INTRODUCTION
On the evening of 10 July 1937 the German-Jewish journalist Bella Fromm, who wrote the society column in a Berlin newspaper, went to the cinema to see the romantic comedy Broadway Melody. Loosely based on the 1929 original, it included the hit song ‘You Are My Lucky Star’, a bunch of characters trying to launch a Broadway show, farcical backstage intrigues and glamorous locations – penthouse apartments and rooftop pavilions – and a finale featuring two grand pianos gliding across the dancefloor next to a tap-dancing chorus line dressed in top hats and tails.
Arriving at the cinema, Bella parked her car and then suddenly noticed that she’d aroused the interest of two SS men. One of them noted down her licence plate while the other pointed his camera at her and ‘took a quick snap-shot’. The reason for this level of surveillance became clear when several large automobiles with swastika pendants pulled up. Heinrich Himmler and his wife Margaret got out and entered the cinema, accompanied by their ‘grim bodyguard’.1 Once inside, Himmler and Margaret took their seats – flanked by his angels of death – and settled in for 101 minutes of fun and frolics. This surreal, almost comic scene is also rather unsettling given how Himmler is generally perceived: a humourless pedant and ruthless zealot obsessed by crackpot fantasies about a Germanic master race.
So why did he take Margaret to see a light-hearted MGM musical? Unlike others in the Nazi elite – including Hitler – Himmler wasn’t a film buff eager to consume the latest Hollywood releases. Perhaps he fancied some carefree escapism to take his mind off the daily grind. Or did he view the film with a critical eye, regarding it as an example of the degenerate decadence of American society? Or maybe he was simply trying to please his wife. From the start, his long working hours and almost constant travelling had taken a heavy toll on their marriage. This was a rare opportunity to have a night out together. Dress up. Summon a fleet of cars and a uniformed escort. Treat her to a feel-good movie.
Sadly, we don’t know if Margaret enjoyed Broadway Melody, or if she was pleased her husband had found time to indulge her; perhaps the most thrilling part of her evening was cruising the streets of the capital in an SS convoy, sending ripples of fear and awe through everyone who saw them speed past.
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Among the thousands of books about Nazism barely a handful focus on the wives of the leading figures in Hitler’s regime: Gerda Bormann, Magda Goebbels, Carin and Emmy Goering, Ilse Hess, Lina Heydrich and Margaret Himmler. While their men have left an indelible imprint on our collective memory the women who gave them vital support, encouragement and direction have largely remained relegated to the footnotes of history. While the overall experience of women in the Nazi period became a subject of serious study during the 1980s, opening up a whole field of enquiry and providing a complex and nuanced picture that challenged the stereotypes perpetuated by Nazi propaganda, the women at the very top of the system have been neglected.
Part of the reason for this is the nature of the source material, much of which has to be treated with caution. Although a lot more information has come to light in the last few decades, there are still considerable gaps and chunks of time missing from the diaries and letters that have survived, while the post-war autobiographies penned by several of the wives actively sought to portray their husbands as paragons of virtue and themselves as innocent bystanders; the memoirs and recollections of fellow travellers – each with their own agenda – have created an echo chamber of anecdotes, hearsay and gossip that make it harder to distinguish fact from fiction.
However, these sorts of issues affect any investigation into the past and are not sufficient to explain why historians have failed to give these women the prominence they deserve, thereby giving credence to their own claims that there was a clear distinction between their husbands’ public and private lives. But this does not bear scrutiny. The Nazis set out to control every aspect of their citizens’ existence – the food they ate, the clothes they wore, who they had sex with, what jokes they could tell, how they celebrated Christmas – making any separation between the public and the private meaningless. And despite their undoubted privilege, the wives were subjected to the same pressures as ordinary women. Their social lives were determined by political considerations. Friendships were jettisoned. Relationships – even with family members – abruptly terminated. Their behaviour was a factor in the struggles within the Nazi elite, particularly where Hitler was concerned; falling out of favour with the Führer could have serious implications for their husbands’ careers.
