Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

In this world within the Reich Chancellery, with its fixed routines and formalities, where he was surrounded by his regular staff and otherwise met for the most part official visitors or guests who were mainly in awe of him, Hitler was cocooned within the role and image of the Führer which had elevated him to demi-god status. Few could behave naturally in his presence. The rough ‘old fighters’ of the Party’s early days now came less frequently. Those attending the meals in the Reich Chancellery had for the most part only known him since the nimbus of the ‘great leader’ had become attached to him.¹⁶⁸ The result only reinforced Hitler’s self-belief that he was a ‘man of destiny’, treading his path ‘with the certainty of a sleepwalker’.¹⁶⁹ At the same time, he was ever more cut off from real human contact, isolated in his realm of increasing megalomania. A ways glad to get away from Berlin, it was only while staying with the Wagners during the annual Bayreuth Festival and at his alpine retreat ‘On the mountain’ above Berchtesgaden that Hitler relaxed somewhat.

¹⁷⁰ But even at the Berghof, rituals were preserved. Hitler dominated the entire existence of his guests there too. Real informality was as good as impossible in his presence. And Hitler, for all the large numbers of people in attendance on him and paying court to him, remained impoverished when it came to real contact, cut off from any meaningful personal relationship through the shallowness of his emotions and his profoundly egocentric, exploitative attitude towards all other human beings.

It is impossible to be sure of what, if any, emotional satisfaction Hitler gained from his relationship with Eva Braun (whom he had first met in 1929 when, then aged seventeen, she worked in the office of his photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann). It could not have been much. For prestige reasons, he kept her away from the public eye. On the rare occasions she was in Berlin, she was closeted in her little room in the ‘Führer Apartment’ while Hitler attended official functions or was otherwise engaged.¹⁷¹ Even in his close circle she was not permitted to be present for meals if any important guests were there. She did not accompany Hitler on his numerous journeys, and had to stay for the most part either in his flat in Munich or at the Berghof, the only place where she could emerge as one of the extended ‘family’.¹⁷²

Even there, however, she was hidden away during receptions for important guests.¹⁷³ Hitler often treated her abysmally when she was present, frequently humiliating her in front of others.¹⁷⁴ The contrast with the olde-worlde charm — kissing hands, linking arms, cupping elbows — that he habitually showed towards pretty women in his presence merely rubbed salt in the wounds.

¹⁷⁵ That Eva had long suffered from Hitler’s neglect of her is evident from her plaintive diary entries two years earlier, in 1935.¹⁷⁶ Her deep unhappiness had culminated in her second suicide attempt in the May of that year — an overdose of sleeping tablets that amounted, like her first attempt (with a revolver) in 1932, to a cri de cœur

rather than a serious effort to kill herself.¹⁷⁷

Probably the closest that Hitler came to friendship was in his relations with Joseph Goebbels and, increasingly, with his court architect and new favourite, Albert Speer, whom in January 1937 he made responsible for the rebuilding of Berlin.¹⁷⁸ Hitler frequently sought out their company, liked their presence, was fond of their wives and families, and could feel at ease with them. The Goebbels home was a frequent refuge in Berlin. Lengthy talks with Speer about the rebuilding of the capital city amounted to the nearest thing Hitler had to a hobby, a welcome respite from his otherwise total involvement in politics. At least in Goebbels’s case there were elements of a father-son relationship.¹⁷⁹ A rare flicker of human concern could be glimpsed when Hitler asked Goebbels to stay for an extra day in Nuremberg after the Rally in September 1937, since (according to the Propaganda Minister) he did not like him flying at night.¹⁸⁰ Hitler was the dominant figure — the father figure. But he may have seen something of himself in each of his two protégés — the brilliant propagandist in Goebbels, the gifted architect in Speer.