What happened to the sister of Eva Braun?

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Annelie
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Re: What happened to the sister of Eva Braun?

#16

Post by Annelie » 26 Nov 2008, 14:11

As for Fegelein having "really loved" Gretl, most accounts say he was in it simply for the opportunity to further his career.
Am not standing up for Fegelein but I was under the impression that during those days and earlier it was not uncommon that couples did get married for convenience in both money and position. We certainly know it happens today, especially when there is money and power involved, e.g. Kennedy and Onassis.
there was probably some hidden jealousy there. Gretl, as a result, probably sought to secure for herself some small compensation and security by getting on with Fegelein. What I am driving at here is that Gretl was an opportunist as well, and maybe "real love" didn't play any part in either her or Fegelein's machinations
Many sisters look up to their other sister whom is seemingly more mature and wordly and "still" love their siblings and
perhaps as you say idolize her without jealousy.

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Re: What happened to the sister of Eva Braun?

#17

Post by J. Duncan » 26 Nov 2008, 20:16

Jealousy was a poor choice of words since it implies malice....the sisters loved each other very much and were very close. Perhaps envious might be a better word...Gretl probably liked the lifestyle that Eva had created for herself and probably wanted a similar set-up as a wife in the "Family Circle".


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Re: What happened to the sister of Eva Braun?

#18

Post by FireFoxy » 27 Nov 2008, 00:38

J. Duncan wrote:Jealousy was a poor choice of words since it implies malice....the sisters loved each other very much and were very close. Perhaps envious might be a better word...Gretl probably liked the lifestyle that Eva had created for herself and probably wanted a similar set-up as a wife in the "Family Circle".
Sir, you are right about Gretl probelry like the life style that eva created for herself-She did marry an SS man high up in the pecking order.
Sorry i still don't know how to qoute a section yet :oops: :oops: :? :)
V = VICTORY

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Re: Gretel's daughter, Eva

#19

Post by Red Ashes » 13 Dec 2008, 23:01

I understand that Gretel's daughter, Eva, was born on 5/5/45, shortly after the end of the war. Does anyone know much about her, other than she committed suicide at age 25? Looking at her picture when she was two (below with Gretel) her eyes look lighter than her mother's eyes. Gretel's and Hermann Fegelein's eyes appear to be brown, and this photo of Eva appears to show little facial resemblance to Fegelein.

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Peter H
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Re: What happened to the sister of Eva Braun?

#20

Post by Peter H » 14 Dec 2008, 04:25

27 year old Eva Fegelein committed suicide on the 28th June 1971 after poisoning herself with a weedkiller.Suffering depression after her boyfriend (driving her car)had been killed in a head on crash near Lake Garda.

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Re: What happened to the sister of Eva Braun?

#21

Post by Peter H » 12 Jan 2009, 12:30

From wehrmacht-awards.com,4 years ago

Said to be Fegelein with Eva,not Gretl
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Fegelein_eva.jpg
Fegelein_eva.jpg (40.91 KiB) Viewed 23287 times

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Re: What happened to the sister of Eva Braun?

#22

Post by Red Ashes » 18 Jan 2009, 09:23

There was some speculation by Hitler's secretary that Eva had a crush on Fegelein. It makes it all the more interesting when you consider that Gretl wanted to be a part of the "family circle". Perhaps Fegelein married Gretl so he could be closer to Eva. Was it a love triangle? What was Hitler's role in all this?

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Annelie
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Re: What happened to the sister of Eva Braun?

#23

Post by Annelie » 18 Jan 2009, 09:54

Perhaps Fegelein married Gretl so he could be closer to Eva. Was it a love triangle?
Some complicated triangle then, Eva chose to die with Hitler rather than what we have been told that Fegelein asked
Eva to leave before the Russians came?

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Re: What happened to the sister of Eva Braun?

