The very lost life of Eva Braun

I just now, just this very second, finished "The Lost Life of Eva Braun". It was interesting, especially the detail of the last days and hours of Eva and Hitler together in the bunker. I think I will attempt to find a book on the early days of Hitler. I just don't like books that are too war-heavy. I find artillery talk uber-boring, but I do like finding out about people, and their thoughts, feelings and reactions in times of great stress or change.
This book (by Angela Lambert) skims over a period of 13 years (the length of time Eva was involved with Hitler) fairly briefly, and there are then two chapters devoted to the last hours in the bunker. The author explains that because Hitler knew it was the end, he could finally stop trying to hide Eva away, so the last two months of her life are the most well recorded. Much is known about her actions in these last days.
Hitler was expecting most of his henchmen to commit suicide in the bunker with him. Although a lot of top-ranking Nazis later committed suicide, mostly as a result of the Nuremberg trials, the only one who died with Hitler was Goebbels, who took his wife Magda and their six children along with him.
It seems as though Eva was his most loyal follower, all the way to the end, even though he had spent so much of their time together denying her existence, or neglecting her because his first love was really the Nazi party. Eva tried to commit suicide twice, once in 1932 and again in 1935. Hitler was surrounded by death and suicide, not least of all the 6 million undesirables that died in the concentration camps, or the 3.5 million German military and civilian deaths as a result of the war (or the 13 million Soviet deaths, or the 500,000 Commonwealth deaths, and so on, and so on).
Looking at it this way, it's incredible. In the true sense of the word, it seems incredible. Taking "just" the above figure of 23 million people, it's incredible. What is the true number of people in the world who died at the hands of this one man? If Hitler had never risen to power, would they have lived on and died at a natural old age? Or would someone else have stepped in and filled the void? Every one of those 23 million had a family, friends, possible children, parents. And yet we will never hear all their stories, because it's too much. The deaths of so many people is just too much to comprehend. And so I read a story about the deaths of two people- Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. The author is by no means sympathetic to Hitler, but at times it does read a bit like a love story. She often makes statements about Hitler finally admitting his love for Eva in the end, but I don't know. Could he be capable of love? I just doubt it. He was an absolute megalomaniac and his greatest love was his own self image. I just don't think such a monster could have loved anyone but himself, and maybe his dog (which was also killed in the bunker with him).
But I have no doubt that Eva loved him. She gave up everything, her family, her friends, her future -even potential everythings- marriage, and children, for him. At 33, she killed herself alongside him in an underground bunker. At 33, she still had years to get married and have children. But, in a way, her reason for dying seems a lot more realistic than anybody else's. The soldiers died for a dream, a dream of the utopia that was to be the Third Reich, the concentration camp prisoners died at the expense of the dream. But Eva died for love. She didn't want to live in a world without the man she loved.
I'll never understand it, I suppose. I'll never understand women who fall in love with bad men, women who fall in love with rapists and serial killers and maniacal dictators. For me, the allure has always been a good heart. Without being too sentimental, I am reminded of my love for my husband when he performs any little act of kindness to me or to others. Could the same possibly, on any level, be said of Hitler? It seems impossible. Is it too simplistic to say that these women are attracted by power? Is it some sort of Freudian father-figure seeking? I can't say.
It is a hell of a story. Anonymous young shop girl falls in love with possibly the most powerful man of the 20th century. In comparison to other stories of powerful men, they even seem to have been completely faithful to one another, all the way until the end. I wonder if they had grown old, and she had lost her youthful vigour and whimsy, if he would have remained so devoted. They even seem to have had a normal sex life. Not what one would picture from a despot. He also abstained from smoking, drinking, or excesses of any kind, unlike his second in commands.
So, all in all, an interesting work of non-fiction. Now I'd like to know a little bit more about Hitler the man, and Speer also seems interesting.
One overriding thing I'd give my right arm to find out though, and I guess I'll never know: "Did Hitler REALLY only have one ball?" And is the other REALLY in the Albert Hall? Maybe I'm missing the point. As usual.