Lavonne Mueller - The Patient Ecstasy of Fräulein Braun

I wish I could taste His ashes, my mouth pulpy with His power, destruction full of meaning, twilight of the Gods.

How much smoke will we make to taint the wind up above? Will my diary survive?

“Say something,” I implore Adi.

Holding his gun firmly, he’s silent.

“A genius always says something poetic on his deathbed.”

My husband leans the back of his head against the sofa carefully forming his words through the sifting dust. His lips slowly move.

“Mohnstrudel,” he says.

I know that nestled in our eternity, I will find this strudel for him no matter how hard it may be.

The shelter throbs and then moans in the seizure of a second tremor, the concrete gorging on us.

I will not let Him shoot the Führer. I take his gun. He doesn’t resist, and the sheer weight of the weapon reminds me I’m still alive. I lift the Walther 7.65 Caliber with my strong swimmer’s left hand, prop the barrel against His right temple while I hold tightly to my pen, ready to record every second to the end. The capsule on my tongue lightly touches my teeth.

Oh, history, you are mine now!

Pulling the trigger… I start to bite down as I… am… do… innnnnnnnnnnng…

This book does not pretend to be the history of Hitler and the Third Reich. I wish to give a portrait of a madman in the eyes of his mistress, Eva, who does not see him as mad. Her point of view allows us to go beyond the “crazy/sick” understanding that according to Primo Levi is almost to justify his actions. Henry Fielding in Joseph Andrews referred to his characters as “species,” something more than individuals and less than universal. That applies to my rendition of Hitler’s court.

We cannot indict only Hitler. His political sycophants were enamored and in awe of him as were many German citizens. Equally dangerous were the “common” men and women such as Eichmann, Hoss, Stangl, Magda Goebbels and Eva Braun.

It is tricky to write about a villain. Irwin Shaw attempted this in his novel The Young Lions, in which he portrays a psychological portrait of the Nazi soldier Christian Diestl. It would be easy to turn Diestl into a one-dimensional character. Yet Shaw makes him a tender lover and intellect, sensitive to black market dealings and the rough manners of his fellow soldiers. Yet Diestl accepts Nazism and the mass killing of Jews. Most critics believe that keeping Diestl from becoming only evil personified is the craft of true art.

Hitler is thus complex. Simplicity in marking the evil person—which Irwin Shaw avoided—would be a trap here as well. Hitler was capable of being brave, receiving the 2nd class Iron Cross in World War I, something rarely given to a corporal. He was a vegetarian who did not drink or smoke and was the first in advocating “no smoking” in a scientific move against cancer. He loved his mother, was thoughtful to his secretaries, always speaking to them kindly and bringing them chocolates. Yet… he masterminded machinery to kill men, women and children in a ruthless manner. There have always been wars, but none have ever included such organized assembly-line extermination, particularly of civilians.

I have taken Flaubert’s advice to keep a “singularity of vision” by placing Hitler in the primacy of Eva’s subjective reality. With my own imaginative interpretation, layered by archival documents, textbooks, memoirs, and news clips, I hope to render the intensity of a more complete vision to the reader in order that he or she may possibly learn from this operatic villainy.

I have been fortunate in being helped and inspired by such wonderful people as Barney Rosset, Howard Stein, and Glenn Young. And I have been enormously informed by historical information, mostly by the following books:

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer

Stalin, Simon Sebag Montefiore

Hitler’s Words, Gordon W. Prange

The Course of German History, A. P. Taylor

The Memoirs of Ernst Von Weizsaecke, Ernst Von Weizsaecke

Rommel—The Desert Fox, Desmond Young

War Diaries 1939–1945, Field Marshal Lord Abenbrooke

The Fall of Berlin 1945, Anthony Beevor

Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France, Ernest May

The Last Days of Hitler, Hugh Trevor-Roper

The Battle for Germany 1944–45, Max Hastings

1. What is it about Adolf Hitler that perpetually captures the public imagination decades after the end of World War II? What other historical figures from that period continue to be explored in popular books and movies today? When will the fascination with Hitler finally end? Will it ever?

