High in the Bavarian Alps, on the Obersalzberg, Adolf Hitler kept a private mountain retreat called the Berghof. Around it lay the homes of his top ministers—figures like Martin Bormann, Hermann Göring, and Albert Speer—along with guesthouses for visiting officers and dignitaries, sprawling SS barracks for his personal protection, and all the supporting infrastructure of a heavily guarded Nazi alpine compound. Hitler tried to spend as much time there as possible, but the demands of war frequently pulled him away to his Eastern Front headquarters at the Wolf’s Lair, to Berlin, or to other Führer headquarters. The one person who was almost always present was Hitler’s mistress, Eva Braun, a woman the staff and locals quietly called the queen of the Obersalzberg.
Braun lived in a lavishly appointed part of the Berghof, kept largely hidden from public view. Very few Germans even knew she existed. In that secluded mountain world, she built a life of luxury with her family and friends, swimming in the local lakes in summer, skiing in winter, and enjoying parties at Hitler’s many tea houses, including the famous Eagle’s Nest. Her relationship with Hitler began in 1929, when she was working as an assistant to the Nazi photographer Heinrich Hoffmann.
She was twenty-three years younger than Hitler, who had a known fondness for younger women. She became closer to him after the presumed suicide of Geli Raubal, Hitler’s half-niece and possible lover. Eva first truly caught Hitler’s attention when she attempted suicide with her father’s pistol only a year later. That act secured his focus, and by late 1932, the two had become lovers.
A second suicide attempt in May 1935, this time with sleeping pills, convinced Hitler to give her a Munich apartment, and later a villa, but he continued to keep their relationship a secret from the German public. Eva’s family circumstances remained modest. Her father, Friedrich Braun, was a schoolteacher and reserve army officer, and her mother, Franziska, had worked as a seamstress before her marriage. Her older sister, Ilse, kept her distance from politics and generally stayed away from the Obersalzberg, working first as an assistant to a Jewish surgeon and later in Albert Speer’s architectural office in Berlin.
She died childless in Munich in 1979. Her younger sister, Gretl, by contrast, was drawn deep into the Nazi social circle. She too worked for Heinrich Hoffmann and became an eager photographer. She enjoyed the lavish lifestyle her sister’s relationship afforded her, flirting with military officers and partying freely.
Gretl’s love life would become entangled with some of the most powerful men in Hitler’s inner circle, with his approval constantly hanging over her relationships. Her first serious romance was with Fritz Darges, an SS adjutant to Hitler who had fought in France and Russia. Despite Hitler pressuring Darges to marry Gretl, the SS officer refused. The relationship collapsed, and Darges’s refusal had dramatic consequences.
On July 18, 1944, just two days before the famous bomb plot against Hitler, a fly wandered into a military conference at the Wolf’s Lair and landed on Hitler’s shoulder. Irritated, Hitler ordered Darges to shoo it away. Darges, perhaps jokingly, replied that since it was a fly, it was the air force’s responsibility, and that Hitler’s Luftwaffe adjutant should deal with it. Hitler immediately dismissed him and transferred him to a fighting position on the Eastern Front.
The true reason for Darges’s downfall was likely his refusal to marry Gretl. He survived the war and died in 2009 at the age of ninety-six. Gretl next became involved with Walther Hewel, a veteran Nazi and a popular figure in Hitler’s close circle. Hewel had served as a diplomat under Joachim von Ribbentrop and acted as Ribbentrop’s liaison at the Führer’s headquarters.
Around forty years old and unmarried, he was the life of the party, and Hitler wanted him settled down. Hewel originally wanted to marry Sigrid von Laffert, a woman Hitler approved of, but she eventually married a German aristocrat stationed in Madrid. Hitler pressed Hewel to marry Gretl, even reportedly promising to make him ambassador to Rome if he did. Hewel instead married another woman, and Hitler expelled him from his inner circle before eventually forgiving him.
Hewel stayed with Hitler until the very end in Berlin. After Hitler’s suicide, Hewel joined a group fleeing the bunker but failed to escape the ruined city. On May 2, 1945, when Red Army soldiers came to capture the group in a brewery, Hewel shot himself. Gretl’s next relationship was with SS General Hermann Fegelein, an ambitious and arrogant former jockey who had risen high in the Nazi hierarchy.
During the invasion of Poland in 1939, Fegelein’s regiment had been involved in the massacre of 1,700 civilians in the Kampinos Forest. He was formally reprimanded for looting after sending stolen goods, including trucks, Mercedes-Benz cars, a Skoda cabriolet, food, coffee, clothing, and expensive furs, back to the SS cavalry school. Himmler protected him from trial. During the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Fegelein’s regiment fought numerous battles and was also tasked with hunting down and killing Jews, partisans, and undesirables in Belarus.
