This morning Anni Brandt[3] confirmed it to me. At the beginning of March 1945 she◦– Anni◦– was invited by Eva Braun to tea at the Reich Chancellery, which she took with Adolf Hitler. When a servant appeared and whispered to her that her husband had arrived and was waiting for her downstairs, Hitler wanted to know what had been said. He was always inquisitive when something was whispered, and if one wanted to arouse his interest in anything, the simplest way was to whisper about the matter to a neighbour and one could rest assured that Hitler would enquire.
Shortly after the attempt on Hitler’s life in July 1944, Dr Karl Brandt was sent packing. He was obliged to leave the Rastenburg FHQ and had not seen Hitler subsequently. Now Hitler sent for him. Hitler was unsure and at first could not look Dr Brandt in the eye, but then began to converse with him as they used to do in the past. All the more incomprehensible for me was it therefore when only weeks later Hitler sentenced him to death.[4] Thus it is understandable that at Ludwigsburg, while amongst the doctors being transported to Belgium for war crimes trials, Professor Brandt, in reply to my question, ‘What was the boss, a good or evil man?’ should answer spontaneously, ‘He was a devil!
Frau Schroeder concluded:
Thirty-three years have now passed since then. I was never a person interested in politics. It was only Hitler as a man who interested me then: what I experienced of him under dictation; in his personal presence at the evening tea sessions in the ‘staircase room’ of the Radziwill Palace; in the larger circle at the Berghof at mealtimes or at midnight around the fireplace: and later during the war in the Führer-HQs at tea after the nightly military situation conferences. How I saw everything then◦– that is what I want to write about.
Frau Schroeder worked only sporadically at her notes. She had a hackneyed book marked ‘Shorthand Exercises’ on the cover and a lever arch file for manuscripts. The old book contained her shorthand notes made during the period of her internment postwar. The last entries are dated August 1948. They were taken down in Stolze-Schrey shorthand and not, as Quick magazine (Issue 19, 15 May 1983, p. 156) alleged, ‘in a secret script which only Frau Schroeder could read’. At this juncture I would like to thank the shorthand historian Herr Georg Schmidpeter who transcribed those stenographic notes not already typed up by Frau Schroeder. Besides these she had many other notes, observations and slips of paper with jottings noted down as items were remembered or on which she was working currently. By the year of her death, 1984, she had cast 95 per cent of her shorthand notes into typed folios of 162 pages for a manuscript. Some of these pages date from the 1976–84 period and do not appear in the shorthand notes.
In the first days of her confinement at the US Army Internment Camp Augsburg in May 1945, Frau Schroeder was interrogated by Albert Zoller, a French liaison officer to the US 7th Army. He asked her to write down everything she knew about Hitler, the circumstances of Hitler’s life and events during the Nazi period. In 1949 after her release Zoller informed Frau Schroeder that he intended to publish her notes under her name. She was supplied with some limited manuscript material to the book but when Zoller failed to produce the entire manuscript despite repeated requests she refused him permission to use her name as author.
In 1949 the book was published using Zoller’s name as author. The original language was French with a translation into German, the result being published by Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf, under the title Hitler privat◦– Erlebnisbericht seiner Geheimsekretärin. The Foreword depicted the person and activity of the ‘Secret Secretary’ in such a manner as to make it seem that Frau Schroeder was author of the book, but had allowed Zoller to appear as author with her full agreement.
Parts of the text foreign to her notes had been interpolated. The German version was a re-translation from French of the original German draft, this resulting in frequent shifts of meaning. Statements were attributed to Frau Schroeder regarding military-technical matters of which she had no knowledge, or of conversations at military situation conferences which she never attended, and so on. She recognized at once that the falsely attributed statements must have been made by prominent arrestees at the Augsburg Internment Camp, such as photographer Heinrich Hoffmann or adjutant Julius Schaub or others whom Zoller had also interrogated. She did not dispute the veracity of what was alleged in these statements, only that she disputed having spoken or written them herself.
