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http://www.smh.com.au/news/0001/08/world/world16.html
January 7, 2000
[Pictures added by this
website]
The shame of my
ties with Hitler
Eva
Braun's cousin breaks her silence about her
times with Hitler's mistress in an interview
with SIMON
FINCH.
FEW of her friends know the secret Elizabeth
Winkler (not her real name) has guarded closely
since the end of World War II. Then, barely in her
20s, Ms Winkler remembers watching American troops
entering her German homeland and vowing never to
reveal her true identity. But now, more than 50
years on, her past remains unresolved and she has
at last decided to talk publicly about a life bound
up with one of history's most notorious supporting
actresses, her cousin Eva Braun.
Ms Winkler provides a first-hand account of a
figure who has become a legend, the myths
surrounding her having grown with each passing
year.
Not only did Ms Winkler holiday with her cousin
while the latter's boyfriend was conquering France,
she was also invited to stay at the Berghof,
Hitler's Bavarian mountain retreat above
Berchtesgaden.
The two women ended up living together there for
the last half of 1944, just months before Braun
died next to Hitler in his Berlin bunker,
with the Russian forces barely 100 metres away.
Now in her mid-70s, Winkler is recognisable in
the tomboyish teenager seen in Braun's home movies.
The curls of tawny hair are still cut to the same
length, though now her angular face shows signs of
strain. She evidently remains anguished by her
association, if at one remove, with the man who has
become the embodiment of evil in Western minds.
Passionately anti-Nazi, Ms Winkler reluctantly
agreed to go back, after a gap of half a century,
to what remains of the Berghof complex, to be
filmed for a TV documentary.
Once there, she confided her unease at the
abiding cultural fascination with Hitler. Yet she
remains loyal to the memory of her cousin, an
exciting role model for the impressionable and
rather awkward teenager, whose first recollection
of Braun is when, at the age of nine, she saw in a
newspaper a picture of her cousin with words she
could not understand.
"I didn't know what a mistress was, or who
Hitler was. When I showed it to my parents [Ms
Winkler's mother and Braun's were sisters],
they said: 'Oh, close it, close it', and that was
all."
They were shocked when, in the summer of 1940,
Ms Winkler chose to spend a month with her
glamorous cousin, knowing full well her association
with Hitler.
The young women lived in the Munich mansion
Hitler had bought Braun and, with victory
apparently around the corner, they enjoyed the
city's intoxicating atmosphere. It was also a time,
Ms Winkler says, when Braun "taught me to accept
and enjoy my nascent femininity. It was an
important time in my life and she intuitively knew
how to help me".
However, the most intense period of their
relationship was still to come. In the summer of
1944, Braun again invited Ms Winkler to stay, this
time at Hitler's Berghof retreat. Her parents would
not hear of it, but finally agreed to a compromise:
Ms Winkler could see Braun, but only in Munich.
"When I arrived," she recalls, "an SS escort was
waiting; Eva had surreptitiously arranged for them
to take me on to the Berghof. I didn't know what to
do, but I felt I couldn't let her down and I had to
see her again."
By complying with Braun's wishes, Ms Winkler
felt she had betrayed her parents and had little
else left to lose. She moved in with her cousin and
for a time lost all contact with the rest of her
family.
During this period, Hitler was mainly at his
headquarters on the eastern front, the so-called
Wolf's Lair. But, Ms Winkler recalls, he "phoned
from time to time and even asked after me. He was
anxious to know how we were getting on
together."
Looking back, Ms Winkler sees now how isolated
life had become. Hitler's obsession with security,
heightened by the assassination attempt of July 20,
meant the women's movements were closely
monitored.
"When we went out of the house, SS men walked
behind us. We couldn't leave without them and we
never knew whether they were listening in on our
conversations. It was a time of secrecy. You
couldn't even trust your friends."
It was in this atmosphere of intrigue and
paranoia, Ms Winkler says, that Braun finally "woke
up" and began to take an interest in the war.
"One day she told me to go to the tea house and
listen to a radio that had been left there. 'Listen
to the BBC, Hilversum [a Dutch resistance
broadcaster] and Beromunster [a Swiss
station]', she told me."
Ms Winkler dutifully kept notes of the
bulletins, unaware that in Nazi Germany the penalty
for unauthorised reception of such broadcasts was
death.
Her cousin vacillated: "Sometimes she thirsted
for details, but on other occasions things got too
much to bear and she didn't want to know." Their
last days together were spent back in Munich. The
city was facing heavy Allied bombardment and the
women would spend many hours in the cellar of
Braun's house.
"We were sitting there and the bombs came and
suddenly she got out her little chest and inside
was some jewellery. She took it out and said:
'That's for you.' I told her not to be so silly,
but she said she no longer had any need for it. It
was the moment when I knew she would go to Berlin
and die with Hitler. That came to me in a
flash."
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Eva
Braun
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Pictures from a
roll of film found in the ruins of the
Berghof in 1945 (from this website's
archives)
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Her cousin rarely spoke openly about Hitler -
"Things were much more formal then, you didn't talk
about boyfriends" - but, looking back, Ms Winkler
sees in the relationship a classic story of
exploitation. Yet she realises Braun was party to
the abuse and even swept her up in it: "In her
traumatic state, Eva used me. But there is always
another side to these things - I let myself be
used, too."
After the war, Ms Winkler slowly picked up the
pieces of her life. Shortly before her wedding in
1953, she revealed the truth to her fiance: "I am
sorry, I am the cousin of Eva Braun. If you want to
leave me, please go." He didn't, but asked her to
promise never to tell any children they had. Ms
Winkler's three offspring found out the truth only
in the late 1980s, after the death of her
husband.
The interview is drawing to a close.
'To this day, I can't believe she really loved
him," Ms Winkler says finally. "I can't believe
such a beautiful young woman loved this man." She
grimaces. "This is my first and last
interview."
The Guardian
Related items on this website
Observer, Oct 7,
2001: Hitler was gay - and killed to hide it,
book says-
October 1999 story:
Hitler secretly gay --historian (Joachim
Fest)
-
David Irving's
comments on this allegation
see also The
Sydney Morning Herald
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write
to David Irving