35. How do you think you’d react faced with a brutal social injustice, especially one that might endanger your own life or your family’s if you were to take a stand against it?

36. What do you think about Hitler’s decision to commit suicide rather than face certain capture? Do you agree that his capture would have been certain?

37. How was the act of suicide portrayed? Was it an act of cowardice? Or was it more complex?

38. Did Eva die for a cause or for blind obedience or for love? Hitler urges her to escape. Why does she refuse?

39. What do you think would have become of Eva had she not committed suicide? Would she have been executed for war crimes? Placed in an asylum? Allowed to return to civilian life? What would the fate of “Hitler’s wife” have been post-World War II?

40. What questions would you have liked to ask Eva if she had lived to be fifty? Remember, she ended her life at a relatively young age.

41. To what extent do we see Hitler through a romantic lens? Can you imagine having a romantic fantasy about Hitler? Women in the Soviet Union were openly besotted by Stalin. Some women found Osama bin Laden attractive. What is it about sheer power that can act as an aphrodisiac?

42. What was the most difficult part of the novel to accept? Did you find the novel offensive in any way?

43. How do you think the child or grandchild of a Holocaust survivor might react to the novel? Would you give this novel to a Jewish friend?

44. Should the author have more openly condemned Eva’s attitudes or Hitler’s actions? If she had taken a more judgmental tone, how would that have altered your own interaction with the story and the life of its characters?

45. What about “stand by your man”? Is there a connection so deep between man and woman that nothing one can do will turn the other against him or her? What do you think about the women who turn in their men after discovering a serious wrongdoing? At what point, if any, can your mate cross a line that forces you to sever the relationship and expose the crime? Or is there no line when it comes to love?

46. Why does Eva sometimes wish Hitler were just an artist with “only colors to capture”?

47. If Hitler as a young man had been accepted as an artist, how might history have been different?

Copyright

NEW YORK AN OPUS ORIGINAL

Copyright © 2013 by Lavonne Mueller

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication

Mueller, Lavonne.

The patient ecstasy of Fräulein Braun : a novel / Lavonne Mueller.— New York : Opus, c2013.

ISBN: 978-1-62316-008-1 (cloth); 978-1-62316-009-8 (epub); 978-1-62316-010-4 (Kindle); 978-1-62316-011-1 (Adobe PDF)

Includes bibliography.

Summary: A disturbing, erotic novel about Hitler seen through the eyes of the woman who worshipped him, set in the claustrophobic and morally twisted underground world of the Führerbunker and the Third Reich’s last gasp.

1. Braun, Eva—Fiction. 2. Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945—Fiction. 3. Germany—History—1933-1945—Fiction. 4. World War, 1939-1945—Germany—Fiction. 5. Statesmen’s spouses—Fiction. 6. Mistresses—Fiction. 7. Man-woman relationships—Fiction. 8. Biographical fiction. 9. Historical fiction. 10. Erotic fiction. 11. Love stories. I. Title.

PS3563.U346 P38 2013

813/.54—dc23 1304

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