Regards, Ivan
Posted on 02/12/2005 5:04:07 PM PST by MadIvan
HE PLUNGED Europe into an orgy of destruction, but his bedside reading was by a popular children’s author. He carried his luggage in a vast train of exquisite crocodile-skin suitcases, but would not sleep under a continental quilt.
Fascinating new insights have emerged into the private life of Adolf Hitler from his former chambermaid, who has admitted that she used to stand in his slippers while cleaning his room.
And the maid, who doubled as a minder for Eva Braun, has also said that the Führer’s mistress was sidelined by the wives of the Nazi leader’s henchmen.
Anna Plaim, who came from the Austrian village of Loosdorf, 50 miles from Vienna, was 20 years old when she was employed as a chambermaid for Hitler in 1941.
In a book to be published this April, she describes how she worked at the Berghof, Hitler’s mountain retreat in the Bavarian Alps.
Perched on the mountainside at well above 5,000ft, Hitler used the residence to impress foreign dignitaries and to dream of a glorious future for the Reich. He met Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, at the Berghof in 1938 and is believed to have planned the 1941 invasion of Russia there.
Plaim has described in the book, Bei Hitlers (At the Hitlers), how the Führer slept in a Spartan bedroom.
She said: "I recall it as being a very simple bed. Even then it surprised me that the Führer did not even have a proper down quilt over his bed. He just made do with a blanket and covering. Eva Braun, on the other hand, did have a big thick down quilt.
"In front of the bed were his slippers, [UK size 10], which by the way I slipped into myself. I can’t tell you why exactly, but I had this desire to stand in the Führer’s slippers."
In contrast to the austere bed coverings, Hitler had a luggage collection which would not look out of place in the swankiest international hotel.
Plaim said: "There was this huge cupboard filled with the most exquisite cases. They were mostly made from crocodile skin leather. They were in a huge pile almost to the ceiling."
While even the world’s dictators need their slippers and their luggage, Hitler’s choice of reading material has raised eyebrows among experts in German literature.
The book on his bedside table was written by the 19th century author Wilhelm Busch, who is most famous for his satirical illustrated children’s stories.
His most famous work is Max und Moritz, written in 1865, which features the naughty deeds of two young pranksters.
Paul Bishop, Professor of German at Glasgow University, said: "This author is a very strange choice for Adolf Hitler. It’s odd to think that he had an author most known for children’s books as his bedside reading. He was a very strange man, of course."
Eva Lehr, the assistant librarian of the Glasgow branch of the Goethe Institut, the German cultural centre, said: "If anything, this makes Hitler even more incomprehensible for me. It seems quite a contradiction that a man who did such things had books by a children’s author."
Bei Hitlers, which is being published to tie in with the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, is part of a series of books and films in Germany which have attempted to ‘humanise’ the dictator and the Third Reich. A recent film, Der Untergang (The Collapse), portrayed the ageing and disillusioned Hitler as a broken man.
The film sparked a national debate in Germany when it was released last summer about whether it was fitting for a German film to portray Hitler as anything other than a monster.
But a Jewish historian said that the humanisation of the Nazis would help to communicate the reality of the Nazi terror.
Dr Nathan Abrams, a modern history lecturer at Aberdeen University, said: "As a Jewish historian, I’m personally in favour of anything which humanises the history of the Third Reich because it demystifies what happened. There’s this notion that the Nazis were some kind of inhuman personification of evil, but the fact is that the atrocities of the Holocaust were carried out by very ordinary people. In some ways, the more we realise that these were people like us, who wore slippers and read all kinds of books, the better we can be aware of the whole horrific reality."
Plaim’s account of life at the Berghof adds weight to the suggestion that Hitler did have a sexual relationship with Eva Braun, even though the two slept in separate rooms.
Some have claimed that Hitler shunned women, and may have been homosexual.
But Plaim added that Braun was sidelined at the Berghof: "Whenever Gerda Bormann, the wife of [Nazi Party chief] Martin Bormann, was there, then she was more important. The same applied to Emmy Göring, the wife of [Luftwaffe chief] Hermann Göring. Frau Göring was the First Lady of the Reich. "
Plaim admits having been a fan of Hitler at the time, but the adoration turned to loathing after the war when she learned of the horrors of the Reich and visited Auschwitz.
She said: "As soon as visits to Auschwitz were possible I went there with my husband Karl. I can still see the huge glass windows with the piles of dentures, the masses of hair and mountains of spectacles. On one suitcase I saw the address of a Jew from St Pölten, just a short distance from where I came from.
"After that visit I was completely shattered. I can no longer even understand my enthusiasm for Hitler. I don’t know. I can’t now understand why so many people were so gripped by him."
Bei Hitlers will be published this April by Droemer/Knaur (Munich) in German. Plans for any English edition have yet to be decided.
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
You Brits have a way of putting things succinctly. Come on Ivan, tell us what you really mean.
"Some have claimed that Hitler shunned women, and may have been homosexual."
That is worth repeating.
Actually, no. The striking thing about the nazis is how childish their behavior was; I mean, "death to our enemies", "we can beat anybody" and especially "no girls allowed!" are the mindsets of an eight-year-old.
I sometimes wonder if the enduring offensiveness of nazism rests not in what they did so much as in that by acting like eight-year-olds when they had grownup powers, they exposed what little monsters all of us guys are at that age and cheapened our memories of our own childhoods.
Can you explain that poem to me in 3 sentences or less? I've never gotten it.
It's the musings of a man in love and contemplating his own mortality.
Regards, Ivan
Interesting read--thanks.
It is the major premise of Albert Speer's "Inside The Third Reich".
Speer was first Hitler's architect, then his armaments czar. He was at Der Fuehrer's side throughout the war. To his death, he never quite understood what came over him that he should have contributed to so much evil. Or that the famously sane Germans had undertaken to go collectively insane.
When it was happening, everybody and everything had seemed so...normal.
His book is a warning to other societies about the "normalcy of evil".
OK...thanks. I get the post WWI hopelessness of "The Wasteland" but Prufrock as a great poem I've never been able to understand.
Scary insight into the mind of a living, breathing satan.
The bedside reading material. Does it reflect on the man's intellect? I doubt it. He was probably trying to get to sleep. I do the same thing, not with children's stuff, but with other, lightweight thematic material. Try to put my mind in neutral.
I can't understand it either. What was it about that pathetic little man that enthralled so many?
"I do not think that they will sing for me . . . "
And the epigram at the beginning from the Inferno, about never returning alive from Hell . . .
Unrequited love is the most common type.
And the epigram at the beginning from the Inferno, about never returning alive from Hell . . .
No one said his musings were cheerful.
Regards, Ivan
Old Schikelgruber should have paid attention to the end of the book . . .
But I agree he was probably just trying to get to sleep. I have a whole bookshelf of old children's stories that make excellent bedtime reading - although my taste runs to E. Nesbit and C.S. Lewis rather than Wilhelm Busch.
And thanks for reading my typo as I thought it, not as I wrote it (I'm certainly not inclined to dither over things, I just mash the "POST" button.)
amen
Extremely interesting book, indeed. I recommend it to anyone interested in WWII.
I was struck by how bored eveyone was when Hitler went into his oft repeated after dinner monologe.
Incidently, I know a lady who lived in "The Bunker" in Berlin at the end of the war. She was the 7 year old daughter of a radio operator. Her entire family lived in the bunker, and she played regularly with the Goebel's children. She remembers clearly the day those children were poisoned, and the day the Russian troops entered the bunker. She told me that she was hugged daily by Hitler at each morning assembly. I was spell-bound by her account. It was detailed and lengthy.
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