His Biggest Secret: The Story of Eva Braun

This week we're stepping into the darker side of women in wartime and uncovering the story of Eva Braun. Braun is most well known for being Adolf Hitler's companion for the duration of the war, before becoming his wife, which only lasted a day. The story of how she came to be part of the inner circle of history's most morally corrupt man, and whether she made those decisions of sound mind, remain a hot topic, and one that we've volleyed back and forth a lot in this episode. The age gap, the deception of a young girl, the mental instability that Braun has been colored with in later years all raise one question: why? While we can't say for certain, we found the story and questions it raised to be a real brain teaser! So grab your coffee and a fresh sinker and join us as we take The Clubmobile down another rabbit hole! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Hey guys, here come the dollars. They got fresh sinkers, hot coffee, and the sweetest smile. Welcome back to the Club Mobile, everybody. We're so happy to have you joining us today.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

Hi everyone, welcome back.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Uh we going old fashioned again. Just me and Winnie. Just hanging out.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

Just us again.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

It's just us. If you were expecting a third party, sorry, not this time.

SPEAKER_02 0:33

I don't think with this one, even if the third party was available, I don't think I would want the third party to be available for this specific.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

No, um, I don't think so. This subject this is a little different than our typical usual stuff uh subjects. Um, but no less important to the history of women during a time in war. So today we're gonna be talking about Ava Braun.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

Yeah. This one's gonna be kind of pause for dramatic reaction, right? Yeah, pause for effect.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Pause for effect.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

This one's this one's very difficult to kind of um, it's not difficult to talk about in a sense of, you know, the facts are all there. It's difficult morally because there is nothing saying, there's nothing saying publicly or outwardly that she was an evil person, but she happened to be obsessed with the most evil man alive.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

It's difficult to grasp in the sense of the why, right? Yeah, not so much the what of what she, you know, or the who of what she was and who she was and what she did, but the why. Like, yeah, why did she find herself so obsessed and attached to somebody who was essentially tearing the world apart or attempting to tell tear the world apart limb by limb?

SPEAKER_02 1:59

Yeah, it's very difficult because there's nothing saying publicly that she was an evil person, she was a bad person, or that she committed any sort of evil act. Yeah, no, like at some point it's it's guilt by association.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Yes, I was just gonna say, or evil by association, yes.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Yeah. Well, we were going through the research, there was a question I wrote down, and it was more was she morally culpable or was she a childlike innocent? Because from accounts of other people post-war, they were saying that she was kind of harebrained, very ditzy, yeah um, very she was not politically inclined, but she was introduced into these circles. And Hitler kept her a secret for so many years, to the point where he borderline arranged a marriage between two members of his circle so that he could introduce her as oh, this is so and so it was um it was a member of his circle and her sister, mm-hmm just so that he could bring her around without feeling any sort of guilt.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

I'm yeah, and that's the thing that gets me. Of everything he did, that's what would have made him feel guilty. Guilt, yeah. So this is definitely one of those morally questionable type of people. And it's me personally, I can't wrap my head around it. I'm like, why would you do that?

SPEAKER_02 3:34

Like for example, when we spoke about Axis Sally, yes, we knew right off the bat evil, bad.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Even looking at her photos, right? To to do the the edits and stuff, I was like, as soon as we can get this out, is as soon as I want to delete it all from my phone, because I feel like it's just she's very evil. I don't want any of that.

SPEAKER_02 3:57

She had an evil whereas she did. Whereas some of the stuff that because Ava Brom was a photographer and a videographer is what we'll call it now. Yeah. There's there's a certain, this is really bad to say. There's a certain whimsy about it. There's a certain like, if you were not told that these people were Nazi party members, you'd be like, oh, it's just a group of guys having fun and someone's recording. Yeah. It's really weird. It's odd. I'd like to go back to the the very, very beginning and talk a little bit about her life pre Hitler. So she was born in February of 1912. She was born Ava Anna Paul Braun. I don't know where the Paul comes from. I think it was just a name.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Maybe a family name.

SPEAKER_02 4:42

Yeah, I think so. She was born in Munich and was the second child of her parents, Friedrich and Fanny. What a name. Um, I believe Friedrich was an engineer. Anyway, her parents divorced in 1921, but then they remarried in 1922 because of financial issues.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Yeah, I mean, you're kind of on the heels of the Depression at that point, but I don't know if that actually transcended into Munich, right? The Great Depression. Don't believe it did, but again, they're on the heels of what was the first war. The Great War.

