01x04 - Hitler's Lovers

[bunniefuu]

n*zi Germany two words synonymous with barbarity terror hate and death a

shocked defeat in World w*r I sews the seeds for discontent in a once

prosperous nation adolf Hitler an unassuming

uninspiring man seizes the opportunity to take control promising to make

Germany great again but he won't do it alone willing

accompllices rally from the most unlikely of places the female

furers n*zi sheevils cougars

fantasists and secret lovers these are the forgotten

Nazis these are Hitler's handmaidaidens [Music]

hitler's love life which he tried desperately to hide from public view

it's full of dark and twisted secrets i am

as the figurehead of n*zi Germany he can't have a public girlfriend and certainly not be married

hitler's wife is every woman in Germany every young adoring woman who hears his

rousing speeches

every mother sending her son off to fight for the Nazis he must be seen to be married only

to Germany

and his sorded bizarre sex life must remain a state secret totally off limits

at all [Music]

costs austria April 1889

claraara Hitler wife of the a*usive alcoholic customs official Aloy has just

given birth to a baby boy [Music]

Adolf adolf was his mother's third child she'd lost three children before Adolf

was born they died and she was going to make sure this one the fourth one did not die and so she causited Adolf she uh

spoiled him a sickly child doted on by his adoring mother but brutalized by his

father historians will wonder if Claraara loved Adolf too much and whether it was this which so

warped his later relations with women hitler's relationship to women appears

to have been extremely complicated so we know from the records that he had this

imshed overinvolved relationship with a loving protective mother and he was

brutalized by a man who appears to have been sadistic and violent so on the one hand he's seeking this maternal comfort

on the other hand he doesn't seem able to relate to women who are his equals

thanks to Claraara's intense motherly love Adolf grew up with an unswerving

belief in his own opinions and thought himself to be devastatingly intelligent

and attractive his mother saw in him great things that he should push himself

towards and gave him a sense of being loved and all the time this brutality and unpredictability of a violent

apparently alcoholic father totally interfered with his inner sense of security so he doesn't seem like he was

secure and confident in in his quest but kind of desperate and attempting to

prove himself in in ways that were completely inhuman and in fact beyond

the the capacity of any ordinary human

it's this delusion that he was meant for greater things which would drive

Hitler's demented ambition and cast a pull over his own adult relationships

and ultimately the lives of millions

[Music] austria

1905 hitler has grown into a shy and awkward teen who finds mixing with girls

painfully difficult he becomes enamored with a local girl but unlike most innocent

young infatuations this teenage crush quickly becomes dark and

obsessive music student Stephanie Isach is tall blonde and wealthy at 19 a

couple of years older than Adolf he was enthralled by Stephanie Isaac he

worshiped her she was the ideal Germanic woman the Aryan woman and for two years

two years Adolf Hitler followed her stalked her for one of a better word

but never spoke to her disturbingly he tells his best

friend Agugust Koopazc that he will one day kidnap Stephanie and force her to

marry him but he then settles on an even

darker plan he had all sorts of fantasies about her he was going to kidnap her they were

going to k*ll themselves by jumping off the bridge you know all sorts of strange ideas

[Applause] hitler was a person of extremes so he either loved totally or he hated totally

and the world knows exactly what happened when he hated so you can see that this devotion from afar would drive

him round following her but never daring to break the spell by approaching her

but Hitler's plans for Stephanie were never fulfilled hitler's mother Claraara dies and he at

just 18 is [Music]

devastated it has a profound impact on him every day for the rest of his life

he carries a photograph of her in his pocket

an aspiring artist he moves from Lintz to Vienna to pursue his dreams of

fame he quickly finds himself destitute living on the

streets it is now 1915 hitler is a young

adult he's rejected by the Austrian army so he joins the Germans to fight against

the Western Allies

the summer of 1917 Hitler is on leave from the w*r in

his sketching scenery in the French countryside from here two different

stories unfold in one Hitler returns to the front after an uneventful break

in another Hitler meets a 16-year-old French farm worker and their brief

sexual encounter results in his illegitimate child hitler according to the story was

on leave from the trenches the unit his unit the Lince Regiment was pulled out as they all were they they come out of

the trenches for rest and she was in the fields haymaking when she saw a German

soldier sitting on the edge of the field drawing that person so the story goes was Adolf

