The Berghof, Hitler's Alpine retreat near Berchtesgaden. This is where Adolf Hitler likes to hide from the public eye. With a woman at his side. Eva Braun is Hitler's mistress. The Führer keeps their relationship a secret from the German Public. Private footage shows her picking flowers with her sister and the wife of architect Albert Speer. To this day, she is regarded as an apolitical and naïve appendage of the mass murderer. But who was the blonde, also known as the bride of evil? Eva Braun was a young, blonde, quite attractive woman, sporty, very sporty. That was quite characterizing. That she did a lot of sport. And she looks very fun-loving and cheerful in the photographs. In the more than thirteen years of their relationship, the girl from a lower middle-class family became the dictator's uncompromising companion. Behind the cheerfulness, which she often put on, there was a woman who was very determined and tried to achieve her goals with incredible toughness and consistency. She was very committed and made it clear to Hitler very early on. She even stayed with him in his last resort. Eva followed Hitler into death. Caught between power and powerlessness, vain and by no means a victim, her biographer believes that Eva Braun saved herself a place in history, albeit a dubious one. One of the few film recordings showing Adolf Hitler together with his lover on the terrace of the Berghof. Eva Braun was always portrayed as a somewhat dim-witted blonde and he, on the other hand, as the leader without ties, the monster, the non-person, incapable of everyday life, incapable of having a private life and then you realize that this was not at all the case for Hitler or Eva Braun. They both had this very close relationship for more than thirteen years and in his relationship with her he did not behave unattached, but was tolerant towards her and protected her from everyone else. Everything that hinted at their existence was supposed to be destroyed after their joint suicide in 1945. However, Eva Braun's private photographs have been preserved and provide unknown insights into a rather strange relationship. He seems like the complete opposite of her. A little uptight, elderly, pinched. At first glance, they didn't seem to fit together at all. But if you look behind the scenes, you find that they had a lot of common interests. They both loved movies, they both loved opera, operetta and the thing that really constituted their relationship was their loyalty to each other. Absolute loyalty and fidelity on both sides. Many hours of film footage and dozens of photo albums were discovered in 1946 at the home of an SS man in Austria who had neglected to burn everything. The images provide a glimpse behind the scenes that was denied to Germans during the Nazi era. They convey the illusion of a harmless idyll. Officially, Hitler's mistress at the Berghof was his private secretary. She and her younger sister Gretel were enthusiastic film amateurs and documented many private scenes over the years. "The colorful film show", shot by Eva Braun, primarily serves to distract Hitler's inner circle. "Dots in the Alps" she calls this film, which was probably shot openly in the summer of 1937. Sixteen millimeter color films were new on the market back then and the Braun sisters passed the time with this unusual toy. Sitting next to Eva Braun are her friend Marion Schönemann and the wife of Hitler's party secretary Gerda Bohrmann They film and photograph each other. Gretel Braun, on the right, is just as enthusiastic about filming as her older sister. Adolf Hitler is absent most of the time. And so swimming trips with family and friends are a welcome change. Eva Braun particularly enjoys being filmed during her sporting activities. Eva and Gretel are joined at Lake Starnberg by mother Franziska and father Friedrich Braun. The Führer's mistress is twenty-five years old at the time. Little is known about Eva Braun's childhood and youth. But evidence of her early life can be found in her private photo albums. Eva Anna Paula Braun was born in Munich on February sixth, nineteen-twelve as the second of three daughters of the vocational school teacher Friedrich Braun. Eva grew up in a middle-class environment in Schwabing. Her parents made it through a serious marital crisis in the early nineteen-twenties. Eva Braun also takes the center stage on a swimming trip to Wörtsee. As every year, relatives from Yena visit Munich and accompany the Braun family on their trips. Cousin Gertraud in particular enjoys going swimming. Aunt Fanny and Uncle Fritz are particularly fond of the thirteen-year-old. For more than sixty years, Gertraud will remain silent about her relationship with the Brauns. Only her husband knows and forbids her to mention the subject. It was not until the year two thousand that Gertraud Weisker decided to reveal the family's past and affiliation with Eva Braun. Once or twice a week we met up with my aunt and went on several excursions, we for example went to Kiemsee or Ammersee. Sometimes Eva and her siblings were there, sometimes not. The contact was just purely familial, so when the cousins came, it was really nice for me. We went to one of the lakes to go swimming or had coffee and then in the evening, we separated and went back to our own place, to our grandparents. My father was never there. He made it very clear, that he didn't want to have