Frau Schroeder worked through a copy of Zoller’s book striking out all passages which did not originate from herself. She claimed 160 to 170 pages as her own work and 68 to 78 pages as from other sources, or as being individual passages re-worded or given a different slant by Zoller. In a letter dated 21.11.1972 to Frau Christian she explained:
It is interesting how Zoller put words in my mouth which are mythical and in reality must have originated from his confidential conversations with General Staff officers which he obtained in his capacity as an interrogation officer. It was quite improper for him to have used these as material for a private publication.
His crafty solution was to put these statements into the mouth of ‘the Secret Secretary’ where to the outsider and uninformed they appear credible. Here is an example. He writes◦– puts into my mouth◦– ‘If in military situation conferences the conversation turned to rumours about the mass murders and torture in the concentration camps, Hitler would refuse to speak, or brusquely halt the talk. Only seldom would he respond, and then to deny it. In front of witnesses he would never have admitted the inhuman harshness of the orders he had given. One day some generals asked Himmler about the atrocities in Poland. To my surprise he defended himself with the assurance that he was only carrying out Hitler’s orders. But he added immediately: ‘The person of the Führer must under no circumstances be mentioned in that connection. I assume full responsibility.’ It was moreover self-evident that no Party member, no SS-Führer no matter how influential, would have dared to have undertaken such far-reaching measures without Hitler’s agreement…
‘The foregoing’, Frau Schroeder concluded, ‘seems absolutely credible, and it originates, and can only have originated, from somebody present at the military situation conferences who did not want to be named, and so the “Secret Secretary” said it. I do not think you could get more crafty than that.’
In 1982 Frau Schroeder asked me if I wanted to publish her notes with my own commentaries. This surprised me. I knew of her bad experience with the Zoller book and that she did not want the notes published in her lifetime. Another of her reasons for having delayed publication was that no sooner were memoirs published than they would be pulled to pieces by contemporaries, a sin of which she was of course guilty herself with respect to the books of Linge, von Below, Hoffmann, Krause, Henriette von Schirach and so on. Frau Schroeder wanted no remuneration for the notes. She declined money or reward in kind, emphasizing repeatedly that her pension was sufficient, she had no special wants and was content with what she had. She had no interest in selling the notes. That remained the position until her death although there was no shortage of offers.
When I failed to reply promptly to her enquiry the matter was dropped for a considerable period. As far as she was concerned that was an end to it. Once Frau Schroeder returned from hospital after the removal of a carcinoma, however, she raised the matter of the notes again, and of my compiling them together with a commentary. At the time she could not flex her fingers and had difficulty in typing. She also tired very quickly. The day before she left for the Schlossberg Clinic at Oberstaufen she invited me to call and we spoke in detail about the publication of her notes in the presence of the female friend with whom she was to travel on the morrow. On her return by ambulance she was clearly seriously ill. A few days later she telephoned and asked me to drop by. After explaining that she was to be re-admitted to hospital she gave me a large, old black trunk containing her literary bequest. She was anxious that under no circumstances ‘should her entire literary estate fall into the hands of journalists, or no matter who,’ and I should remember what she had always said and wanted.
3
Anni Brandt née Rehborn (b. Langenberg 25.8.1904). German Ladies’ national swimming champion (crawl and backstroke) during 1923–9 period; 1928 Olympic Games Amsterdam; introduced to Hitler 1925 and from then until 1945 part of his intimate circle at the Berghof. Married surgeon Dr Karl Brandt 17.3.1945, one child: taken into US custody April 1945.
4
SS-Gruppenführer Dr (med.) Karl Brandt (b. 8.1.1904 Mühlhausen, Alsace, d. 2.6.1948 Landsberg Prison, executed as war criminal). Dr Brandt was arrested by the SS on 16 April 1945 for defeatism after sending Hitler a letter on 1 April 1945 expressing doubt in final victory, and sending his wife and child to Bad Liebenstein so that they would fall next day into American and not Russian hands. On 17 April 1945 he was condemned to death by court martial but was still at Kiel awaiting execution when Hitler’s death was announced, and Speer had him freed.