remained of the Czechs” (in defiance of the concessions of the Western powers in the Munich Agreement of September 1938) and “taking possession” of the formerly East Prussian “Memel Territory” belonging to Lithuania, then reconquering the other territories lost in the First World War—meant war.17 The Nazi regime had decided to use force as soon as any neighboring Eastern European government stood in its way, and indeed it moved closer to war when Polish Foreign Minister Jozef Beck at a meeting with Hitler on the Obersalzberg on January 5, 1939, in which the Nazi leader demanded the return of Danzig to the German Reich as well as access routes to East Prussia, rejected the German ideas in the name of his government.
The Polish position did not change even after German troops marched into Prague on March 15, with Hitler declaring Czechoslovakia “the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” in Hradschin Castle there, nor after March 23, when the Germans occupied the Memel Territory.18 Three days later the Polish government again rejected the National Socialist dictator’s demands. Hitler then ordered concrete preparations for a war on Poland “beginning 9/1/1939.” He was never interested in a diplomatic solution to the conflict, since, as he remarked to his generals in May 1939, Danzig “is not the real concern. The issue is an expansion of Lebensraum in the east.”19 As in the case of Czechoslovakia, the Western powers failed here, too—as did the League of Nations, which had been founded to collectively ensure world peace. The British government gave merely a halfhearted guarantee to Poland and worked to sign a neutrality pact with the Soviet Union, without success. Hitler’s and Stalin’s realpolitik calculations prevented this agreement, as did the Poles themselves, who did not trust the Soviets as a protective power. The Soviet dictator sought a rapprochement with Hitler, despite their ideological enmity, because his country was not ready for war and he was not willing to be drawn into a conflict by the capitalist powers England and France. Hitler, in turn, must have been afraid of a war on two fronts.20
In late June on the Obersalzberg, Hitler paced back and forth in the great hall of his estate night after night, with either Albert Speer or Nicolaus von Below, “giving his thoughts free rein” as Below recalled later. During these evenings, the Nazi leader explained that he had to lay the groundwork for the Greater German Reich’s future “work of peace” by seizing the opportunity “to create a foundation for the unavoidable fight with Russia by solving the Polish problem.” The English would “certainly stay completely quiet if he managed to bring about a pact with Russia,” and the Poles would “come down off their high horse on their own” since they were “even more afraid of the Russians… than they are of us.”21 In other words, Hitler laid out his worldview and war plans with brutal clarity to the air force adjutant on duty. Nicolaus von Below’s account shows, first, how great the Nazi leader’s tension was with respect to the military conflicts he had planned, so that he needed to seek psychological relief in his trusted circle, far from Berlin. Second, it reveals that Hitler felt no need to exercise caution or discretion around his loyal followers on the Berghof.
The fact is, there were no ideological differences within the “inner circle.” Nicolaus von Below later admitted that he had been impressed with Hitler’s “thoughts” about “Jewish Bolshevism” as a constant threat to Germany and Europe; Hitler’s “clear-sighted judgment of the situation” convinced him.22 Speer, meanwhile, the “Fuhrer’s” special favorite who was on the Obersalzberg through most of the summer of 1939, kept quiet after the war about the political discussions that took place then. He answered the American interrogators’ questions on the subject in September 1945 by evasively claiming that any information from him would merely be “the intuitive impressions of a man at the edge of the circle where foreign-policy questions were decided.” Speer gives the impression in his later memoirs, claiming, for example—unlike Below—that he heard about the negotiations with Moscow for the first time on August 21, 1939, during dinner at the Berghof, after Stalin had sent a telex expressing his willingness to receive the Reich Foreign Minister on August 23 and sign the Nonaggression Pact that had already been drawn up.23
