Living with Hitler: Accounts of Hitlers Household Staff

Living with Hitler

Front view of the Berghof. On the first floor you can spot Hitler’s study, with its three doors leading to the balcony. Situated to the left of the main building are the staff rooms and the dining room. The hall, on the ground floor of the main building, boasted a window of huge proportions off ering a breathtaking view to the Untersberg.

Living with Hitler

Accounts of Hitler’s Household Staff

Karl Wilhelm Krause, Herbert Döhring & Anna Plaim

Introduction by Roger Moorhouse

Translation by Eva Burke

Living with Hitler: Accounts of Hitler’s Household Staff

This edition published in 2018 by Greenhill Books,

c/o Pen & Swords Books Limited, 47 Church Street,

Barnsley, S. Yorkshire, S70 2AS

www.greenhillbooks.com

contact@greenhillbooks.com

ISBN: 978-1-78438-297-1

eISBN: 978-1-78438-298-8

Mobi ISBN: 978-1-78438-299-5

Publishing history

The newly revised and corrected edition of Kammerdiener bei Hitler: Im Schatten der

Macht by Karl Wilhelm Krause was first published in German in 2016;

Hitlers Hausverwalter by Herbert Döhring was first published in German in 2013;

Bei Hitlers: Zimmermädchen Annas Erinnerungen by Kurt Kuch was first published

in German in 2003

All rights reserved

Roger Moorhouse introduction © Greenhill Books 2018

Eva Burke English language translation © Greenhill Books, 2018

At Home with Hitler: Memories of Chambermaid Anna © Elke Kuch

The Valet of Hitler: In the Shadow of Power by Karl Wilhelm Krause & Herbert Döhring:

Hitler’s Housekeeper © ZeitReisen-Verlag & Agentur, In der Mark 93, D-44869

Bochum, Germany, www.zeitreisen-verlag.de

CIP data records for this title are available from the British Library

Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction by Roger Moorhouse

Translator’s Note

Part 1: The Valet of Hitler: In the Shadow of Power

by Karl Wilhelm Krause

Endnotes

Part 2: Herbert Döhring: Hitler’s Housekeeper

Foreword by Alexander Losert

Herbert Döhring: Hitler’s Housekeeper (Alexander Losert’s interviews with Herbert Döhring)

Endnotes

Part 3: At Home with Hitler: Memories of Chambermaid Anna

Foreword by Kurt Kuch

My Life on Adolf Hitler’s Berghof (Kurt Kuch’s interviews with Anna Plaim)

Endnotes

Part 4

The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler – In Brief

Brief Biographies

Illustrations

(between pages 128 and 129)

Introduction

What was it like to work for Adolf Hitler? Not as a minister, or a diplomat or other elevated, esteemed position but as a servant – a housekeeper, a chambermaid or a valet – the silent, the unseen; those who saw Hitler every day, in every mood, in every circumstance; those who brought him his breakfast, made his bed or oversaw the smooth running of his household. Such lowly figures rarely feature in conventional histories. Their memoirs, when published at all, are rarely considered able to compete with those of the ‘great and the good’ – the presidents, prime ministers and field marshals – for importance or significance. But they too have their place in the narrative; they too have a valid story to tell. This volume makes that point with full force. It is the memories of three of Hitler’s closest staff members: his former housekeeper at his Berghof home, Herbert Döhring; one of the Berghof’s chambermaids, Anna Plaim; and his former valet Karl Wilhelm Krause.

The first of them, Herbert Döhring, responded to an advert asking for tall men to join a military unit and ended up serving in the SS-Leibstandarte – Hitler’s bodyguard division – before being appointed in 1936 as housekeeper at the Berghof, which was Hitler’s home on the Obersalzberg above Berchtesgaden. There, Döhring acted as a ‘major-domo’, responsible for the smooth running of the household, even through the extensive remodellings and expansions that were carried out on the building at that time. In this capacity, he developed a very close relationship with his master, so much so that, in later life, he made occasional appearances – jowly and thickly accented – in television documentaries on the Third Reich. He knew Hitler’s foibles, knew his security arrangements, knew his favourite colour (green) and knew when he was best avoided – Hitler humming was safe, Hitler whistling was dangerous. Hitler, he said, could be unpredictable, moody, brutal and benevolent, but he was the boss – der Chef – and Döhring was doing his duty, just as he would have done, he said, if he had been asked to serve Stalin or Churchill.

