Adolf Hitler kept his affairs secret. Officially he admitted only one with his long-term mistress Eva Braun. The couple even married 36 hours before his suicide.
Brief biography of Eva Braun
Childhood and youth
Eva Braun was born in Munich to Friedrich Braun, a schoolteacher, and Franziska Kronberger, who worked as a seamstress before her marriage. She attended the Catholic Lyceum in Munich and later studied for one year at the business school of a local convent.
When she turned 17, she took a job in Munich with Heinrich Hoffmann, the official photographer for the Nazi Party. She initially worked for him as a studio assistant and saleswoman, but later learnt to take photographs and make pictures herself.
It was here in October 1929 that she met Adolf Hitler, who used the photographer’s services. The Nazi leader at the time had another mistress, Geli Raubal, with whom he lived in a separate flat in Munich.
Relationship with Adolf Hitler
After Raubal unexpectedly committed suicide on 18 September 1931, Hitler and Eva Braun began to see each other more often. Braun was in love with Hitler, but he did not reciprocate her. In desperation, Eva also tried to shoot herself with a pistol to, as historians believe, win Hitler’s favour.
When Eva Braun recovered from her gunshot wound, Hitler was by her side and they soon had a close relationship. Although Eva was only 17 years old at the time and Hitler was 40, they became lovers.
According to some reports, Eva tried to commit suicide a second time in May 1935. Hitler had no time for her, and in desperation Braun used a very large dose of sleeping pills, but survived.
Eva Braun was close to Hitler for many years, but the public knew nothing about their relationship. Hitler remained single because it suited the image of an ascetic fighter, fully committed to Germany, and he also hoped to capitalise on the commitment of other women in his political struggle.
Braun made her first public appearance alongside him only during the 1936 Olympics, but it was not until after their deaths that Germans learnt of Hitler and Braun’s relationship. Eva Braun was not interested in politics, was not even a member of the Nazi Party. The circle of her interests were sports, fashion and cinema.
Marriage and death
In early April 1945, Eva Braun moved from Munich to Berlin to be close to Hitler. When the Red Army approached the capital and she was offered to get out of the bunker and escape, she flatly refused and decided to share Hitler’s fate.
After midnight on the night of 28-29 April, 1945, Hitler and Braun were married in a private civil ceremony in the bunker. Witnesses during the wedding were Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann. After the marriage, Eva Braun first signed her name on her marriage certificate as Eva Hitler.
On 30 April 1945, Hitler and his wife decided to commit suicide. After bidding farewell to those present, in the afternoon, Hitler’s valet Heinz Linge heard a gunshot and, entering the Führer’s apartment a few minutes later, found the dead bodies of Hitler and Braun on a sofa.
Eva Braun had died from cyanide poisoning and Hitler from a pistol shot to the right temple. Hitler and his wife’s corpses were then taken to the garden of the Reich Chancellery and burned. The remains of Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler were later found by Smersh workers and reburied elsewhere, and finally destroyed in 1970.