cover image  The Lost Life of Eva Braun

The Lost Life of Eva Braun

Angela Lambert, . . St. Martin's, $29.95 (512pp) ISBN 978-0-312-36654-4

Lambert (whose novel, A Rather English Marriage was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize) cites the remarkable fact that while Hitler has over 700 biographies, his long-time mistress and wife (for 36 hours), Eva Braun, enjoys just two in English—the first long out of print and now this one. Since her death at age 33 in the bunker alongside her beloved Adolf, Braun has been dismissed as a vivacious but flighty and not overly intelligent companion with a perverse adoration of the fuehrer. In her magnificent, sensitive and finely written bio, Lambert does not wholly undermine this perception, but for the first time Braun emerges as a fully rounded, complex individual both liberated and imprisoned by her relationship with Hitler, a relationship assiduously dissected here and that exemplifies the meaning of "opposites attract." She was, for instance, the only person allowed to smoke in the abstemious fuehrer's presence, and she was as Catholic as Hitler was militantly self-worshiping. No one in Hitler's retinue ever understood their mutual attraction, though perhaps Albert Speer was closest when he said that for Hitler Braun was "incredibly undemanding"; as for Braun's infatuation, Lambert herself remains bemused, but her behind-the-scenes tale of an extraordinary man in love with a most ordinary woman is a revelation. 32 pages of b&w photos. (Jan.)