Description
The year 2012 marks the centenary of Eva Braun's birth. This is the
strange-but-true saga of her life, richly illustrated from her own
personal photograph albums, as well as from other captured German
archives. She married German dictator Adolf Hitler but 36 hours before
their joint suicides in Berlin on April 30 1945, in the last week of the
Second World War in Europe. This exciting pictorial biography tells the
full story of a Catholic convent-bred young woman - not only as the
secret mistress, as many historians have painted her since her voluntary
death at age 33 - but also as Hitler's lawfully wedded wife, even
though she is still largely referred to today by her maiden name. They
met at a Munich photography shop in 1929 when she was but 17, and he was
already 40. The true nature of their long relationship is fully
explained in detail for the very first time: she was heterosexual and he
bisexual, but the author concludes Eva most likely remained a virgin
until the day she died. Although many reports after the war claimed that
he shot himself and that she took poison, the official Russian autopsy
of their partially-burnt bodies asserted that both died by cyanide
capsules, despite the postwar testimony of all Hitler's closest aides,
lending even their deaths an air of mystery. Who was she, really? The
answers are here. This fascinating, gripping, and tragic story of a
pretty, well-liked, middle-class shop girl is of a life mainly lived in
the iron shadow of history. In death Eva Braun Hitler became - and
remains today, a hundred years after her birth - one of the most famous
women in all of world history, alongside such female luminaries as Joan
of Arc, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Princess Diana. Eva has been a
figure shrouded in controversy, misinformation, myth, and legend, until
now. At long last the veil is lifted, with over 300 photographs
providing an extensive collection of imagery, including a number of
contemporary colour shots. Eva Braun had a lifelong passion for
photography - her close friends nicknamed her the 'Rolleiflex girl'
after a camera model - and this is reflected in the array of imagery
featured in this groundbreaking book.