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The thought of a wedding conjures up all sorts of images. For some, it’s the bride’s white dress and a big church with an orchestra. For others, it’s a sunny island beach somewhere in the Pacific with a few guests milling around in the ocean breezes. Still others have in their mind’s eye a plateful of food, a piece (or two) of delicious cake, and that yummy carbonated punch with crushed ice or sherbet in it. You can probably guess which image is mine…as I head up for another glass.
Whatever the pictures, it’s pretty safe to say that our idea of the “perfect wedding” doesn’t include a subterranean bunker. The lights flickering on and off, mostly due to enemy artillery fire, isn’t generally our idea of a “Wedding of Whimsy”. And it won’t bring tears of joy to your eyes knowing that pretty much everyone in town that’s not in the wedding party wants to kill you, your husband, and everyone that is in the wedding party.
But those were the circumstances surrounding Eva Braun’s wedding ceremony on April 29, 1945. Soviet troops were now in the heart of Berlin, fighting just down the street from the Chancellery, and exacting their revenge. For more than three years, the Soviets had suffered bloodshed, brutality, and horror at the hands of their German invaders in Russia, and it was payback time. Above all else, they wanted to make sure that the one man behind it all, Eva Braun’s new husband, did not escape from his “wedding chapel”.
A white wedding dress? Any German with one had stuck it on a pole and was looking for the nearest American soldier to wave it at. Cake?…yeah, right. And that tasty punch?…nowhere to be found. I’m sure the two witnesses at the wedding, Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann, had a strong suspicion that some exotic location would not be the Hitlers’ honeymoon destination, though maybe someplace warm would be.
Recommended Reading: Armageddon: The Battle For Germany, 1944-1945 – Max Hastings is one of the finest writer-historians around, and this work only strengthens my claim.
Today's History Lesson 