Hitler’s Suicide Women - Andrew van Ginkel

For many, the existence of a woman in Hitler’s life had remained a secret until the news of the suicide of a woman at his side in the Führerbunker hit the headlines in 1945\. Five years earlier, at the start of the Second World War, Unity Valkyrie Mitford, a young British socialite, attempted suicide in Munich’s Englischer Garten. Reacting to Unity’s unsuccessful suicide attempt, Hitler said the following to his photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann: ‘I’m beginning to be frightened of women! Whenever I happen to show a little personal interest – by a look or by paying some little compliment – it is always misinterpreted. I bring women no luck! And that’s a fact which repeats itself in a most unusual and fateful way throughout my life!’The list of unlucky women by that stage was not a short one. Hitler’s young niece, Geli Raubal, had, for example, shot herself in Hitler’s Munich apartment in 1931\. Nine months after Geli’s suicide, Hoffmann’s young salesgirl Eva Braun attempted suicide by shooting herself in the chest. News reports covering Geli’s suicide also mentioned the attempted suicide of a seventeen-year-old girl from Berchtesgaden four years earlier, who later identified herself as Mimi Reiter.Historian Robert Waite later suggested that the high rate of suicides attributed to the seven women who had been in an intimate relationship with Hitler appeared to support the theory that Hitler had a sexual perversion. A perversion so abhorrent in its nature, that it had driven these women to take their own lives. For most historians, the allegations regarding Hitler engaging in sexually perverse activities with young women are considered as ‘Nazi gossip’ spread by Hitler’s political adversaries. The author of this book, however, believes that too many questions remain unanswered.This book is an attempt to unravel the complex evolution and origin of these suicide-related Hitler myths. To sort through the mountain of conspiracy theories and false information to uncover the available evidence, which the author then has pieced back together to create a more accurate interpretation of Hitler’s relationships with women.