. 278f.).

240. See Gun, Eva Braun , p. 152.

241. Schroeder, Er war mein Chef , pp. 84ff.; Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant 1937–45 , pp. 92f.; Dietrich, 12 Jahre mit Hitler, pp. 52f.; Speer, Inside the Third Reich , p. 109. Gitta Sereny, in contrast, writes that Speer told her upon questioning about his stay in Vienna in March 1938, at the Hotel Imperial ( Albert Speer , p. 191).

242. See Richard J. Evans, David Irving, Hitler, and Holocaust Denial , electronic edition. See also Ron Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil (New York, 1999), pp. 228ff. According to Rosenbaum, Christa Schroeder was for David Irving the “key” to the “magic circle.”

243. For example, Goebbels noted under the date March 20, 1938: “The Führer is magnificent: generous and constructive. A true genius. Now he sits for hours at a time brooding over his maps. It is moving when he says that he wants to see the Greater German Reich again with his own eyes” ( Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels , Teil I, vol. 5, p. 222).

244. See Heinrich Hoffmann Photo Archive, hoff-12309, BSB Munich.

245. Julius Schaub, statement at Nuremberg, June 8, 1948, KV Trials, Document 1856, Case 11, File G15, Dietrich Document No. 279, Julius Schaub Affidavit, State Archives, Nuremberg. Karl Brandt, too, addressing the “question of guilt” in the tract “The Hitler Problem #2” that he wrote in an Allied prison after the war, avoided all mention of the fate of the German Jews. He spoke only of Bolshevism, the “danger threatening Europe from the Asian sphere” against which Hitler had to secure “the Lebensraum of the German People” (“Das Problem Hitler, Nr. 2,” September 27, 1945, p. 8, in Kleine Erwerbung 441-3, BA Koblenz).

246. Paul Schmidt, Statist auf diplomatischer Bühne 1923–45 (Bonn, 1953), p. 390.

247. See Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant , p. 98. See also Maser, Adolf Hitler , pp. 374f.

248. Adolf Hitler, “Mein Testament,” Berlin, May 2, 1938 (copy), in Adolf Hitler Papers, N 1128/22, BA Koblenz.

249. See Gun, Eva Braun , pp. 169–170. Nicolaus von Below mentions the will, but does not say whether he knew about it at the time ( Als Hitlers Adjutant , p. 98).

250. See Walther Darré, Aufzeichnungen 1945–1948 , vol. 2, p. 377. It is possible that Bormann, as alternate executor, and Schaub also knew about the will. The latter was to examine private “books and correspondences” and decide whether or not to destroy them (Hitler, “Mein Testament,” as cited in note 248, above).

251. See Schmidt, Statist auf diplomatischer Bühne, p. 390; Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, p. 98; Wiedemann, Der Mann, der Feldherr werden wollte , pp. 133f.; Spitzy, So haben wir das Reich verspielt , pp. 260ff. See also Kube, Pour le mérite und Hakenkreuz , p. 72.

252. See “Auswärtiges Amt an Marga Himmler, ‘Vorläufiges Fahrtprogramm für die Damen’ vom 1. bis zum 11. Mai 1938, anlässlich des Staatsbesuches in Italien [Foreign Office to Marga Himmler, ’Provisional Travel Schedule for the Ladies for May 1–11, 1938, during the state visit in Italy],” in Himmler Papers, N 1126/20, Fol. 1, BA Koblenz. See also Wiedemann, Der Mann, der Feldherr werden wollte , p. 135.

253. Hitler, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier , p. 247.

254. See “Auswärtiges Amt an Marga Himmler,” as previously cited. See also Wiedemann, Der Mann, der Feldherr werden wollte , p. 139.

255. See Gun, Eva Braun , pp. 161f; Henriette von Schirach, Frauen um Hitler , p. 228. Christa Schroeder, the only secretary “to travel with the Führer in his special train,” as it says in her memoir, never mentions Eva Braun’s presence (see Er war mein Chef , pp. 86f. and 345f.). See also Jürgen Ehlert, Das Dreesen: 100 Jahre Geschichte und Geschichten im Rheinhotel (Bonn, 1994).

256. See Heinrich Hoffmann Photo Archive, hoff-18577, BSB Munich.

257. See Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945 , pp. 150f.

258. See Gun, Eva Braun , p. 162. Gun repeats the rumor that an unknown assassin tried to stab Eva Braun in Naples, instead wounding her companion, Maria Dreesen.

259. Henriette von Schirach, Frauen um Hitler , p. 230. Schirach also says that Mussolini, after hearing that “Hitler’s lover was coming along on the trip,” had a “small crocodile-leather suitcase containing every imaginable kind of toiletry” brought to Eva Braun.

260. See Wiedemann, Der Mann, der Feldherr werden wollte , p. 127. See also Otto Meissner, Staatssekretär unter Ebert—Hindenburg—Hitler: Der Schicksalsweg des deutschen Volkes von 1918–1945 , wie ich ihn erlebte , 3rd ed. (Hamburg, 1950), p. 460. Cf. Joachim von Ribbentrop, Zwischen London und Moskau , pp. 136, 139 and 150.