Anna Plaim (née Mittlstrasser) was also employed at the Berghof, and worked under Döhring’s supervision. Like him, she came into Hitler’s service largely by chance. A twenty year old from rural Lower Austria, she was appointed to the staff of the Berghof in 1941, thanks to a cousin who was well-connected with the Nazi Party in Munich. Once there, and once she got over the shock of her appointment, she struck up a close relationship with Eva Braun – Hitler’s secret ‘mistress’ – and, crucially, recorded events in a series of letters home, which survived the war and inform her contemporary recollections. As well as serving as a chambermaid, she also seems to have been unable to resist the temptation to probe a little deeper into the lives – and the wardrobes – of her employers, by trying on Hitler’s shoes, and pulling torn-up photographs out of Eva Braun’s wastepaper basket.

Her account – covering many aspects of Hitler’s household and his entourage, including Rudolf Hess and Heinrich Hoffmann – is gossipy and forthright and is especially interesting for the wealth of insights that it provides about Eva Braun – her personality and the nature of her relationship with Hitler. The Berghof, Plaim says, was Braun’s gilded cage – an oasis of plenty amid the madness of war.

The third of the trio is Karl Wilhelm Krause. Originally from the German Navy, Krause was appointed as Hitler’s valet in summer 1934, a position he would hold for the next five years. In this role, Krause was perhaps as close to his master as anyone would get: waking him in the morning, serving him breakfast, managing his wardrobe and travelling with him wherever he went. The Hitler he describes is a complex, multilayered personality who could be impatient, exacting and fickle, yet had a good sense of humour and enjoyed a joke. Hitler, he said, was ‘like a father’ to him.

Hitler’s daily routine, Bohemian and dissolute though it was, is now rather well known, but it is nonetheless described in detail by Krause. Hitler, he explains, rose late, ate a cursory breakfast of warm milk and biscuits, and then retired again to read the newspapers or deal with government or party business. After lunch, meetings with his guests or visitors were usually followed by afternoon tea, where Hitler often enjoyed Stollen (German fruit cake). The evenings, where they were not taken up with official engagements, habitually ended with a film showing. Hitler, Krause reminds us, was a keen film buff, who – as well as keeping up with Hollywood’s offerings – viewed all of the output of Germany’s studios, often passing his critiques onto his Minister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. His favourite film, according to Krause, was the 1935 drama The Lives of a Bengal Lancer starring Gary Cooper.

Perhaps more than the other two memoirists, Krause brings the reader closer to an appreciation of the sort of person Hitler was. He gives ample details of their relationship: the lighter moments, the daily difficulties and the squabbles – not least the confrontation that ultimately cost him his job. Importantly, he also outlines Hitler’s methods of delegating and giving unspecific orders, emphasising the degree to which his master existed within a bubble that became increasingly remote from the outside world.

These three accounts – brought together here for the first time – were originally published individually, in German, between 2003 and 2013; two were in the form of transcribed interviews, and one was a straightforward narrative. They represent, perhaps, the last wave of publications of the memoirs of Hitler’s former staff – a topic that had been given new life by the success of the 2002 memoir of his secretary Traudl Junge, Bis zur letzten Stunde (Until the Final Hour). Like Junge – who died in 2002 – all three memoirists survived into the new century; Döhring and Krause both passed away in 2001, while Plaim – remarkably – is a creditable ninety-eight at the time of writing.

The accounts that they give complement one another well, being essentially the recollections of intimate observers; those who were present but uninvolved, forever at one remove from the momentous historical events upon whose fringes they stood. In this respect, they chime with the similar memoirs of Heinz Linge (Hitler’s other valet), chauffeur Erich Kempka and secretary Christa Schroeder, all of whom served for many years on Hitler’s staff.

Inevitably, the question that many readers will ask is ‘what did they know?’ It is a fair point. Surely, readers will assume, people who were present at the very heart of the Third Reich must have learnt something – via a whispered exchange, perhaps, or a discarded document – of the heinous crimes then being committed in Germany’s name. However, that assumption presupposes that the Third Reich functioned like a normal state, with robust discussions at a governmental level and a verifiable paper trail. But it didn’t. As Karl Wilhelm Krause indicates, orders from Hitler were often given verbally and could be astonishingly vague – feeding a rather chaotic bureaucratic system.

