Braun, Eva Anna Paula ‘Schnacksi’.

Braun, Eva Anna Paula ‘Schnacksi’, born 06-02-1912 in the Wasserburger Strasse in Munich’s villa district Bogenhausen.  Eva was the second daughter of school teacher Friedrich “Fritz” Braun, a non-practicing Protestant, and Franziska “Fanny” Kronberger, (see Braun parents) who came from a respectable Bavarian Catholic family.

     Her elder sister,  Ilse Ruth,  was born in 1909 and her younger sister, Margarete “Gretl“, was born in 1915. Like her father, Eva’s older sister Ilse (1909-1979) was not very fond of National Socialism. Ilse married twice; neither marriage lasted and she remained childless. Her parents separated in 1919 and the official divorce was on 03-04-1921 and mother Franziska had the right on parenthood, as the children were underage, Eva was 7. On 26-11-1922 the couple was standing in front of the officials for a new marriage. Eva Braun was educated at a lyceum, then for one year at a business school in a convent where she had average grades and a talent for athletics, gymnastics and swimming like her mother.

   

     She worked for several months as a receptionist at a medical office, then at age 17, took a job as an office and lab assistant and photographer’s model for Heinrich Hoffmann,   the official photographer for the Nazi Party. His shop was in the Isabellastrasse 45 in Munich. Henriette “Henny” von Schirach-Hoffmann

the daughter of Hoffmann, was her girlfriend and later Henriette married the Hitler Youth Führer, Baldur von Schirach.   The Hoffmann couple Heinrich and Erna on the other hand didn\’t like Eva too much anymore when she was related with Herr Wolff. Hitler’s, then age 37, first love was the schoolgirl Maria “Mimi” Reiter,  age 16, she was living in Berchtesgaden. Eva met Adolf Hitler  (did you know), he 40, 23 years her senior, at Hoffmann’s studio of Munich in October 1929. He had been introduced to her as “Herr Wolff”, a childhood nickname he used during the 1920s for security purposes. She described him to friends as a “gentleman of a certain age with a funny mustache, a light-colored English overcoat, and carrying a big felt hat.” She noticed that he was watching her legs and she since shortened her skirts, to pleasure him. He appreciated her eye colour, which was said to be close to his mother’s. Her family was strongly against the relationship and little is known about it during the first two years. Her father wrote a letter to Hitler to tell his indication of the relation, but Eva intercepted the letter. She like Hitler liked to read the books of Karl May

    , listening to American Jazz and watching American movies.

Carl Friedrich May (Ernstthal, 25-02-1842 – Radebeul, 30-03-1912), usually called Karl May, was a German writer who became known worldwide for his many adventure novels about Winnetou and Old Shatterhand in the Wild West and to a lesser extent the stories of Kara Ben Nemsi and Hadji Halef Omar in North Africa and the Middle East.

Hitler didn’t see Eva too much and for her 27th birthday he sent her a signed picture. Hitler saw more of Braun after the apparent 1931 suicide of his half sister, Angela’s daughter see Geli Raubel.

    with whom, it was rumoured, he had been intimate. The circumstances of Raubal’s death in Munich have never been confirmed. Some historians suggest she killed herself because she was distraught over her relationship with Hitler or his relationship with Braun, while others have speculated Hitler played a more direct role in the death of his niece. Braun was unaware that Raubal was a rival for Hitler’s affections until after Raubal’s death. Meanwhile, Hitler was seeing other women, such as actress Renate Müller, whose early death, age 31, on 01-10-1937, may also have been suicide. According to Hitler’s maid Frau Winter, the couple had first love, at the beginning of 1932, in Hitler’s house in the Prinzregentenplatz, Eva made jokes about the sofa as she saw a picture in the newspaper with Neville Chamberlain   sitting on it. Later she asked Dr. Theodor Gilbert Morell,

  Hitler’s personal physician to give him pills for his increasing libido. Dr. Morell was  captured by the Americans and interrogated on 18-05-1945. One of his interrogators was reportedly “disgusted” by his obesity and complete lack of hygiene. Although he was held in an American internment camp, on the site of the former Buchenwald concentration camp, and questioned because of his proximity to Hitler, Morell was never charged with any crimes. His health declined rapidly. Grossly obese and suffering from poor health, he died in Tegernsee hospital on 26-05-1948, age 61.