#24

Post by palaisfan » 19 Jan 2009, 23:44

Peter H,
Said to be Fegelein with Eva,not Gretl
That's right. If the pictures come from the wedding day, they are easy to confirm, as that is the dress Eva is in, and in Anton Joachimsthaler's book on the Bunker there is a similar picture that shows both Eva in that dress and Gretl in the same picture, with Fegelein, clinching how to tell apart.

- palaisfan

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Re: What happened to the sister of Eva Braun?

#25

Post by Red Ashes » 20 Jan 2009, 08:04

I have to wonder if Hitler encouraged Gretl and Eva to compete over Fegelein, much as he had encouraged the competition between Eva and Geli Raubal over him. As her first and possibly only lover, Eva was loyal to Hitler even to the point of taking her own life as the new Mrs. Hitler in her black wedding dress. Her third attempt of suicide for love of Hitler was finally successful.

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kiwi123
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Re: What happened to the sister of Eva Braun?

#26

Post by kiwi123 » 15 Jun 2009, 13:06

Red Ashes, there is also speculation that a husband had to be found for Gretl quickly, because she found herself pregnant to someone else. The social climber Fegelein was likely under pressure from Himmler's policy of having his SS men marry and produce children for the Reich. Seeing the opportunity to get closer to Hitler, a deal could well have been struck. That would account for your observation that baby Eva didn't look much like him.

I can't remember the book I read that in, but the same book also posed the notion that Eva's decision to suicide may have been prompted by her being pregnant to Fegelein. (Go with us here, it's not entirely implausable!) Coming to Berlin to "die at the side of the Fuhrer" was, according to this theory, only a cover for her real motive, being closer to her lover. Many sources document Fegelien pleading with her to leave the bunker, and also her pleading with Hitler to spare Fegelein's life after his capture. After his execution, the pregnant Eva may have felt there was nothing left for her but an "honourable" suicide, with the title of Frau Hitler as a bonus, ensureing she did not just go down in histroy as Hitler's mistress. With Fegeline executed, and Hitler dead, there were no more Sugar Daddies, and assuming she survived the Russian advance, the alternative to suicide would have been social ridicule at the very best - how Hitler would have been capable of fathering a child in his last days would have been a difficult thing to explain to society!! It's an interesting theory anyway, and certainly photos such as the one shown ehre do show that her and Fegelien were at least quite intimate.

Finally, Gretl is said to have had a past fling with (I think) Erich Kempka, Hitler's chauffer.

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Re: What happened to the sister of Eva Braun?

#27

Post by Ohlendorf2 » 17 Jun 2009, 05:21

In her volume, "The Lost Life of Eva Braun" (St. Martins: New York, 2006), Angela Lambert notes that Eva's sister "Gretl" (for Margarethe) passed away on October 10, 1987 in a state of advanced Alzheimer's Disease, which had impaired her thinking to one degree or another for many years. That, plus a strong desire for anonymity, probably explains the paucity of interviews of Gretl, although I'll bet there are transcripts of interrogations of her right after the War by the British which are still now under lock-and-key. And yes, as is noted above by a number of contributors, she did marry Kurt Berlinghoff but they had no children. Her daughter by Fegelein, "Little" Eva (born May 5, 1945), took her own life on June 28, 1971 at age 26 after her fiance was killed in an automobile accident in which he was (alone) driving Little Eva's new VW Karman Ghia sports model. As an interesting aside, Lambert's book is a good read on the Braun family as a whole, and she does a fine job of portraying the conduct of a middle class German family in the first decades of the twentieth century. Her contribution on Eva Braun is only the second one in English, the first being Nerin Gun's "Eva Braun: Hitler's Mistress" (Leslie Frewin: London, 1969). Lambert disagrees with Nun on a number of basic points about the Braun family, but I have not read Gun's account, and so I am unable to offer much more information. Happy Trails from Ohlendorf2!

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Re: What happened to the sister of Eva Braun?

