Gretl would not give up hope and thought she might at least have a closer relationship with Hitler. She was playing the lead role of Catherine the Great at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin and before her next performance, convinced of her ultimate victory over him, gave me a photograph of herself in costume with a message in a large, triumphant hand: ‘Tinchen (her nickname for me), to my first Lady at Court, from her Gretl.’ Just before New Year 1939 she gave me a letter to forward to Hitler at the Berghof. What it said I have no idea but it would have done her courtship no good whatever. After taking power Hitler would never have committed himself to anybody in the theatre because the risk would have been too great, all of them would have used it to advance their careers. He was always careful to maintain discretion with regard to his position.
Now I would like to address the assertion that Hitler painted Gretl Slezak. In the 1920s he produced no more watercolours, only architectural sketches. In 1932 when he is supposed to have painted Gretl Slezak he was on the hunt for electoral support and in a single day might have spoken at three different locations. He had neither the time for, nor interest in, painting, and in any case in the past had only turned out watercolours to survive. He had not found that necessary from 1919 onwards when he was active in the Reichswehr, and was sent to report on the newly formed Deutsche Arbeiter Partei of Anton Drexler. From then on his life was devoted to that Party and politics.
From 1935 Margarete Slezak was my close friend. If Hitler had ever painted her I would certainly have found out about it. Hitler’s alleged letters to her are crude forgeries. Margarete Slezak was a divorcée with a daughter. Hitler knew all about it. He was not so ignorant that he would have written to a divorced woman as ‘Fräulein Slezak’. In any case he always called her ‘Gretl’ and used the formal pronoun ‘Sie’ and not the familiar ‘Du’ when speaking to her. He never called her ‘Tschapperl’◦– ‘little idiot’◦– an obvious fabrication.
I knew Hitler’s erstwhile lady friend Ada Klein. In the 1920s she was a regular visitor to his flat in the Thierschstrasse and knew from these visits that Hitler had given up painting. She shared my opinion that he had never painted flowers, only buildings and landscapes. To suggest otherwise is an unprincipled deception.
Chapter 12
Eva Braun
FEW PEOPLE KNEW ANYTHING about Eva Braun before the end of the Second World War. I first knew her in the summer of 1933 on the Obersalzberg. The daughter of a Munich teacher of commerce, she was employed upon completing her education as a salesgirl in Heinrich Hoffmann’s photography business. Although outwardly soft, blonde and womanly, she had great energy and will and to get her own way she could be very persuasive if necessary. Eva Braun enjoyed sport, was a competent skier, outstanding swimmer and a passionate dancer. Hitler never danced. Hitler met Eva Braun at Hoffmann’s business establishment in 1929. She found him to be a very interesting man. His name was always in the newspapers, he had men to protect him and he was driven about in a large Mercedes by a chauffeur. Her boss Heinrich Hoffmann forecast a great future for Hitler.
Six months after Geli Raubal’s death in September 1931, Hitler’s friends finally succeeded in rousing him from his lethargy. Heinrich Hoffmann took him to a cinema one day and ‘purely by chance’ sat Hitler next to Eva Braun, whom Hitler had often invited to the ice rink when Geli was alive, where they sometimes ate ice-cream together. He had met her afterwards now and again without having any serious interest in her.[104] Eva Braun told her friends however that Hitler was enamoured of her, and she now spun her web. Hitler had no hint of her intentions and was therefore more than surprised when Heinrich Hoffmann informed him one day in November 1932 that Eva Braun had attempted suicide because of him. Hoffmann was naturally very anxious to protect his commercial relationship with Hitler, and the first meeting between Hitler and Eva Braun after her suicide attempt was held at Hoffmann’s house in the Wasserburger Strasse.