              

Lonely and disappointed of the endless waiting, Eva Braun, nicknamed by Hitler as ‘Schnacksi’, first attempted suicide on 01-02-1932 at the age of 20 by shooting herself in the neck with her father’s pistol. The bullet almost hit her artery, but she recovered. She even could make a phone call directly after and was so smart to call Dr. Wilhelm Plate, a brother in law of Heinrich Hoffmann and Hitler soon knew what was going on, Eva had speculated well. She attempted suicide a second time on 28-05-1935 by taking an overdose of Phanodorm, 20 pills, her sister Ilse found her unconscious. Eight women, all the same types, that are thought, possibly, to have been intimate with Hitler, attempted suicide: Mimi tried to hang herself 1928, Geli Raubal died of a gun-shot with Hitler’s gun, 1931, Eva Braun tried suicide in 1932 and 1935 before succeeding in 1945, Frau Inga Ley, Inga committed suicide in 1942 because of her alleged addiction to drugs and the burden of being married to the boorish Ley. Renaté Müller and Suzi Liptauer were all successful suicides, and Unity Midford

  attempted suicide in 1939. After Braun’s recovery, Hitler became more committed to her and arranged for the substantial royalties from widely published and popular photographs of him taken by Hoffmann’s photo studio to pay for a villa in the Wasserburgerstrasse 12, today Delpstrasse 12,in Bogenhausen.

  leveled to the ground on 17-11-2015. Hitler once commissioned his photographer Heinrich Hoffmann to buy the villa for 30,000 Reichsmarks. Later the Führer gave the jewel to his beloved. This income also provided her with a Mercedes, a chauffeur, a maid and two Scottish terriers, Stasi and Negus, who kept the the neighborhood out of sleep because of their continual barking. Braun’s sister Gretl moved in with her. Hoffmann later asserted Braun became a fixture in Hitler’s life by attempting suicide less than a year after Geli Raubal’s death, as Hitler wished to avoid any further scandal. Later Eva lived regular on the Berghof and had her own room next to Hitler’s one, with a little corridor, but Eva was not allowed to join the official occasions in the Berghof and watched and filmed everything through her bedroom window. One day the Italian foreign minister Graf Ciana  noticed her and asked who the blue eyed girl was, but was passed over. Eva had her own maid, Magarete Degenfelder and hairdresser, Milla Schellmoser and spent the day with changing her clothes several times. Even during World War II, Braun apparently lived a life of leisure, spending her time exercising, reading romance novels, watching films and early German television, at least until around 1943, along with, later, helping to host gatherings of Hitler’s inner circle. Unlike most other Germans, she was reportedly free to read European and American magazines and watch foreign films. Her affection for nude sunbathing (and being photographed at it) is known to have infuriated Hitler. She reportedly accepted gifts which were stolen property belonging to deposed European royal families. Braun had a lifelong interest in photography and their closest friends called her the “Rolleiflex Girl” (after the well-known camera model). She did her own darkroom processing and most of the extant color stills and movies of Hitler are her work. The first things plundered after the war by Russian nurses were her underwear and bras. Hitler often warned the visiting ladies for the danger of smoking and Eva then always whistle the song, “Smoke gets in your eyes”,  but Hitler didn’t understand English and the song. The only official occasion that he took Eva with him,

  was for the 1936 Olympic Winter Games in Garmisch Partenkirchen and a photographer took a picture with the two of them by accident, see above. Next to Eva is Hitler’s oldest and longest secretary Johanna Wolf.

   When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Braun sat on the stage in the area, reserved for VIP’s, as a secretary, to which Hitler’s sister Angela, Angela Hammitzscher-Hitler died age 66, on 30-10-1949, in Hannover, strongly objected, along with the wives of other ministers. She was banned from living anywhere near Braun as a result. By 1936, Braun was at Hitler’s household at the Berghof near Berchtesgaden, whenever he was in residence there and her parents were also invited for dinner several times. In early April 1945, Eva Braun traveled by car from Munich to Berlin to be with Hitler at the Führer bunker. She refused to leave as the Red Army closed in, insisting she was one of the few people loyal to him left in the world. After midnight on 29 April, Hitler and Braun were married in a small civil ceremony within the Führer bunker. The event was witnessed by Joseph Goebbels (did you know) and Martin Bormann, he died of suspected suicide, age 44, 02-05-1945, escaping from the Führer bunker. The bride wore a black (some accounts say dark blue) silk dress. Thereafter, Hitler hosted a modest wedding breakfast with his new wife. With Braun’s marriage, her legal name changed to Eva Hitler. When she signed her marriage certificate she wrote the letter B for her family name, then lined this out and replaced it with Hitler. Although bunker personnel were instructed to call her Frau Hitler, her new husband continued to call his wife Fräulein (Mrs) Braun. There was gossip among the Führer bunker staff that she was carrying Hitler’s child, but there is no evidence she was ever pregnant. Indeed, Eva Braun, who was never a NSDAP member, is reported to have suffered from Mayer-Rokitansky syndrome (MRKH) which prevented her from ever becoming pregnant.

