Hitler and his Women

Phil Carradice

• Publisher: Pen & Sword History
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781526779557
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politische Biographien

This unique biography examines Hitler's many female relationships, from his mother and sisters to his girlfriends, secretaries, and adoring public. To most of the world, Adolf Hitler was a ranting, evil demagogue whose insane ambitions caused incalculable harm to humanity. But to the women in his life, he was kind, compassionate, and loving—a man to be admired and adored. In Hitler and His Women, historian Phil Carradice explores the Fuhrer's many relationships with women, from his romantic involvements to his interactions with female staff and the thousands of women who flocked to hear him speak. While many are familiar with Eva Braun, she was not alone in her role as the Fuhrer's lover. Dozens of women preceded her, including Mitzi Reiter, Henny Hoffmann, and his own niece Geli Raubal. To them and many others, Hitler was the ultimate romantic. From deep familial bonds to a teenage infatuation with a girl he never met, from actresses like Zara Leander to English aristocrat Unity Mitford, Carradice examines how Hitlers relationships with women affected the course of history.

Chapter 1

Popular Opinion: Myth and Truth

Try this as an experiment. Stop any passer-by, any man or woman you might encounter in the street or at the bar of your local public house, and ask them for their opinion of Adolf Hitler. The vast majority of those questioned will stare at you as if you had just uttered a piece of blasphemy or a particularly unpleasant and foul word. They will then probably all agree that Hitler was one of the most sinister and evil men who ever lived.

From the inception of the Nazi Party in the early 1920s until its demise in 1945, Hitler’s warped, twisted and malformed mind spawned a regime that murdered millions and terrified the whole world. He took many of his early ideas from the man he regarded as his mentor, an alcoholic right-wing theorist who lived in and around the Munich area. Dietrich Eckart was a poet and writer whose fanciful ideas and theories held great appeal for Hitler but the culminations of his plans – the death squads, the concentration camps and the gas chambers – were his and his alone.

In the years immediately after 1945, following his suicide in the besieged and battered city of Berlin, Hitler’s influence remained significant. Even now, from well beyond the grave he continues to haunt and cast his malign influence across the globe.

It seems that Hitler’s evil knew no bounds. Apart from ruthless military campaigns in places like Poland and Greece, the rabid desire for lebensraum in the East, vicious race laws across Germany and newly conquered German-held territory, Hitler and his Nazi Party perpetrated a series of pogroms and massacres that have remained unequalled in the history of the world. Inventing murder on an industrial scale, his name has become a byword for the cold and calculated extermination of millions of helpless and hapless groups of people.

Thousands of books have been written condemning Hitler and his actions while hundreds of films and documentaries have also been produced. There have been others, perhaps not quite as many as the anti-Hitler variety but still a significant number, which have attempted to explain away the killings and the brutality, even to deny them altogether. In its own way the denial of the Holocaust has always been a concept as evil and diabolical as anything that came out of the Third Reich.

Beyond the arguments and the debates, the sheer horror of Hitler’s Holocaust remains as a programme of carefully devised and organized murder that can be glibly called man’s inhumanity to man. In whichever way they are looked at and whatever they are used for, the tragic groups of innocent men, women and children who went, largely unknowing, to the gas chambers, are a wide-ranging and eclectic selection of would-be victims.

Jews, gypsies, Slavs, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Quakers and communists were the primary targets of the Holocaust. They were not alone. Physically, mentally and emotionally disabled people were also caught in the crosshairs of the Nazis’ all-seeing scrutiny. So, too, were intellectuals, homosexuals and even members of Hitler’s own Party. The list of his victims seems at times to be endless.

At the risk of being considered fey or overly poetic, it does not stretch the imagination too much to conjure harrowing visions of Hitler’s countless dead and persecuted. They range and reach far into the distance ahead of you like a faintly perceived but always remembered regiment of ghost figures. It is a fanciful and effete response, perhaps, but that is what such horror leads to in many thinking and imaginative individuals.

On a more prosaic level, what Hitler’s use of terror meant to anyone who was opposed to the Nazi view of the world was a lengthy period of unmitigated horror. It was a time of such fear that it is now difficult to imagine how people felt. Trying to capture that fear is, frankly, beyond most of us.

Once in power Hitler’s fury knew no bounds. Critics of the Nazi regime and members of the sects designated for destruction might all expect, sooner or later, to hear the terrifying midnight knock on their door or wake to an early morning raid by Gestapo* and SS** officers. Persecution, punishment, torture and, ultimately, death were the inevitable result for anyone who dared to voice a counter opinion or represent opposition and disagreement to the Nazis.

