Eva Anna Paula Braun (February 6, 1912 - April 30, 1945) was born in Munich, Germany the daughter of a school teacher and educated at a convent school. She met Adolf Hitler in 1929 when she was an assistant to Hitler's court photographer and is said to have slipped a love letter into his pocket. Hitler invited her to his mountain retreat a few weeks later and she became his mistress. She described him to friends as a "gentleman of a certain age with a funny moustache and carrying a big felt hat." Braun is considered by historians as a passive woman of limited intelligence who offered Hitler total devotion and submission.

Hitler began to see more of Braun following the suicide of Geli Raubal in 1931 (though some historians suggest that Raubal killed herself because she was distraught over Hitler's relationship with Braun) though Hitler also saw other women such as actress Renate Mueller who also committed suicide. Braun attempted suicide in 1932 by shooting herself in the neck. She attempted suicide a second time in 1935 by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. After her recovery, Hitler became more committed to Braun and gave her a villa in Wasserburgerstrasse, a Munich suburb, and provided her with a Mercedes and a chauffeur. In 1936 she entered his household at Berghof near Berchtesgaden and acted as hostess. She was generally kept ignorant of the many negative aspects of Hitler's government. Any person who mentioned anything bad about government programs or the defeats suffered by the military forces was no longer invited to be at any gathering where she was present. Nevertheless, she has been criticized for never having made any effort to mitigate the excesses of her lover and his followers.

Braun's relationship with Hitler was kept secret from the German people and they were never seen in public together.

In his book Inside the Third Reich, Albert Speer describes the relationship as follows:

Eva Braun was allowed to be present during visits from old party associates. She was banished as soon as other dignitaries of the Reich, such as cabinet ministers, appeared at the table .. Hitler obviously regarded her as socially acceptable only within strict limits. Sometimes I kept her company in her exile, a room next to Hitler's bedroom. She was so intimidated that she did not dare leave the house for a walk. Out of sympathy for her predicament I soon began to feel a liking for this unhappy woman, who was so deeply attached to Hitler.

For most of World War II, Braun lived a life of leisure spending her time exercising, reading romance novels, watching films while waiting for Hitler to summon her at which time she would go on picnics and host dinner parties.

In early April 1945 she joined Hitler at the F�hrerbunker in Berlin. She refused to leave as the Red Army closed in, and Hitler married her the next day on April 29, 1945 and they committed suicide together on the 30th, she by taking cyanide capsule. Both of their corpses were burned with gasoline in the Reich Chancellery garden.

According to credible sources, their charred remains were later discovered by the Russians and moved to Moscow. The KGB reports that their bodies were moved frequently and were buried in the 1960s at the KGB's compound in Magdeburg, East Germany before being exhumed in 1970 and completely cremated with the ashes being dispersed. See also Hitler's death.

The rest of Eva Braun's family survived the war. Her mother, Franziska died aged 96 in January 1976 having lived out her days in an old farmhouse in Ruhpolding, Bavaria.

Notes

She was officially Eva Anna Paula Hitler for one day; she married Hitler on the 29th of April, and the couple committed suicide the next day. Both Hitler and Braun followed the proper procedures necessary for getting married under German law, and after the ceremony staff were instructed to address her as Frau Hitler instead of Fr�ulein Braun.

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