Eva Braun was very fond of her two Scottish Terrier dogs named Negus and Stasi

    and they feature in her home movies.  She usually kept them away from Hitler’s German  shepherd, Blondi. Blondi was killed by one of the entourage on 29-04-1945 when Hitler ordered that one of the cyanide capsules obtained for Braun and Hitler’s suicide the next day be tested on the dog. Braun’s dogs  and Blondi’s puppies were shot by Hitler’s dog handler, Feldwebel Fritz Tornow on 30 April.   On 02-05-1945 the Soviet Army took control of the bunker complex. Tornow was among only five living occupants.

After 1:00 pm on the afternoon of 30-04-1945, Braun and Hitler said their farewells to staff, and members of the “inner circle”. She gave her fur-coat to Hitler’s secretary Traudl Junge  and Junge Hans .  Hitler gave his Party Badge to Magda Goebbels,  Eva hated Magda Goebbels, who humiliated her in front of other. Later that afternoon at approximately 3:30 pm, several witnesses reported hearing a loud gunshot. After waiting a few minutes, Hitler’s valet, Heinz Linge,   he died age 66 on 09-03-1980 and Hitler’s SS adjutant, SS Sturmbannführer, Otto Günsche.  Günsche died of heart failure, age 86, on 02-10-2003 and his ashes are scattered in the North sea, entered the small study and found the lifeless bodies seated on a small sofa.

         

Eva had bitten into a cyanide capsule. Hitler had shot himself in the right temple with his own pistol, a PPK 7.65. The two corpses were carried up the stairs by SS Obersturmbannführer, Erich Kempka Hitler\’s driver and the one who brought the petrol for the burning,

 

Otto Gunsche his adjutant and Martin Bormann  and through the bunker\’s emergency exit to the garden behind the Reich Chancellery where they were burned. Arthur Axmann  the Hitler Youth leader was a witness. Braun was 33 years old when she died. The corpses were set on fire as the Red Army advanced and the shelling continued. Later Harry Mengershoven a member of the Reichs Security Service filled in the graves and left. When the Russians captured the Chancellery, they discovered the graves in the garden and the remains of the bodies, in two wooden ammunition boxes, were taken to the Russian headquarters in Plötzensee for autopsies by Professor Nikolai Krayevski. General Hans Erich Voss,  he died age 72, on 18-11-1969, in Berchtegaden, had already identified Hitler and Eva Braun,

     the Goebbels couple and General der Infanterie, Chief of the Army General Staff (OKH), Hans Krebs,

who was also laying in the garden after his suicide. The bodies, also of the Goebbels children, found in a room downstairs, were then buried near the SMERSH headquarters at hospital ground in Buch, near Berlin and later moved to a forest near Rathenow, not far from Stendal, to where the SMERSH unit had been transferred. As the Smersh headquarters were moved to Magdeburg, the bodies were buried in the garden behind the headquarters, in the Westendstrasse No 32 and 36, now Klaussenerstrasse 19 and 23, Magdeburg.

The bodies of Joseph Goebbels  and Magda Goebbels (see Harald Quandt)

(see Günther Quandt)

, and their six children and General Krebs, on No 36, witnessed by Major Vasily Orliovsky. The burials were carried out by Colonel Gorbushin the deputy chief of SMERSH in the Third Stock Army. A large garage then stood beside No 32, large enough to accommodate five cars, and it was equipped with an inspection pit to facilitate servicing. It was in this pit that Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun were buried. When SMERSH or rather its post-war successor, the NKVD/KGB, vacated the properties in Westendstrasse, On 04-04-1970, a Soviet KGB team, Wladimir Gumenjuk.
Major Sergey Schirikow and Oberst Kawolenko, with detailed burial charts secretly exhumed five wooden boxes. The remains from the boxes were taken to the vicinity of Schönebeck eleven kilometers away from Magdeburg thoroughly burned on the ground of a military bases with fuel and were mixed together until they turned into uniform mass, after which the ashes were thrown into the nearby river Ehle, a site river of the Elbe, ironical called the Schweinebrücke, Pig Bridge, Magdeburgerstrasse, West of Biederitz.

The rest of Braun’s family survived the war. Her mother, Franziska, died at age 96 in January 1976, having lived out her days in an old farmhouse in Ruhpolding, Bavaria. Her father, Fritz, died in 1964. Gretl gave birth to a daughter—whom she named Eva—on 5 May 1945. She later married Kurt Beringhoff, a businessman.  She died in 1987. Braun’s elder sister, Ilse, was not part of Hitler’s inner circle. She married twice and died in 1979.

                                                        Picture Westendstrasse is Copyright After the Battle magazine

       General Voss identified the corpses                                Westendstrasse No 36 in Magdeburg.