SPEAKER_02 5:18

Yes, exactly. So I think when they divorced, obviously women could not go out to work, especially, especially women from this time period, they that they were expected to go to church, yeah, and raise their kids. Babies raise their kids. Exactly. Um, so to help her parents financially, at the age of 17, uh, in 1929, Ava took a job as an assistant and model for the official Nazi Party photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, and it was through him she met Hitler. And apparently, when they met, it wasn't an instant attraction, it was more that she stroked his ego and he stroked hers. But she was so young.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

I can't see any sort of physical attraction at all. No, I mean, you know, when you look at photos of men from the 40s from the war, you're like, oh, and you're like, he's very handsome, he's very handsome, or you're like, you know, or you say, I know he was a horrible SOB, right? But he wasn't a bad looking guy.

SPEAKER_02 6:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Exactly. Sorry, Adolf Hitler had two strikes against him. He was a horrible SOB and he was a bad-looking guy. Correct. That mustache did nothing for him. He was a bad-looking guy. Not sure what was going on in Ava's mind at that point.

SPEAKER_02 6:38

Apparently, it was the fact that they knew how to make each other feel better and how to, we would say, lift each other up, but this was a bad way of doing it. At that at the time, Hitler was 40 when they met. She was 17. Jesus. And he was 40. So he was 23 years older. And then this is when it kind of gets a bit iffy, you know, like at the very beginning, I said, was she morally culpable or was she just kind of not all that? Right. Was it just natural innocence? Yeah, she brought her family into the fold as well. So her younger sister Gretel also worked for Hoffman from 1932, and they rented a flat together, but that flat was paid for by Hitler. Yeah. He he kept her really secluded and he kept her a secret.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

And I'm very I was very like not surprised, but also a bit that around this time is when she started dying her hair to achieve a particular shade of blonde.

SPEAKER_02 7:37

Yeah, particular shade.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

A very specific shade of blonde.

SPEAKER_02 7:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

So it's 1929 and they they meet. They meet at Hoffman Studio in Munich. Like I said, Hitler was 40, she was 17. When they met, I know that he was unbothered. He didn't care because he was living with his niece. And apparently they were involved in no way a niece and uncle should be involved.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

She was his half-niece. I guess at the time the half made it okay. But she was his half-niece. And yeah, even irregardless to be involved in a particular way like that.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

In a particular way, in which a niece and an uncle should not be involved, and they were obsessed with each other. And while on a trip to Nuremberg, his half-niece was found dead with a self-inflicted gunshot to the chest, and she had done it with Hitler's own pistol. Hitler was, of course, devastated, but it was only after then that that event that he then became obsessed with with Braun. Yes. So it seems that Ava Braun was like the biggest rebound in history. She's up she's obsessed with this man. He is unbothered until the person that he's in love with, who is um has now died by her hand and by his pistol. They were not together until this event took place.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

No.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

He kept her almost length.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Yeah, he kept her at arm's length, but then it's also as if he said, like, you know, he looked, he saw something in Ava that mirrored his niece.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

I think it was. Which then begs the question: what was the particular shade of blonde?

SPEAKER_02 9:38

Yeah, absolutely. I think it was either the shade of blonde of the niece's hair, and I think it was also the shade of blonde the of the Aryan race.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

I would, I would, I would venture a very well-educated guest to say it was one of the two, or it was or both a combination.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

Yes, because it lines up. Like in 1932, the niece has killed herself, and then in 32 onwards, she's Ava's dyeing her hair. He kept Ava at arm's length, though, like to the point she was so obsessed with him, and he would not give her the attention she wanted that she attempted suicide multiple times for attention. They were both as batshit as each other, truly. It's the best, the best way I could put it.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

They were both insane. After her recovery from this attempted suicide, he then commits himself to her.

unknown 10:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

And they become and they become secret lovers. So you know she's nuts. This is the one I want.

SPEAKER_02 10:47

But he's also he's also not right. No. Um, so the reason why he gave her this apartment, this villa, was that he could keep an eye on her and make sure that she did not attempt suicide again.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

And he put her sister Gretel up in the apartment and the villa with her.

