Eva Braun had a room in Hitler’s apartment too, but she seldom used it, and never while Hitler was in Munich. There was another guestroom in the right-hand part of the apartment, which I used as an office when I had some typing to do, and Hitler’s bedroom must have been somewhere as well. I never entered it.
I had been summoned because Hitler had something to dictate. Unfortunately I can’t remember for the life of me what it was. But anyway it wasn’t anything long and difficult. When I’d finished my work I took it into Hitler’s study. He was sitting at his desk when I came in, and I waited standing beside him while he read through what I had typed and corrected it. Suddenly without looking up, he said, ‘You’re engaged to Junge, wouldn’t you like to get married straight away before he goes to join the troops?’
Now I was in a fix! For a moment I looked at him dumbfounded, because I’d had absolutely no intention of committing myself so firmly to the relationship when Hans and I had known each other for such a short time. I tried desperately to find some good argument against the idea, but nothing much occurred to me. Finally I said, ‘Oh, my Führer, why should we marry now? It won’t make any difference. My husband to be is going to the front and I’ll go on working for you just the same anyway, and we don’t need to get married for that.’ I was wondering why the Führer should take any interest in my marriage. Love isn’t an affair of state, this was my own private business, and I was quite annoyed to have such a VIP meddling with it. All the same, I was surprised to hear Hitler say, ‘But you two are in love, so it’s best to get married at once! And you know, once you’re married I can protect you any time if someone tries pestering you. But not if you’re only engaged. And you’ll still be working for me even if you’re married.’ I almost laughed out loud. How very respectable! But I’m afraid I also felt very uncomfortable, because how could I explain to him that love on its own isn’t always reason enough to get married straight away? I said no more, and told myself this wasn’t important and he would soon probably forget all about it again. I told Hans Junge what the Führer had said to me, and he too laughed out loud. ‘That’s typical of him◦– when he scents the faintest possibility of a marriage he’ll do his best to encourage it. But never mind, he won’t have taken it as seriously as all that.’ I decided that one day I’d have my revenge and ask Hitler why he hadn’t been happily married himself long ago. After all, he said he loved Eva Braun. But at the time I was still too shy and too young to say such things.
At lunch time Hitler drove to a small café where he had often eaten in the past, the Osteria Bavaria in Schellingstrasse. The proprietor, a man with the very Bavarian name of Deutelmoser, had been informed just before our arrival and had his best suit on when we entered the place. The main lunch hour was over by now, and there were only a few guests sitting at some of the tables in the café. She designed and produced tapestries, interiors officers, wondering what precautions were taken for Hitler’s security in such cases. But either they were particularly intelligent officers or genuine customers, because they acted entirely normally, looked with interest at the distinguished guest, and some of them left quite soon.
The least comfortable table, right at the back in the corner, was the one Hitler regularly occupied. We were only a small party of six, Hitler with two adjutants and Professor Morell, Professor Troost and me. Professor Troost was the widow of the late architect who had built the House of German Art. Hitler had thought very highly of him, and Professor Troost, who herself was an interior designer, was carrying on some of her husband’s work. She designed and produced tapestries, interiors, mosaics and so on for the Führer. For instance, she had designed and worked on the document appointing Göring to the post of Reich Marshal, and on the design of his marshal’s baton too. She was a very lively, natural, witty woman, and took the lead in conversation during lunch. She talked so fast and vivaciously that Hitler could hardly get a word in. She laughed at him and his diet, and claimed he wouldn’t live long if he nourished himself on such wishy-washy stuff and didn’t eat a decent piece of meat for once.
The meal didn’t last long, and then Hitler left, got into the cars with the other men and drove back to his apartment. That afternoon he had talks with political leaders and Gauleiters in the Führer Building on Königsplatz, where I wasn’t needed. I walked home and stayed on in Munich for another day, while my boss and his staff drove back to Berchtesgaden that evening, taking Fräulein Wolf with them.
When I turned up at the Berghof again two days later, Hans Junge too had been told that we should get married at once. He couldn’t think of any particularly good reason against Hitler’s persuasions either, and anyway I believe at heart he rather liked the idea. Finally I came to terms with it too, and the wedding was fixed for the middle of June 1943. I rebelled only once, when I saw the mountain of forms and questionnaires I must fill in because I was going to marry an SS man. I lost my temper and told my future husband that I’d throw the whole lot in the wastepaper basket if my marriage depended on this kind of thing.
Hitler laughed heartily when I read him out some of the questions on the forms. For instance, they asked, ‘Is the bride positively addicted to housework?’ He himself said that of course all this was nonsense, and he’d have a word with Himmler about it. Anyway, I was spared having to fight a battle on paper, and before I knew it June came and I was Frau Junge. My married bliss lasted four weeks, while we went on honeymoon to Lake Constance, and then my husband joined the army and I moved back to headquarters.
IV{3}
Meanwhile the Supreme Commander had moved back to the Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia. The forest […] had been cleared around it to make room for several more huts and bunkers. What we called ‘hut disease’ had broken out and proved very infectious among the upper ranks. Everyone wanted his own hut to live in, and the bunkers were used only for sleeping. Speer built himself a whole housing estate, Göring’s hut was nothing short of a palace, and the doctors and adjutants erected summer residences of their own. Morell◦– but no one else◦– was even allowed a bathroom. Once again he was the butt of many jokes in the camp when it turned out that a normal bathtub was too small for him. He could just about get in, but he couldn’t get out again without help.
When I came back to the camp as a newly-wed wife, of course I too was the target of much male jocularity. I reported to Hitler that morning when he was about to go for his walk. ‘Why, you’re all pale and thin,’ he said, in a friendly and well-meaning tone, but Linge, Bormann, Hewel and Schaub grinned broadly, making me blush with embarrassment. From now on Hitler generally addressed me as ‘young woman’.
We secretaries were far from overworked. Fräulein Wolf and Fräulein Schroeder, the old guard, were working for Schaub. Every morning they were given a pile of letters to be answered. Schaub indicated briefly what the letters should say, but left the phrasing to the ladies. I did office work for the young SS adjutants Darges, Günsche and Pfeiffer.[58] I typed out the bodyguards’ reports, requests for promotion, orders for transfers, suggestions for the award of decorations. There were a great many of those; more and more men were becoming heroes, and silver and gold crosses and medals were lavishly handed out on the Eastern Front.
However, that wasn’t a really satisfying occupation, and although I enjoyed the forest and the lakes I still felt discontented, like a captive. Above all, life here was unbalanced in a way I couldn’t tolerate permanently. Perhaps I had been made more aware of that by my husband’s ideas. He had suddenly realized how hermetically cut off from real life we were, living in Hitler’s ideological sphere of influence. Once I had thought that here at the centre of events, the place to which all threads ran, you would have the best and widest view of all. But we were standing behind the scenes and didn’t know what was happening on stage. Only the director knew the play, all the rest of us just learned our parts, and no one knew exactly what part anyone else was playing.
58
SS-Obersturmführer Hans Pfeiffer was detailed for duty as Adolf Hitler’s aide-de-camp on 10 October 1939.