Braun’s calm, intelligent, and objective way of being.” He called her “a clever girl who means a lot to the Fuhrer,” whereas Hitler was “through with Schirach, both personally and politically.”108 What had Eva Braun actually done to earn this praise? Apparently she not only stayed loyal but also continued to act unconcerned about external events. Gerda Bormann, for example, reported from the Obersalzberg to her husband in the “Wolf’s Lair” that there were constant air raids in Munich but Eva Braun was going swimming in the Konigssee with her friends.109 Apparently, in an oppressive situation where the only military task was to make “the impossible possible” Eva Braun and the carefree attitude she displayed so openly was a relief for Hitler. Just like him, she had subscribed to the motto “All or nothing,” and in so doing she impressed Goebbels as well, who indulged in expressions of undying loyalty and felt that the Nazi leader’s “closest friends” now had the duty to form “an iron phalanx” around their “Fuhrer.”110
10. THE EVENTS OF JULY 20, 1944, AND THEIR AFTERMATH
While thus in 1943 and 1944, power struggles were breaking out not only in Hitler’s political environment but also in his private circle, which even at the Berghof was showing its first signs of falling apart, resistance to the war was growing among the leading military and diplomatic circles. Many people understood that the war was lost, and they blamed Hitler’s political and strategic missteps for the loss. Among the general population, too, the defeat at Stalingrad marked a turning point in the popularity of the Nazi regime. The expectation that the state-run German press had fostered for years—that the war would be swift and victorious—had not been met. The aura of an invincible “Fuhrer” had been shattered.1
The climax of this development was the assassination attempt that took place on July 20, 1944. On a hot and humid summer day, Lieutenant Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, who was chief of staff to the Commander of the Replacement Army, left behind a briefcase with explosives during a briefing with Hitler in the “Wolf’s Lair” headquarters, intending to kill the Nazi leader and help end the war. The attempt failed, and Hitler survived the explosion only lightly wounded.2 Stauffenberg and three other conspirators were shot the same day, and the other two hundred or so people involved in the plot were then rounded up and hanged after a show trial at the Nazis’ so-called People’s Court in Berlin.3 A camera recorded their deaths in Berlin’s Plotzensee prison. This film, and photographs of the hanged men, were at the “Wolf’s Lair” in August 1944, but no one knows for sure whether Hitler saw them. It is an authenticated fact, however, that one man was delighted by them: SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Hermann Fegelein, Himmler’s liaison officer in the headquarters and Eva Braun’s brother-in-law.4
Fegelein had married Gretl Braun in Salzburg on June 3, 1944, with Bormann and Himmler as witnesses. The ensuing celebrations took place in Bormann’s house and in the teahouse on the Kehlstein peak—the “Eagle’s Nest”—and lasted three days, an inappropriately long time for a wedding party during the war. Eva Braun, who apparently brought her sister and Fegelein together, had arranged the party. Fegelein was a highly decorated member of the Waffen-SS and commander of the SS cavalry forces including the First SS Death’s-Head Cavalry Regiment. According to Speer, he had paid court to all of the single women at the Berghof, and rumors even circulated that he and Eva Braun had found favor with each other.5 Eva Braun remarked at the time, according to Christa Schroeder: “I want this wedding to be as beautiful as if it were my own.”6 Her own prospects of one day living with Hitler as his wife in Linz after the so-called final victory were looking slim. On the very night of June 3–4, the Allies took Rome, and on June 6 the long-expected invasion of the Continent began at Normandy.
Thus the end was conceiveable. Nonetheless, life on the Obersalzberg continued to take its “peaceful course.” Below, Speer, Brandt, and Goebbels were among the regular guests. Eva Braun showed “a series of color films” that she had shot of Hitler in earlier years at the Berghof. “I have never seen him so relaxed on film,” Goebbels remarked.7 The Minister of Propaganda praised Eva Braun’s “critical discernment” in “questions of film and theater,” and recorded: “We sit there around the fire until 2 a.m., exchanging memories, taking pleasure in the many beautiful days and weeks that we spent together. The Fuhrer asks about people, now this one, now that one. In short, the atmosphere is like that of the good old days.”8 For more than four months—from late February until July 16, 1944, with only brief interruptions—Hitler stayed at the Berghof. It was his last time there, and he probably suspected it would be. He postponed his departure several times. There had been hints for months that an attempt on his life from his own military was looming.9
Eva Braun heard about the assassination attempt on the afternoon of July 20. She had once again left the Berghof to go swimming with her best friend Herta Schneider at Konigssee, just five miles away. On the way back, a chauffeur fetched the women and told them what had happened. Schneider later told the American journalist Nerin E. Gun that Eva Braun, back at the Berghof, tried to phone Hitler at his headquarters in Rastenburg, and suffered a nervous crisis when she still could not reach him after many attempts. When she finally did get through to Hitler, she reportedly said: “I love you, may God protect you,” and cried tears of joy after hanging up the phone.10 Hitler had apparently already made plans with her at the Berghof for the eventuality of his death, given the rumors that had been circulating for some time of a possible assassination attempt. Goebbels noted after a discussion with the Nazi leader in Rastenburg on August 24, 1944, for example, that Hitler told him about premonitions he had had even before his departure from the Obersalzberg, which had weighed on him like a “nightmare,” and about having “told [Eva Braun] precisely” what she “needed to do upon his death.” She had apparently brushed aside “such admonitions,” however. Instead, she had told Hitler that “in such a case, there would be only one thing left for her, namely to seek her own death as well.”11
It must certainly have been quite clear to Eva Braun that without Hitler she would be in a weak and vulnerable position vis-a-vis her many enemies. But would this fear justify suicide? And why would Hitler, otherwise so silent about private matters, have given Goebbels this advance notice of his girlfriend’s plans? Eva Braun seems to have completely and utterly bound her life to that of Hitler, early on and quite consciously. She had already proven many times over that she was prepared to do the utmost for him. He, in turn, clearly valued this kind of attestation of loyalty, especially as he saw himself increasingly surrounded by “traitors,” and he therefore must have emphasized his appreciation of her. The whole episode makes clear that their double suicide nine months later was no accident. Hitler and Braun had already decided what roles they were to play in the last act. They may even have made arrangements for it together.
To Hitler’s close confidants, the assassination attempt came as a shock. They all knew, of course, how dependent they were on the “Fuhrer.” But while his girlfriend sat waiting for news at the Berghof, Goebbels and Speer in Berlin helped crush the revolt. Goebbels took an active role by putting the “Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler” (Hitler’s Personal Bodyguard Regiment), stationed in the capital, on alert and by arranging for a special announcement to go out over the German radio: “Assassination Attempt Failed.” Speer, who had come to the Ministry of Propaganda for a meeting on the afternoon of July 20, stood at his side and offered advice.12 Still, there was not exactly rock-solid cohesion among Hitler’s henchmen in light of this threat from within, since Speer, for instance, found his name on a government list of traitors, was exposed to numerous suspicions, and feared intrigues on the part of his rivals, Goebbels and Bormann.13
In any case, the failed attack in no way inspired doubts in Hitler’s circle about the continuation of the war. The members all explicitly declared their faith in Hitler and their belief in the “final victory.” None of Hitler’s longtime companions and convinced National Socialists saw Hitler as the cause of the human suffering in Europe. Ilse Hess, for instance, had complained of the “destruction of our beautiful, beloved Munich” after the heavy bombardment of