The classic or standard image of Hitler, one that most people can recognize and possibly even relate to, comes from the 1930s. It is that of the dictator in his brown SA* uniform, designed for the stormtroopers by Party member Hugo Boss, standing in front of adoring thousands at one of the many Nuremberg rallies or election meetings. He is hurling invective, ranting and screaming himself into near-apoplexy. Metaphorically at least, the tyrannical Hitler holds the admiring host in the palm of his hand. Thousands stare at him, unblinking, unthinking but all of them in raptures and totally accepting what he says. They are mesmerized, in thrall to his words and vision of the world. No matter how many times he repeats his promises and condemns all the many enemies of the Third Reich – both of which he does over and over again, at the expense of almost any explanation or rationalization – the crowds worship and scream back their acceptance.

Under the leadership of a man like this almost anything is possible. And that is exactly what Hitler is offering: ‘almost anything’. Nobody seems to know, least of all him, how he will obtain these misty, ill-defined utopian ideals for his people. That is part of the Hitler mystique. He seems to be saying that if you follow him and listen to him, if you agree with his ideas and join him, then the whole world will be open to you. But the questions have to be asked: what are those ideas, what are the ideals he is propagating?

For the non-partisan observer the ideals of the 1930s Party meetings and rallies would always remain unclear. Apart from a few lofty targets such as an end to unemployment, Germany restored to power and wealth, the ultimate realization of Aryan destiny, the ideals are little more than sketchily drawn outlines, like a child’s view of the world. The audience can fill in the blanks with almost anything they might like to dream about. ‘Almost anything’ soon becomes ‘Almost everything’. That is really what Hitler seems to be offering when he stands before his public to make his promises, almost anything they want. It is not the reality of the dream but the offer itself, made with such certainty and such violent aplomb that matters to the worshipping crowds.

Hitler screams and gesticulates, he sways and moves from side to side on the podium. His hands weave magical shapes in the air. Spittle flies from his lips and his eyes glisten with an appeal that everyone, even those hundreds of yards away at the back of the stadium, swear they can see. To those not of the faith he seems a madman; to those who believe and trust in each word he utters he is nothing short of a messiah.

The one thing that no one can doubt, not his supporters, not his opponents and certainly not the representatives of foreign governments who look on in shock and horror, is that this man knows how to work a crowd. He can control them, whip them into fury and, when needed, quieten them into a menacing, sibilant hush. It is a skill practised by many but only truly gained by very few. From a faltering and stuttering start his diatribe gathers momentum. It is slowly and carefully done, even though very few in the auditorium realize it. The pattern is always the same, a gradual move from uncertainty to confidence and ultimately to a level of command that somehow manages to mirror Hitler’s view of his mission.

The climax is always spectacular and eventually the crowds are treated to the howls of manic rhetoric that he famously spews out, wherever and however his speech is given. Hitler runs the crowd through every imaginable emotional gamut and they are like putty in his hands. Now, in hindsight, it is impossible not to view the performance as a public version of the sexual act, a slow and gradual build up to a cataclysmic and orgasmic climax, both for him and for the worshipping thousands. At the end both Hitler and his audience are fulfilled. The word ‘audience’ is used deliberately for Hitler is the player, the actor on stage. The crowd who applaud and scream are the equivalent of the spectators in an Elizabethan theatre.

Like the sixteenth-century playgoers, the groundlings who packed into the Globe, the Curtain and other theatres of London, they demand a quality performance. The subject and the content remain, very clearly, only secondary factors. And eventually they are sated. They have been reduced to sweat-soaked, exhausted, brain-washed zombies who at that moment really believe that he and they can take over and control the whole world.

That is what most observers see. Yet there is another side to Adolf Hitler, a softer, calmer and more normal side, if that word ‘normal’ can ever be used in regard to such an individual. It is a private side of his personality, one that he keeps carefully hidden from the world. It concerns not warfare, not German expansion and not even anti-Semitic promises of retribution. Where it is displayed and seen at its best is simply in his attitude towards women.

It is a surprising, even startling attribute but there is no doubt that once in the company of women Hitler changes and becomes a more laid-back character altogether. Almost unbelievably he becomes compassionate, caring and agreeable. Unknown to most people, he has a keen and infectious sense of humour, usually withheld from public scrutiny until he is relaxed and surrounded by women whose company he enjoys and in the face of whom he does not feel threatened or abused. Then he flirts and smiles, charms the company with his wit and knowledge. He is a skilled mimic and raconteur and he now becomes a man with whom it is a pleasure to sit, talk and spend a couple of agreeable hours.

Time and the events of history have fixed our perceptions of Hitler, the Nazis and the whole of the Third Reich. What that means is that it is now difficult to imagine him as anything other than the ranting demagogue shown in the plethora of television documentaries and films to which we are regularly subjected.