SPEAKER_02 11:05

Yeah, because they both worked for Heinrich Hoffman, who was up above. They had a very odd, like, power dynamic. He wasn't introduced to her as Hitler, he was introduced to her as Herr Wolf. So that's what she called him. She called him that forever. Her wolf, Mr. Wolf. It's a very odd, of course. It is odd. It's Hitler. Of course, it's gonna be an odd. But no, she attempted suicide multiple times. Like there was just to get his attention. Yeah, there was one attempt where she with her own father's pistol, and then historians bidded that as an unserious attempt on her life. She was doing it for detention.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

None of them were serious. She wanted him to, he was very look at me, look at me.

SPEAKER_02 11:49

Yeah. And then in 1935, she took a dose of sleeping pills, which at that point they called sleeping powder, which she had purchased herself. And she took an overdose of those because Hitler was not making time for her in his life. Because, you know, he was too busy at the top of the Axis powers.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

He was too busy trying to rip the world apart. So she decides Let me just let me just try and kill myself.

SPEAKER_02 12:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

A third or fourth time.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

Fourth time. This is again where it gets a bit. I mean, the whole thing is iffy, but right at the beginning, as I mentioned, was she morally culpable? Was she just hairbrained? She became his private secretary. He made her his private secretary, but it wasn't a serious role. He put her in there so she could have a job title. Right. Just so she could sneak into his office. Like she had a certain door she could go through and certain stairs she could take without being seen.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

So he just kept again, he kept right after so after all this, she moves into his residence at Berchtesgarden.

SPEAKER_02 12:57

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

And he gives her and he gives her this position as private secretary, just so that he could say, Now you're now like, you know, okay, you're closer now. I can see you, you can see me.

SPEAKER_02 13:09

Yeah. But then at this point, she's in all of these, you know, circles with the with the Nazi with the Nazi party, and she's in these rooms, obviously, that are full of political men. And she has no interest in politics at all. No interest in politics. She has no interest in what they're saying or what they're doing. She is just there for him. She was not an official member of the party.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

So despite holding the position of private secretary to Adolf Hitler, you're not an official member of the Nazi party. I make that make sense. To me, that doesn't make sense. So you're sleeping with the man, you're his official secretary, you're his private secretary.

unknown 13:53

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

But you're not an official member of the Nazi Party. And you're in these rooms with all of the highest members of the Third Reich. But no, don't worry, she's not an official member of the Nazi Party.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

Like to the point where she was ushered away from political conversation.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

And it just said that back then women had no place in politics, especially if I mean he certainly believed women had no place in politics.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

And uh historians have said that she wasn't really bothered by that. She was like, okay, yeah, this is fine. Heinrich Hoffman described Braun's outlook on politics as featherbrained and inconsequential.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

I would describe her as feather-brained and inconsequential.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

She absolutely was. I mean, she was sort of, you know, those memes where it's like, oh, I'm just a girl.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

And it's that's literally the definition of her. She was like, I'm just a girl with a massive crush.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

It's like borderline obsession. I say borderline, it's it's obsession.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

It's obsession.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

It's crazy. So the borderline arranged marriage I mentioned was between Braun's sister Gretel, and she married a man called Herman F. I'm gonna butcher this man's name. Hermann Feigelin. He served as Himmler's liaison for Hitler's stuff, and Hitler used this marriage as an excuse to have Braun appear at official functions, not as, oh, here's my intended, here's my partner. It was so he could introduce her as Feiglen's sister-in-law. Feigelin' sister-in-law.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

And not, you know, this is my secret lover who's 20-something years younger than me.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Yeah, yeah. 23 years younger. Um, he never officially introduces her. But everyone knows who she is. Everyone knows what they're up to. But he keeps her at this at this arm's length. And I think anything, it just fed the obsession. It feeds the obsession for her because she's like, oh, he's giving me a moment of his time, he's giving me a few minutes out of his day. Oh my god, it's finally working. And like while, you know, while I was not in a relationship with someone who committed genocide, um, I've been in such a relationship where it's like, oh, he gave me a second, oh yeah. It's fucking awful, but it is I don't feel sorry for her.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

Yeah, you look back on it and you're like, why would I do that? Why did I do that, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:25

And I don't feel sorry for this woman.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Uh-uh.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

Because she knew what she was getting into, she knew what he was capable of.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

I mean, at that point, right? At that stage in the game.

SPEAKER_02 16:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Right? It's 1944.