Even though they might not have been privy to their husbands’ daily decisions, the evidence of their murderous work was all around: the looted art on the walls; the furniture made from human skin and bones stashed in the attic; the fruit and vegetables taken from the local concentration camp gardens; the slave labour tilling their land. The rituals of family life – births, weddings, funerals – were inextricably linked to Nazi ideology. Perhaps this is why it has proved easier to take these women at face value and treat them as minor characters; treating them seriously means accepting that their husbands engaged in normal activities and experienced recognisably human emotions. Falling in and out of love. Worrying about the bills and their weight and where to send the kids to school. Planning dinner parties and picnics. Spending vacations sightseeing. Acknowledging that in many respects they were no different from the rest of us creates a form of cognitive dissonance: a deeply uneasy feeling.
Yet their story offers important insights into the nature of Nazi rule and the psychology of its leaders, providing a fresh perspective on the key events that shaped its rise and fall. The aim of this book is to chart their lives from the moment they became involved in the Nazi movement – in several cases before they even met their husbands – through the years of struggle, power, decline and destruction, and then into the post-war twilight of denial and delusion. While they enjoyed luxury lifestyles and VIP status, they also endured broken marriages, cheating husbands, suicide, assassination, desertion, impoverishment and incarceration. But despite all these trials and tribulations, their commitment to Hitler’s cause never wavered.
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Though they were each unique and fascinating individuals in their own right who coped differently with the demands placed on them, these women’s backgrounds were strikingly similar. Well-educated, they all came from conservative middle-class families – representing the professions, business, the army and the lower gentry – where gender roles were rigidly defined; whatever her achievements, a woman’s best hope was to find a good husband. Their parents, whether Protestant or Catholic, took religion seriously and their daughters were instilled with values that would shape their tastes, interests and political views: a belief in the supremacy of German culture, its music, art, literature and philosophy, the genius of its scientific achievements, its unbeatable army; devotion to the Kaiser and the state; a hatred of socialism and a fear that the unruly masses would devour them. As a result they had more in common with each other than they would ever have with a woman working in a factory.
They grew up in an era that saw the rapid transformation of Germany from a largely agricultural society to an industrial one, an uneasy trade-off between a democratic system and an imperial one, and a belligerent effort to establish Germany as a major global power with a large navy and a string of colonies. But despite the strident patriotism, there was also a pervasive feeling of crisis, of a country at war with itself, struggling to accommodate the pressures of modernity – not least the sharpening of class divisions – and surrounded by hostile neighbours. The bourgeoisie were especially vulnerable to these stresses and strains, suffering from both an exaggerated sense of their own superiority and a nagging anxiety about the future.
The beginning of the First World War seemed to resolve these tensions, as the nation united in anticipation of glory. As the slaughter dragged on and on, the whole population was mobilised to support the war effort while blanket censorship and relentless propaganda made ultimate victory still appear inevitable, whatever the cost.
These women’s young lives – at home and school – were monopolised by the conflict. Battlefield statistics and soldiers’ stories entered the classroom. Priests prayed for success at the front. Everything from toys to playing cards were given a military theme. Mothers, particularly those from the middle classes, took part in a vast campaign of charity work, whether organising food drives or knitting socks and scarves for the men in the cold damp trenches.
The last year of the war delivered shock after shock to the already tottering system; the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia threatened to spread revolution across its borders and inspire mutiny in the army; the failure of the massive do-or-die offensive on the Western Front that led to irreversible retreat; the collapse of Germany’s main allies, Austro-Hungary and Turkey; the hunger, malnutrition and disease that wrecked civilian morale; the strikes and demonstrations; the calls for peace and the abdication of the Kaiser.
The chaos and violence that engulfed Germany in the wake of defeat and surrender continued into 1919, driving the country towards outright civil war. The radical left almost gained control before it was ruthlessly crushed by the Freikorps – right-wing paramilitary units made up of ex-soldiers and enthusiastic volunteers – who were given free rein by the embattled government of the new Weimar Republic, which was held responsible for the humiliating terms imposed by the Versailles Treaty.
As a result, these women became adults in profoundly insecure and volatile circumstances. Old certainties were gone. The civilised conventions of their parents’ generation appeared increasingly irrelevant. Cut adrift, they each gravitated towards a self-styled saviour who promised them the world.
1
EARLY RUNNERS
In the spring of 1920, Ilse Pröhl moved into a respectable student hostel on the outskirts of Munich, determined to benefit from the educational opportunities opening up for German women. In 1900, the year Ilse was born, women were admitted to university for the first time. Eight years later, the first female versions of the Gymnasium – exclusive fee-paying high schools that trained their pupils for the university entrance exam known as the Abitur – opened their doors.
