Hitler's Last Secretary (10 page)

During the conference, however, no one could enter the Hall, so you had to hang around outside somewhere or stay in your room until you were summoned. Unfortunately, Hitler himself never seemed to feel hungry, and he sometimes entirely forgot that he had a crowd of guests waiting for lunch, drinking vermouth after vermouth to soothe their rebellious stomachs. So it was sometimes three or four in the afternoon before the last uniformed officers had finally left his side and the last car had driven away again.

Then Hitler came down the few steps from the Great Hall and entered the living room, where a hungry company was assembled. It was usually at this moment that Eva Braun appeared, announced by the yapping of her two black companions. Hitler would go up to her, kiss her hand, and shake hands with everyone he had not already seen at the conference. It was at an occasion of this kind that I first saw Eva Braun and was introduced to her. She was very well dressed and groomed, and I noticed her natural, unaffected manner. She wasn’t at all the kind of ideal German girl you saw on recruiting posters for the BDM or in women’s magazines. Her carefully done hair was bleached, and her pretty face was made up – quite heavily but in very good taste. Eva Braun wasn’t tall but she had a very pretty figure and a distinguished appearance. She knew just how to dress in a style that suited her, and never looked as if she had overdone it – she always seemed appropriately and tastefully dressed, although she wore valuable jewellery.

When I first saw her she was wearing a Nile-green dress of heavy woollen fabric. Its top fitted closely, and it had a bell-shaped skirt with a broad leopardskin edging at the hem. The pretty way she walked made the skirt swing gracefully. The dress had close-fitting sleeves, with two gold-coloured clips at its sweetheart neckline – I don’t know if they were real gold. She was addressed as ‘gnadiges Fräulein’, and the ladies called her Fräulein Braun. Frau Brandt and Frau von Below seemed to be very friendly with her, and she immediately began a very feminine, natural conversation with them about their children, the latest fashions, dogs and anecdotes of personal experiences.

Frau Schneider, whom Eva called Herta, was an old school-friend of hers and almost always in her company in Munich too. It was her two little girls who were so often photographed with Eva Braun that many people thought they were hers.

The waiting time before lunch passed in easy conversation. Hitler talked to Eva, teased her about her dogs, which he said were nothing but a couple of dusting brushes, whereupon she replied that Blondi wasn’t a dog at all but a calf. I was surprised to find that the man who had just come from a military briefing had left all his serious, official thoughts behind the heavy curtain that separated the Great Hall from the living room. His expression was that of any ordinary genial host welcoming company to his country house.

At last Linge came in, went up to Frau Brandt and said, ‘Gnadige Frau, the Führer will escort you to the table.’ An orderly told the other guests what the seating plan was, and then Linge stepped up to the Führer and announced: ‘My Führer, lunch is ready.’

Hitler, who had also been told ahead of time whom he would be taking in, went ahead with Frau Brandt, Eva Braun took Reichsleiter Bormann’s arm – this seating plan never varied -and then the other couples followed, going along a wide corridor, round the corner and into the dining room.

The Führer sat in the middle of the broad side of the table facing the window, with Eva Braun on his left, and then Reichsleiter Bormann. Opposite Hitler and Eva Braun sat either the guest of honour or the highest-ranking officer present with his lady.

I had the head of the Reich press office as my neighbour at table. He was in civilian clothes, and his dark blue suit made him look even more inconspicuous than his uniform. I was bracing myself, expecting him to start a highly intellectual conversation, but he asked, ‘Have you ever been on the Obersalzberg before?’ When I said that although I came from Munich I didn’t know the mountains at all well, he seemed to be as much struck by this information as if I had told him I came from the moon. Then he described the beauty of the area to me at length, and told me about any number of good walks, but unfortunately they remained a mystery to me because I didn’t know a single one of the places or paths he mentioned. But at least during this unexciting conversation I had a chance to observe the lunch ceremony.

