Hitler absolutely refused to get married and explicitly wanted no children of his own; neither, as is said, did Eva Braun.177 But why? On Hitler’s part, was it from the politically calculated wish to “visibly stand apart” from those around him, as their “Führer”?178 Did Hitler play, as Ian Kershaw claims, the roll of an “idol” within his closest circle of friends as well?179 And what effects did this attitude have on Eva Braun and her position within the Berghof group? Here is where we have to distinguish between the propaganda assertions and the actual rationales. The first thing to point out is that Hitler’s political style of promoting a cult of the mother while remaining an unmarried heartthrob was not his own invention. Historian Brigitte Hamann has shown that Hitler was merely copying the propaganda pose of Karl Lueger, the popular anti-Semitic mayor of Vienna (1897–1910) whom Hitler idolized, and who likewise used his bachelor status for political purposes. Like Lueger, who told his lover that he could not marry because he needed “the women” in order to “achieve anything” politically, Hitler said: “Lots of women are attracted to me because I am unmarried. That was especially useful during our days of struggle. It’s the same as with a movie actor; when he marries he loses a certain something for the women who adore him. Then he is no longer their idol as he was before.”180
Hitler accordingly emphasized, in a speech at the 1936 Party convention to the elite National Socialist Women’s League (Nationalsozialistische Frauenschaft, or NSF), that he “never would have been able to lead the Party to victory without women’s constancy and truly loving devotion toward the movement.” He knew, he said, that “women stood with the movement from the depths of their hearts, steadfast and true, and are bound together with me forever.” Their children were in fact what gave his work meaning, and they belonged to their mothers “in exactly the same way… that they belong, in the same moment, to me.”181 Hitler drew women to him by linking the concepts of devotion, eternal bonds, and children to his own person. He thereby cast himself as the husband of every German woman and the father of every German child—in accordance with the well-known motto of the cult of the “Führer,” “Hitler is Germany! Germany is Hitler!”—and satisfied their deeply rooted desire for a “messiah of the People.”182
Out of the public eye, Hitler gave deeper insights into the real reason for his remaining unmarried over tea one night in January 1942 at his East Prussian “Führer headquarters.” With respect to his private life, he said there that it was a “lucky thing” he had never married, since the time commitment of a wife would have been a burden on him. He explained further: “That’s the bad thing about marriage: It establishes legal rights! So it’s much more proper to have a lover. The burden drops away and everything remains a gift.” If we believe this account, Hitler’s confession “disturbed” the secretaries who were there, Christa Schroeder and Gerda Daranowski, so that Hitler added jokingly that “of course” this was true “only for great men.”183
Hitler’s refusal to marry Eva Braun thus apparently had nothing to do with her, nor with the assertion that, according to Albert Speer, he “obviously” thought of his girlfriend as “socially acceptable only within strict limits.”184 Rather, he seems to have been afraid to expose himself to the possibilities of a wife’s power and influence, and to make himself vulnerable in the private sphere. The fact is that he always kept everyone in this sphere who could get too close to him, including all of the members of his real family, at a distance. He saw his sister Paula every year between 1929 and 1941, for example, either in Munich, Berlin, or Vienna, but demanded that she live “under the name Frau Wolf and strictly incognito.”185 Even back in 1924, when Rudolf Hess suggested to him while they were in prison together at Landsberg that Hitler could have his sister come from Vienna to Munich, Hitler reacted with panic. Hess wrote to his future wife that Hitler dismissed the idea
with every sign of horror. He became nervous, shifted back and forth in his chair, ran his hands through his hair—“For God’s sake no!” That would be, with all his love for her, a burden and a constraint—she could try to influence him before an important decision, or plead with him. He won’t get married, for the same reason, and he even—he implied—avoids any serious attachments with a female. He must be able to face all dangers at any time without the slightest human or personal considerations, and be able even to die, if necessary.186
Given the propaganda and cult of personality that cast him as a godlike superfather, a relationship like the one he had with Eva Braun was not allowed and had to be kept in the strictest secrecy from the outside world. His girlfriend could not appear in public, so as not to damage his aura. At the Berghof, too, when official visitors or foreign guests were there she remained out of sight, withdrawing to her room the whole time. The same was true not only for Eva Braun but for all of the private guests, who, according to Speer, “were banished to the upper floor” on such occasions.187
Given all of these constraints upon her, can we describe Eva Braun as “Lady of the House” at the Berghof at all? After 1936, she did take on the role of the hostess more and more within their private circle at least. Unlike everyone else except Hitler, she invited friends and their children or other family members to the Obersalzberg. She also, Speer commented in August 1945, suffered from an “inferiority complex” and so “often” came across as “conceited and dismissive” to outsiders.188 At no point, in any case, did Eva Braun act as “housekeeper” at the Berghof: other people were there to worry about the housekeeping, including a married pair of house managers as well as, for special occasions, Hitler’s majordomo Arthur Kannenberg.189 Presumably, in any case, she intervened in developments from time to time and tried to put her own ideas into effect. Especially among the housekeeping staff, but also among the professional colleagues and several female regular guests, she seems to have made enemies for a variety of reasons. At the end of 1945, Hanskarl von Hasselbach (a surgeon, SS-Obersturmbannführer, and the Nazi leader’s third accompanying physician along with Karl Brandt and Werner Haase—part of Karl Brandt’s team since 1934) expressed a deeply critical opinion of Eva Braun’s conduct on the Obersalzberg. She called herself “Lady of the Berghof” in recent years, he reported, but only laid claim to the privileges of that position without fulfilling the attendant duties. Everyone in the house except Hitler had to do what she wanted, he said, while she hardly cared about the well-being of the service personnel. Hasselbach also held Eva Braun responsible for the makeup of the Berghof circle, and for its low “intellectual and moral level.”190