any contact with Eva. Eva's relationship with her parents was not always as relaxed as the films suggest. Her best friend will later report that Eva spent almost her entire youth in her parents' house because the conditions at home were not very pleasant. At a Catholic boarding school, Eva learns bookkeeping and typing as well as housekeeping. In 1929, she successfully applied for an apprenticeship in a well-known Munich photo store. Heinrich Hoffmann is the owner and Adolf Hitler's personal photographer. At some point, he introduces his new employee to him with the words "our good little Fräulein Eva". Eva and Hitler meet from time to time. Hitler soon confides in one of his aides: "To have love, I keep a girl in Munich." She was seventeen and he was fourty. So he was a somewhat older bachelor, who obviously found this girl attractive. She, on the other hand, was certainly impressed by him. And so were many women at the time, and many of those in his immediate circle. Last but not least, her boss Heinrich Hoffmann played a certain role in initiating the relationship, although in which way exactly remains unclear to this day. Eva Braun's private photo albums provide clues to the true story. Nineteen thirty-one, Hitler allows her to accompany him to the Obersalzberg for the very first time. There are no photos of them together. The blonde feels neglected. She wants to bind him to her by all means. Out of desperation she pulls her father's gun on herself. As a seventeen-year-old, you have to imagine her as relatively naïve, cheerful, but at the same time very, yes, she always had an urge to be photographed. She was also exalted. She was by no means completely shy. The relationship becomes closer. Hitler tells Hoffmann that he "sees from the incident that the girl really loves him." and that he felt a moral obligation to look after her. Eva Braun's family is anything but enthusiastic about the relationship without a marriage. I was nine years old when I first heard about it, I actually read about it in the newspaper. I saw a picture of Eva and Hitler, I believe, but I don't know if Hitler was in it for sure. The caption was: Hitler's favorite is now Eva Braun, the daughter of a teacher from Munich. I showed it to my mother and then she said: that's not true, don't talk about it, it's all hogwash and I don't want anyone to speak about it any more. Because Hitler made no attempt to legitimize the relationship, Eva Braun was considered a cortisan by her relatives. Photos from that time show her as a fashionable young woman who was obviously more interested in hairstyles and clothes than politics. Cousin Gertraud remembers. She was twelve years older than me and she was an attractive young woman who I was enthusiastic about, not only about her, but also about her siblings. She was a well-groomed young woman with long fingernails and I admired her and thought she was great. It was just nice to be with my cousins, to see them, but when you're ten years old, you don't think about actually wanting to be like her. That is a very far stretched thought. We romped around a lot, just like other youngsters. I remember, she was much better at sports. She courageously jumped off towers and I didn't, I just jumped off the diving board. I looked up to her. I was admiring an older, fascinating girl. Regardless of the relationship. There was an idol, a ten-year-old with a very good athlete. The private film footage from nineteen thirty-seven only shows the fun-loving side of the Führer's beloved, who actually suffers in her relationship with Hitler. It was only two years ago that Eva Braun was particularly unhappy. Fragments of her diary from this time have been preserved. For example, on May tenth nineteen-thirty-five, she notes: "As Mrs. Hoffmann informs me lovingly, but tactlessly, he found a replacement for me." I would say, from what I know today, that she was a very depressed person. She constantly had to cover up her depression, with sport, with clothes, she constantly had to distract herself somehow from what was bothering her. That, you didn't notice in her everyday life. "He should know me so well to be sure, that I would never get in his way if he suddenly lost his heart to someone else. He musn't care about what happens to me." Eva's family didn't fail to notice the signs of the twenty-three-year-old's manic and depressive episodes. The family knew it, but I for one didn't know it. I can only explain it to myself in retrospect, that she was manic. She changed clothes over and over again. So she changed her clothes four, five, six times a day when staying at the Berghof, while there was no one to admire her, so she could only have done it for herself. She also couldn't concentrate on anything. She later asked me: "Tell me, what are you doing?" If I then started to tell her something about my math or anything else, she interrupted: "Oh come on! leave it". That was too much again. She couldn't or didn't wanted to concentrate. "Hitler only needs me for certain purposes", she whined. When the dictator is out and about, she hears nothing from him. On May twenty-eighth, nineteen thirty-five, Eva Braun makes another suicide attempt by overdosing her sleeping pills. "I have decided to take thirty-five", she notes. "This time it really should be a surefire affair. If he just at least let someone call me". The suicide attempt of Eva Braun shows