Hitler march 1918 and so it's thought the farm girl

gives birth to a son

much later university analysis shows the men who might be father and son

intriguingly share the same unusual handwriting

i think if we're being brutally honest that is a little bit of fantasy because there are so many implausible elements

in that hitler was a shy young corporal in the German army he would never ever

have made uh advances to her she spoke French he spoke German they didn't speak

each other's language uh although you could argue that love sex doesn't need a language but but they certainly didn't

speak each other's language

throughout his adult life Hitler seeks out maternal figures to replace his dead

mother to older women young Adolf Hitler appears charming charismatic destined

for bigger things [Music] ancient

woman getting these women to adore him comes easily but from the accounts of

his relationship with his mother that sense of devotion to her and the wish to

have maternal care doesn't seem wholly opportunistic it seems like it's a real

need in him he obviously was very good at appealing to women both of in terms of those who

wanted to be close to this powerful guy promising salvation and

those who thought he was a fiery young man with a great vision for Germany and

the world and wanted to nurture him the road to ultimate power for the Nazis lay

in the power to persuade the German people at the ballot box hitler knew that the key to their

electoral strategy was his appeal with women which he was ready and willing to

exploit to the full

[Music]

1920s Germany Berlin high society a glittering new world for Hitler he's

being ushered into it by a wealthy married much older woman Hela Beckine who showers him with

expensive gifts and displays of adoration she calls him by his nickname Wolf and

is seen in public stroking his hair as he sits on the floor at her feet

so we can see a pattern in his life as he was advancing towards his leadership

he developed strong relationships with older women like Beexeen and Vagnner and

I think that fitted in with the underlying pathology of never being able to let go of his mother and needing

maternal figures who weren't threatening but were causiting and supporting him

so Hitler had a couple of patronesses effectively elder rich women

with salons who took him up and must have seen in him to all descriptions a a

charismatic young charismatic character though there was never any evidence of a

physical relationship with Beckin letters between them were more than friendly

[Music] hitler is now part politician part

German celebrity his love life is the source of

constant speculation when asked why he still isn't

married Hitler always has the same response my bride is Germany

[Music] this refrain will free him from the need

to display a wife but would also ensure he could remain an unlikely sex symbol

for the millions of German women who fell under his

[Music] spell

berseskarten a beautiful German village in the Bavarian Alps near the Austrian border

it's where Hitler is living when he first sees a girl called Maria Writer

also known as Mitsy she was a very young girl who was living

on the Oasisburg with her parents and they had a shop selling because the family run into financial difficulties

and she was had to drop out of school and she was working in the shop and then suddenly outside the door one day she

saw this figure in Bavarian costume you know the old leg the lady hosen and and

the the woolen socks and of course she recognized Adolf Hitler straight away and she couldn't resist going out to

speak to him mity is pretty blonde and young she's 16

to Hitler's 37 it's an age difference that would become a common theme in Hitler's

romantic liaison working with people who have abused

children and adolescence invariably there's a sense of inadequacy a wish to

control and dominate when the older partner like Hitler was in many cases uh

chooses younger individuals it's a kind of quest for comfort and control

she watches him deliver a speech at a local n*zi party rally and is entranced

as 1926 progresses Hitler would often call and take her out for

[Music]

walks at 17 Mitsy first has sex with Hitler

and so they say Mity admits herself she went to to Munich and they made love

they had sexual relationships but Hitler has said "I can't carry this on with

this because it would not be good for the party." And so he withdrew from that

his frequent love letters to her suddenly stop a typical behavior for a narcissist

like Hitler mity is

heartbroken she doesn't realize that she could never compete for Hitler's affections either with Germany or with

the memory of the sainted Claraara so any woman coming into the picture

would be competing with the image of his mother and never be allowed to get close

enough to threaten it you choose very young women well they no threat to you and they're pliant and

they can be molded and Hitler often spoke that you know a perfect wife is somebody who should be young and molded

into shape by her partner mity though isn't just mooning

over a lost love like many girls her age her misery is much deeper and darker she

tries to hang herself fortunately though her family find her

just in time what is interesting about many of the

women that had relationships with Hitler is that they either attempted or or committed suicide and he patently had a

very very potent traumatizing and almost desolating effect on women to cause them

to try and k*ll themselves though Mitsy survived a number of other

secret lovers

wouldn't hitler now an older more powerful man still prefers relationships

with teenage girls another very young woman

16-year-old Gelli Raal captures his attention the teenager is said to be

Hitler's one great love the most important affair of his life but the

relationship is twisted from the start she's not only nearly 20 years younger

than him she's also his niece gi Rael was without any doubt the most important

woman in Hitler's life after his mother she was his half niece daughter of his half sister

hitler is guardian to his young relative whose mother had died the previous

year he suggests she leaves home and moved to Munich it is the perfect cover titly

