From one of Germany’s leading young historians, the first comprehensive biography of Eva Braun, Hitler’s devoted mistress, finally wife, and the hidden First Lady of the Third Reich. In this groundbreaking biography of Eva Braun, German historian Heike Görtemaker reveals Hitler’s mistress as more than just a vapid blonde whose concerns never extended beyond her vanity table. Twenty-three years his junior, Braun first met Hitler when she took a position as an assistant to his personal photographer. Capricious, but uncompromising and fiercely loyal—she married Hitler two days before committing suicide with him in Berlin in 1945—her identity was kept secret by the Third Reich until the final days of the war. Through exhaustive research, newly discovered documentation, and anecdotal accounts, Görtemaker turns preconceptions about Eva Braun and Hitler on their head, and builds a portrait of the little-known Hitler far from the public eye.

A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2017 One of NPR Fresh Air's "Books to Close Out a Chaotic 2017" NPR's Book Concierge Guide To 2017’s Great Reads “How lucky for us readers that Shapiro has been listening so perceptively for decades to the language of food.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR Fresh Air Six “mouthwatering” (Eater.com) short takes on six famous women through the lens of food and cooking, probing how their attitudes toward food can offer surprising new insights into their lives, and our own. Everyone eats, and food touches on every aspect of our lives—social and cultural, personal and political. Yet most biographers pay little attention to people’s attitudes toward food, as if the great and notable never bothered to think about what was on the plate in front of them. Once we ask how somebody relates to food, we find a whole world of different and provocative ways to understand her. Food stories can be as intimate and revealing as stories of love, work, or coming-of-age. Each of the six women in this entertaining group portrait was famous in her time, and most are still famous in ours; but until now, nobody has told their lives from the point of view of the kitchen and the table. What She Ate is a lively and unpredictable array of women; what they have in common with one another (and us) is a powerful relationship with food. They include Dorothy Wordsworth, whose food story transforms our picture of the life she shared with her famous poet brother; Rosa Lewis, the Edwardian-era Cockney caterer who cooked her way up the social ladder; Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady and rigorous protector of the worst cook in White House history; Eva Braun, Hitler’s mistress, who challenges our warm associations of food, family, and table; Barbara Pym, whose witty books upend a host of stereotypes about postwar British cuisine; and Helen Gurley Brown, the editor of Cosmopolitan, whose commitment to “having it all” meant having almost nothing on the plate except a supersized portion of diet gelatin.

Featuring 32 pages of intimate home photos, this authoritative biography on Hitler's famous mistress is based on detailed new research and opens a new window on the life at the cold heart of the Nazi leadership.

When the fake Hitler diaries were taken up by The Sunday Times, it was accompanied by all the the razzmatazz of the modern media. Yet in 1949, when Eva Braun's diary was published, there was no such circus in a world already tired of the war.

Eva Braun, daughter of a respectable German bourgeois family, was convent educated. Yet she grew up to become the mistress of Adolf Hitler and went with him to her death in the holocaust of Berlin during the waning days of World War II. The product of a happy but uneventful childhood in middle-class Munich, Eva went to work for photographer Heinrich Hoffmann after her schooling ws completed. It was at Hoffmann's that she met the rising National Socialist politician, Adolf Hitler. Though considerably older than the nubile Eva, he exerted a strong fascination over her. A stormy courtship ensued, during which Eva attempted suicide. Eventually she became mistress to the man who would soon rule Germany. From this point on, she remained Hitler's faithful and dedicated companion for seventeen years during which time her paramour was destined to shake the very foundations of western civilization. Eva Braun was Hitler's official hostess at Berchtesgaden and was present at most of the important gatherings where the fate of nations was being decided and where history was being made. When the mighty edifice of the Third Reich was collapsing in ruin under the pounding of the Allies, she joined her doomed lover in Berlin where he finally made her his wife and they perished together during the Russian assault. Eva Braun had a uniquely intimate view of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and no history of those days is complete without her. The book contains numerous photographs of Hitler and his entourage and utilizes material taken from Eva Braun's unpublished scrapbooks and letters.

Madman, tyrant, animal—history has given Adolf Hitler many names. In Mein Kampf (My Struggle), often called the Nazi bible, Hitler describes his life, frustrations, ideals, and dreams. Born to an impoverished couple in a small town in Austria, the young Adolf grew up with the fervent desire to become a painter. The death of his parents and outright rejection from art schools in Vienna forced him into underpaid work as a laborer. During the First World War, Hitler served in the infantry and was decorated for bravery. After the war, he became actively involved with socialist political groups and quickly rose to power, establishing himself as Chairman of the National Socialist German Worker's party. In 1924, Hitler led a coalition of nationalist groups in a bid to overthrow the Bavarian government in Munich. The infamous Munich "Beer-hall putsch" was unsuccessful, and Hitler was arrested. During the nine months he was in prison, an embittered and frustrated Hitler dictated a personal manifesto to his loyal follower Rudolph Hess. He vented his sentiments against communism and the Jewish people in this document, which was to become Mein Kampf, the controversial book that is seen as the blue-print for Hitler's political and military campaign. In Mein Kampf, Hitler describes his strategy for rebuilding Germany and conquering Europe. It is a glimpse into the mind of a man who destabilized world peace and pursued the genocide now known as the Holocaust.

This is the most complete and best documented biography ever published of the woman who was Adolf Hitler's companion from 1933 until their marriage and suicide twelve years later in Berlin in April 1945. Lawyer, professor, and scholar Thomas Lundmark documents and discusses crucial facts he has discovered about Eva Braun which were not known to previous biographers, such as Eva's father's problems with alcohol, her parents' divorce, her refusals to help close relatives and children, her personal involvement in anti-Semitic pogroms, and her abuse of other people. This book also reveals and relates crucial facts about her medical condition hitherto unknown to biographers, including the fact that Eva suffered from recurring bouts of depression, likely triggered (or worsened) by her Mayer Rokitansky Syndrome, MRKH, a congenital under-development of her vagina and uterus. Brought now to light, these facts force us to re-assess Eva's relationship to Hitler and her unhappy position in Adolf Hitler's gilded cage.