His unit was responsible for the deaths of 13,788 Jews and another 3,500 men classified as partisans. Wounded by a sniper in December 1941, he later commanded the 8th SS Cavalry Division Florian Geyer. After being wounded again in October 1943, he was appointed as Himmler’s SS liaison at Hitler’s court. He was popular, conceited, and handsome, and he wore the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves.
He became close to Martin Bormann, Hitler’s cunning private secretary, joining his regular drinking sessions. Even Eva Braun noticed him, confessing to a friend that she had fallen in love with him, though she was careful not to cross Hitler. Fegelein, a womanizer, flirted with all the Braun sisters but was equally careful to maintain the right relationship with the Führer. Soon enough, he began a relationship with Gretl.
He cheated on her both before and after their marriage and even tried to seduce Hitler’s female secretaries. Many in Hitler’s circle despised the arrogant SS general. Albert Speer called him one of the most repulsive people in Hitler’s entourage. Fegelein performed his duties well and showed deep respect for Hitler, but he did not hesitate to tell others that he was far too good for the job and was openly bored with his responsibilities.
Despite all this, Fegelein decided to marry Gretl, most likely because it placed him in an unmatched position of power and influence directly beside the Führer. He was a realist with a strong survival instinct. The wedding on June 3, 1944, was the grandest event on the social calendar of the inner circle, meticulously planned by Eva Braun. The main ceremony took place in the Marble Hall of the Mirabell Palace in Salzburg.
It was a pagan-style ceremony rather than a Christian one, favored by senior SS officers. Heinrich Himmler himself officiated, and Martin Bormann was among the witnesses. The newlyweds drove to the Berghof to pay their respects to the Führer, where a reception was held in the Great Hall, with its famous picture windows overlooking the valley and mountains. The celebration ran into the evening.
After the reception, the Fegeleins and their guests, except Hitler, rode to the Eagle’s Nest, driven up the mountain by Bormann himself, then ascended Hitler’s luxury elevator into the interior of the mountain to the Kehlstein Mountain Diplomatic Reception House. There they celebrated for three days. The main hall of the Eagle’s Nest, where the wedding party took place, still exists much as it was then, now serving as a restaurant. The party came to an abrupt end on June 6, 1944, when word arrived that the Allies had landed in Normandy.
Hitler left the Berghof for the Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia on July 14 and never returned. Fegelein went with him. Six days later, Count von Stauffenberg planted a bomb in the Wolf’s Lair conference room, nearly killing Hitler. Fegelein was present and suffered a minor injury to his left thigh.
In the final months of the regime, Fegelein remained on Hitler’s staff, moving between various Führer headquarters and seeing his pregnant wife only rarely. By January 1945, after the failure of the Ardennes offensive and the massive Soviet winter offensive, Hitler moved to his last headquarters in Berlin. On January 19, Gretl arrived at the Reich Chancellery with Eva Braun. On February 9, Hitler sent the two women to Berchtesgaden for their safety, but Eva eventually returned to stay with Hitler.
As Soviet troops closed in on the city in late April 1945, Fegelein’s situation turned dire. Trapped in the Führerbunker with a mentally unstable Hitler who had ruled out any escape from the capital, he decided to save himself. On April 27, three days before Hitler’s suicide, Fegelein attempted to flee Berlin without permission. When Hitler called for him during a conference, he was nowhere to be found.
A squad of Hitler’s bodyguards went to an apartment in the city and found the general drunk in bed with his mistress. She escaped through the bathroom window, but Fegelein was arrested and returned to the bunker along with his suitcase full of cash, civilian clothes, and false identity papers. Eva Braun pleaded with Hitler to forgive him because he was the father of her unborn sister’s child, and Hitler did, for the moment. But on the evening of April 28, news arrived that Heinrich Himmler had been conducting secret peace negotiations with the Western Allies.
Hitler flew into a rage and ordered Himmler’s arrest. Himmler was free in northern Germany with loyal guards, but Hitler could at least take revenge on Fegelein, Himmler’s SS liaison, who was assumed to have been complicit in his boss’s betrayal. Fegelein was brought before a hastily convened court-martial in the bunker, convicted of desertion, and sentenced to death. His medals and decorations were stripped from his uniform, his shoulder boards were torn off, and he was dragged upstairs by Hitler’s bodyguards in utter humiliation.
In the Reich Chancellery garden, amid Soviet shelling, an SS officer shot him in the neck. His body was kicked into a shell crater and hastily covered with dirt and debris. The following day, April 29, 1945, a second Nazi wedding took place, this time between Hitler and Eva Braun. It ended with both of their deaths in the bunker the next afternoon.
Gretl Fegelein gave birth to a daughter on May 5, 1945, at the Obersalzberg, naming the girl Eva in memory of her sister. Gretl later married a businessman, Kurt Berlinghoff, in 1954, and lived quietly in Munich. Her daughter Eva committed suicide in 1975 after her boyfriend died in a car accident.
Gretl Berlinghoff died in October 1987 in Steingaden, Bavaria, at the age of seventy-two.