There was a beautiful flower arrangement in the middle of the long table. The Führer never had flowers, branches of foliage or anything like that in his rooms at his headquarters. But here at the Berghof there was a woman in charge of the household, and you could feel her feminine touch. The table was laid with Rosenthal china, with a hand-painted flower pattern on a white background. A cruet set with oil, vinegar, salt and pepper – and toothpicks! – stood at the top of the table and another at the bottom. Beside each place there was a napkin in a paper bag with the guest’s name on it.

As soon as the party had sat down at the table and unfolded their napkins the door to the domestic wing opened and a row of orderlies came in. Two were carrying stacks of plates. The others took away the plates already in front of us on the table and replaced them with the new, warm plates. Soon the meal was served. Junge brought in a tray with the Führer’s lunch, two orderlies brought large dishes of various salads for each side of the table and began serving down both sides from the middle. Two others asked what we would like to drink. The salad seemed to be a kind of starter, because everyone began eating it at once. But then the next course appeared too: braised beef marinated in vinegar and herbs, with creamed potatoes and young beans. This first menu I ate at the Berghof has stuck in my mind because I was greatly relieved to find that we didn’t all have to follow the Führer’s diet. I’d have had to be very ill, I’m sure, to subsist on gruel, linseed mush, muesli and vegetable juice of my own free will. During meals Hitler himself often mentioned his difficulty in getting decent vegetarian dishes. He had a delicate stomach, although later I came to believe that much of his illness was nervous or imaginary. Here on the Obersalzberg Hitler ate the diet food of the Zabel sanatorium, quite a well-known nursing home in Berchtesgaden where Professor Zabel provided the same kind of diet as Professor Bircher-Benner of Switzerland. When Hitler was at the Berghof a cook came in from the sanatorium to cook for him. He had a peculiar passion for unrefined linseed oil. For instance, he loved to eat baked potatoes with curd cheese and would pour unrefined linseed oil over them.

Eva Braun had only contemptuous pity for this diet. I should think nothing would have persuaded her to try the Führer’s food. However, she too claimed to have a weak stomach and ate very little, nothing but easily digestible dishes and not much fat. Sometimes she drank bitters after the meal. But when I came to know her better I thought that she ate sparingly mainly to keep her slim figure. She hated fat women, and was very proud of being slim and dainty. The Führer teased her about it. ‘When I first met you, you were so nice and plump, and now you’re positively skinny. All the ladies say they want to be beautiful for their menfolk, and then they do everything they can to be the opposite of what a man likes. They claim that they’d make any sacrifice to please him, but they’re sacrificing themselves entirely to fashion. Fashion is the one and only power – the strongest of all. And other women are the only judges. All women just want to be the envy of their female friends.’ Eva might protest vigorously, but she admitted that she most certainly didn’t want to be any fatter.

Conversations at table were usually trivial and cheerful. Hitler talked about the pranks he had played at school and reminisced about the early struggles of the Party. He often teased his colleagues. Walther Hewel, the liaison officer from the Foreign Office, was a favourite butt. Hewel was still relatively young for his high rank, and unmarried. He was about forty years old. His pleasing charm, typical of a Rhinelander, made him popular. He had lived in India for years and had many amusing tales to tell of his time there. Hitler asked him, ‘So when are you finally going to write your book
From Machete to Diplomatic Dagger?
But then you’re no diplomat! More of a giant diplomatic cowboy!’ The tall, dignified Hewel responded to this sally only with hearty laughter. ‘If I weren’t a diplomat I couldn’t stand between you and Ribbentrop, my Führer,’ he replied. Hitler had to acknowledge the truth of this, for he knew what a difficult character the Foreign Minister was. But the fact that Hewel was still unmarried made him the object of daily teasing. ‘I expect you’re looking for one of those Indian tree monkeys,’ said Hitler. But seriously, the Führer really was looking out for a suitable wife for his favourite liaison officer. For a while those around him thought he wanted Hewel to marry Eva’s sister Gretl Braun. But Hewel himself didn’t fancy the idea. Later he was discreetly pointed in the direction of Ilsebill Todt, daughter of the late architect.
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Hitler described Ilsebill as ‘a beautiful girl’, and was disappointed that this comment wasn’t enough to convince Hewel.

