40 Fun Facts About Eva Braun

Roughly how long was Eva Braun married to Adolf Hitler before the couple died together in a Berlin bunker?

About 40 hours separated the midnight ceremony from their deaths, so she was Frau Hitler for less than two days. For over a decade before that, most Germans had no idea she existed.

Which British prime minister did Eva Braun joke about after he was photographed in 1938 on a sofa in Hitler's flat?

Neville Chamberlain was pictured on that sofa in the year he tried to buy peace with the Sudetenland. Braun giggled to friends that he had no idea what the sofa had seen.

Which letter did Eva Braun begin to write, then cross out, when she signed her marriage certificate in 1945?

B, the start of her maiden name, came out of habit: she struck it through and signed as Eva Hitler instead. Her new husband had kept her out of public view for more than a decade.

Under which false name was Adolf Hitler introduced to the 17-year-old Eva Braun at a photography studio in 1929?

Herr Wolff was how the studio's owner presented him to the teenage shop assistant. Hitler was 40, some 23 years her senior, and already led the Nazi Party.

Which breed were Negus and Stasi, the two pet dogs that appear in Eva Braun's home movies?

Scottish Terriers were her favourites, and she usually kept the pair away from Hitler's much larger dog. His photographer once snapped Hitler playing with one of them.

Which personal photographer of Adolf Hitler hired Eva Braun as a teenage shop assistant and introduced the two in 1929?

Heinrich Hoffmann taught her the trade: she soon learned to use a camera and develop prints in his shop. His company was still paying her as late as 1943.

Which 2004 German film about the last days in Hitler's bunker stars Juliane Köhler as Eva Braun?

Downfall earned an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film. Its scene of Hitler raging at his generals later spread across the internet in countless parody videos.

Which poison did Eva Braun use to end her life beside Adolf Hitler in the Berlin bunker on 30 April 1945?

Cyanide came from a capsule she bit into, seated on the sofa where Hitler shot himself. Their bodies were carried up to the garden and burned.

At which Alpine home of Adolf Hitler near Berchtesgaden did Eva Braun act as hostess to his inner circle?

The Berghof began as a small holiday house that Hitler bought in 1933 and rebuilt into a fenced-off compound. Guests staying there were cut off from the outside world.

In which Bavarian city was Eva Braun born in 1912 and later given a villa by Adolf Hitler?

Munich was also where she met Hitler, at the photo studio where she worked. Her father was so unhappy about the housing Hitler provided that he wrote to him to protest.

Which German Shepherd belonging to Adolf Hitler did Eva Braun usually keep apart from her own two dogs?

Blondi never won Braun over, though Hitler doted on her. A woman who worked at the bunker's casualty station said in 2005 that the dog's death affected people there more than Braun's own.

Hitler's valet recalled Eva Braun sipping wine in the evenings at the mountain retreat while Adolf Hitler drank what?

Tea in his study, alone with Braun, was how Hitler ended most evenings before bed. The couple had separate bedrooms and bathrooms joined by connecting doors.

Which Allied operation began three days after Eva Braun arranged her sister's wedding celebrations in early June 1944?

The Normandy landings began on 6 June 1944, days after a wedding party at Hitler's mountain homes in the Bavarian Alps. Hitler left the mountain for the last time five weeks later.

Which sister of Eva Braun married an SS general in 1944, giving Eva a pretext to attend official functions?

Gretl was the youngest of the three sisters and a regular in Hitler's mountain circle. After her wedding, Eva could be introduced at events as the groom's sister-in-law.

Joseph Goebbels and which other Nazi official witnessed the bunker wedding of Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler?

Martin Bormann signed as a witness and was also named executor of the will Hitler dictated that same night. Himmler, by then, had been ordered arrested for offering to surrender.

Beneath the garden of which Berlin government building did Eva Braun spend her final weeks in a bunker?

The Reich Chancellery garden hid the Führerbunker, where she had her own quarters beside Hitler's. She would not leave as the Red Army closed in.

Where in the United States are Eva Braun's silent home movies of Adolf Hitler's inner circle now kept?

The National Archives catalogues the footage as the private motion pictures of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. US newsreels were using clips from it as early as 1947.

At which 1936 sporting event was Eva Braun pictured sitting near Adolf Hitler, their only published news photo together?

The Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen gave the only glimpse, as the pair never appeared in public as a couple. Hitler believed staying single kept him popular with women.

In which city did Eva Braun attend her first Nazi Party rally in 1935, to the anger of Hitler's half-sister?

Nuremberg hosted the party's huge annual rallies, and Braun went as one of the photographer's staff. She was never a member of the Nazi Party herself.

Which half-niece of Adolf Hitler died in 1931, after which he began seeing far more of Eva Braun?

Geli Raubal had shared his flat for two years and was found shot with his pistol, an apparent suicide. The bond was probably the most intense of Hitler's life.