that their relationship had already taken on a deeper, much more profound level at this point. That it was by no means a superficial relationship, but that it had somehow gotten out of hand. It could have been the case that he was put off by it and somehow tried to get rid of her afterwards. But no, for him it was basically a sign of her absolute faith. And it was actually exactly what he expected from his disciples. Loyalty to the point of death. That was what she was prepared to give and live. The parents shower the daughter with insulting reproaches and made it impossible for her to stay at home. Eva Braun finally moves into a house in the elegant Bogenhausen district, which Heinrich Hoffmann has bought on behalf of the Führer. Hitler's private apartment is very close by. She is finally allowed to give up her job in the photographers shop. To keep up appearances, Sister Gretel also moves into the little house with garden. In nineteen thirty-eight, Eva Braun officially becomes the owner. I didn't know who had given her the house, I only knew that she was now living there with Gretel, so I thought: "Well, they moved out". In fact, they were old enough to leave home. Apart from that, I didn't know anything about this house...I didn't know that it was a gift from Hitler. It was never talked about either. There were always lavish parties in the house. But the atmosphere is anything but relaxed, since Eva's father does not want to accept that his daughter is bringing shame on the family. The biographer finds Friedrich Braun's later claim that he had written a letter to Hitler asking his daughter to return to her parents' house less than credible. The prevailing idea has always been that her father was an opponent of the Nazis, for example. However, in an interview, Fritz Braun had to undergo after 1945 in connection with the Spruchkammer proceedings after Germanys capitulation, he stated that he had believed in the Führer to the end. So of course also in in this family, there was no opposition to the system whatsoever. There was no one in this family who resisted or even opposed this regime. They all benefited from it, starting from the mother down to the youngest sister. There is no break with the family, in fact, the opposite is the case. Eva's parents are now also welcome guests at Obersalzberg. Like their daughter, they come to terms with the fact that Hitler will not marry his partner. Franziska Braun has apparently convinced her husband that "resisting happiness, especially when it pursues you so persistently, is futile." "Any daughter can attach a husband." "But a Hitler, that's something else." With unusual severity and targeted intrigues, Eva Braun drives competitors for Hitler's favor away from Obersalzberg. Over the years, her position there becomes unchallenged. "I am the mistress of the greatest man in Germany and the world", she is reported to have once said. Officially, the existence of a woman at Hitler's side is concealed. "My bride is Germany", says the dictator. Nazi propaganda claimed that the Führer had no private life. Day and night, he devoted himself to the German people. Filming and photographing is now Eva Braun's greatest passion. Sometimes, she enthusiastically stages her lover on the terrace of the Berghof. The photographs suggest that the Führer, distant from the world and its people up there, welcomes friends and political companions. Some of the photo series have been preserved uncensored in her private albums and document Eva Braun's professional work. These films and photos that Eva Braun took of Hitler and the Berghof society were not purely of a private nature. She continued to work for Heinrich Hoffmann and she also made these films and photographs with the aim of selling them. She sold these films to Hoffmann and received a lot of money for them. In some cases twenty thousand Reichsmark for a single photographic work. She was part of the propaganda machinery, she was part of the Hoffmanns propaganda department, who staged the Führer privately. And it's also interesting how she portrayed him, namely as a caring family man, as a child-loving patron, which doesn't really fit in with the image that people had previously had of her, that she only created these images in order to dream of a previously unfulfilled family life herself. No, she was also doing business with them. And Hitler knew that too. It wasn't that he was completely clueless. It in fact was deliberate. Among the welcomed guests at the Berghof were Hitler's favorite architect Albert Speer and Joachim von Ribbentrop, who was promoted to Foreign Minister in nineteen thirty-eight. Photographer Heinrich Hoffmann and his wife were usually part of the party. Hitler basically relied to a large extent on Heinrich Hoffmann and Eva Braun to put together this Berghof party. This society basically served as a support-system for him, an emotional support-system. It was them he spent his private life with, whereas he kept his own biological family completely outside. With them he met separately. They seemingly had no business on the Berghof since nineteen thirty six. In other words, he looked for a new family, a surrogate family, consisting of the Speers, the Bormanns, the families of the doctors, the Hoffmann family and Eva Braun and her family. This circle was obviously so important to him that he repeatedly withdrew to this Berghof before