TheBanyanTree: The Lost Life of Eva Braun

[Margaret R. Kramer]

I’ve been a World War II buff since junior high.  I’m not sure why, because
I’m usually not that interested in war stuff, but it’s something about that
era . . . perhaps because we had some genuine big players on the world
stage – Stalin, Hitler, Churchill, and Roosevelt.  What a collection of
intellectual and very extreme personalities.  In my opinion, we don’t have
this caliber of leadership in any country on the world stage today.

Hitler has always interested me.  Can you imagine a vagabond and basically a
homeless person becoming one of the most feared world leaders?  He rose from
almost nothing to take control of German politics after World War I and
became an empire builder in the same league as Alexander the Great and
Napoleon.  At the peak of his power, he controlled most of Europe and the
northern tier of Africa.

He was also an evil person who ordered the extermination of Jews and many
other types of people who didn’t fit into his ideal human race.  We talk and
worry about Osama bin Laden, but bin Laden is a small scale operator
compared to Hitler and his Nazi cronies.  I think only Stalin has come close
to Hitler as being a truly evil person.

I’ve read many books on Hitler and the World War II era, because his
personality fascinates me.  So The Lost Life of Eva Braun by Angela Lambert
caught my eye.

Lambert’s premise was to focus her book on Eva Braun and not on Hitler.  But
how can she write about Eva without writing about Hitler?  The bottom line
is that Eva was nothing and Hitler was everything.  There is not much to
write about Eva Braun.  She was pretty, Catholic, well dressed, and spent
most of her life waiting for Hitler.  She got her wish when they committed
suicide together as the Russians were approaching their Berlin bunker in the
last days of the war.

Unfortunately, Lambert didn’t offer much new information about Eva.  She
droned on for 300+ pages repeating the same things over and over again.  As
Albert Speer, one of Hitler’s close associates and Eva’s friend, stated,
there just wasn’t much to tell.

I was disappointed in the book, but it wasn’t Lambert’s fault.  There really
isn’t much new material concerning Eva Braun.  Her premise was worth
pursuing, but in the end, we can’t separate Eva Braun from Hitler.

Back in the 30s, people had private lives and the press backed off, and the
world knew nothing about Eva Braun (Hitler kept her out of sight).  Can you
imagine if Hitler lived in today’s world?  Everyone would know about Eva
Braun – there would probably be videos on youtube.com of Hitler and Eva
having sex.  Eva pictures would be everywhere, because she loved to pose and
be photographed wearing expensive clothes.  Perhaps she would become a
Princess Diana, another woman known for not being particularly intelligent,
and use the art of media imaging to become more than what she was.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows
cold:  when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.
~Charles Dickens