became infatuated with it and Gayy wanted the the bright lights of

Munich she wanted to revel in this famous uncle's name and so Hitler

arranged for her to come and live with him in Munich and he had an apartment on

Prince Regent Plats and that's where she had her her

room rumors persisted that their relationship became intimate in time it would become dark

and destructive [Music]

in 1929 with his political career rapidly rising Hitler buys a 9-bedroom luxury

apartment in the heart of Munich gelly is given the bedroom adjoining his she will live there for

the rest of her short life and she enjoyed for a while the the delights of

Munich she went to cafes she met with students she enjoyed the music and the operas and so on but gradually gradually

slowly Hitler became more dominating he became more controlling and in the end

she could barely do anything without Hitler's say

so young vivaceious Gelli draws the attention of men and Hitler cannot

contain his jealousy he monitors her movements and needs to

know who she's with at all [Music]

times gi is tall and outgoing she wants to be a singer or an actress and she

wants a real boyfriend

but this is something Hitler will never allow and then slowly or not so slowly it

starts sinking in he's controlling her as much as he controls anything else

this is totally what she didn't want and she's starting to see aspects of him that are to her frankly horrifying

[Music] chief among them Hitler's alleged sexual

perversions and bizarre

predelictions the evidence it's not totally clear you know people have alleged that he was a pervert uh they've

alleged that he had this ponchon for women urinating on him and he had a

ponchon for uh for feces you know human feces and yeah that's quite possible

it's not my role to determine the veracity of the story but certainly the

rumors about Hitler engaging in extreme sedochistic practices fits perfectly in

with his personality of a a raging sedo masochist

munich September the 19th 1931 whatever the truth about the

relationship between Hitler and his niece it proves a fatal

one after a single g*nsh*t is heard from Hitler's apartment Gelli is found dead

with a b*llet in her chest and his g*n by her side and think about it if you

took Gi as she was before Hitler you'd say this is not a person who commits

suicide she's a superficial good time fun girl she bounces around without any

problem and I think that that really that comparison tells you how much how desperate she'd got into a state she'd

got into then during the night Gaye locked

herself into her room she took Hitler's mouser p*stol with her and she shot herself and k*lled herself possibly you

know I mean the body was found the next day uh by the housekeeper but um I I

have doubts about that one if you're going to k*ll yourself with a g*n you normally would aim there into the into

the head that's guaranteed gaye shot herself in the

heart the Munich police immediately rule out foul play

her death is declared a suicide and her body quickly

buried but troubling allegations leaked to the city's newspapers reports that the 23-year-old

had been arguing with Hitler the day before her death and that her broken nose and other injuries weren't

consistent with suicide could Hitler or his henchmen

have k*lled her the quick burial and cover up mean Hitler survives the scandal that could

have ended his career but n*zi party insiders now had an insight into just

what he was capable of

that would have fit in my opinion with someone with a very disturbed perverse

personality who needs a younger malleable person who they can control

and dominate who they may also show some affection towards but ultimately I

believe that his way of thinking is so primitive and so completely polarized

that he's someone who could really mess with someone else's mind particularly a

vulnerable young woman

[Music]

september 1931 [Music]

adolf Hitler has been left devastated after the mysterious death of his niece

and suspected lover Gelli Rabal his grief is said to be extreme

some fear maybe even suicidal hitler was whisked away from Munich and

Gelli was obviously buried but Hitler was distraught absolutely distraught and

sunk in profound depression after Gelly's death and many historians will

say you know that was that was an important turning point for him and a point at which he almost considered

giving up politics altogether [Music]

but fatefully for the rest of the world he didn't a year after Gelly's death Hitler

begins to court a new lover and she couldn't be more different to his pliable teenage

mistresses renata Müller is 26 and a famous singer and movie star renata

Müller was one of many actresses actually who were invited back to the right chancellory for an intimate dinner

with Hitler he did that a couple of times with other women and he loved actresses he was interested in actresses

and she was a gossipy actress who regailed people after this particular

dinner with what had passed between them

according to Renata one night Hitler asked her to physically abuse him for

his sexual pleasure they undressed and both naked and then

Hitler said to her "Kick me." And he wanted her naked to stand above him to

kick him in boots she put boots on and he wanted her to kick him which which eventually she

did and Hitler became very excited and masturbated while she was doing this

so lots of times in perversion the wish is to control the other and even when

people are taking the role of massochists they're actually requesting what happens and in a funny way taking

