Being a biography of Eva Braun, mistress of Reichsfuhrer Adolf Hitler. Writing a book-length biography of an interesting but shadowy figure such as Braun is a big ask, and our young author succeeds at times in inflating the sketchy documentation into a coherent whole. Eventually, though, her account drifts away into minutiae and tangents, most disastrously in an interminable chapter which stretches through more than a quarter of the book's length, and rambles through topics such as who had access to Hitler--for the most part people who didn't operate through Braun--and the lives of the wives of the Nazi hierarchy. And Gortemaker used up her authorial good will with this reviewer by her annoying and supercilious affectation of invariably enclosing the word Fuhrer in sneer quotes every time she used it--and she uses it a lot. There are a lot of interesting tidbits herein, and her rather skeptical evaluation of her sources is right on target, but overall this book is a curate's egg. ( )

This book does not really focus on Eva Braun so much as it does Life with Hitler. I recall a remark made by Albert Speer - 'The future historian will be very disappointed with Eva Braun - she is no Cleopatra or Marie Antoinette'. Yet the author tries their best.

The author does make very interesting analyses of Hitler's inner circle, tearing apart some myths and presenting alternative views. But unfortunately, most of the important witnesses have passed away, and there is difficulty with treading any new ground.

I won't blame the author - they did they best with what they had. Unfortunately, there is still much mystery surrounding Eva Braun - almost as much as Hitler. ( )

German historian Heike B. Görtemaker faced a difficult task writing Eva Braun: Life with Hitler . There is little available by which to evaluate Braun. Any correspondence she had with Hitler has been destroyed or disappeared. The only extant diary consists of 10 entries in the first half of 1935. There are few contemporary descriptions of her. As a result, Görtemaker tries to piece together a picture of Braun through others.

Although Görtemaker relies on and cites a wealth of sources, some of her "primary" ones come from acquaintances such as Albert Speer or Herman Göring's wife, Emmy. Their comments come from statements given Allied forces after the war or post-war memoirs. In many cases, though, she discounts these sources as being influenced by efforts to distance the individuals from Hitler and his regime. This leads Görtemaker to explore the story of Hitler and to look at the lives of a variety of people near or around him during the same periods Braun was.

While that is an ingenious approach, it doesn't really produce the intended result. The reader spends as much or more time reading about others and what they thought than about Braun. Ultimately, whatever conclusions the reader or Görtemaker might draw as to Braun's views, ideas and the like can't rise above the level of speculation. Although it may be predicated on decent analysis, it is still speculation. In the end, we don't really learn much about Braun and her life with Hitler.

(Originally posted at A Progressive on the Prairie.)