By this point at the very latest, the supposedly apolitical ladies at the table were let into the picture of the looming developments. Speer nonetheless stresses that the women were “still excluded” from discussion.24 But Eva Braun’s photographs tell another story. On August 23, 1939, in the middle of the extremely tense environment reigning at the Berghof in connection with Joachim von Ribbentrop’s departure for Moscow—accompanied by, among others, Heinrich Hoffmann—she captured on film Hitler restlessly awaiting news of the progress of the negotiations in the Soviet capital. Surrounding him in the Berghof hall that afternoon were Goebbels, Bormann, Otto Dietrich, Walther Hewel (head of the Foreign Minister’s personal staff), Karl Bodenschatz (Goring’s adjutant and head of the ministerial office in the Reich Ministry of Air Travel), and Julius Schaub. Speer and Below were there as well, but like many others did not appear in the photographs. Goebbels notes in his “Diaries” that they waited “for hours” for “news from Moscow,” until finally, “at one in the morning,” the communique was transmitted. “The Fuhrer and all of us are very happy,” he wrote.25
Reich Press Chief Otto Dietrich, on the other hand, in his reminiscences published in 1955 under the title
The Minister of Propaganda had already, on the evening of August 21, arranged for the announcement of the upcoming German-Soviet Pact over German radio, and instructed the editors of all the newspapers “to publish [news of the pact] on the first page, very large.”28 On the morning of August 22, Goebbels held a press conference in Berlin for foreign journalists, while Hitler, at the same time, informed fifty officers, including the commanders of the various armed forces, in his Alpine residence that he was definitively resolved to go to war, a war that he would be “hard and ruthless” in waging.29 The Nazi leader spent the following days getting constant reports about the domestic and foreign reactions. The announcement of a Nonaggression Pact between the two powerful dictators, which Goebbels described as a “worldwide sensation,” did not, however, produce the desired reaction in either England or Poland. Both governments immediately announced that their positions were unchanged; Britain in fact strengthened its mutual assistance pact with Poland (it was formally signed only on August 25), and the Polish government refused further discussions with the Nazi leadership.30
As we would therefore expect, Eva Braun’s photo diary contains the following entry: “… but Poland still does not want to negotiate.” This comment was not “naive”; it matched the view of many Germans who thought that Poland would not risk a military conflict with its powerful neighbor in these circumstances.31 Moreover, Poland’s refusal to accede to Germany’s demands, withdraw from Danzig, and permit passage to East Prussia was criticized outside of Germany as well: the demands were seen as perfectly legitimate outside of National Socialist circles, too. In addition, Nazi propagandists had succeeded in imputing their own country’s war intentions to the Western powers. Goebbels, for example, in an address to the Danzig population on June 17, 1939, accused “Polish chauvinists” of wanting “to smash us Germans to pieces in an upcoming Battle of Berlin,” while England had “given them a blank check” to do so and was trying “to encircle the Reich and Italy.” Right up to the invasion of Poland, the Minister of Propaganda constantly repeated the basic ideas of Hitler’s conspiracy theory, in which Hitler wanted peace but the “encirclers” in London, Paris, and Washington wanted war. As a result of the effectiveness of the German propaganda, the Nazi leader, apparently successful at everything, enjoyed the widespread reputation in Germany of being a savvy politician on the international stage, outwitting Western powers who acted moralistic but ultimately did nothing.32
Was Eva Braun aware of the historic significance of these days that she spent at the Berghof, days whose drama she clearly was trying to capture on film? There is no testimony on the subject, contemporaneous or later. No information from any of the women present—who included Margarete Speer, Anni Brandt, and Gerda Bormann —has been preserved. Eva Braun’s photographs themselves, however, imply that she was well aware of what was happening, as does the fact that she went along to the capital immediately afterward. She presumably rode to Berlin via Munich in one of the ten Mercedes that left the Obersalzberg on August 24, 1939. The “court,” as Speer said, had repaired to the Chancellery.33 Hitler’s “situation room” was in the great hall of the Old Chancellery, and it became the center of the “Fuhrer headquarters” in Berlin after the start of the war.34 Eva Braun was living in her rooms on the upper floor of the Old Chancellery, but it is unclear how well informed she was about the developments. On September 1, though, she apparently witnessed in person, along with her sister Ilse who was then living in Berlin, the session of Parliament hurriedly called by Goring in which