SPEAKER_02 16:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Her sister married Herman Biglin three days before D-Day, June 3rd of 44. You know what's happening in the world, right? Whether you're in the room with the politics, whether you're disinterested in the politics, you can't be that self-absorbed. You can't be that self-absorbed that you're not aware of what is going on around you and in the world. And the man that you are so obsessed with is doing that you don't realize something's wrong.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

Yeah. This is when it's hard to pin down where she obviously she was on his level, they would not have fallen in love. I say they. But I hate the fact there is nothing publicly saying that she was also evil because she did not technically commit an evil act apart from marrying this evil, evil man who committed genocide.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

You were the private secretary of the most evil man in history. Sorry, I wouldn't even go with evil by association. You're just plain evil. You have to be you have to be an evil person or have a bad streak in you to allow yourself to associate with somebody that is as evil as that. The same goes for today. Like you have to be how self-absorbed, right? Or lack of self-awareness, how much lack of self-awareness do you have to have that you you know you know somebody is bad. And yet, and you're like, but you know, he's got a job opening, yeah, and it's good. You could tell me it was a $200,000 salary, and I'd say, he's a real piece of shit. No thank you, right? No, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 18:29

Absolutely not. Like there was obviously the there's so many of the memes now. I'm just a girl, this is another one, I could fix him. And I feel like she was very much I can fix him. I can fix him.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

I think she's the original, I would say she might be the original pick me girl.

SPEAKER_02 18:44

Oh, I think you might be correct, truly. She must have, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

Absolutely she was. She's the original pick me girl and probably the most strange rebound ever.

SPEAKER_02 18:58

The most famous rebound in history because he wasn't bothered about her until his lover slash niece killed herself. Gag. You when you think it can't get any weirder, you find out that he's actually having a love affair with his half niece. I'm gonna admit the half because it's still and she was so much younger than him, too. And it seems that he liked younger women so that he could mold them and that's exactly what it is.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

I you know his um I could fit them into this box and make them do what I want, make them do what I want.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

While she may not have been on his level initially, he molded her enough to put her on his level. Absolutely. So he just he messed with her mind, but then again, she knows what no one can be that dumb to not look outside the window and not know what is going on in the world and to not read the newspaper and to not listen to the radio. There is no way that she was like, Oh no, I don't know what he's doing. I used to have no idea what he does.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

I'm so disinterested in politics, I have no idea what he does. Oh, oh, yeah, the the Americans and the English are knocking down the door. But I have no idea why, right? I have no idea why.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

So he kept her at this arm's length and refused to say who she was to the point where he arranged a marriage between her sister and one of his closest co-workers, just to say, oh, this is his sister-in-law, right? Not my secret lover, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:36

Not my secret lover, not my romantic partner. I mean, God forbid you introduce the smart move would have been this is my secretary. Yeah, why are we jumping through hoops? Going, why are we being so extra? Right? Being so extra.

SPEAKER_02 20:53

Then again, you have to realize that people who are this insane do not think logically. No, this was not a logical thought, not at all. Because he was insane, and she was also insane for going along with it. But then again, he had put her on his level at such speed that they I don't think she cared. She was just like, Oh, I'm in the room with him, and I can see him, and that makes me so happy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

So he marries her sister off to Hermann Feiglin, and now he's got Ava in the room where this is Feiglin's sister-in-law. In April of 45, Braun travels back to Berlin from Munich to be with Hitler. This is just as the Russians are closing in on the Capitol, she refuses to leave.

SPEAKER_02 21:42

Yep. He tries to set, I believe he tries to send her away, and I believe a lot of the other party members were trying to usher her away so that he could figure out his next steps.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

Um she refuses to leave him. Yeah. So end of April of 45, April 29th, they marry. In a small civil ceremony in his bunker.

SPEAKER_02 22:04

I'm not sure how they came to this conclusion because he had kept her a secret for so long. I'm not sure why at this point they married. I obviously it was in death that they could be husband and wife, but he was so disinterested.

SPEAKER_01 22:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

That I'm not sure how that decision came about.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Could have just been to play. I mean, to and maybe he knew what his final move was, and it was to placate her.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

Maybe. It's again, it's never publicly said.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

It's never it's never publicly This is such a cut and dry.

