Synopses & Reviews
Eva Braun is one of historys most famous nonentities. She has been dismissed as a racist, feathered-headed shop girl, yet sixty-two years after her death her name is still instantly recognizable.
She left her convent school at the age of seventeen and met Hitler a few months later. She became his mistress before she was twenty. How did unsophisticated little Fraulein Braun, twenty-three years his junior, hold the most powerful man in Europe in an exclusive sexual relationship that lasted from 1932 until their joint suicide? Were they really lovers, and what were the background influences and psychological tensions of the middle-class Catholic girl from Munich who shared his intimate life? How can her ordinariness and apparent decency be reconciled with an unshakeable loyalty to the monster she loved?
She left almost no personal material or documents but her private diary and photograph albums show that her life with Hitler, far from being a luxurious sinecure, caused her emotional torture. His chauffeur called her “the unhappiest woman in Germany.” The Führer humiliated her in public while the top Nazis wives, living in his privileged enclave on a Bavarian mountainside, despised her. Yet Albert Speer said: “She has been much maligned. She was very shy, modest. A mans woman: gay, gentle, and kind; incredibly undemanding . . . a restful sort of girl. And her love for Hitler---as she proved in the end---was beyond question.”
Eva loved the Führer, not for his power, nor because, thanks to him, she lived in luxury. His material gifts were nothing compared with the one thing she really wanted: his child. She remained invisible and unknown, a nonperson. They were never seen in public together and she never saw him alone except in the bedroom, yet their long relationship was a sort of marriage.
Angela Lambert reveals a woman the world never knew until the last twenty-four hours of her life. In the small hours of April 29, 1945, as Allied troops raced to capture Berlin and the bunker below the Reichskanzlei where the defeated Nazi leaders were hiding, Eva Braun finally achieved her lifes ambition by becoming Hitlers wife. Next day they both swallowed cyanide and died instantly. She was young, healthy, and thirty-three years old. Based on detailed new research, this is an authoritative biography, only the second life of Eva written in English.
Review
"A new biography of Braun...is a must-read about the essence of evil and the enigmatic Eva....Although she inserts her own strong opinions on German women, feminism, German men and racism, this window into the life of German women during the 1930s and '40s is both intimate and telling." San Antonio Express-News
Review
"Lambert does utilize personal interviews with Braun's cousin, Gertraud Weisker, who spent time with Braun at the Berghof toward the end of the war." Library Journal
Review
"Willing to speculate about that which is unclear from the historical record, Lambert's exuberance for her subject makes this a fascinating read." Booklist
Synopsis
Featuring 32 pages of intimate home photos, this authoritative biography on Hitler's famous mistress is based on detailed new research and opens a new window on the life at the cold heart of the Nazi leadership.
Synopsis
Eva Braun is one of history's most famous non-entities. She has been dismissed as a racist, feather-headed shop girl, and yet sixty-two years after her death her name is still instantly recognizable.
She left her convent school at the age of seventeen and met Hitler a few months later. She became his mistress before she was twenty. How did unsophisticated little Fraulien Braun, twenty-three years his junior, hold the most powerful man in Europe in an exclusive sexual relationship that lasted from 1932 until their joint suicide? Were they really lovers, and what were the background influences and psychological tensions of the middle-class Catholic girl from Munich who shared his intimate life? How can her ordinariness and apparent decency be reconciled with an unshakeable loyalty to the monster she loved?
Synopsis
The inner lives of the top Nazis and their families, Hitlers famous mistress---ultimately his wife---comes to three-dimensional life in this penetrating and critically acclaimed biography.
She left her convent school at the age of seventeen and met Hitler a few months later. She became his mistress before age twenty. They remained in an exclusive sexual relationship from 1932 until their joint suicides at the end of the war. Hitlers chauffeur called her “the unhappiest woman in Germany.” The Führer humiliated her in public while the top Nazis wives despised her. Yet Albert Speer said: “She has been much maligned. She was very shy, modest. A mans woman: gay, gentle, and kind; incredibly undemanding . . . a restful sort of girl.” This authoritative biography, only the second life of Eva Braun written in English, based on detailed new research, opens a new window on life at the cold heart of the Nazi leadership.
About the Author
Angela Lambert was born to a German mother and an English father and grew up bilingual. From 1947-50 she lived in Germany and met her surviving German relatives for the first time, though they never talked about their experiences in wartime Hamburg. She read philosophy, politics, and economics at St. Hildas College, Oxford and worked as a civil servant, journalist, and TV reporter until 1998. Her first book, Unquiet Souls: The Indian Summer of the British Aristocracy, 1880-1918, was one of three shortlisted for the 1986 Whitbread Prize. This is her tenth book and first biography.