Hitler declared war on Poland. His justification was: “This night for the first time Polish regular soldiers fired on our territory. Since 5:45 a.m. we have been returning the fire, and from now on bombs will be met by bombs.”35 No one knew at the time that the alleged Polish attack on a German radio station in Gleiwitz in Upper Silesia, which German propaganda cast as “the cause of the outbreak of the war,” was a fabrication by the SS, along with all the other “border incidents” that had allegedly taken place in the previous days.36
In the former Kroll Opera House near Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, closed since 1931 and housing the National Socialist sham-parliament since the Reichstag fire of February 1933, there were several hundred seats available for visitors and journalists, in the two tiers of boxes. According to Ilse Braun’s description as relayed by Nerin E. Gun, Eva Braun cried when Hitler, dressed in battle dress with the SS insignia on his left sleeve, announced:
My whole life, from this moment on, belongs to my People. I want nothing more than to be the first soldier of the German Reich. I have therefore put on this tunic, which was been the holiest and most priceless to me, and will take it off only after our victory, or not live through its end.37
The members of Parliament stood up at these words, as per protocol, and “a thunderous cry of Heil” resounded in the chamber. Eva Braun, though, according to her sister, said: “If something happens to him, I’ll die too.”38 Christa Schroeder, Hitler’s secretary, expressed herself in similar terms two days later, on September 3, shortly before 9 p.m., when she set off for the Polish front with Hitler in the special train (still bearing the code name “Amerika”) from Berlin’s Stettin station. Great Britain and France had declared war against the German Reich that day. Hitler’s—and his entourage’s—hope that England would continue its wait-and-see policy was thus shattered; the Nazi regime had unleashed a great war. Suitably depressed, Christa Schroeder wrote to her friend Johanna Nusser: “In a few hours we will leave Berlin…. For me it means going with the leader through thick and thin. As for the worst case, I don’t want to think about that yet, but if it happens—my life is over.”39
With the start of the war, Hitler’s Alpine residence became a “Fuhrer headquarters” whenever the commander in chief of the Wehrmacht was staying there. Only the military adjutant on duty was with him at all times; Wilhelm Keitel, head of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW) and Alfred Jodl, Hitler’s most influential military adviser and Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command in the OKW, were housed a couple of miles away in the “Sub-Chancellery” in Berchtesgaden. The Wehrmacht command staff, meanwhile, worked in a special train in the Salzburg train station until the end of 1942.40 Briefings on the military situation, however, took place at the Berghof every afternoon and evening. As a result, Otto Dietrich recalled, the women had to stay in their rooms “until the ‘noon briefing’ ended, around 2 p.m., and the generals drove off again.” The same procedure was repeated after dinner, when the “OKW gentlemen” arrived once more. Eva Braun, her friends, and the secretaries repaired to the downstairs rooms of the Berghof most of the time, where there was a bowling alley and where they could watch movies.41
In any case, Hitler no longer showed up on the Obersalzberg several times a month, as he had in the past. There were still extended stays, up until the end of the war, but they were less frequent and also could not happen at will, since they depended on the military situation. Spontaneous trips with a few close friends were a thing of the past, since traveling now required that the whole “Fuhrer headquarters” be moved, including the orderlies and the security personnel, namely an SS military escort and a “Fuhrer escort battalion.” Hitler’s whole way of life changed. He had now become, as Speer remarked, “a slave to work,” whereas before he had “never let himself be pressured by work.”42 Especially in the latter half of the war, he stayed away at the front for months at a time.43
Hitler had no fixed headquarters when the war started. As a result, Hitler and his whole staff, including Schroeder and Daranowski, the secretaries; Wilhelm Bruckner; Julius Schaub; Karl Brandt; Nicolaus von Below; Martin Bormann; Heinrich Hoffmann; and Otto Dietrich slept in the “Fuhrer train” for the first three weeks of September 1939, during the so-called Eighteen-Day War against Poland. This train consisted of two locomotives, two special cars with antiaircraft guns, two luggage cars, a “Fuhrer car,” a command car, a military escort car, two dining cars, two guest cars, two sleeping cars, and a press car.44 The train’s locations in Eastern Pomerania and Upper Silesia were declared military protection zones, guarded by military police and defended with antitank and antiaircraft cannons. An airplane was kept at the ready for Hitler; it was monitored by a soldier carrying a machine gun.45 The commander of a given “Fuhrer headquarters”—in this case Major General Erwin Rommel—was responsible for all security measures.46
Christa Schroeder, in a letter to her friend Johanna Nusser dated September 11, 1939, described how the situation appeared from the point of view of the secretaries accompanying the Nazi leader:
We’ve been living in the train for ten days now, always changing our location, but since we—Daranowski and I—never leave the train, it all stays monotonous (for us,
Meanwhile, Hitler visited various sectors of the front. His accompanying physician Karl Brandt occasionally availed himself of a field military hospital and performed operations along with the other doctors.48 Heinrich Hoffmann as well as employees of his company photographed the whole campaign, producing among other things aerial shots of burning buildings, destroyed Polish tank convoys, and the bombing of Polish bunkers and bridges.49 Hoffmann, himself in uniform, also staged the commander in chief in his photos, taking pictures of Hitler on his “Ride Along the Front in the Corridor” on September 4, saluting to marching soldiers, and used this for the cover of the illustrated book he published that year,
In addition, Einsatzgruppen, or task forces of the secret police, part of the SS, had marched in behind the German army and were carrying out mass shootings, primarily of Jews. Hitler had issued a “special order” for the ethnic “cleansing” of Poland and named Heinrich Himmler the Reich Commissioner for the Eastern Territories.51 We have no photographs by Hoffmann and his associates of the murders committed, although there are images that reveal the discrimination, violence, and persecution. They show, for example, members of the security service (Sicherheitsdienst, or SD) arresting Polish Jews and cutting off their beards. Hoffmann and his team also photographed transports to the ghetto and Jewish forced laborers.52 In truth, the march of German troops into Poland was the start of a horrific program of “Germanization,” deportation, and extermination. Around 3.2 million Jews were kept imprisoned in ghettos. Hitler’s racial mania and hatred of the people in Poland—who were, he said, “more like animals than human beings”—found full expression for the first time during the Poland campaign.53 It is unlikely that Eva Braun ever saw any of the thousand photographs of the Poland campaign that Hoffmann kept, but she presumably knew Hitler’s stereotypical racial views and in fact may have, like many other Germans, shared them. The extermination of Jews, on the other hand, was never discussed openly in the innermost private circle; the topic was never allowed to be mentioned in Hitler’s presence.54
Eva Braun also never joined Hitler at his garrison near the front. None of the women from the Berghof (except the secretaries) were ever brought there. Instead, Eva Braun remained in her house in Munich, drove up to the Obersalzberg with her family and friends, or traveled to Italy, escorted by several of the ladies of the inner