The Führer also tried to put meat-eaters off their food at mealtimes. He didn’t actually want to convert anyone to vegetarianism, but he would suddenly begin to talk about the horrors of an abattoir. ‘One day, when headquarters was stationed in Ukraine, my men were to be shown the biggest, most modern of the local abattoirs. It was a fully modernized factory seeing the job right through from pig to sausage, including processing the bones, bristles and skin. Everything was so clean and neat, with pretty girls in high gumboots standing up to their calves in fresh blood. All the same, the meat-eating men felt unwell, and many of them left without seeing everything. I run no such risks. I can happily watch carrots and potatoes being pulled up, eggs collected from the henhouse and cows milked.’

It is true that most of these remarks were so familiar by now that they no longer spoiled anyone’s appetite, but Hitler could always find a victim. The sensitive Reich press chief put down his knife and fork, turned pale, and claimed quietly, in muted tones, that he wasn’t hungry any more. Sometimes this conversation was followed by a little philosophical discussion of human cowardice. There were so many things, said Hitler, that people couldn’t do themselves, or couldn’t even watch, but all the same they would happily reap the benefit.

Lunch usually lasted about an hour. Then the Führer brought the meal to a close to get ready for his walk. He liked the little tea-house in the grounds better than the actual walk there, which took him only twenty minutes, but if the weather was bad he often preferred to drive in the Volkswagen. The servants and orderlies asked all the guests if they were going for the walk. You didn’t have to, and then you could use the time as you liked. But ladies were always in demand – there weren’t so many female guests when we first arrived, and then for form’s sake there must be enough gentlemen to make up a well-balanced party. Reichsleiter Bormann almost always pleaded pressure of work. For a compulsive worker like him these hours of private relaxation, when he couldn’t talk business, were a waste of time.

Eva Braun, however, loved athletic pursuits and walking. She would get her outdoor clothes on immediately after lunch, take her two dogs and her friend Herta, and go a long way round on foot all through the grounds, joining the company at the coffee table later.

The Führer would put on his soft peaked cap – the only item of headgear that he didn’t place upright on his head like a saucepan – with either a long black rain cape or a trench-coat over his uniform. Then he took his walking-stick and the dog’s leash and set off along the path with one of the men. The rest of the party followed informally. Usually the Führer walked so slowly that some of those following caught up with him. Poor Blondi had to stay on her leash, because the grounds here were a paradise for game. The deer, rabbits and squirrels were very tame. They grazed in the meadows and took hardly any notice of passers-by. It seemed they had discovered that no shot would disturb their peace here, and that humans protected them and would put out food for them in winter. Eva Braun’s black terriers sometimes raced through the tall grass on the hillsides yapping, and the deer grazing there would look at them pityingly and leap aside only when the dogs chasing them came very close.

The tea-house lay on a little plateau of rock falling steeply away on the north side. It was a natural look-out tower. Deep below, the river Ach flowed in many winding curves, and the houses on its banks looked like little matchboxes. There was also a view from here between the mountains all the way to Salzburg, blocked only on the left-hand side by the Steinernes Meer, the ‘Stone Sea’. But that mighty colossus of rock was worth seeing for its own sake. In fine weather those to arrive first waited outside on a wooden bench until the whole party had assembled.

Usually Eva Braun brought her camera or cine-camera and tried to get the Führer in front of her lens. Admittedly she was the only person who could photograph him whenever she liked, but it was very difficult to get a good snapshot of him. He liked photos to be taken without any fuss or bother. But in fine weather, when the sun was shining, he always had his cap on, so that his face was in shadow, and he couldn’t be induced to take it off because bright light dazzled him. He might even be wearing sunglasses. However, Eva put so much cunning and patience into her passion for photography that she often got good shots -better photos, in fact, than those taken by her former teacher and employer Heinrich Hoffmann.
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