2. What makes Lavonne Mueller’s novel different from other portrayals of Hitler in books, movies or documentaries?

3. Has Mueller’s approach changed your own perception of Hitler?

4. What effect does the claustrophobic setting in the bunker have on the action of the novel and the behavior of its characters?

5. How well does the old bromide “behind every great man is a woman” apply to Adolf and Eva?

6. Hitler, we are told, is married to Germany. How does this condition shape Eva’s destiny?

7. What if Hitler had won the war? How would a victorious Hitler deal with his realtionship with Eva? Would they ever have become man and wife?

8. How would you characterize their relationship? Is it similar to other relationships you know? Women sometimes feel they are in relationships with unbending monsters—dictators who control their every move. Or is Hitler forever in his own category of evil?

9. Is Hitler cruel toward Eva? How would you expect him to treat her?

10. On their first date, Hitler compliments Eva on “the pleats in my dress saying he loves repetition.” How is this love of repetition a symbol of his regime to come?

11. To what extent does the author expect us to know about the world outside the bunker? Are these offstage events important to understanding the full scope of the novel?

12. Where does history leave off and fiction begin in Mueller’s novel?

13. How does Eva’s status change once she moves into the bunker?

14. Life in the bunker meant everybody lived under stressful, unpleasant, and hazardous conditions. How did Eva cope?

15. Above the bunker the war is raging to its catastrophic end. How much do you think Eva knows or cares about what’s happening to Germany?

16. Until they moved into the bunker, Eva was more or less an invisible figure on the sidelines of Hitler’s life. Why?

17. Could Eva have been as innocent as she appears, or must she be judged an accomplice to Hitler’s barbarity?

18. Did Eva show any awareness or feeling about Hitler’s Jewish policy?

19. What does “patient” refer to in the title?

20. Hitler’s charisma—his magnetism—is legendary. To what extent is his charisma palpable in the novel?

21. During an intimate encounter between Hitler and Eva, he speaks of ideal love as a German and a French soldier atop each other in the trenches who blow themselves up with a grenade. There’s been speculation over the years that Hitler was a homosexual. Does this story suggest he was?

22. Did it surprise you that Hitler does not have sexual relations in a normal fashion? Mueller never actually explains what prompts their unorthodox sexual practice in the book. What’s your speculation? Psychological or physical?

23. Why do you think he calls Eva his grenade? Does this foreshadow their suicidal end? Or is it a sexual metaphor for the sexual act?

24. Eva’s attitude about Hitler is total acceptance, idealization, and obsession, totally sublimating her own needs. Do you know women who act similarly with powerful or controlling men? What do you make of this phenomenon?

25. Though Hitler was responsible for some of the most inhumane acts in history, he’s presented in this book with some positive qualities, such as love of animals, promotion of healthy living, etc. How do these descriptions affect your view of him?

26. Eva says when she first met Hitler in the camera shop, he struck her as being very “ordinary.” Were his ordinary qualities part of his extraordinary rise?

27. Does Hitler believe he is an ethical person?

28. Is it a moral or ethical mistake to humanize somebody as evil as Hitler ? Is there a danger we will begin to forgive his atrocities as a result?

29. By denying Hitler’s humanity, does a writer risk severing connection to the rest of us? Or by making Hitler a mythical monster, do we rule out the possibility we may find something of him in each of us ?

30. Why would an author want to enter a mind of such dehumanizing evil as Adolf Hitler’s?

31. What about the other residents of the bunker? Do they also have positive and negative qualities?

32. The philosopher Primo Levi warns, “More dangerous are the common men” in Nazi Germany. Do you agree? Who are the “common men” in the novel?

33. Did reading about Hitler’s days in the bunker remind you of Osama bin Laden and his entourage in hiding? Do you see any similarities between the two men in terms of their beliefs and lifestyles?

34. Magda has the chance to get her children out but chooses not to. What do you think about that decision? What does her character add to the overall atmosphere of the book?