Eva Hitler

By Martin Kerr

Let me begin by saying that I refer to Adolf Hitler’s wife as “Eva Hitler,” and not by her more-commonly used maiden name, “Eva Braun.” The Führer married her at the very end, and thus legitimized her place in his life and to posterity. His wishes should be respected.

Generally speaking, I have found that as the years and decades roll on, historical accounts of Adolf Hitler and the Hitler Era have become better and better. By that I do not mean that they have become more pro-NS in a subjective sense, only that they have become more factually accurate.

About 25 years back, Ian Kershaw wrote an excellent two-volume biography of the Führer which was better than any mainstream treatment of his life that came before it. (I except the works of David Irving from the classification of “mainstream historian;” his writings are in a category by themselves, apart from and above those of other historians.)

I was looking forward to reading the new two-volume biography of Hitler by the German mainstream historian Ullrich Volker, in hopes that it would be better still. Alas, I was disappointed: for the most part, Volker’s biography is inferior to Kershaw’s.

But having said that, Volker does produce a chapter on Eva Hitler that is far more insightful and far kinder than those that have appeared previously. (Nerin Gun’s biography Eva Braun was not too bad.) For the most part, these accounts portray her as a silly, empty-headed bimbo whom the Führer kept around for his amusement or as a decoration. Not so, says Volker.

Volker ends the chapter with this appraisal of her:

The image of Braun as the apolitical, naïve mistress of the Fuehrer has also been revealed as a deliberate distortion by Speer and other members of the Berghof society in order to claim ignorance after the war of the criminal [[I]sic[/I]] nature of Hitler’s dictatorship. Braun was by no means the dumb blonde observers mistook her for. She was a modern young woman who knew quite well what she was getting into with Hitler and who herself helped bolster the mythic aura of the Fuehrer with the photos she gave to Hoffmann and with her home movies, which she made for posterity. Like others who were part of the Berghof circle, she shared Hitler’s racist beliefs [sic] and knew too well about the exclusion and persecution of the Jews. (Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939, page 635)

I imagine that Volker thinks he is impugning her historical reputation with these words, not rehabilitating it. I guess from his perspective, he is.

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Hitler by Ian Kershaw. Volume one: 1889-1936 Hubris (1998); volume two: 1936-1935 Nemesis (2000). W.W. Norton & Co., New York.

Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939 by Volker Ulrich (translated by Jefferson Chase). Alfred A. Knopf, New York (2016).

Author: Martin Kerr is the Chief of Staff of the NEW ORDER, the North American Affiliate of the World Union of National Socialists.