#28

Post by francois » 08 Nov 2009, 22:09

Several books have stated that Gretl Braun, who stayed at Eva's house in Munich with their maid, dated frequently and became pregnant by a German soldier, who was named, whose name I can't remember now. This soldier refused to marry Gretl, even after a request/demand from Hitler. Hitler was furious and ordered the soldier sent to the front where he quickly perished in the war against Russia. Hitler could not allow his photographer's sister to be unmarried and pregnant, and being Roman Catholic, he could not demand an abortion. Solution -- have Himmler's Golden Playboy of the Reich publicly marry Eva's sister and surprise, when her pregnancy begins to show, she will already be married. This is what occurred. Hermann had no love or respect for Gretl and cheated on her before, during and after the marriage. He even maintained two other homes besides the marriage home with Gretl. There is documentation transcripts from tapped phone calls and letters that Hermann had a crush on Eva but Eva knew that any man that got close to her would be killed by the Nazis on standing orders from Hitler as this had happened on more than one occasion to Eva's male suitors. They always had bad accidents or disappeared. But I believe Eva was attracted to Hermann also but knew it was too dangerous and she didn't want to cause any trouble for her sister, also. At the end of the war Hermann shipped several trunks of unknown possessions of Eva's to her father at the hospital where he worked before he disappeared, and this caused Allied military intelligence to suspect that Fegelein was involved in some broad conspiracy and Fegelein's parents were spied on for years after 1945 8O hoping to catch him visiting them.

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Re: What happened to the sister of Eva Braun?

#29

Post by Ohlendorf2 » 09 Nov 2009, 03:12

Hello Francois--Interesting information in your post about the Braun sisters, Fegelein, and Hitler. Considering Eva's penchant for teenage "kitsch," it wouldn't surprise me at all if the "trunks" Fegelein shipped for her contained all sorts of memento's, most probably of little historical value--unless, of course, one wishes to get a better glimpse of Eva, her relationship with Hitler, Fegelein, and other members of Hitler's "Court." And that's always worthwhile, for certain. I myself have often wondered (and I've visited Eva's little house in Munich, although it does not bear the same address it did during the War) whether or not Fegelein actually escaped execution at the Chancellery on April 28, 1945 (most "evidence" does indicate that he was shot there--note comments by Rochus Misch in his volume "Der letzte Zeuge" and on film for the American History Channel, available on DVD--but perhaps, at the last minute, he "got away" i.e. was released into the Berlin City nightmare by a sympathetic SS man or two.) More provacatively, was the woman who "committed suicide" with Hitler on April 30 Eva? Again, Eva probably did commit suicide with Hitler (or was assassinated along with him by a desperate, small group of SS men along with Bormann), yet I have a nagging doubt, due to the extremely poor forensic evidence available to make a conclusive ruling about the identity of the badly burned female corpse found along with Hitler's on May 4--if, indeed, the burned corpses were Hitler and Eva's or, better yet, if there were any corpses found at all (I don't put it beyond Russian Security to have "invented" the entire "autoposy" of Hitler and Eva story.) My personal opinion aligns with that of Anton Joachimsthaler and Joachim Fest that all the Russians ever found were a few charred bits, turned up after sifting the soil in the Chancellery garden for days after the capitulation of the City. Surely, Hitler died in the Bunker. Eva, in all likelihood, did, too. After all, if she were "spirited away" by the SD/SS in a drunken stupor after having slit her own right wrist and lost much blood just before Hitler's death, where would she go? Could she get out of the City, even with a great deal of "help?" And if she did escape, what would be left for her, other than a life of enforced anonymity or assassination soon after her "escape" (although she was quite non-political, she may have "known too much" to be permitted to live--by the SS). Still, I've heard a few 'convinced romantics' suggest that, at the last minute, she and Fegelein "rode off into the sunset" as Russian guns bashed the last out of Berlin. It's a cute idea, but I doubt it! Finally, where does your information about the true father of Gretl's child come from? Thanks for a good post! Ohlendorf2.

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Re: What happened to the sister of Eva Braun?

#30

Post by Vikki » 14 Nov 2009, 22:04

A series of posts discussing the evidence surrounding the death of Hitler and Eva Braun were split into their own thread at: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 6&t=160026

~Vikki

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