crucial situations or important political decisions and made very important political moves within this circle. Invitations to the Berghof are coveted by Nazi celebrities. Even if life up there seems to have been rather suburban, some guests find the petit-bourgeois idyll thrilling. "All that remains of the social life on the Obersalzberg is the memory of a strange doctrine", Albert Speer later wrote. He goes on: "Hitler hardly ever spoke about the Jews, about his domestic political opponents or even about the necessity of setting up concentration camps. This perhaps had more to do with the banality of these conversations than with any intention." Everyone in the inner circle knew about the dictator's special circumstances. Nobody takes notice of the fact anymore, that Eva Braun plays the lady of the house on such occasions. She was not political, she hardly ever tried to influence Hitler. And as it turns out, politics was of course discussed at the Berghof, politics was discussed in the presence of the women, the ladies. They were certainly not privy to everything. They were certainly not privy to military operations. But of course there were discussions at the Berghof, for example, about how things should continue in Austria after the so-called Anschluss. Hitler's secretary Martin Bormann was also part of the inner circle. He made sure that all neighbors disappeared from the vicinity of the Berghof and that the huge area around it was turned into a specially secured restricted area for the Führer. Hitler likes to sleep in and doesn't have lunch until around fifteen o'clock. Afterwards, the dictator usually sets off to extended walks with his guests. This time, Ribbentrop is obviously the preferred conversation partner at Hitler's side. On this occasion, sensitive political issues are also discussed. The Foreign Minister is a loyal follower of the dictator and unconditionally supports his war plans. The destination is always the same. The viewpoint at Mooslahner Kopf. From here you have a wonderful view towards Salzburg in good weather. Nearby, Bormann had built a tea house for Hitler. Albert Speer later recalled that Hitler particularly enjoyed losing himself in endless soliloquies at the coffee table. Here, Eva Braun shoots a conversation with Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach from a suitable distance. Albert Speer and his family have lived in a house very close to the Berghof since 1938 and is one of the most frequent visitors. He has a friendship with Eva Braun. He will testify after 1945 that she was able to exploit her position there, just like Hitler's prominent collaborators. Speer later states that only a few individuals close to Hitler resisted the temptations of being close to power. Hitler himself offered no visible resistance to this development. Speer believes that the particular conditions of his style of rule led to Hitlers growing isolation. "He was incapable of human interaction." He goes on: "In the hundreds of conversations, questions of fashion, dog breeding, theater and film, operetta and its stars were discussed. Occasionally Hitler fell asleep over his monologues. Sometimes, the Führer's beloved managed to take unusual photos that would never have been published during the dictator's lifetime. They document the unusual relationship between the two. Eva Braun likes to play the hostess, who sets the tone according to her position. The highlight of Bohrmann's building activities on the Obersalzberg is the construction of the Eagle's Nest. A road and an elevator had to be built into the rock so that the Führer and his entourage could reach the vantage point at an altitude of eighteen hundred meters. Hitler is rarely seen there. He allegedly suffers from a fear of heights. Eva Braun, however, likes to come here. She is much more exuberant when the dictator is not present. A series of photos shows Hitler with Eva Braun in the Eagle's Nest. Sitting at his side is Magda Göbbels, the wife of the propaganda minister. She has fled to the Berghof with her children and plays the role of the betrayed and indignant wife. She complains to the Führer that her husband is having an affair with the Czech actress Lida Barowa and is seeking a three-way marriage. Hitler is furious. He summons Josef Göbbels to the Obersalzberg. It is unclear whether this film footage of Eva Braun shows Göbbels' arrival that day or another visit. Only a word of power from the Führer can persuade Göbbels to separate from his lover. Hitler forbids the propaganda minister to have any further contact with the actress. The marriage with Magda had to be continued for reasons of state. Göbbels obeys. This photo from the New Year's Eve party in 1938 documents the Führer's marriage-like relationship with Eva Braun. Hitler, a vegetarian, was given his own menu, which Eva Braun pasted into her photo album. The results of the dictator's led casting are not recorded. The Year Nineteen thirty nine marks the turning point in Hitler's reign. Since coming to power, he has gone from success to success, arming Germany and incorporating the Saar region, the Sudetenland and the whole of Austria into the Third Reich. If he had died at that time, even his enemies believe, he would have been the greatest German since But the dictator is determined to go to war. And so, from this point on, his unstoppable downfall takes place. Although Eva