Travels
Travel was an important aspect of life in Hitler’s circle. While the staff of employees who worked closely with Hitler, such as the doctors and secretaries, were his constant travel companions up until 1939 and after the start of the war as well, Eva Braun seems to have been allowed to go along only rarely. Since she never traveled as part of Hitler’s official retinue, however, and her name therefore never appeared on any list in the record, unlike the names of the wives of other high-ranking Nazi officials, it is difficult to determine which events she actually was present at and which not. Thus, a single photograph taken by Heinrich Hoffmann is the only evidence we have that she attended any event at the Olympic Winter Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, whose opening ceremony took place on her birthday, February 6, 1936.231
These games must have held a special attraction for Braun, herself a passionate skier; here, for the first time, Alpine skiing was among the competitions. Hitler, in contrast, avoided taking part in any sport personally. His refusal had less to do with fear of injury than with his conviction that he would present “a laughable figure every time” he took part. “When people are very famous, a lot is expected of them,” he told his inner circle during one of his “table talks” in August 1942. Referring to Bismarck, he explained that “there would be demands” he would “not be able to meet.” As a result, there was never any question of the Nazi leader “skiing” or “going swimming.”232 He had not forgotten the photograph that appeared on the front page of the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung three days after the inauguration of President Friedrich Ebert in 1919, showing Ebert with Minister of Defense Gustav Noske shirtless in bathing trunks on the beach of the Baltic Sea spa Haffkrug. The picture had been a blow to the image of the new Weimar Republic from which it never recovered.233 Mussolini, too, who enjoyed appearing before the Italian public as an athlete in various capacities, including as horseman, pilot, and swimmer, only opened himself up to ridicule, in Hitler’s opinion, since he “couldn’t actually do” all those things. Il Duce, in Hitler’s view, would have been better off “piloting his Italy.”234
Hitler arrived for the Olympic opening ceremonies in Garmisch in a special train. Officially accompanied by Reich Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick, Bavarian Minister of the Interior Adolf Wagner, Reich Sports Leader Hans von Tschammer und Osten, and the mayor of Garmisch-Partenkirchen and members of the German Olympic Steering Committee, he stomped through the snow on foot and entered the Olympic ski stadium. Frick had asked Hitler during the run-up to the games to prohibit the “increasing anti-Semitic propaganda” in the Garmisch area for the course of the games; he was afraid that the festivities, destination for a half a million visitors through February 16, and especially the even more prestigious Summer Olympics due to take place a few months later in Berlin, could be endangered “if there were any incidents in Garmisch.”235 As a result, the placards stating “Jews Unwelcome Here,” which were common everywhere in Garmisch, temporarily disappeared.
Hitler attended the Winter Games in Garmisch several times, with various escorts and usually with prominent Party members such as Göring and Goebbels at his side. It is unknown at precisely which event on which day he had Reich press chief Otto Dietrich, Eva Braun, and other friends from Munich including Helene Bechstein, Erna Hoffmann, and Sofie Stork with him, sitting directly behind him in the second row. The only photograph of this group, taken by Hoffmann, gives no hint of the time of day or the sport event. In any case, Hitler’s presence in Garmisch-Partenkirchen was largely kept from the public, and representatives of the press were permitted to be there only under strict conditions. Heinrich Himmler, head of the Reich Security Service, personally ordered the Bavarian Political Police in writing that it was “strictly forbidden” for “photographers to accompany the Führer.”236
At the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin—the great international media event of the National Socialist state—journalists and photographers were likewise subjected to severe restrictions, of course. The propaganda mission of the Nazi regime was to show the world a new, strong, and at the same time peace-loving Germany, and to that end the communicative power of a picture far outweighed that of the written word. Thus only 125 carefully selected German photographers, called “official photojournalists,” were allowed, and the 1,800 members of the press from fifty-nine other countries were supplied with preselected material by the photo press office of the organizing committee.237 This fact did nothing to dampen international enthusiasm, however. Heinrich Hoffmann’s firm took countless pictures and movies of the games and the Olympics became a major propaganda success, not least because of photo reports, radio reports, and, for the first time, broadcasts on television.238
Meanwhile, there is no photographic evidence of Eva Braun’s presence. She may not have been allowed to see for herself what Rudolf Hess called the “first great public appearance of the new Reich.”239 In the autobiographical literature, there is not a single hint of her presence at the Summer Games. The same is true for other major public events in the prewar years. The information that Eva Braun, accompanied by her mother and her school friend Herta Schneider, traveled to Vienna according to Hitler’s wishes on March 14, 1938, to see her lover’s triumphal entry into the city late that afternoon after the “annexation” of Austria to the German Reich—information that allegedly comes from the family itself—is not confirmed anywhere else in the literature.240 Neither Nicolaus von Below nor Otto Dietrich nor Christa Schroeder, all of whom were part of Hitler’s entourage together with the secretary Gerda Daranowski (who had started that spring), mentioned Eva Braun in the context of these events in their later memoirs, even though she allegedly stayed with Hitler and his staff in Vienna’s Hotel Imperial. All of the autobiographers, in fact, avoid mentioning any names or giving any details of their own experiences in this matter. Von Below, for instance, refers merely to the “retinue” or the “numerous companions,” and speaks of having been “witness to a historical moment.” Christa Schroeder makes do with mentioning the military escort and the factotum Julius Schaub, and remarks vaguely that “back then everything was overwhelming” to her. Reich Press Chief Dietrich even gives the impression that he witnessed what he called the “ardent glow of the enthusiasm” of the Austrian masses as an entirely uninvolved bystander. Speer, perhaps the only one who would willingly have gone into any detail, was not among Hitler’s entourage this time, claiming that it was only “several days later” that he learned “via the newspapers” what had taken place.241