So the answer to the question ‘what did they know about the Nazis’ crimes?’ is, frustratingly, ‘not very much’. There were a few indications that – in retrospect – hinted at dark deeds, not least Martin Bormann’s vindictive, high-handed behaviour, but beyond that little of any substance. We must conclude – paradoxically perhaps – that the gilded cage of the Berghof, or of Hitler’s entourage, was not the best vantage point from which to view the true murderous nature of Nazism.

Indeed it was Martin Bormann who – as much as Hitler – played a key role in the lives and careers of the Berghof staff. As Hitler’s personal secretary, Bormann assumed responsibility for the day-to-day running of the entire Berghof area, as well as overseeing the building’s expansion in 1936. In this capacity, he became known as the ‘Lord of the Obersalzberg’, and sought to exercise authority over the Berghof staff, and was responsible for the dismissal of Anna Plaim in 1943, considering her unsuitable for service because of her parents’ religious faith. Herbert Döhring also got on the wrong side of Bormann, and only earned the latter’s respect through his robust self-defence.

For all his machinations, however, Bormann was ultimately not responsible for Döhring and Krause leaving Hitler’s service. Döhring requested to be allowed to take up a combat role, and so left the Berghof in 1943, while the circumstances of Krause’s dismissal in 1939 are rather more bizarre, involving a missing bottle of mineral water and a white lie.

The three accounts presented here may not have the gravitas of a prime minister’s memoir, or the lofty world view of a president’s, but they are nonetheless instructive and in their own way revelatory. In different ways, they all demonstrate the capricious nature of life at the epicentre of the Third Reich, where a mistake or a rumour or an allegation could end one’s employment forthwith. And yet there were no regrets; all three remembered their employment with a degree of fondness. Krause even met Hitler again after his dismissal and was warmly received by him. All three memoirists were starry-eyed, of course; blinded to some extent – as so many other ordinary Germans were – by their proximity to their Führer, but what is most interesting about their accounts is that very ordinariness. These were very ordinary, normal Germans – cast into extraordinary times.

Roger Moorhouse

January 2018

Translator’s Note

Living with Hitler offers us the eyewitness reports of three people, all of whom worked for Hitler’s household, and close to the dictator himself. While in their respective roles they obviously had first and foremost to be professionals, and thus not distinguish themselves in any noticeable way through their individual personalities, in my translation I nevertheless endeavoured to convey a flavour of who these people really were, of their family background and their education. All of this is, of course, reflected in their use of language – above all because the book is based on interviews, letters and personal memories.

The two men, Herbert Döhring and Karl Wilhelm Krause, had a solid and strict upbringing, followed by a military education. They came from working-class, traditional homes of the early 1900s, an era when youth was brought up to observe, ask few questions, respond in brief sentences, obey and not indulge in superfluous embellishments. This is reflected in their use of short sentences, their militarily precise language, factual rather than narrative, with little in the way of expansive language or filler words. Anna Plaim (née Mittlstrasser), younger than Krause and Döhring, came from a more comfortable Austrian family, one that was politically aware and close-knit. Anna worked mostly with women, female friends and indeed directly for a woman, which is reflected in a more nuanced use of language. Her accounts reflect more introspection, more observations, more humour and an eye for detail and subtleties.

The stories of both men – one a soldier, the other a sailor – remind us of entries into a logbook: facts, figures, precise timing, dates and a blow-by-blow description of events and conversations exchanged, no self-doubting or questioning. In contrast, Anna’s book consists of personal letters; she is telling a story.

The reader will find a mixture of past and present tenses. When our protagonists tell their story, they occasionally get so caught up in the moment that it was as if they relived it in the present.

In Krause’s case, he would also often refer to ‘we’ rather than just ‘I’. He seems to have often identified with Hitler, his boss, and it is not surprising that he was called Hitler’s Schatten – his shadow.

Similar to others at the Berghof, all three were grateful to have found a position in a household in those difficult times of unemployment. This is reflected in my conscious translation of certain phrases, particularly Döhring’s use of the German Chef to Boss, as opposed to ‘Führer’ or ‘chief’.

Finally, I was keen to convey a sense of the German language as it was used during the Third Reich – thus leaving many expressions, words and titles untranslated. For the most part it is a terminology never before, nor since, used in the German language.

