Hitler's Last Hostages by Mary M. Lane

Author:Mary M. Lane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2019-09-09T16:00:00+00:00

Hitler, now secure in his choice of Posse’s successor, spent the spring of 1943 at the Berghof. To his generals the war was now a defensive struggle, but Hitler remained optimistic. At his mountain retreat, the Führer and his entourage mixed military and cultural meetings with ample leisure time.

Hitler commonly went to bed late and slept in. His valet, Heinz Linge, would begin the leisurely wake-up process by placing his boss’s newspapers and dispatches on a chair outside his bedroom at around eleven o’clock. Hitler would retrieve the papers, read them for approximately an hour, and descend the stairs for “breakfast” around 1 p.m. Lunch took place at 2:30 p.m., with the Führer’s preferred meal being a gruel of puréed linseed, granola, and vegetable juice. Occasionally, he treated himself to a baked potato with curds and unrefined linseed oil. Sitting with him at a table decorated with fresh flowers that Eva Braun would pick outside, his guests enjoyed traditional German fare: a standard meal was braised beef marinated in vinegar and herbs, mashed potatoes, and a simple salad.7 In the past, Hitler had enjoyed a lunchtime beer or glass of wine, but having gained weight, he now abstained from alcohol.8

Eva Braun considered herself the Berghof’s homemaker. “It was almost a family environment, with grown-ups sunning themselves, children running around madly and, between them, yapping dogs,” noted Hitler’s secretary, Traudl Junge.9 That Braun and Hitler were romantically connected was an open secret among his close confidantes, a fact kept quiet from the public. Even around Hitler’s entourage, the pair refrained from even the slightest display of physical affection. Braun was, however, the only person allowed even gently to tease Hitler. When she joked about his spartan choice of food, he countered that she should actually eat more to maintain the traditionally feminine, curvaceous figure befitting an Aryan woman. “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 opposite what a man likes,” the Führer said at one meal.10

In the afternoons, Hitler would draw sketches of landscapes and plans for the Führermuseum.11 Ensconced in his office, he would hear Negus and Stasi, Eva Braun’s Scottish Terriers, racing through tall grass on the hillsides barking at deer and other wildlife so tame that they only moved aside when the Scotties came extremely close.12 In the early evenings, the group often played in Hitler’s bowling alley. He kept the facility’s existence a closely guarded secret. “If the bowling associations get wind of it,” he told his valet, Linge, “they will make me honorary president of every club.”13

After dinners, the group gathered in the living room, a large, open area with a massive bookcase holding encyclopedias, rarely perused Western classics, and copies of Mein Kampf, which they picked up even more infrequently than the classics. The walls were covered in medieval tapestries; a portrait by Anselm Feuerbach of his Italian lover, Anna Risi, nicknamed “Nanna,” hung over the hearth.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.