But why, then, did he entrench himself on the Obersalzberg? Was it a psychological way to strengthen his aura of an inapproachable, absolute ruler? Or did he simply sometimes want to avoid any confrontation with the world outside the “Grand Hotel” (Eva Braun’s name for the Berghof)?36 Wiedemann, whose memoir gives the impression that Hitler neglected his political duties after 1936, even claimed that Hitler “absolutely never” received less “important personalities” than Lammers anymore after that time.37 The truth was exactly the reverse. Speer, for example, questioned in August 1945 about Hitler’s mode of working, stated that “when [Hitler] had important decisions to make” he went to the Obersalzberg and tried “to clarify things… for himself” by means of hours-long “conversations, repeated many times over,” with his military adjutants.38 Hence, the supposedly “unimportant people” such as adjutants, secretaries, doctors, Martin Bormann, and not least Eva Braun (still largely unknown to the public), had “access to the dictator” that well-known political figures in the Nazi elite, including Göring and Hess, were denied.39
The “Royal Court”
Who were the men and women of this exclusive society, who made up Hitler’s private environment on the Berghof and met with him daily whenever he was there? Were they really, as is often maintained, normal, “simple” people, uneducated and without any political influence? How did this circle of individuals form? What were their relations with each other? And what role did Eva Braun play in the group?
Joachim Fest has argued that Hitler continued to prefer “the uncritical, dull milieu of simple people” around him, such as he had known from childhood on. Guido Knopp, too, said with respect to “everyday life… on the mountain” that the dictator’s “substitute family” consisted of obsequious “personal physicians, personal photographers, personal bodyguards, secretaries, and adjutants.”40 But this way of looking at things has since been superseded. In fact, Hitler’s close environment in no way consisted of a homogenous group of people. It remains the case that, aside from Goebbels and Speer, most of the “great and powerful men” of the Reich were not among this group. Hermann Göring—the power-hungry, second-most-powerful man in the Nazi hierarchy, commander in chief of the air force and “General Plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan,” thus a major influence on the development of the rearmament economy—owned a house of his own on the Obersalzberg, but there was no private contact between him and the Reich Chancellor. Any social invitation of Göring and his wife Emmy to the Berghof was, Speer says, “completely out of the question.”41
Heinrich Himmler, as “Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police” after June 1936, reported directly to Hitler and was responsible for terror, persecution, and genocide, but he likewise appeared in Hitler’s Alpine residence only for meetings. Himmler’s unquestioning loyalty and belief in the leader’s convictions ensured him Hitler’s favor, which he used to expand his power and define his role entirely in terms of his own personal principles of military tradition and racial selection. No connection to his “Führer” on a personal level is known, however.42 Joachim von Ribbentrop, too, whom Hitler apparently described as a “second Bismarck,” appeared on the Obersalzberg only for meetings and official occasions such as the visit of David Lloyd George, the former British prime minister, on September 4, 1936. Ribbentrop, the ambassador to London starting in that year and Foreign Minister from 1938 on—thus “the greatest warmonger other than Hitler himself”—was hated by most of the other high-ranking Party members for his high-handed manner.43 Rudolf Hess, the “Deputy Führer” who ran the Party headquarters in Munich, was also excluded from Hitler’s private circle. He had been among Hitler’s constant companions until 1933, with the reputation of being “the high priest of the Führer cult,” but by the time Hitler moved into the “new Berghof,” Hess was already estranged from the center of power. One important reason for this exclusion was probably that the former “private secretary” was seen to be a difficult person, an eccentric loner with obscure interests, unsuited to harmless diversions with others.44
Thus prominent representatives of the government and the Party were denied access to Hitler’s private sphere, however, there were at least three distinct groups with distinct functions around Hitler at the Berghof: (1) personnel, such the doctors, personal adjutants, secretaries, servants, chauffeurs, and bodyguards; (2) military adjutants and representatives of the government, the military, and the Party, including Albert Speer, Martin Bormann, Karl Brandt, Sepp Dietrich, Hermann Esser, and Franz Xaver Schwarz; and (3) a social circle, including Hitler’s lover, her family, and her friends as well as Heinrich Hoffmann and his family.45 Only Speer and Goebbels, among the Nazi Party leadership, can be considered “friends” of the otherwise unapproachable Hitler, who was “cut off from real human contact.”46
But was this circle on the Obersalzberg actually purely private in nature, as Speer claimed to his interrogators in 1945? Speer stated that Hitler had chosen a group of people there “apolitically,” out of purely personal sympathy; that he included only those who “would not disturb his thoughts with political discussions.”47 Speer’s early statements about the composition and significance of the Berghof circle thus give the impression that the people who were regularly present—including himself—were merely the dictator’s personal friends, who had nothing, or an insignificant amount, to do with the regime’s politics, at least until the start of the war. Politics, Speer said, was not a topic of discussion within the so-called private circle—a claim that everyone involved who survived the war stubbornly stuck to as well. But was it even possible to so sharply distinguish private life and politics, in a place that was the regime’s second center of power, along with Berlin? And how does this testimony fit with the widespread belief that Hitler had no private life at all?
The various people at the Berghof were not, of course, all equal in status—or of the same gender—but the boundary between the social circle and the two official groups was extremely fluid. Hitler was the center around whom everyone revolved, and the dividing lines would dissolve and be redrawn according to the various degree of favor and trust each person found himself or herself in. Once the Alpine residence was sealed off in 1935, a kind of community of purpose developed, in which everyone ate lunch together, spent the evenings with one another, went on excursions, celebrated holidays, and—in changing permutations—could be seen on the VIP platform at Party conventions.48 There were also trips together: Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Hoffmann, Karl Brandt, and their families flew to Greece in fall 1936, for example, for a semiofficial eight-day visit; they were received by George II, the reinstated king, and his prime minister, Ioannis Metaxas. Eva Braun, meanwhile, had joined Heinrich Hoffmann Jr. and others on a purely private trip to Italy a few weeks earlier, visiting Venice and Milan, among other places.49