Eva Burke

January 2018

Part 1

The Valet of Hitler: In the Shadow of Power

Karl Wilhelm Krause

The Valet of Hitler: In the Shadow of Power

How I Came to Work for Hitler

On 2 July 1934 the Chief of the Naval Flotilla and the then commander of the minesweepers dispatched me to the Naval Department, which was part of the Reich Ministry’s Defence Department and located in Berlin, but not without first assuring me of his very good wishes for my future. I was only to report upon my arrival, and then receive further instructions of how to register at the Reich Chancellery. Full of trepidation and with mixed feelings, I travelled from Kiel to Berlin. Though somewhat familiar with the streets of the city, I certainly did find myself having to ask the way to the Reich Chancellery. I was directed to where the Navy Department’s Chief of Staff worked, and he, welcoming me with utmost friendliness, went on to present me to several higher-ranked officers, among them the Grand Admiral of the Navy, Dr Erich Raeder and von Blomberg, Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht.¹

I was asked to answer several questions and was then shown the process of how to register with the Reichskanzler, Adolf Hitler. I was told to contact him the following day. After that I was formally dismissed and ordered to take myself to what had once been a utility building for the Prussian Railway Regiments in von Papen Street.²

Today, I can only smile when I think back to that time, with all those feelings of tense expectations and thoughts as to what the next day would bring, rumbling through my head. I was handed an envelope on which was written: ‘Report to SS-Oberführer and Adjutant Schaub at 10 o’clock at the Reich Chancellery.’³

I got up at 6.45 a.m., cleaned and brushed my uniform, put on the shirt I usually wore for parades and was ready to report by 8 a.m. At half past nine, I turned into the Wilhelmstrasse, waited there for a few minutes, took a deep breath and then resolutely stepped up to the door of the Reich Chancellery. At reception, I stated my purpose and said that I was expected by a ‘Herr Schaub’ (at the time I had no knowledge about ranks or titles of either of the SS or the SA).⁴

One of the reception staff accompanied me across the small courtyard to Hitler’s private apartment, where I was left in the care of the SS officer on duty. This man then led me to the common room of the Begleitkommando and asked me to wait. Two SS men were sitting there, playing chess. At first, they just glanced up and threw me some sceptical looks. Later on, some other men dressed in civilian clothes came in, as well as some SS men. Everyone then briefly introduced themselves.

So much was totally new to me and I slowly had to come to grips with them. Many questions troubled me: what was I doing at the Reich Chancellery and what was my role in the navy? Every time the door opened, I thought that I would be asked to come in. When it slowly became known that I was to become Adolf Hitler’s valet, a general discussion broke out, with one person pointing out one thing he thought was relevant, while the next one disagreed and thought a totally different issue needed to be considered. Overall, most of the people there were kind to me and thus were good enough to inform me that Hitler wasn’t actually in Berlin at the time, but in East Prussia. He had made this trip to Gut Neudeck⁵ in order to brief the Reichspräsident von Hindenburg ‘about the whole issue’, referring to the Röhm Putsch. From comments made I gathered that his plane would be back in Berlin around three o’clock.

Then followed my first lunch in the dining room of the Begleitkommando. Two orderlies were waiting on tables, serving platters by placing them on the table and then clearing the dirty plates. Everybody had to help themselves to food. For drinks, we were offered beer, orange juice and fizzy water. Everybody could eat as much as they wanted. Since the first excitement and the tension of the past two days had now eased, and because introductions hadn’t been delayed, I was actually able to eat my meal properly and did so with a full and hearty appetite. Besides, everyone was now fully apprised of the fact that a marine had joined the group, and as a result they treated me with the utmost friendliness.

After the meal we went off to the common room, where most people seemed to be playing a game of cards, chess or billiards, until the moment when, finally, information filtered through from the airport: ‘The plane with the Führer on board has just landed.’ Within a split second, life returned to the room and everyone disappeared in an instant, apart from two men. In answer to my question regarding what all these people might be ordered to do, I was told that each one of them had their assigned role and position for when Hitler arrives: firstly, they were to close off the street from the public, and, secondly, they were to open it up for Hitler. Once again, I was overcome with worry as to how all this would pan out. I asked one of those men to show me a spot from which I could observe the Führer’s arrival. We were just about to leave the room – I was still standing in the doorway – when Adolf Hitler passed right in front of me at a distance of barely one metre.

I stood to attention. Hitler greeted me with his very deep voice saying ‘Heil.’ He was followed by a few men from his staff whom I, of course, did not yet know. A few minutes later Dr Goebbels arrived and went to the rooms situated at the far end, where the other men had also gathered. An SS officer