UNFINISHED BOOK CHAPTER ONE

BEFORE THE BEGINNING…

That it happened we know. Why it did can result in a brief history of mystery. Adolf Hitler, the man to have unleashed a spell of terror that had benumbed the entire universe. Eva Anna Paula Braun, the daughter of a teacher from a Bavarian family. Born in Munich, Germany, on 6th February 1912, Eva led what one would call a 'regular' life, studying in a lyceum, followed by a convent where she was an ordinary perfomer with an inclination towards athletics.

The year was 1929. While working as an office and lab assistant to Hitler's photographer Heinrich Hoffman when she was around 17 years of age, Eva is said to have met the man who was to be her lover not much thereafter. Hitler walked in, and noticed her legs which were in view because she had climbed a ladder. Interaction followed, and the twosome got attracted to each other, one story being Eva too found Hitler so charismatic that she managed to slip a love letter into his pocket at their very first meeting.

The inevitable was to occur not much later. She decided to follow Hitler, her decision evoking reactions ranging from outrage to disgust. But the girl of yesteryear had grown into a young lady who knew her mind. For 16 years that ensued, she was Hitler's mistress, forming one of the two angles of an unlikely romance.

Shrouded in ambiguity, dissected by diverse historical interpretations, the Hitler-Eva Braun relationship has played the temptress to both academics and laymen the world over. Why it has been so can be easily explained. Because of what he might have achieved, Hitler continues to be among the most intensely scrutinised individuals on earth even today. That Braun happened in his life, and not a lesser someone else's, is a good enough reason for one investigation after the other.

When the World War II was its peak, Braun was tucked away in a cosy world in which she could read romantic novels and watch the television. She was very fond of sunbathing, a passion that annoyed him no end. In April 1945, when the sun was setting on Hitler's turbulent life, she went down to Munich from Berlin to be with the man she loved. Times were getting from bad to worse and, after a small ceremony in which he married her (the date being April 29), the two of them committed suicide. The marriage lasted for a day, with he shooting himself while she swallowed cyanide.

When Braun ended her life, she was merely 33. For the overwhelming majority, her death assumed significance only because her lover had also killed himself. Since that happened, decades have gone by. With the passage of time, the commoner's interest in the Hitler-Braun romance has enhanced. While that had to happen once Hitler's political life had been understood in the best way possible, why do you think that the man who terrorised the world fell for Eva, and she for him?

There is no satisfying answer, one would intervene while you think. Some things just happen.