I come herewith to the solemn act of matrimony. In the presence of the above-mentioned witnesses… I ask you, My Leader Adolf Hitler, whether you are willing to enter into matrimony with Miss Eva Braun. If such is the case, I ask you to reply, “Yes.”
Herewith I ask you, Miss Eva Braun, whether you are willing to enter into matrimony with My Leader Adolf Hitler. If such is the case, I ask you too to reply, “Yes.”
Now, since both these engaged persons have stated their willingness to enter into matrimony, I herewith declare the marriage valid before the law.
The participants then signed the document. Hitler’s new wife was so agitated by the circumstances that she began signing her maiden name. Then she crossed out the initial letter B and wrote, “Eva Hitler, nee Braun.” The entire party then went together to the private rooms, where the secretaries, Hitler’s diet cook, Fraulein Manzialy, and several of the adjutants had gathered for drinks and melancholy reminiscences of times past.
From this point on, it seems, the direction of events finally slipped from Hitler’s hands. It is likely that he would have wished to stage the concluding act more grandiosely, more disastrously, with a greater display of lofty emotion, style, and terror. Instead, what now took place seemed oddly hapless, improvised, as though in view of the many seemingly miraculous reversals in his life he had up to this very moment never really considered the possibility of an irrevocable end. At any rate, the gruesome idea of having this wedding on the verge of a double suicide, as if he feared nothing so much as “illegitimacy” on his deathbed, marked the beginning of a trivial departure. It demonstrated how spent he was, drained of even his histrionic effects, even though the Wagnerian reminiscence of joining his beloved in death might in his eyes give the procedure a saving note of tragedy. But, henceforth, whatever else might remain associated with his name, his death contributed nothing to mythology. Possibly he was now giving up more than the right to direct the life he had always regarded as a role to be played.
For all its casual character, this marriage represented a significant step. It was not only a gesture of gratitude toward the one living being aside from the dog Blondi who, as Hitler once remarked, remained faithful to him to the last. It was also a definitive act of abdication. As the Fuhrer, he had repeatedly declared, he must not be married. The mythological conception he had of his status could not be reconciled with ordinary human ties. Now he was abandoning this stand, with the implication that he no longer believed in the survival of National Socialism. In fact he did remark to his guests that the cause was done for and would not spring to life again.71 Then he left the group and went into one of the adjacent rooms to dictate his last will.
He produced a political and a private testament. The former was dominated by violent polemics against the Jews, by asseverations of his own innocence, and appeals to the spirit of resistance: “Centuries will pass, but the ruins of our cities and monuments will repeatedly kindle hatred for the race ultimately responsible, who have brought everything down upon us: international Jewry and its accomplices!”
Twenty-five years had passed. He had experienced an unprecedented rise, undreamed-of triumphs and defeats, despairs and downfall, and he himself had remained unchanged. Down to the very phrasing, the ideological passages of the testament might have been taken from the first document of his political career, the letter to Adolf Gemlich in 1919, or from one of his speeches as a young local agitator. The phenomenon of early and total rigidity, of the rejection of all experience, which was so typical of Hitler, was confirmed for the last time in this document.
In a special section he expelled Goring and Himmler from the party and from all of their offices. He named Admiral Donitz as his successor in the posts of President, Minister of War, and supreme commander of the armed forces. His comment that in the navy the sense of honor still survived, that any thought of surrender was alien to it, was obviously intended to be understood as an injunction to continue the struggle even beyond his death, to ultimate doom. At the same time, he appointed a new government, headed by Goebbels. The document concluded: “Above all I call upon the leaders of the nation and all followers to observe the racial laws scrupulously and to implacably oppose the universal poisoner of all races, international Jewry.”72
His personal testament was considerably shorter. Whereas the political document asserted his claims on history, the personal one expressed the custom’s official’s son who had remained behind all the disguises. It read:
During the years of struggle I did not think I could responsibly undertake to establish a marriage. But now, before the completion of this earthly course, I have decided to take as my wife the girl who after long years of faithful friendship entered this city, already almost besieged, of her own free will, in order to share my fate with me. At her request she is joining me in death as my wife. Death will compensate us for what my work in the service of my people robbed from us both.
All that I own—in so far as it had any value—belongs to the party. If this ceases to exist, to the state; and if the state also is annihilated, no further decision on my part is necessary.
My paintings in the collections I bought over the years were never collected for private purposes, but always only for the expansion of a gallery in my hometown of Linz on the Danube. It would be my heartfelt wish if this bequest could be duly carried out. I appoint as executor of my will my most faithful party comrade, Martin Bormann. He is legally entitled to make all final decisions. He may transfer any personal mementos, or whatever is needed for the maintenance of a modest middle-class standard of living, to my brother and sisters, and particularly to my wife’s mother, and to my faithful associates who are well known to him—principally my old secretaries, Frau Winter, etc., who for many years have sustained me by their work.
I myself and my wife choose death to escape the disgrace of removal or surrender. It is our desire to be burned at once at the place in which I have performed the greater part of my daily work in the course of twelve years of service to my people.
The two documents were signed at four o’clock in the morning on April 29. Three copies were prepared, and in the course of the day arrangements were made to have them taken out of the bunker by different routes. One of the people selected for this messenger service was Colonel von Below, Hitler’s Luftwaffe adjutant, who took with him a postscript directed to General Keitel. That was Hitler’s last message and ended with the characteristic sentences:
The people and the armed forces have given their all in this long and hard struggle. The sacrifice has been enormous. But my trust has been misused by many people. Disloyalty and betrayal have undermined resistance throughout the war. It was therefore not granted to me to lead the people to victory. The
The efforts and sacrifices of the German people in this war have been so great that I cannot believe that they have been in vain. The aim must still be to win territory in the East for the German people.73
At various times during the past weeks Hitler had expressed anxiety that he might have to appear as an “exhibit in the Moscow zoo” or as the principal actor in a “show trial staged by Jews.”74 These fears were intensified when, in the course of April 29, the news of Mussolini’S death reached him. The Duce and his mistress, Clara Petacci, who had hastily joined him that same day, had been caught by partisans and on the afternoon of April 28 shot without formalities in the small north Italian hamlet of Mezzagra. The bodies were taken to Milan and suspended by the heels from the roof of a garage on the Piazzale Loreto, where a screaming mob beat, spat upon, and stoned the corpses.
Under the impact of this news, Hitler began making the arrangements for his own death. He charged many members of his entourage, including his servant Heinz Linge, his chauffeur Erich Kempka, and his pilot Hans Baur, with the task of seeing that his remains did not fall into the enemy’s hands. The preparations he made seemed like a last manifestation of his lifelong efforts to conceal his real self. It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that between Hitler’s crawling into a hole to die, as it were, and the end of Mussolini, who called upon his remaining adherents to go together to the Valtellina and there “die with the sun in our faces.”
But Hitler also feared that the poison he had provided might not bring about death fast enough or reliably
