14. “More About Evi,” Time, December 18, 1939. See also “Hitler’s Girl Evi Braun Takes His Picture,” Life, November 6, 1939; Richard Norburt, “Is Hitler Married?” Saturday Evening Post, December 16, 1939.
15. “Spring in the Axis,” Time, May 15, 1939. It says there: “To her friends Eva Braun confided that she expected her friend to marry her within a year.”
16. Bella Fromm, Blood & Banquets: A Berlin Social Diary (New York, 1990 [1st ed., London, 1943]), pp. 255 and 303. Bella Steuerman Fromm wrote for Ullstein Verlag (including for B.Z. Am Mittag) and The Times (London) since the mid-1920s. Her contacts extended all the way to Schleicher and Papen. See Stephan Malinowski, Vom König zum Führer: Deutscher Adel und Nationalsozialismus (Berlin, 2003), p. 556; also Louis P. Lochner, Always the Unexpected: A Book of Reminiscences (New York, 1956). Another source for such inside information was Sigrid Schultz (pseudonym “John Dickson”), Berlin correspondent for the Chicago Daily Tribune, who knew Hermann Göring personally and interviewed Hitler many times. On the monitoring and censorship of foreign reporters, see Peter Longerich, Propagandisten im Krieg: Die Presseabteilung des Auswärtigen Amtes unter Ribbentrop (Munich, 1987), pp. 290ff.
17. See “Weisung des Führers und Obersten Befehlshabers der Wehrmacht, Geheime Kommandosache, Berlin, 21. Oktober 1938,” in Michael Freund, Weltgeschichte der Gegenwart in Dokumenten: Geschichte des Zweiten Weltkrieges, vol. 1 (Freiburg, 1954), pp. 302ff.
18. See Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945, p. 172.
19. See Rainerf Schmidt, Der Zweite Weltkrieg: Die Zerstörung Europas (Berlin, 2008), p. 13.
20. See Hans-Ulrich Thamer, Der Nationalsozialismus, pp. 319ff.
21. See Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, pp. 169f.
22. Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, p. 169. The circle around Hitler was thus neither “unsuspecting” nor “morally indifferent to his real plans,” as Sereny writes in her biography of Speer (Albert Speer, p. 223).
23. See Speer, Albert Speer: Die Kransberg-Protokolle 1945, pp. 224f. and 227. While the “negotiations with Russia progressed,” Speer claimed at that point, there were “vague rumors” on the Obersalzberg “that something was going on with Russia” (p. 227). In Inside the Third Reich, p. 162, Speer writes that Hitler had already, for “weeks before” in “long talks with his four military adjutants tried to arrive at definite plans.” In the German edition of his memoir, Speer specifies that talks “often went on for hours” [Erinnerungen, pp. 176–177]—“Hitler tried to arrive at definite plans.” See also Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945, pp. 283 and 290: Speer, according to Kershaw, “did not discuss foreign-policy details” with Hitler. See also Lars Lüdicke, Griff nach der Weltherrschaft: Die Aussenpolitik des Dritten Reiches 1933–1945 (Berlin, 2009), pp. 124f.
24. Speer, Inside the Third Reich, p. 162.
25. Goebbels, diary entry, August 24, 1939, in Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I, vol. 7, p. 75.
26. Dietrich, 12 Jahre mit Hitler, pp. 60f.
27. See snapshots from Eva Braun’s photo diary, reproduced in Gun, Eva Braun, after p. 176. However, Gun falsely claims that these scenes took place in the Chancellery. Eva Braun apparently sold the negatives to Hoffmann, since all of the images can be found in the inventory of the Hoffmann Photo Archive in the Bavarian State Library [Bayerische Staatsbibliothek]; they are not labeled there as photographs by Eva Braun. In this regard see also Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, pp. 182f.
28. Press statement in Fritz Sänger, Politik der Täuschungen: Missbrauch der Presse im Dritten Reich: Weisungen, Informationen, Notizen 1933–1939 (Vienna, 1975), p. 360.
29. Quoted from Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945, pp. 293ff. Cf. Franz Halder, Kriegstagebuch: Tägliche Aufzeichnungen des Chefs des Generalstabes des Heeres 1939–1942, ed. Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, vol. 1 (Stuttgart, 1963f.), p. 25.
30. See Lüdicke, Griff nach der Weltherrschaft, p. 127.
31. See Sigmund, Die Frauen der Nazis, p. 273.
32. See Joseph Goebbels, “Ansprache an die Danziger Bevölkerung anlässlich der Danziger Gaukulturwoche am 17. Juni 1939, Danzig, Balkon des Staatstheaters,” in Goebbels Reden 1932–1945, ed. Helmut Heiber (Bindlach, 1991 [1st ed., Düsseldorf, 1971/1972]), pp. 334f. See also Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, p. 182. According to Below, Hitler expressed himself in similar terms on the afternoon of August 23. See likewise Jeffrey Herf, “ ‘Der Krieg und die Juden’: Nationalsozialistische Propaganda im Zweiten Weltkrieg,” in Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 9.2, ed. Jörg Echternkamp for the Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Munich, 2005), pp. 173f.
33. See Speer, Inside the Third Reich, pp. 163–164. Speer gives no departure date here (“a few days later”). Cf. Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, p. 184, which says that Hitler flew to Berlin on the afternoon of August 24; Goebbels, diary entry, August 25, 1939, in Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil I, vol. 7, p. 76: “… to Ainring by car. Flight to Berlin. The Führer in very high spirits.” On Eva Braun’s presence, see Gun, Eva Braun, pp. 180f.
34. See Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, p. 192 (image on the following page).
35. Adolf Hitler, “Erklärung der Reichsregierung,” in Verhandlungen des Reichstages, 4. Wahlperiode 1939, Band 460. Stenographische Berichte 1939–1942, 3. Sitzung, Freitag, 1. September 1939. Cf. Gun, Eva Braun, p. 181.
36. See Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945, p. 221; “Weisung für den Angriff auf Polen vom 31. August 1939,” in Hitler, Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945; Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen (Wiesbaden, 1973), pp. 1,299f.
37. Hitler, “Erklärung der Reichsregierung, 1. September 1939,” p. 48.
38. Quoted from Gun, Eva Braun, p. 181. On Hitler’s appearance, see Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant, p. 195.
39. Christa Schroeder to Johanna Nusser, Berlin, September 3, 1939 (original), in ED 524, Institut für Zeitgeschichte (IfZ) Munich. Cf. Andreas Hillgruber, “Zum Kriegsbeginn im September 1939,” in Kriegsbeginn 1939. Entfesselung oder Ausbruch des Zweiten Weltkriegs? ed. Gottfried Niedhart; Wege der Forschung, vol. 374 (Darmstadt, 1976), pp. 173ff. Hitler, Speer recalled, “tersely took his leave of the ‘courtiers’ who were remaining behind” (Inside the Third Reich, p. 167).
40. See Franz W. Seidler and Dieter Zeigert, Die Führerhauptquartiere: Anlagen und Planungen im Zweiten Weltkrieg, 2nd ed. (Munich, 2001), pp. 260 and 271.
41. See Dietrich, 12 Jahre mit Hitler, p. 223; Rochus Misch, Der letzte Zeuge: “Ich war Hitlers Telefonist, Kurier und Leibwächter” (Munich and Zürich, 2008), p. 96.