Eva Braun went to a convent school in Simbach, a Bavarian town facing which birthplace of Adolf Hitler across a river?

Braunau am Inn lies on the Austrian side of the river Inn. Braun spent one year in Simbach at a business school housed in the Convent of the English Sisters.

Eva Braun's parents divorced in 1921 but remarried a year later, probably to save money during which German crisis?

Hyperinflation was eating away at savings when the couple remarried in November 1922. Both parents outlived Eva by decades: her father died in 1964 and her mother in 1976.

Which US president was presented with the recovered certificate of Eva Braun's marriage to Adolf Hitler?

Harry Truman received it with Hitler's will, which three messengers had carried out of the besieged bunker. Roosevelt had died just 17 days before the wedding.

Whose memoirs describe Eva Braun protesting to Adolf Hitler in 1943 about a planned wartime ban on cosmetics?

Albert Speer, then armaments minister, was quietly told to halt production of cosmetics instead of banning them outright. It was a rare case of Braun taking an interest in policy.

Under Nazi law, what did the official marrying Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler have to ask both of them to confirm?

Their Aryan descent had to be declared, even by the dictator whose regime wrote the rule. The official, a lawyer serving in the home guard, first had to be driven back for the right paperwork.

What was the profession of Fritz Braun, the father of Eva Braun, who protested to Hitler about her living arrangements?

A teacher, Fritz Braun raised three daughters with his wife Fanny, who had worked as a seamstress. He was Lutheran and she was Catholic.

Hitler's half-sister Angela lost which job at his mountain home after objecting to Eva Braun's presence at a 1935 rally?

Housekeeper was her post until she was dismissed, though whether the clash was the only reason is unclear. Afterwards, Hitler's entourage treated Braun as untouchable.

Which official job title let Eva Braun come and go at Hitler's Berlin headquarters without attracting notice?

Private secretary was the cover that let her slip in by a side entrance and a rear staircase. She also had her own flat inside the building.

What evidence did Soviet investigators rely on in May 1945 to identify the burned bodies of Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler?

Dental remains were matched by an assistant and a technician who had worked for Hitler's dentist, Hugo Blaschke. The bodies had been burned in the garden above the bunker.

Which SS officer, the brother-in-law of Eva Braun, was shot for desertion two days before her own death?

Hermann Fegelein was caught with cash and jewellery, some of it Braun's, after slipping away from the bunker. He had served as Himmler's liaison officer on Hitler's staff.

Which British aristocrat did Adolf Hitler reportedly play off against Eva Braun in the 1930s to make her jealous?

Unity Mitford, a British fascist whose middle name was Valkyrie, had become close to Hitler. Braun wrote sourly about her rival in her diary.

Which former actress, married to the Luftwaffe's commander, openly snubbed Eva Braun and claimed the role of first lady?

Emmy Göring served as Hitler's hostess at many state functions, since his own companion was kept hidden. Braun allegedly never forgave her for taking that role.

Which woman who typed Adolf Hitler's last will later recalled Eva Braun pleading for her brother-in-law's life?

Traudl Junge was the youngest woman on Hitler's office staff and later told her story in the memoir Until the Final Hour. Braun's plea failed.

In which Austrian city's Mirabell Palace did Eva Braun's younger sister marry in 1944, with Adolf Hitler as a witness?

Salzburg hosted the ceremony, and the celebrations then moved to Hitler's mountain homes nearby. Braun made all the wedding arrangements herself.

What happened to Walter Wagner within a day of marrying Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler in the Berlin bunker?

Killed in street fighting near the Anhalter station, he had rejoined his home guard unit straight after the ceremony. His body was never found, and rumours that he had survived persisted for years.

Which valet of Adolf Hitler entered the bunker study with an SS adjutant and found Hitler and Eva Braun dead?

Heinz Linge then helped carry the bodies up to the garden, as Hitler had told him to do that day. He spent the next ten years in Soviet captivity.

Eva Braun's dog Negus shared its name with a royal title once used by the rulers of which African country?

Ethiopia's regional rulers were granted the title negus, the word for king in its Semitic languages, by the King of Kings. Braun's other dog was called Stasi.

Which part of the Berlin bunker hosted Eva Braun's marriage to Adolf Hitler shortly after midnight on 29 April 1945?

The map room saw a brief civil ceremony, after which Hitler held a modest wedding breakfast with his new wife. The Red Army was by then pushing into the government district.

Eva Braun earned only average grades at her convent business school but showed a talent for which pursuit?

Athletics stayed with her: sports were among her main interests, along with clothes and the cinema. Hitler worried whenever she took part in them.

The daughter of the photographer who employed Eva Braun married which leader of the Hitler Youth?

Baldur von Schirach's wife Henriette later urged Braun to go into hiding once the war was lost. Braun said no, vowing to stay with Hitler to the last moment.