I had imagined the Führer’s marriage differently in

earlier years. Now when it wasfinallyheld there was

probably nobody who was not disappointed. There were
few people present. When registrar Walter
Wagner, clad in Volkssturm uniform, arrived shortly
before one o’clock on the morning of 29 April,
everything was ready. Hitler had had the situation conference
room set up for the ceremony. At one side of the
table were four chairs, one each for Hitler, Eva Braun
and the witnesses Goebbels and Bormann. After the
witnesses had been advised as to their role they
waited with the ‘guests’. Registrar Wagner, as excited
as Eva Braun, had a two-page typed document from
whichhe requested the contracting parties to declare
that they were of Aryan origin and free of any
hereditary disease whichwould present an impediment
to the marriage. Then Wagner said in trembling
tones: ‘I come now to the solemn act of the
marriage. In the presence of the witnesses I ask
you, mein Führer Adolf Hitler, if you are so willed
as to enter wedlock with Fräulein Eva Braun. In
this case I request that you answer with ‘Yes’. Hitler
did this, and then Eva Braun did so, after Wagner
had continued: ‘Now I ask you, Fräulein Eva Braun, if
you are so willedas to enter wedlock with our
Führer Adolf Hitler.’ After a concluding paragraph and
the signature of the Hitler, Eva Hitler, Goebbels,
Bormann and registrar Wagner to the certificate, the
ceremony was over. Hitler and his bride accepted our best
wishes. After they retired ninety minutes later, we
celebrated with the Goebbels family, Bormann. Burgdorf,
Hewel, Axmann, von Below, Hitler’s secretary Gerda
Christian and the personal adjutant. Champagne,
sandwiches and tea were served in a fitting
atmosphere.
In captivity the Russians asked me why Hitler had
married on the last full day of his life. In this they
saw proof for their theory that Hitler was a typical
middle- class citizen who required everything to be
‘rubber-stamped and official’ for it to have any
validity: ‘You Germans’, an NKVD intelligence officer
remarked to me disparagingly in this connection,‘are only
revolutionaries if you have a piece of paper authorising
it.’ There was no point in explaining to him that
Hitler’s decision to marryEva Braun ‘properly’ resulted
from quite different motives. It is certain that the
ceremony and its consequences meant nothing at
all to him. He merely wanted to fulfil Eva’s wish that
after coming to him in Berlin, she should die at
his side as his lawfulwife. In principle this is put
another way in his Last Will and Testament of 29
April 1945:
. . . SinceI believed during the years of
struggle that I should not accept the responsibility
of marriage, I have decided before ending my
earthly span to make that girl my wife who, after long
years of loyal friendship, came of her own free will into
an almost besieged city in order to shareher fate
with mine. It is her wish that she should accompanyme
into deathas my wife. Death will replace for us that
of whichmy work robbed us both in the service
of my people.59
Eva Hitler’s composure after her marriage proved Hitler right.
For a while she seemed to have forgotten the
catastrophe and her environment. When I saw
her afterwards, instead of addressing her as gnädiges
Fräulein as I always had done, or gnädige Frau
as she now was, I preferred the emphatic ‘Frau
Hitler’. Her eyes lit up. She gave me a happy
smile and for a moment laid her hand on my
forearm. Eva Hitler. She had dreamed of this for more
 than ten years. Instinctively I thought of what Kurt
Tucholsky had written, according to which one gets one’s
heart’s desire, but always a day too late and
always a size too small. This seemed coined for
Eva Hitler, who went off to bed with her husband
after drinks. We, ‘the most intimate circle’, stayed
behind and celebrated the marriage ‘deep below the
ground’ while the Russian artillery churned up the
parkland around the ReichChancellery.