Chapter 1
How I Became Hitler’s Secretary
AS A YOUNG GIRL I wanted to see Bavaria. I was told it was very different there from central Germany where I had grown up and spent all 22 years of my life. So, in the spring of 1930, I arrived in Munich and started to look for work. I had not studied the economic situation in Munich beforehand and I was therefore surprised to find how few job opportunities there were and that Munich had the worst national rates of pay. I turned down some work offers hoping to find something better, but soon things began to get difficult, for my few savings were quickly melting away. As I had resigned of my own accord from the Nagold attorney whom I had used as a springboard to Bavaria, I was unable to claim unemployment benefit.
When replying to an extremely tiny advertisement written in shorthand cipher in the Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten, I had no premonition that it was to open the doors to the greatest adventure, and determine the future course of my life, whose effects even today I am still unable to shake off. I was invited by an unknown organisation, the ‘Supreme SA leadership (OSAF)’ to present myself in the Schellingstrasse. In this almost unpopulated street with its few businesses the Reich leadership of the NSDAP, the Nazi Party, was located at No. 50 in the fourth floor of a building at the rear. In the past, the man who would later become Adolf Hitler’s official photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, had made his scurrilous films in these rooms. The former photographic studio with its giant oblique window was now occupied by the Supreme SA-Führer, Franz Pfeffer von Salomon and his chief of staff, Dr Otto Wagener.
Later I learned that I had been the last of eighty-seven applicants to keep the appointment. That the choice fell on me, a person being neither a member of the NSDAP nor interested in politics nor aware of who Adolf Hitler might be, must have resulted purely from my being a twenty-two year old with proven shorthand-typing experience who could furnish good references. I also had a number of diplomas proving that I had often won first prize in stenographic competitions.
Below the roof at No. 50 was a very military-looking concern, an eternal coming and going by tall, slim men in whom one perceived the former officer. There were few Bavarians amongst them, in contrast to the majority of men on the lower floors where other service centres of the NSDAP were located. These were predominantly strong Bavarian types. The OSAF men appeared to be a military elite. I guessed right: most had been Baltic Freikorps fighters.[11] The smartest and most elegant of them was the Supreme SA-Führer himself, retired Hauptmann Franz Pfeffer von Salomon. After the First World War he had been a Freikorps fighter in the Baltic region, in Lithuania, Upper Silesia and the Ruhr. In 1924 he was NSDAP Gauleiter (head of a provincial district) in Westphalia, and afterwards the Ruhr. His brother Fritz, who had lost a leg and was prematurely grey, functioned as his IIa (Chief of Personnel).
In 1926 Hitler had given Franz Pfeffer von Salomon the task of centralising the SA men of all NSDAP districts. Originally, every Gauleiter ‘had his own SA ’ and his own way of doing things. Many were ‘little Hitlers’, which certainly did not serve the interests of unity in the Movement. As Hitler took upon himself the decision in all matters of ‘degrees of usefulness’, he considered it opportune to suppress the Gauleiters by centralising the SA. This was a clever chess move, for he envisaged the SA as the sword by which he proposed to force through the political will of the Party. Since this struggle did not go his own way, Hitler delegated this unpleasant job to Hauptmann Salomon. This ‘keeping myself out of it’ was a crafty move to which Hitler often resorted later. The Gauleiters were incensed by the reduction in their power, went all out for Salomon and constantly reported their worst suspicions about him to Hitler. Hitler had of course expected this, which was the main reason for his having delegated the job, and no doubt he gave an inward smile of satisfaction at his own foresight.
In August 1930 Hitler was obliged to give in to the pressure of the trouble-makers and sacrificed Pfeffer von Salomon, something which to all appearances he regretted having to do, although he did not much like the man. After making it clear that Salomon had outlived his usefulness, the latter resigned in August 1930, and Hitler took the opportunity to appoint himself Supreme SA-Führer in his place. Franz Pfeffer von Salomon was a critical sort of man. I often had cause to confirm this. One day for example I saw a copy of the Party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter lying on his table. It showed a photograph of Hitler. Salomon had doodled Hitler’s filthy, unkempt uniform jacket into a slim, tailored shape. The debonair Salomon seemed to find Hitler’s figure and manner of dressing, as probably much else, apparently not to his taste.
The OSAF chief of staff was retired Hauptmann Dr Otto Wagener, a former general staff officer and Freikorps street fighter, like Salomon from comfortable origins and full of vigour for putting Germany back on her feet. He had given up a directorship in industry and, relying on his comrade-in-arms Salomon, had followed Hitler’s call for collaborators. Dr Wagener lectured at Würzburg University. That he was a man of wide education with far-reaching contacts to politicians, industrialists and the nobility was obvious from the very comprehensive correspondence which I had to transcribe for him. Whilst he held the post of OSAF chief of staff, Dr Wagener drafted the ‘Economic-Political Letters’ whose length and multiplicity of subjects caused me much toil. My work for Dr Wagener was interrupted for a few weeks towards the end of 1930 when on Hitler’s orders he took over the leadership of the SA in September to fill the gap before the arrival of Hauptmann Ernst Röhm, recalled from Bolivia.
Ernst Röhm was the son of a senior railway inspector in Munich. He was commissioned in 1908 and in the First World War fought at Flaival on the Western Front. He was seriously wounded three times and lost the upper part of his nose to a shell splinter. He met Hitler in 1919 as a Reichswehr Hauptmann in Munich. As a liaison officer to the Reichswehr, Röhm was an important member of the Nazi Movement and was on familiar terms with Hitler. He was discharged from the Reichswehr for his involvement in the 1923 putsch, but a year later was active in the Deutsch-Völkische Freiheitspartei as a Reichstag Deputy and organised the National Socialist armed group Frontbann, although he gave up leadership of it once Hitler was released from Landsberg prison. At the end of 1928 he was reinstated in the rank of Oberstleutnant in the Reichswehr and as a general staff officer was sent to La Paz as a military instructor. In 1930 Hitler recalled him to lead the SA.
I then spent a couple of weeks with the Reich leadership of the Hitler Youth which at the time was housed in a private apartment. After the lively workload at OSAF I found this to be almost a punishment. When Dr Otto Wagener was appointed leader of the NSDAP Economics Office (WPA) on 1 January 1931, he asked for me as his secretary. The WPA offices with their various departments for Trade, Industry and Farming were located in the Braunes Haus at Brienner-Strasse 54, the former Barlow Palace opposite the Catholic seminary.[12] Dr Wagener used to dictate long reports about discussions he had had without mentioning the name of the other party. He also made long trips away from the office, and on his return would dictate long memoranda which when complete would then disappear into his desk. I would often get annoyed about this unnecessary production of paperwork, or so it then seemed, and all too much cloak-and-dagger. It was not until 1978 when I read the book by H.A. Turner jr, Aufzeichnungen eines Vertrauten Dr h.c. Wagener 1929–1932[13] that I saw immediately that Wagener’s mysterious partner on his trips and discussions had been Adolf Hitler. His other conversation partners were Franz Pfeffer von Salomon and Gregor Strasser.
11
‘Baltic fighters’ were members of the various German
12
When the rented premises at Schellingstrasse 50 were no longer adequate for the NSDAP Reich leadership, on 5 July 1930 Hitler bought for RM 1.5 million the former Barlow Palace at Briennerstrasse 45. Built in 1928 it was converted by Professor Troost and Hitler, and was enlarged. Renamed ‘Braunes Haus’ on 1 January 1931, it housed the NSDAP Reich leadership on three floors. Later other buildings were purchased including two during the reconstruction of the Königsplatz on Arcisstrasse which remain standing today.