These Gymnasia were restricted to daughters of wealthy families, but this wasn’t a problem for Ilse: her father was a respected doctor who treated members of the Prussian court in Berlin and became a chief military surgeon at the elite Potsdam garrison. Aged 14, Ilse took up a place at one of these prestigious high schools. A bright, energetic and popular pupil, she was particularly keen on music and literature. She also enjoyed hiking and camping, outdoor pursuits that were extremely popular among middle-class adolescents seeking to escape the soullessness of urban life. This back-to-nature movement began as an all-male activity but by the time Ilse got involved it was thoroughly mixed.
Her carefree teenage years were overshadowed by the First World War. Though a firm supporter of the armed forces and a convinced patriot, the full reality of the catastrophe occurring in northern France was brought home to her when her father, who had been posted to a relatively quiet sector of the front, was killed in the spring of 1917.
This painful loss was compounded by the shock of defeat and the upheavals that threatened to break Germany apart. Then, during her last year at the Gymnasium, her mother remarried – to a museum director – and the family moved to Munich before Ilse could complete the Abitur. Rather than stay at her new home, Ilse signalled her desire for independence by taking a room at the hostel.
One evening, Ilse ran into a fellow lodger, a tall young man wearing a threadbare, tattered uniform, who gruffly introduced himself as Rudolf Hess. She was immediately struck by his gaunt appearance: the thick eyebrows that seemed destined to meet in the middle, the sunken eyes and haunted expression. Despite his curt manner, she was instantly attracted to him. Whether the 26-year-old Hess had a similar reaction is impossible to say. Of all the senior Nazis, Hess was the most enigmatic. Dozens of experts, from psychiatrists to historians, have struggled to make sense of him. Hess even puzzled himself. In a letter to a friend he confessed that he felt torn between two opposing sides of his personality: one craved an almost monk-like existence contemplating the mysteries of the universe, while the other was a bloodthirsty barbarian hungry for battle.
Yet it was precisely this combination of the thinker with the man of action that appealed to Ilse. The frayed uniform he was wearing that fateful evening – which Ilse instantly recognised – belonged to the notorious von Epp Freikorps regiment that he’d joined in 1919 during the violent overthrow of Munich’s left-wing government.
Hess was also a decorated veteran – with an Iron Cross for valour – who’d been wounded twice. At the hellish Battle of Verdun, during which he witnessed ‘every horror of death imaginable’,1 he was hit by shrapnel; while leading an infantry charge in Romania he was shot in the chest. His recovery complete, Hess trained as a pilot, satisfying a long-held urge to fly, but the war was over before he could test himself in combat.
When the conflict began, Hess had been at a critical juncture in his life. He wanted to go to university, but his father wanted him to enter the family business, an import-export firm based in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria where Hess grew up in a palatial villa on the edge of the desert, an environment that contributed to his sense of otherworldliness. His father was a strict disciplinarian who thought the most important day of the year was the Kaiser’s birthday. Hess felt closer to his mother, a gentle, intelligent woman who encouraged his early interest in astrology.
In 1908, when Hess was 14, the family returned to Germany; having only spent summers there, Hess was thrilled by his first sight of snow. Packed off to boarding school, he remained an outsider. A hard-working pupil, he passed the Abitur and reluctantly enrolled on a business course; his poor performance provoked a clash with his father that was only resolved when Hess enlisted in the army.
With the war over – and his father’s business requisitioned by the British – Hess was free to pursue a degree in history and economics. While he flirted with the Thule Society (a semi-secret group interested in Aryan mythology and prehistoric Nordic civilisations) Hess’s main intellectual influence was the 50-year-old geo-politics professor Karl Haushofer, who had managed to combine a military career with academic study: Haushofer developed the concept of Lebensraum after visiting Japan and concluding that a nation’s chances of success depended on the amount of living space available to it. Though Haushofer didn’t think Hess was particularly intelligent, he admired his strength of character. The professor – and the rest of his family – treated Hess like an adopted son. This close friendship, which included Ilse, endured for decades, with mixed results for all concerned.