Braun is a good skier, Hitler does not like it when she skis since he is afraid of injuries and broken legs. But this one time, when he wasn't present he gave her eight days' leave to go skiing in Austria with Albert Speer. There, Speer later recalls, "she danced unrecognized and with great passion until the early hours of the morning with young officers." The two shared a mutual dislike of Martin Bohrmann. According to Speer, because of his "arrogant, clumsy manner, with which he mistreated nature and cheated on his wife." On easter nineteen thirty nine Eva Braun films Speer and Bormann's numerous offspring on an Easter egg hunt. The children live isolated from the outside world on the Obersalzberg. It is not known whether Eva Braun had a desire to have children. Rumor has it that she once underwent an abortion in Munich. There is no evidence of this. Speer felt sympathy for the unfortunate woman. "Very intelligent people should take on a primitive and stupid wife", Hitler once said in Evas presence, according to the architect's memoirs. He remembers him going on: "Worst case, if I had a woman talking about my work." "I want to have my peace and quiet in my free time." At this point, the dictator of Nazi Germany prefers to rule from the Berghof. This is where he draws up decisive political and military plans. He makes laws and decrees. It is possible that the strong relationship with Eva Braun, who was always at Obersalzberg when Hitler was there with his court, played a role in this. An aide later recalled that it had become increasingly difficult to obtain decisions from the head of state from the Berghof. On the mountain, the Führer was usually inaccessible even to representatives of the party and government. Often, only cultural events lured Hitler, an artist who had been prevented from being one, out of his government headquarters on Obersalzberg. In June of nineteen thirty nine, due to the seventy-fifth birthday of the composer Richard Strauss, he made an unplanned trip to Vienna. On the way back to Berchtesgaden, Hitler visits places from his childhood. Eva Braun films his arrival at the elementary school in Fischelhamm near Linz. In his book "Mein Kampf", Hitler claims that he was already "a ring-leader back then, when the village boys played cops and robbers." His class teacher would later remember him as "a thin, pale youngster who disliked learning, neglected his talents and was unable to conform to the schools rules." Back at the Berghof, the dictator plans the forthcoming war against Poland. Meanwhile, the Braun family has decided to take an unusual sea voyage. Mother Franziska has herself filmed visiting a travel agency in Munich, where she books a trip to the North for herself and her daughters Eva and Gretel. Father Friedrich will not accompany them. Shortly afterwards, the small travel group arrives in Hamburg, where they will board the cruise ship Milwaukee. The Brauns travel through the harbor on a barge, Eva is filming. Like the Robert Ley, the Milwaukee is used by the Nazis organization "Strength through Joy", which enables ordinary people to go on vacation. The 'former North Atlantic passenger liner', with room for six hundred guests, is now extremely popular as a cruise ship. This time, the Norwegian fjords are the destination. On board, Eva Braun is also a dapper figure. She buys her costumes from expensive tailors in Berlin. Albert Speer, on the other hand, describes her in his memoirs as "dressed simply and inconspicuously. She did, however, wear strikingly cheap jewelry." The first-class guests pass the time by the pool. Younger sister Gretel is always in the camera's eye. Shore excursion in the north of Norway. Of course, the locals don't know that the mistress of the dictator from Nazi Germany is one of the tourists. Foreign publications repeatedly state that Hitler was in a relationship with a certain Evie Braun. But apparently there is a lack of reliable information. Journalist Robert Arndt, for example, writes in a booklet titled "The women in Hitler's life in New York": "Evie Braun is hardly the typical Aryan glamor girl. Yes, she is blonde and has blue eyes, but she is strong and her figure is plump." "She fits the image of a middle-class German housewife more than the idea of a First Lady of the Reich." "Evie was not always the conservative housewife she is now. In the early days of her relationship with Hitler, she was known for the drinks she served the Nazis and even the Führer." "She also had a talent for making perfume, and it is said that she mixed erotic scents to attract the Führer." This description is obviously fictitious, and Nazi censorship ensures that such stories do not reach Germany in the first place. Gretel Braun relaxes by the pool in a dressy two-piece. Her function is entirely tailored to the needs of her big sister. She acts as companion and chaperone. Another highlight of the trip? Lobster is served on deck for lunch. The Braun family languishes in luxury, while the daughter's companion at home is on the verge of plunging Europe into a new war. At Obersalzberg on June seventeenth, nineteen thirty-nine, Hitler receives the special envoy of the King of Saudi Arabia for a meeting followed by tea. When diplomatic appointments are scheduled at the Berghof, Eva Braun is banished to her chambers. She even has to stay in her room when party leaders visit. Albert Speer