Marion Schönmann[105] who was there told me in the 1960s of the manoeuvre: Heinrich Hoffmann’s wife Erna had used make-up on Eva Braun upstairs so that she appeared to be ‘in distress’ for Hitler’s arrival. Success was guaranteed when Hitler saw Eva Braun ‘still pallid’ coming slowly downstairs. Hitler was of the opinion that he had given her no cause for her action, but the fear that a second suicide by a young woman of his close acquaintance must cast its shadow across his political career disturbed him. With female cunning Eva had realised that fact after Geli’s suicide. Hitler was left with no choice but to concern himself more for Eva Braun,[106] and henceforth he included her in his life and cared for her. She was subsequently an occasional guest at Obersalzberg, but never stayed at Haus Wachenfeld because of Frau Raubal’s antagonism towards her. Initially Hitler rented her an apartment on the Widemayer-Strasse, and some years later made her a gift of a small house and garden at Wasserburger-Strasse 12. Frau Raubal, Hitler’s half-sister and his housekeeper on the Berg, made no secret of her dislike for Eva Braun and would deliberately ignore her. If obliged to speak to her she would address her only as ‘Fräulein’ without using her name. She was quite open about her feelings and once told Göring: ‘I envy you two things for my brother: the first is Frau Sonnemann[107] and the other Robert.’[108] I heard Göring reply: ‘If necessary I would give up Robert, but never Frau Sonnemann.’
From the beginning Eva Braun had an aversion to Göring and particularly his wife Emmy. In the second year of the war, Emmy Göring invited all the Berghof ladies to tea at her country house. The real reason was to subject Eva Braun to close scrutiny. Hitler intervened and when all the women, Frau Brandt, Frau Morell, Frau Göring and we secretaries assembled, we found that Eva Braun and her sister had stayed away. At the 1935 Nuremberg Rally,[109] the wives of ministers and Gauleiters, Hitler’s sister and Eva Braun and their friends sat on the tribune for guests of honour. Frau Raubal was of the opinion that Eva Braun had drawn attention to herself, and said so to Hitler in the hope that he would rid himself of her after wards.[110] This backfired, and Frau Raubal was ordered to leave the Berg together with all the other women who had made adverse comments about Eva Braun in the affair, and they were not invited to enjoy the hospitality at Haus Wachenfeld again for a considerable time.
As previously mentioned, the first ‘suicide attempt’ by Eva Braun had had the desired effect, and she was now integrated into Hitler’s circle. Perhaps by now he had had enough of Geli’s mother and so used the campaign against Eva Braun instigated by his half-sister as an excuse to remove Frau Raubal from the Berg. It is suggested elsewhere[111] that: ‘his half-sister Angela Raubal kept house for him for years in Munich and on the Obersalzberg. She was forced out when Bormann converted the Berghof. For a large house appropriate to a head of state, she was no longer adequate.’ No further commentary is necessary.
In 1936 Frau Raubal left Obersalzberg and, her heart weakened by all the excitement, she took the cure at Bad Nauheim, where she met and married Professor Hammitzsch of Dresden University. She rarely saw her half-brother again, and only officially on his birthdays, when she was forced to wait at the Hotel Kaiserhof like an outsider for one of the adjutants to convey her to the Reich Chancellery.
104
See Dr Otto Wagener,
105
Marianne Schönmann née Petzl (b. 19.12.1899 Vienna, d.17.3.1981 Munich). Daughter of opera singer Maria Petzl, whom Hitler knew and admired from his youth in Vienna; 1935–44 often invited to the Obersalzberg where Marianne befriended Eva Braun; August 1937 married architect Fritz Schönmann, Hitler was present at the ceremony.
106
Frau Winter, Hitler’s housekeeper in Munich, said after the war that ‘despite her submissiveness, Hitler would have found some way to have rid himself of her had the war not intervened’ (Musmanno Papers, Univ. Library, Duquesne Univ., Pittsburgh).
109
The Seventh NSDAP
110
In her notes, Schroeder recounted a conversation with Eva Braun subsequently in which Eva had become aware of the campaign to uproot her. For this reason she had been making the fuss on the guests’ platform, and this was the gist of Frau Raubal’s complaint. Afterwards Eva Braun took Veronal in anticipation of the possible reaction but ‘was found in time’.