Politics and Private Dealings
The business interests pursued by individual members of Hitler’s inner circle constitute a special chapter in the history of life at the Berghof. They show above all that Hitler looked after the personal circumstances, too, of the members of his Berghof society and was prepared to support them financially when necessary. The files of Albert Bormann, who handled and archived Hitler’s personal correspondence in the “Private Chancellery of the Führer,” show, for example, that Sofie Stork’s personal and business contact with Hitler lasted until at least 1941. A “correspondence diary” that indicates the incoming and outgoing letters for the years 1939–1940, predominantly within a narrow circle (including Schaub, Brückner, Heinrich Hoffmann, and Hermann Esser), along with, less often, private letters such as those to or from Hitler’s nephew Leo Raubal, his half-sister Angela’s son, or Sigrid von Laffert, contains numerous entries on the “Stork matter,” revealing Hitler’s energetic business assistance. Already in September 1936, Hitler had arranged for Sofie Stork to receive 45,000 reichsmarks—an astronomical sum at the time—so that she could carry on her deceased father’s fishing-tackle business in Munich, which had apparently run into financial difficulties.78 On top of that, Hitler hired, and paid the salary of, a financial adviser who looked after the company for years “on the orders of the Führer.” The auditor regularly sent annual reports to the “Private Chancellery of the Führer” from then on.79
In later years as well, Albert Bormann’s entries show that Sofie Stork turned directly to the dictator whenever she ran into business problems. For example, in the early summer of 1940 she asked him for help in procuring Tonkin bamboo (a special type of bamboo reed used to manufacture fishing poles), which had become increasingly difficult to import from the Far East, Australia, or the United States since the start of the war. In September 1940, she put in another request directly to Hitler, for a travel permit to, and purchase approval within, Belgium and France, which had been occupied by the German army a few months earlier. The northern half of France, with its major industrial regions, came under the jurisdiction of the German military administration and was thus a coveted trading center for businesspeople from the German Reich. Sofie Stork received her concession, too, as Albert Bormann’s bookkeeping proves: on October 13, 1940, she appeared in the files again, with a new request. Could her commercial representative use certain airplanes belonging to Hitler’s fleet?80
But why would Sofie Stork have been granted such an enormous amount of assistance, financial and otherwise? Christa Schroeder, Hitler’s private secretary, later claimed that Hitler so resented Wilhelm Brückner’s separation from this woman that he decided “on his own accord” to compensate the ex-girlfriend financially “and very generously.”81 But is this account plausible? What would explain such an emotional reaction on Hitler’s part? It seems likely that Sofie Stork’s close friendship with Eva and Gretl Braun could have been one possible cause of Brückner’s gradual loss of Hitler’s favor and eventually his expulsion. For the young artist, in contrast, the Braun sisters’ friendship and thus her belonging to Hitler’s personal sphere was enough to give her extraordinary advantages. This was not the only case in which Hitler rewarded political allegiance, and above all personal loyalty, with material contributions of all kinds.82
Another friend of Eva Braun’s was Marianne Schönmann, from Munich. Thirteen years older than Braun, she first arrived in the Berghof circle thanks to her long-standing acquaintance with Erna Hoffmann, Heinrich Hoffmann’s second wife.83 Erna Hoffmann and Marianne Schönmann both came from artist families; Schönmann’s aunt, Luise Perard-Petzl, a soprano well known in Vienna and Munich, had had successes before the First World War in, among others, Wagner operas—as Sieglinde in Die Walküre and as Elsa in Lohengrin. Marianne Schönmann met Hitler, according to her own statement, around 1934 in Hoffmann’s apartment in Munich. Her relationship to the world of opera, and to Wagner, probably played an important role in forming this acquaintance. They were in harmony politically as welclass="underline" she had already joined the NSDAP three years previously, in December 1931.84 She was then unmarried and still named Petzl.
When and how Schönmann met Eva Braun is not known. The statements she gave in this regard in her denazification proceedings after the war were vague: she stated before the court in 1947 that she was merely one among several “female acquaintances” who “repeatedly” invited Braun to her house in Munich. She herself first visited the Obersalzberg, she said, sometime during 1935.85 However, Schönmann very quickly became one of the regular visitors there after Eva Braun’s position at the Berghof became unassailable in early 1936. Within a few years, Marianne Schönmann was one of the women around Hitler. When she married the Munich building contractor (and NSDAP member) Friedrich “Fritz” Schönmann on August 7, 1937, at age thirty-six, Hitler and Eva Braun were among the select few guests.86
Marianne Schönmann and Eva Braun were apparently in regular contact in Munich as well as at the Berghof. The Schönmanns’ villa near the Herzogpark was located not far from the Braun sisters’ residence in Bogenhausen. After the war, when it was necessary to play down such close connections to Hitler and those near to him in order to save one’s own skin, Marianne Schönmann stated that Eva Braun must have been “so obliging” to her only because of Braun’s interest in opera. She emphasized, too, that her acquaintance with Eva Braun and Erna Hoffmann did not lead to any “political activity” on her part; there was “never any politicizing” between them. Neither acquaintance had “ever told [her] about the actions or any other affairs of Hitler or Heinrich Hoffmann,” she said.87
In reality, Schönmann was extremely well informed, since the “actions” and “affairs” about which she claimed to know nothing were ones she had close and direct experience of during her numerous visits on the Obersalzberg. And she must have heard from other members of the inner circle, in one form or another, at least some details about the events taking place around Hitler—events that all those who had anything to do with him were as burningly interested in as the curious general public. Karl Brandt later stated that he was a “very close” friend of Schönmann’s,88 and Nicolaus von Below still remembered precisely, decades later, Schönmann’s confident manner in Hitler’s presence: he described in his memoir how Eva Braun’s friend even dared to disapprove openly of one of the Reich Chancellor’s decisions.
During a four-day stay on the Obersalzberg over Easter 1938, which played out “informally, in a private atmosphere” according to Below, Hitler, surrounded by his guests (including Eva and Gretl Braun, Marianne Schönmann, the Bormanns, the Speers, and the Brandts), spoke “frequently about Austria during meals and during the long nights.” It was only five weeks since German troops had occupied the country and Austria had been “integrated” into the German Reich.89 Many of the people present at the Berghof had been at Hitler’s triumphal entry into Linz on March 12, 1938, and into Vienna on March 14, and had seen how their “Führer” had been frantically, jubilantly greeted by crowds of cheering Austrians for fulfilling the dream of a “Greater German Empire.” Walter Schellenberg, who worked in the Reich Main Security Office and was responsible at the time for Hitler’s personal security during his drives through Vienna, described a “true carnival of flowers,”90 and Christa Schroeder later recalled the “almost hysterical outbursts of joy,” which she described as “nerve-shattering.”91 Bormann, Below, and Brandt were also among those accompanying Hitler. Eva Braun, in contrast, had traveled to Vienna unofficially and separate from the others.92 In a move that his followers did not expect, Hitler immediately chose Josef Bürckel, a schoolteacher from the Rhineland and an “old campaigner” in the movement, to take over the Austrian NSDAP and the Gleichschaltung of Austria. This was the decision that Marianne Schönmann, a native Viennese, criticized at the Berghof. His naming a non-Austrian as the “Führer’s Representative for the Building Up of the Party in the Eastern Region” clearly displeased her very deeply.93