Der Untergang

A discovery of hundreds of Hitler’s gramophone records in the attic of a former Soviet intelligence officer who died earlier this summer sheds new light on the Nazi leader’s musical tastes. His favourite records and most scratched from frequent playing were: Beethoven Piano Sonatas Opus 78 and 90, Wagner’s Ouverture to the Flying Dutchman, Mussorgsky Boris Godunov, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and Mozart Piano Sonata n°8. It is astonishing to find Russian music in his collection. He dismissed Russians as “Untermenschen” and was contemptuous of their contribution to world culture. Most astonishing is the presence of Jewish performers. This is rather perverse. There he was listening to music performed by relatives and blood-brothers of the Jews whom he was daily sending to their deaths. The evidence that he was a music connoisseur does not make him a less hateful person. This brings me to the story of his beloved dog, Blondie, a German Shepherd. Shortly before her death, Traudl Junge, his private secretary revealed Hitler’s pride and affection for Blondie. Hitler bragged on the tricks she could perform and kept her by his side most of the time. She even slept in his bedroom in the Berlin bunker. Then, as the Russians closed in, Hitler fed Blondie cyanide. He killed her not to spare her from any of the ravages which might follow defeat, not to spare her from hunger or deprivation or disease. Rather, he had begun to suspect that the cyanide Himmler had supplied for his own suicide might be fake. So the Führer killed his dog to make sure that his supply of suicide tablets would work when the time came. Traudl Junge claims that Eva Braun was jealous of Blondie. She hated her and sometimes kicked her.