EVA BRAUN - LIFE WITH HITLER : HEIKE B GORTEMAKER

Back in June 2010, when I was just getting into the groove with this blog, I elected Eva Braun Mistress of the Month.  It was easy to think of Eva because she was one of the most known, infamous, 20th century Mistresses ever and her story of being married at the very last moment to Adolf Hitler before the two of them commit suicide makes us wonder how she ever got involved, stayed with, and endured with a man who was so evil.  Was she also evil?

Since then I've covered some other Mistresses who are part of the Holocaust history. You can find posts about them in the archives.  November 2017 was dedicated to Righteous Gentile Oskar Schindler's (i.e. of the film Schindler's List) Mistresses.  That month included a post about Ruth Irene Kalder, the Mistress of Nazi War Criminal Amon Goth (also in that film).   June 2018 brought forth a new question about to CoCo Channel, the fashion designer, as I asked if she was a Nazi Spy or simply a Society Woman in Love due to her affair with Baron Hans Guther Von Dincklage.

I recently read a book about Eva called  EVA BRAUN - Life with Hitler by Heike B. Gortemaker

EXCERPT: 

Page 85 "THE DIARY"

Meanwhile, hardly any letters or personal documents exist from the dictator himself or from his companion of many years that shed any light on the nature of their relationship, or Eva Braun's role, or how she saw her role. It's well known that Hitler rarely wrote private letters, aside from thank-you notes or birthday cards. His secretary Christa Schroder, in fact, stated immediately after the end of the war that he had considered hit "his great strength" that "even in the years of struggle he wrote no letters." Such letters might have fallen, "into the wrong hands" and been "exploited." He also, before his suicide, made sure to destroy the greater part of his private correspondence, of which there was presumably little to begin with. Julius Schaub, hs adjutant of many years, left the bunker in Berlin for this reason at the end of April 1945, on direct orders from Hitler, in order to burn the private letters and files stored in safes at Hitler's Munich apartment and at the Berghof.

Here is a New Yorker review of the book by Meredith Blake.

NEW YORKER BOOKS: EVA BRAUN CIPHER SILLY COW or SOMETHING ELSE?
Dispelling all these myths?

EXCERPT:  For instance, unlike other biographers, she rejects the assumption that Hitler and Braun did not have a normal sex life; the book even includes a story about a couch where they shared many an assignation -- and where Neville Chamberlain later sat.  The author also doesn't buy the idea that Braun was anything less than a passionate believer in Nazism.  "She was in the loop and knew what was going on.  She was no mere bystander." Gortemaker explained to the Observer. 


Heike B. Gortemaker's book was translated from the German by Damion Seals Alfred A. Knopf, New York is the Publisher

Translation copyright 2011 by Damon Seals

Originally published under C 2010 Verlag C.H. Beck oHG, Munch called Eva Braun: Leban mit Hitler