Despite Hess’s aversion to fun, Ilse decided to pursue him and they began spending time together. It was a platonic affair. Still a virgin, Hess showed absolutely no interest in sex: for the next few years, their relationship lacked a physical dimension. Instead, they consciously cultivated a spiritual connection based on their shared love of German culture, especially the writers and composers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Their favourite was the poet and philosopher Friedrich Hölderlin: his early work worshipped nature, his later work worshipped God. Ilse gave Hess a copy of Hölderlin’s metaphysical novel Hyperion and added a lyrical inscription; their love was ‘full of power and yet tender as their spirit’, while their ‘hearts beat stronger waves even than the trident of the Sea God who is ruler of the waves’.2
However, it was their shared response to Hitler that forged an unbreakable bond between them, both convinced they’d stumbled on the man destined to drag Germany out of the abyss and set it on the road to glory. Soon after they first met, Hess heard Hitler speak at a tiny gathering. Unable to contain his excitement, Hess ran back to the hostel and burst into Ilse’s room, raving about this amazing man and his electrifying message. A few weeks later, Ilse accompanied him to another Nazi gathering and was equally impressed. Her unquestioning enthusiasm for Hitler’s poisonous ideology is evident in a letter she wrote to a schoolfriend, in which she made no attempt to soften her views; ‘we are anti-Semites. Constantly, rigorously, without exception. The two basic pillars of our movement – national, and social – are anchored in the meaning of this anti-Semitism.’3
By the autumn of 1920, Ilse had completed her Abitur, begun a part-time university course in German and library science, and started work at an antiquarian bookshop. Asides from occasional trips outside Munich to ramble in the countryside, she spent the majority of her spare time working for the Nazi movement; delivering leaflets, putting up posters, helping out with the party newspaper and acting as Hess’s secretary while he attached himself to Hitler and put his body on the line during the frequent brawls between Nazi supporters and their left-wing opponents.
In recognition of their efforts, Ilse and Hess were granted the privilege of being around Hitler during his downtime, unwinding with his most trusted companions. Ilse – and many others – described how much Hitler enjoyed a good laugh; not one for telling jokes, Hitler did impressions and liked nothing better than listening to a well-told funny story as long as it wasn’t about him.
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Shy and sensitive, Gerda Buch was a dreamy, artistic child on the verge of adolescence when she first met Hitler, who promptly took her under his wing. ‘Uncle Adolf’ had a special interest in young people – girls in particular – and was keen to adopt a quasi-guardian role, taking responsibility for their cultural, political and moral welfare. At the time, his main focus was Henriette Hoffmann, the 9-year-old daughter of Heinrich Hoffmann, one of Hitler’s closest associates who would become his personal photographer. Every afternoon, while Henriette practised the piano, Hitler would test her knowledge of German myths and folklore. Though he spent less time with Gerda, Hitler lavished her with attention whenever he visited her home.
The reason Hitler was such a regular presence in Gerda’s life was her father, Walter Buch, a career soldier. Buch was 19 years old when he joined the army in 1902. Gerda was born in 1909, a year after Buch married her mother. By 1914 he was a first lieutenant, one of the small number of officers who wasn’t from an aristocratic background. Serving on the Western Front, Buch gained one promotion after another until he commanded a whole battalion. In 1918, he resigned his commission – disgusted by the Allied peace terms that reduced his beloved army to a meagre 100,000 men – and joined the other disgruntled ex-soldiers milling round Munich, licking their wounds after the disbandment of the Freikorps and the collapse of the Kapp Putsch, a military coup launched in spring 1920 and defeated by the largest general strike in German history. Pointed in the direction of Hitler, Buch quickly fell under his spell, declaring that Hitler ‘had been sent to the German people by the grace of God’.4
Buch was exactly the kind of recruit Hitler was looking for; a representative of the officer class with an untarnished reputation. Buch’s natural home in the movement was the Sturmabteilung (SA), better known as the Brownshirts. Hitler needed experienced men like Buch to transform this undisciplined mob of street fighters into an effective paramilitary force. During the summer of 1923, Buch took charge of the 275 SA men based in Nuremberg – some 100 miles from Munich – and began preparing them for action. Once again, Buch would be away from home. Reflecting on her childhood, Gerda complained that her father was ‘merely a visitor. He never stayed with us for any length of time.’5 Ultimately, Buch’s most significant contribution to his daughter’s young life was introducing her to Hitler.
Copyright © 2019 by James Wyllie