SPEAKER_02 22:40

Like she meets him, yeah, she works for Hoffman, she's obsessed with him, she dies with him. It's one of the stories where I wished we had more meat around the bones because she's very she's spoken about very step one, step two, step three, step four, which is part of me is like that's what she deserves. She deserves to not have the splendor and the gift of having this wonderful and wonderful, this great story told about her, and it's tragedy, and it's gonna you know stick with history forever. But then another part is because we speak about these people, I wanted there to be so much more. Yeah. And even though she was a terrible, terrible person for even being attracted to this man, knowing what is going on in his head, I wish we had more because one of our things is that men are always gonna overtake a woman's story. Yeah. And I think it should go for even these bad stories. We had more meat on Axis Sally, and there was a man involved in that. We had more meat around those bones. This is one of the most famous women. Infamous, I would say, famous for the wrong reasons.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 24:03

And yet every story is cut and dry. And every story is, I don't know. No one knows, but they know all about the answers.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

Well, I it's one of those cases where the answers to the questions died with her and Hitler.

SPEAKER_02 24:18

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

SPEAKER_00 24:21

That's a good question.

SPEAKER_02 24:28

There's gonna be nothing.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

And I know that we've made it our mission to tell good and bad stories, and I hate the fact that's because there's good and there was good and bad sides of the war.

SPEAKER_02 24:41

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

But it's very difficult when you can't find all the pieces, or there are no other pieces, like you've got all the pieces available to you. It's very difficult, but it's still important that we did it.

SPEAKER_02 24:55

It's still important that we tell this story despite it being not a good story.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

Correct.

SPEAKER_02 25:01

And I wish that we had had more, even though it was a bad story. Anyway, she she and Hitler marry in a small civil ceremony in his bunker. The event was witnessed and the marriage certificate was signed by Goebbels. So again, how do you not how are you so hair flick, hair flick, dough-eyed that you're like, this is fine? He's not a bad guy, and how are people not thinking, yeah, you're a bad woman? They had a modest wedding breakfast, and they were joined by other members of the Nazi party. And Ava's name was legally changed to Ava Hitler as of the night of the marriage. After 1 p.m. on April 30th, Braun and Hitler said goodbye to staff and members of the inner circle. They know people are they know the Red Army's closing in on them, essentially. Later that afternoon, they are both found deceased on a small sofa by members of the SS. Hitler had shot himself, and she had taken a cyanide pill. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

Not the Romeo and Juliet ending.

SPEAKER_02 26:11

Christ, no.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

Or to her, I mean, I would imagine to her it was the Romeo and Juliet ending. To her, this is the most tragic love story, and it's her Romeo and Juliet ending. That you love somebody so much that you would you would take these these steps and then just end your life.

SPEAKER_02 26:32

If it was anybody else, if it wasn't this horrible woman married to this god-awful man, I'd feel a bit bad for her.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

I'd feel really sad for her chasing I I feel that she was very brainwashed, very brainwashed.

SPEAKER_02 26:45

If it was anybody else, I would feel bad for her because she's chasing this man who was not interested. And then she's marrying him, he's finally interested, but oh, it's only because you're going to die together, because he is a terrible man and does not want to be killed by anybody else but his own hand. If it was anybody else, I'd be like, Oh god, that's awful. It's not not in this instance.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

When they died, he was 56, she was 33, she was so young, she was a baby, but she also knew better because she knew what at 33, yeah, you should know better, and it's very strange because her parents again, it's never mentioned if her parents were this way politically inclined.

SPEAKER_02 27:37

Yeah, you have to imagine that they were because someone seek out this job, yeah, with both of their children being involved in the Nazi Party. Yeah, I think it I think they had four children, and it was both the daughters that are in involved with the SS and the Third Reich and the Axis powers and what have you. They don't again, like, yes, I know this is an awful, awful story to talk about and to learn about. I wish there was more. Because again, oh her parents did this, they had four children. Oh, and now, by the way, they're now involved with the Third Reich, and she's 17. But that's all we know. On 11th of May 1945, the dental remains of both bodies were identified by two of Hitler's dental assistants.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

Their bodies were burned, right? So they were they were the SS finds them and moves their bodies, but then they're their bodies were burned during the Red Army's shelling of the area that they have now invaded in Munich.

SPEAKER_02 28:49

But it's been disputed if the remains were bronze because of the number of teeth that that they that the the dentist examined.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

I mean, that's not to say that the rest of the teeth weren't just lost.

SPEAKER_02 29:02

That's true, yeah. This part of the remains only had 11 teeth, but upon her last and most recent examination, she had all her teeth. So no one's entirely sure if that was actually them. I think they may have lied just to say, yep, we found him. And he's burned, and here's the proof. Here's the here's the record of his death. The rest, the rest of Braun's family survived the war, I assume, purely because of who their daughters were involved with.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

With the exception of her sister Gretel's husband, who was executed for trying to flee.