control over the sexual situation but the fundamental feature of these

perversions is that intimacy is not possible there's a real fear of intimacy

and that would fit with everything that has been suggested or recorded about

Hitler's way of relating to women but Renata's regaining of this story is

a terrible mistake that brings her to the attention of n*zi Germany's infamous

secret police the

Gustafo she starts talking to others about Hitler's sexual proclivities

renata is put under constant surveillance interrogated and when she

dares take a Jewish lover the Gestapo makes sure she's blacklisted and her career is over the

story of Renata there from there on is the downward spiral she became addicted

to morphine she became uh depressed

renata was sent to a sanitarium in Berlin for treatment in late October

1937 a team of SS officers was seen entering the building a few minutes later she was

dead there were reports she jumped from a third floor window the official cause

of death is quickly ruled as suicide although rumors of foul play

arrive ultimately Renata had a terrible end in that she was being treated as in

a clinic for quotes depression and fell out of a window but falling out of a

window was a way that very many enemies of the regime met their end wasn't an

unusual way actually to be m*rder*d in the Third Reich

renato Müller was just one more casualty in Adolf Hitler's attritional love life

but she wouldn't be the last star to catch his eye

[Music] hitler's fascination with the movie

business was legendary he understood its power and the propaganda mythmaking it inspired

he developed a close relationship with renowned German female film director Lenny Reefenstal

lenny Ryenstyle was brilliant in the 1920s black and white she made mountain

movies and she climbed the mountains herself and Hitler saw her as a genius he liked film he was a good film critic

and he said that's who's going to make my film for the Nerburgg rally

rumors of a love affair between the pair quickly spread

given the fate of his other secret loves it was fortunate for Reefen Stal that she wasn't Hitler's type she was

altogether too independent too talented and too forthright

lady Reefen Stal absolutely adored him right to the end of her life and she lived to 100 she never ever lost that

love for Hitler but he said "No we cannot do this i am married to Germany."

Great excuse but Lenny was everything that Hitler didn't like she was intelligent she was successful she was

clever she you know she had succeeded as an artist he hadn't the intimacy of their

relationship is never confirmed but Hitler's love of her propaganda films and their effect on

Germany was massive thanks in part to Reefenstyle his star continues to rise and

soon he'll become the most powerful man in

Europe as Hitler becomes the undisputed leader of Germany two women from his

past reemerge hashtangle was a young Munich

girl Hitler had considered proposing to in the early 1920s

two decades on she was involved in a complex plot to overthrow

him the plan was to abduct and detain Hitler while secret negotiations with

the Allies took place far-fetched and doomed to failure

the plot is never put into action but it proved not every woman in

Hitler's life would blindly obey him another was Henny Vonidira a one-time

crush of Hitler's now married to a leading n*zi Buldor

Fonida henny was one of the very few who dared to challenge Hitler over the Nazis

treatment of Jewish women one of the only recorded instances of a woman

personally standing up to Germany's fura she was an interesting girl was Henny

because she wouldn't tolerate fools gladly and one day she was in the Netherlands doing some work for von

Shiraath and she heard a a riot going on outside went outside to find what the trouble was and it was women Jewish

women who were being placed in transport to take to the concentration camps and at the Burgoff they had this

debate and she said it's it's not on hitler was incandescent with rage he was

furious he just exploded and said "Don't you realize I'm losing 10,000 troops a

day and you're worried about a handful of Jewish women you know nothing about it stick to what you're good at making

home." And that was the end of Henny and Bolivan Sheriff were never asked to the Burgoff ever again

[Applause] women who stood up to Hitler were few

and far between for the masses of German women he was their handsome dashing idol and

savior

it appears this hysteria that many encounter at the rallies when Hitler

appeared with the women most of it actually does seem to be genuine i mean when you look at the old uh the n*zi

film reels you you'll see especially lots of these young women and and they're in tears and they want a piece

of the fura they want to hold his hand they just want to get near him they absolutely idolize the man

how could this massisteria be aroused by such an unprepossessing violent and peculiar man

or is it simply the psychology of time that clouds our perspective of Hitler

knowing now the man he was and would become

i the cult of his personality his

convictions his delusional hysterical almost manner of speaking would have

been very appealing to all kinds of people including women who would have you been attracted wanted his attention

however today most of us are repulsed seeing this evil psychopath

there was one woman above all who fell so deeply under Hitler's spell that at

the end of everything she'd give up her life to join him in death her name was

Eva [Music]

