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.
Read "Inside the Third Reich: The diary of Albert Speers".
I know people who knew Hitler personally. People were indeed captivated by him. They all said he could rivit one in place with his eyes. He was a strange bird, indeed.
Fascinating! What insights she would have.
Whenever someone would describe Clinton as "charismatic", I would recall Speer's advice: listen to what they're saying!
Charles Manson's followers said similar things about him. And so did the followers of Jim Jones. I've never understood how people can allow themselves to be manipulated and controlled like that.
I have never read Max und Moritz but I have heard that it Had a strong element of sadism and cruelty running though it
Incidently, I know a lady who lived in "The Bunker" in Berlin at the end of the war
Interestingly, I too know a woman who was the child of an enormously wealthy German family (she was in grade school - boarding school during the war) whose fortune, including art collection, was saved by virtue of her relative's connection to the Third Reich. She angrily states emphatically that everyone knew what was happening when Jewish children were taken away, but that no one did anything. It is fascinating to hear and see her bottled up anger at what she, as a child, assimilated as a great injustice. This has never left her, although she has been in the U.S. for years.
And you did. :-)
But unrequired love is the most fun.
My theory: the Germans have a history of a special kind of brilliance in everything from music to aeronautical engineering, a brilliance not matched by any other nationality in the world. When they do something, they go all the way, good or bad. Lesser nations might have sloppily massacred a few thousand, or even a few hundred thousand, in a fit of madness. Not Germany -- by God, if they're going to go crazy, they're going to go crazy the same way they do everything else, and take it completely over the top.
Another point I think is VERY important, more important than anything else. Hitler was a fluke. He was in the "right" place at the "right" time -- amidst a brilliant, productive, disciplined, and after WWI, horrifically demoralized people (we can thank France for that!) who were ripe for mischeif.
Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, and Marx, on the other hand, abused and slaughtered "undesirables" on such a large scale as to make Hitler look small time, and they were not flukes. On the contrary, their evil existence and consequences were all part of carrying out the Communistic creed of "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." I find the existence of those four far more horrifying and inexplicable than Hitler.
Hitler was 120% dedicated to blaming someone else for Germany's woes...the Jews, the French, whoever. The Germans had lost out on the colonialism thing and they were mad. Newly unifed, the German states were ready to colonize...but too late...the time had passed in history for that. They would have gone for anyone who could give fiery speeches about German "virtues". Hitler just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
< g >
I mean, "death to our enemies", "we can beat anybody" and especially "no girls allowed!"
Sounds like the little rascals He-Man Womanhaters Club.
There was a program on the local PBS station last night which I came across by chance, about the capture of Berlin in 1945, told from the perspective of surviving German soldiers, who were mostly pretty young at the time. One of them said that he didn't know about the concentration camps until after the war. The Russian soldiers' behavior was so atrocious (mass killings and mass rape) that the Germans kept fighting on even when they realized the war was lost: "enjoy the war, because the peace will be worse." I was surprised that they mentioned the rapes by the Red Army...after all, it was PBS.
Good post, bro.
I have a book on the managers of the concentration camps, and it makes the same point others have made here about how very commonplace they were. They were men like many others, but the Nazis put them in snappy uniforms and gave them a chance to Be Somebody.
Of course, in the end they were hanged.
"To Be, or To Do." -- John Boyd's question; you can only pick one.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
I too had a friend who knew Hitler personally. Indeed, he was decorated by him. All his life, he commented on the man's eyes and force of character.
Evil only has the strength that good yields to it, but as it happens, that's quite a lot.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
That would be pure conjecture on my part. :-)
I just don't see how people found his ranting appealing. He seemed to be out of control during his speeches. That would have frightened me. I get very uncomfortable when liberals do it now, so it's difficult for me to understand why so many Germans liked it at the time.
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