SPEAKER_02 29:40

Yeah, I believe it was right after D Day, her husband, who she had essentially been in an arranged marriage with, so that Hitler could introduce people as this man's sister-in-law. Right.

unknown 30:00

Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 30:01

So after all that, what was the point? What was the point? Greta remarried, and she had a daughter that she named after her sister. I believe they all remained in Germany their whole lives.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

Imagine growing up being the little girl named after Hitler's side piece.

SPEAKER_02 30:19

But then again, I don't know if the family were like into it. I don't know if they were into the fold. I don't know if they were. But I would love people's opinions on it. Because with the with the facts that we've had presented to us, it seems that because it isn't mentioned, the family was not involved. Right. But then they were brought into the fold because their daughter got a job. And I'm not having that she did not know what she was getting into. You have to know. You have to know, and like I'm not 17 is incredibly young, but it's not young enough to be stupid, it's not young enough to not ask people. You're not too young to think about what you're doing before you act at 17.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

Somebody like Anne Frank, who was younger than Ava Braun at the time that the war began, was very hyper-aware of everything that was going on.

SPEAKER_00 31:22

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

And Ava Braun is pl like, you know, didn't know. She was feather brained, a little innocent, a little scatterbrained, didn't really, didn't really get it. I don't buy into that. I don't buy into that.

SPEAKER_02 31:36

Was she?

SPEAKER_01 31:37

Unless that was just her, you know.

SPEAKER_02 31:40

Did she present herself that way?

SPEAKER_01 31:41

Did she present herself as, you know, an airhead? Was part of the scheme. Yeah. Was that part of her game?

SPEAKER_02 31:49

Because of course he thought that women had no place in politics. He thought women belonged in the kitchen and raising babies and and what have you.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

So if she plays like she's disinterested, then she's got his attention because that's the kind of woman he's got his eye on.

SPEAKER_02 32:03

And like she was very manipulated by him.

SPEAKER_01 32:07

Yeah, she was. She was very manipulated by him.

SPEAKER_02 32:11

So she changes her whole demeanor to keep him interested. And then when he's not interested, she tries to kill herself. It's just a very lost sense of self. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mentioned earlier on in the episode that she was I hate to use the word gifted for this woman, but she was she was very good at being a photographer, and a lot of her home movies and pictures are on the National Archives, so they can be viewed if you type in her name. You will find videos and her pictures.

SPEAKER_01 32:49

There's no doubt that she might have been a very talented photographer.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

Yeah, like a lot of it looks great.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

One, I don't think one feeds into the other, no, necessarily, but it's just an odd, it's an odd word to use when describing somebody like that. Oh, she's talented or she was pretty.

SPEAKER_02 33:07

Yeah, like I said at the beginning, if you did not know that she was filming members of the most evil party in history, yeah. You think, oh, this is a bunch of friends just having a wild time. And Germany looks beautiful, it's so green. And the way that it's been filmed and restored, the colours of where they are, it's it's gorgeous.

SPEAKER_01 33:33

It's almost like she wanted to document what Germany looked like before Hitler destroyed it.

SPEAKER_02 33:40

Yeah, pretty much. You know the scene in Band of Brothers where they're all up at Eagle's Nest? It looks like that.

SPEAKER_01 33:48

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 33:49

Mountainous, green, lush. So that's why if you do not know who you're looking at, you would not think it is the Third Reich. You would not think there's a members of the SS.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:01

You would think it's just a bunch of friends having a nice time during the summer. But I'm kind of glad that that part of history has not been lost. You can go and see what it was like before. But I think I think you are completely correct with the fact that he manipulated her and her whole demeanour changed, and um there's no evidence of her parents taking action. I sort of think they were too caught up in their own troubles, and she took the job in a in order to help them financially. Right. But then again, you go home and you say, Hey mom, hey dad, I'm now working for Hitler's personal photographer. Oh, and I'm also his model. I'm also his muse. So you're not gonna be like cracking, thanks for bringing home some rent.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

No, but in a time maybe in a time like that, in that time, your post-World War I, maybe they saw it as well. If she continues, maybe whatever whatever might be happening, whatever might be unfolding, if my daughter is involved, it won't happen to them. Safety by association, right? We'll be safe by association of Ava and then eventually Gretel. So maybe that's why her parents didn't. This is all hypothesis at this point. So maybe that's why they didn't say, no, don't do this. No, you have to stop. They figured it would secure their safety.