But as far as many German women of the inter-war years were concerned, this evil killer of millions was a somewhat different person altogether. They understood that when policy and the safe governance of the country demanded it, he might have to be ruthless, to be stern and even brutal. That was acceptable, that was how it had to be. But even those who had never been nearer to him than across the cavernous spaces of the Nuremberg stadium or the sawdust-covered floor of a Munich beerhall knew, truly knew, that he also had a softer side.

Apart from acceptance by his women it was an affection – an affectation almost – that was noted by very few. It is unlikely that this propensity for female company and the change in character that accompanied it was ever considered important by his acolytes and the myrmidons whose primary concern was for their own position and advancement. If it was noticed it was soon pushed away, relegated to the depths of individual memory. Hitler’s staunchest allies, both within and without Party circles, saw only what they wanted to see in the man who had given them, and would continue to give them, immense power and position. Their vested interests would not allow them to take any other view.

However, for those who had no interest in climbing the Party ladder to the top, men like Hitler’s personal pilot Hans Baur who was content with his position, the attraction of the Führer to what was then still termed ‘the weaker sex’ was obvious. Baur recorded one instance during a trip to Weimar:

Whilst we were out Hitler turned round to Sauckel, who was walking behind us with a group of other Party leaders. ‘See that we have some female companionship at table tonight, Sauckel. All day long I’m surrounded by men, and I’d like to hear women’s voices for a change.’1

Sauckel happily obliged and dinner that night was taken in the company of a large and willing posse of enchanted young women. Such contact between the Leader, the Führer as he became universally known after 1934, and his worshipping female supporters was distant, ephemeral almost, and was limited to nothing more than his appreciation of the sound of those ‘women’s voices’.

Hitler knew that the press and the authorities would pounce eagerly on any dalliance he might enjoy and that while his order would lead to the arrival of twenty or thirty young girls, his words to Fritz Sauckel, as recorded by Baur, did at least reveal that he had an enjoyment in the attention and presence of women. That enjoyment was a two-way process but, as far as Hitler was concerned, it was always short-lived.

Invariably, after two or three hours, Hitler’s interest faded or passed away. He was not bored, exactly, but he had a mind that was impossible to pin down to one reality. He had something of a ‘butterfly brain’ as it might be described. Internally, after a few hours his imagination was already wandering onto other issues and the company would be relegated to the back of his mind. Then he would slip away, sometimes offering warm goodbyes, and sometimes just exiting the room before anyone noticed. However he departed, he would leave behind an enchanted group of what might now be regarded and labelled as an early example of totally smitten ‘groupies’. He would have called them soft-headed female adherents.

There is an interesting question that has to be asked. Did the feelings and reactions of Hitler’s female acquaintances, of his women friends and daily companions, have any effect on his plans and policies? The answer is, in most cases at least, probably not. The women like Sauckel’s ‘rent a crowd’ who gathered around him, happy just to be in his company, were like ships that pass in the night. They would remember the contact with the Führer; he would not.

With his long-term female friends things might have been very different. For many years people did not believe that this group of friends ever existed. Yet despite the generally perceived and widely held view of a man standing alone, married only to his country and dedicated to his mission, Hitler did actually have many intense relationships with women. Those who fell into this category could have influenced, if not his plans and policies then certainly his personal makeup and characteristics – in other words, his personality. And that personality would, of course, be essential in helping him to take decisions.

The complexities of Hitler’s personality were tortuous in the extreme but, if it is not stating the obvious that what he did, what he achieved, where he succeeded and where he failed, can be related directly to his inner beliefs and feelings – not a quality that can always be attributed to every politician or statesman, either then or now.

Significant developments in his character can, at least in the early stages of his life, be linked to the women he encountered, the women he loved, used and abused. Not every one of them, of course, would leave such a rich trail of influence. A great deal would depend on the woman’s own individual and collective character and personality.

Analysis is not easy. It must be remembered that for all of his political life Hitler remained the consummate actor, a man who could jump from one role to another with barely a pause for breath. This man who might be a ranting, obsessive tyrant one minute could be a caring, compassionate and supportive father figure the next. His range was wide and each part was totally believable.

How, then, can he be assessed? The answer is with difficulty and no small degree of surmise. The interested reader or student is often tempted to invoke the old variety-show comment, ‘Will the real Adolf Hitler please stand up.’ Even then, the man who stood for identification would depend on the audience and the purpose behind both the question and the likely answer.

One thing is clear, however: Adolf Hitler was fascinated by women; that is a recorded fact. He liked to have them around him and found great pleasure in their company. If nothing else they provided him with a relaxing, rejuvenating environment. An hour or two in...