Brawn october 1929 downtown Munich

hitler's visiting his friend Henrik Hoffman's photographic studio when he first lays eyes on Eva ava Brown was a

young pretty blonde assistant at the photographic studio and Ava was up a

ladder at the back of his shop one day going up to some shelves when Hitler came in and he saw this pair of legs

which belonged to a 17-year-old girl and he asked her to the opera

[Music] eva rejected his initial advances but

these rejections only spurred Hitler on and it wasn't long before she fell for a

man more than two decades her senior eva writes in her diary in 1935

when she's 23 years old that she is the mistress of the greatest man in Germany

and indeed the world

she had no way of knowing that in just 10 years he'd turn Germany into a

channel house and decimate the lives of millions the world would come to know

him as a monster

the embodiment of [Applause] [Music]

evil eva Brawn desperately dreamed of the day her relationship with Hitler

could be publicly recognized but he insisted that like all

his other women Eva would stay in the shadows

over time Eva's excitement about her role as Hitler's mistress

waines hitler won't acknowledge her in public she has none of his public

adoration and glory and she becomes miserable in their secret affair even notes in her diary that on

nights out Hitler would completely ignore her before handing her an envelope of cash on the way out then she

might not hear from him again for months the other issue is of course that it

would appear from the records that his affections were very intermittent and he

would treat people in very confusing ways again a vulnerable young person uh

devoted to him would find that understandably distressing confusing and

that could also contribute to the kind of depression that could lead to suicide

eva's diary entries become dark whenever Hitler doesn't call they show she is

becoming so desperate she's contemplating suicide one thing you said about Hitler and his

relationships virtually all of his relationships he became involved with someone was about to you know f over

them give them everything they wanted and then he'd disappear with the Brawn he would go and he disappear and it's

almost as if he's had his fun he now needs to go elsewhere because they were

peripheral to to what he really wanted and Ava of course tried to commit

suicide on two occasions [Music]

the thought of another young woman romantically linked to him dying would be a serious problem for Hitler who is

fiercely protective of his public reputation hitler's relationship with Eva has been

much speculated on but there were two suicide attempts and in a sense he was

then trapped because after Gilli if he had a partner who k*lled themselves

again his public image would be shot i think it's simply a case of the terrible

power that he had over them and the realization that they could never escape

it and the relationship is beset by another

more intimate issue their sex life eva finally confides in one of Hitler's top

ministers Albert Shpear and also his personal physician Theodore Morel that

Hitler wasn't performing physically that also said she was the unhappiest woman

in Germany because this relationship was bad for her extremely bad for her and uh

Hitler did not give her what she wanted so the idea that Hitler wasn't able to

satisfy Eva Brraw sexually is a very interesting one and if true that bit of data would could explain a lot about his

need for violence control power lots of the men I've worked with who are rapists

can't actually achieve erections or ej*cul*te so the the violent sexual act

isn't about achieving orgasm it's about evacuating aggression

adolf and Eva continue their relationship known only to the n*zi party in a circle for 14

years what began with a chance meeting in a photographic studio will end in their dismal squalid

deaths in April 1945 the w*r in Europe in its last

desperate death rows eva leaves Hitler's hideaway in the Bavarian Alps and joins

him in Berlin eva who initially was still at the Burgoff on Saltsburg decided she would

go to spend the final days with Hitler in the bunker in Germany eva Brawn had

always wanted to be the wife of the furer finally in the bunker she gets her

wish they got married on the last day so it was a kind of death wish but in a way

her entire relationship with Hitler had been a death wish but you know it was the the culmination of

that i think what Hitler did in marrying Ava right at the end is a way of not

seeing her as a person yet again it's not a way of saying how can I answer

your needs her needs really would be to get in to escape by any means possible it's a way of saying you've served me

loyally and here is your

reward above ground the savage battle for Berlin is nearing its bloody end

down in the bunker Hitler and Eva Brawn have been married for just 36

hours they commit suicide each taking a cyanide pill before Hitler shoots

himself he is 56 she just 33 eva becomes the last of Hitler's

women to be with him and to die with him

what you make of the suicide of Eva Brawn is a bit more complicated i think

it had a lot to do with her obsession about being recognized as the Furer's

wife remember he said he was married to Germany and could never have a wife but

really every relationship with Hitler was characterized by despair leading to

attempted suicide history tells us the type of man

Hitler became but we can see through his relationships with women the type of man

he always was a psychopathic monster who saw them as he did the entire world there for him

to dominate to abuse and to destroy as he saw fit without pity without

remorse i think the way that Hillary treated women in his personal

relationships is reflective of how he treated women in greater society in that

he had very circumscribed roles and they were not ends in themselves they were

means to an end and so this is a person without scrutals without empathy without

compassion certainly for the majority of people who I think is driven by the need

to achieve his end his aims his power and his glory

[Applause] [Music]