SPEAKER_02 35:30

And uh ultimately it it did. But I would not be able to, I wouldn't be able to sit with that. No, that's just me.

SPEAKER_01 35:38

So that also again tells me that her parents were a couple of bad sticks too, because it's not the consequence of saying, yeah, this is gonna secure our safety, but at what cost now your daughter's dead?

SPEAKER_02 35:49

Yeah, and she has killed herself with the man who has committed the most atrocious war crimes ever in the history of time. Yeah. How are we all okay with this? How are we all? Oh, yeah, this is fine. I don't this has been one of the ones where I have sat through it and I'm like, I don't get it. I don't understand.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

I don't get the logic.

SPEAKER_02 36:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:12

Normally, normally I can read something, right? History is, you know, not that history is linear. We talked about this with Jeff, that you know, one event could bring something that's 50 years old to the surface in similarity. So history, while it might be linear on the timeline of it happened here, it happened here, it happened here, it's still ever kind of rolling. History is, you know, a thing that comes and goes, and yeah, ever-evolving ebbs and flows. Normally, I can grasp just about anything. I can read it a couple of times, understand it. I can't grasp the logic here.

SPEAKER_02 36:54

I can't make it work.

SPEAKER_01 36:56

I can't, as a woman, especially I think as a woman, I can't wrap my head around the why.

SPEAKER_02 37:02

And as someone like I mentioned earlier, as someone who has been in such a relationship where I was young and my mind was very um molded into having a certain demeanor and a certain look and a certain mood around this person. However, I had enough sense to realize if this person was as evil as this man, I would have there was still some sense in my body. There was still, even though it was overtaken by being taken advantage of and being manipulated, I still had some kind of common sense in my head, like, oh, this man's committing genocide against Jewish people. Yeah. Maybe I should take a step back. Maybe I should start planning an escape. Um, but then again, when you think this literally just came to me, when you think about it, her parents have remarried because of financial difficulties, and he's giving her a home. He's giving her and her sister shelter, which is adds even more to the manipulation.

unknown 38:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:02

So yeah, in a way, it's like he's trying to disguise himself as a good person to them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:08

Like he saves.

SPEAKER_01 38:09

Oh, I rescued you, I put a I put a roof over your head. I'm gonna rip all these people. I'm gonna rip all these other people out of their homes. But you but you get a roof over your head. Once again, I can't comprehend the why.

SPEAKER_02 38:25

There is um there's something else I wrote down during our research, and I would like to end with this. It's her bland indifference to the world her boyfriend was destroying that makes her such a sinister figure. So we went into this being like, was she evil? Was she not? Everyone make their own decision. I she was. I think she was. I think she was. She was what makes her guilty by association.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 38:55

I would love everyone's opinion. I would love to know how our listeners feel about this story. I think we're gonna spend some time trying to make sense of the course of events. Yeah, we're gonna try and spend some time figuring out.

SPEAKER_01 39:09

There's a lot to unpack here.

SPEAKER_02 39:11

There's a lot to unpack with this one.

SPEAKER_01 39:13

So and if you have information that we might have missed, let us know. Because once again, we want to make sense of it. We want to understand it fully. You know, that's not to say we're not sitting here saying, I don't understand and understand it. We understand what happened. The logic is where we're where we still can't grasp it.

SPEAKER_02 39:34

So I'm glad that we I'm glad that we did this one.

SPEAKER_01 39:36

I'm glad we covered this. This is important. This is all very important stuff because it's part of history. The war was not just all, you know, cute hair and and yeah, it wasn't just you know, girls in uniforms and you know, pretty Red Cross girls handing out donuts. It had an ugly, it had an ugly side to it. War is ugly.

SPEAKER_02 39:57

War's ugly, and uh, in some cases, women did make history, but for the wrong reasons. Correct. So I would love to know everyone's opinion on this. Where do you stand? Do you feel like she was manipulated? Do you feel like she already had this mean streak in her that she followed through with him? Do you feel like it was a case of them stroking each other's egos and it ended very, very terribly? Yeah, let us let us know. I would I'd love to know people's opinions. Until next time, thank you for listening, everyone. Thanks for joining us, guys. See you next time.

SPEAKER_01 40:33

Bye.

SPEAKER_02 40:34

Bye.