believes that Hitler "found her socially acceptable only to a limited extent." The large reception hall is also off-limits to her mistress on such days. If the high guests stay longer, she even has to move to the nearby house of the unloved Martin Bormann at times. Sometimes she manages to shoot scenes like this one from a window on the second floor. Hitler waits for a visitor on the stairs of the Berghof. A guard of honor from the SS has arrived. During his political rise, it had always been clear to Hitler that Germany's greatness could only be restored through a new war in which land had to be conquered. This would not be handed over voluntarily, it would have to be taken. There would be a war. And this war was to begin at a time when he would be physically able to fight it. Any thought that he might fall ill or die prematurely made him speed up his war plans. He wanted to start it sooner rather than later. For Hitler, war was nothing to be ashamed of or to be avoided. His first victim would be Poland. On the twelfth of August 1939, Eva Braun had to disappear from the scene again, from a safe distance, she films a unit of the SS Leibstandarte that has lined up to receive the Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano, who was negotiating Italy's entry into the war with Hitler. It is unclear whether Heinrich Hoffmann took this photo of the visitor from close up. Eva Braun comments on it in her photo album as follows. "There are forbidden things to see up there. Me. Hitler informs the ally of his decision to attack Poland. Eva Braun calls these snapshots "Departure from the guest room perspective". During this time, SS chief Heinrich Himmler and his associates Reinhard Heydrich and Karl Wolf are filmed on the terrace of the Berghof. The dictator repeatedly discusses details of war, terror and mass murder with his henchmen at Obersalzberg. Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop regularly took part in the discussions about Hitler's war plans. While peace in Europe hangs by a thread, the Führer isolates himself from the ministerial bureaucracy and gathers his closest confidants around him. The dictator has prepared a special coup. Ribbentrop is to travel to Moscow to conclude a non-aggression pact with Stalin. Heinrich Himmler and his enforcer Reinhard Heydrich have prepared the brutal suppression of Poland in every detail. They report back during their visit to the Berghof. So-called task forces from the security police and security service are to "liquidate the leading Polish", as Hitler wants to occupy the country permanently. The dictator nervously waits for the redemptive news from Moscow on august twenty three nineteen thirtynine. Eva Braun is allowed to be there that day. She filmed and photographed. "And then Ribbentrop went to Moscow", she captions her professional photo reportage. When Ribbentrop confirms the pact with the devil, the dictator rejoices, "it will hit like a bomb." Further photos show Hitler, Bormann and Goebbels when the sensation is officially announced. "And the Führer hears the news on the radio", comments Eva Braun. But still, Poland does not want to negotiate. Eva Braun's biographer is certain that the women were aware of the historical significance of the dramatic days at the Berghof. This situation, shortly before the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact at the Berghof shows how much all those present, who belonged to Hitler's social circle, as well as Göbbels or Speer, were feverishly involved and how much they participated in what was happening politically. Eva Braun photographed the situation when Ribbentrop was in Moscow and the signing was about to be announced. This tense situation at the Berghof. And that shows, of course, that the women were all in on it. It's inevitable when you spend evenings and weekends together, or even weeks together, that you naturally talk about it. That was also of very, very decisive importance. There was no separation between Hitler's private life and his political life. They always belonged together. Himmler's assassination squads were also given a free hand in the event of a military conflict with Poland, since the foreign minister's agreements in Moscow guaranteed that Stalin's Red Army would not intervene, but would only occupy and annex the eastern part of Poland. Obersalzberg therefore played a particularly important role on the road to the Second World War. All attempts to stop Hitler on his way to disaster are doomed to failure. Nine days later, the dictator declares war on Poland. Eva Braun is said to have wept when he declared in the Reichstag, "From now on, my whole life belongs to my people. I want to be nothing other than the first soldier of the German Reich. I have once again put on the coat that was once the most sacred and dearest to me. I will only take it off after victory, or I will not live to see the end." "That means war", Eva Braun is supposed to have said to her older sister Ilse on that first September nineteen thirtynine. "He will go away. And what will become of me now?" According to Ilse Braun's recollections, she is to have declared, "If anything happens to him, I'll die too." That same evening, Eva Braun arranged for enough food and drink to be brought to the Berghof storage rooms. She is supposed to have said that there must be a lot of supplies. "We will need them for a long time."
