Interview with Hitler’s Pilot, Hans Baur
Hans Baur (1897-1993) was Adolf Hitler’s pilot from 1932 until 1945. He was one of the last people to see Hitler alive before his suicide in 1945. Baur then spent spent ten years in a Soviet Gulag after being captured by the Russians in Berlin in 1945, after having lost a leg and having to watch it being amputated (without anesthetic!) with a pocket knife. Hans Baur was interviewed a number of times and wrote an interesting book about Hitler, but this interview with John Toland is arguably his most interesting chat.
This interview was conducted on September 7, 1972 at the Starnberger See in Bavaria. The interpreter is indicated as Thomas L Berndt. “JT” refers to John Toland and “HB” refers to Hans Baur.
JT: You first began working for Adolf Hitler in mid 1932. What can you tell me about this period?
HB: I had been reading and hearing about Hitler for years before I met him. I didn’t have a chance to talk to him face to face until 1932, when I received a telegram requesting me to come to Munich to meet him. But he was already very famous by the time I met him. He was probably the second or third most famous person in Germany at that time.
JT: Why did Hitler summon you?
HB: This was the period in German history when there were many elections between Hitler, President von Hindenburg, also the Communists and the Social Democrats were still viable political parties. Hitler was not yet the German leader, he was just one of several politicians vying for power. He wanted to fly from place to place and I was recommended to him as a pilot. He wanted to visit many towns in one day so he could reach more voters. The plane was quicker than a car, simple as that.
JT: When you met him in 1932, what can you recall about this?
HB: Oh, I can recall everything, this was the most important meeting of my life, excepting when I met my two wives. I went to the Braunes Haus in Munich, where Hitler had an office. I just walked in, un-escorted and told a secretary Hitler was expecting me. I walked up a flight of stairs with
Brückner, who was one of his adjutants.
JT: And what were your first impressions of Hitler, what can you tell me about that?
HB: I remember being impressed with his office first of all. It had high ceilings, woodwork and it was very spacious. This was during the Depression when most Germans didn’t have such an opulent office or any office at all. Everything looked very expensive and he was the leader of a working class Party. I was a little amused at the contradiction. Hitler was well briefed on my career as a pilot and said that I had come highly recommended. He asked me many questions about flying, its dangers, the possibility of mishaps, flying in bad weather, those sorts of things.
- Hitler with Hans Baur in 1933
JT: And Hitler as a person during this first meeting, what were your impressions?
HB: He was very impressive. That was evident to me from our first handshake. You know, of course, that he had these large, piercing blue eyes, like two blue stars almost. Sort of luminous, and arresting. I could see immediately why he had so many followers, why people were so enthusiastic about him. He was confident without being arrogant and he was quite friendly to me in a simple, unaffected way. I knew I wanted to get to know him better because he was so unusual and so intense. A memorable meeting for me. You know, and Hitler was very friendly too. Charming man in all respects.
JT: How did his friendliness manifest itself at this meeting?
HB: Well, he asked me personal questions about my flying qualifications, but he also asked me about my wife, my daughter, my military service in the Great war, and things like that. I remember he asked me if I would like tea or coffee and he treated his subordinates very well. I was really very pleased at meeting him and liked him straight away. He was oddly polite, almost in an old fashioned way. Well mannered, not the fanatic you see on TV in documentaries about the war. Not at all.
JT: How long was the conversation?
HB: About an hour, maybe less. I remember he told me in some detail that he hadn’t flown since 1920 and that experience had been very traumatic for him. He’d been physically sick the entire flight and he said the pilot had been incompetent and he had resolved not to fly again after that. I said to him, “Herr Hitler, you do not look like the sort of man to be airsick and I have flown thousands of people in all sorts of inclement weather. I think you are in safe hands with me.” We shook hands and that was the beginning of our association.
- Hess, Hitler, Esser, Schwarz and Hans Baur in 1933
JT: So you will say you liked Hitler right away?
HB: Oh yes, I certainly did. I make no apologies for saying that. None whatsoever. I should probably add that I was already a National Socialist party member then, ever since 1926. But I wasn’t a political person, I never was, really. But the
Führer’s personal magnetism was so extraordinary that I resolved then and there to be on his side no matter what. I am proud to say I never wavered in that conviction, even at the very end. You can put that in your book if you want. I am not ashamed at having loyally served the Führer.
JT: Now I must ask about your first flights with Hitler, did he become airsick after all?
HB: No, he was perfectly fine. From 1932 until 1944 I flew the Fuehrer hundreds of times and the only time I am aware he was sick onboard was flying to Russia in 1942. The weather was perfectly calm but for some reason he became ill. Otherwise he was a good flyer. He would complain to me about the cold in the cabin, he was very susceptible to cold. His hands and feet would feel like ice, as he said. He wore sometimes several layers of clothes while flying, especially in the winter months. That’s something most people don’t know about Hitler nowadays, that he wore clothes that other people would have thought were too warm. Even in the summer, he would wear a trench coat.
JT: What would he do in the hours he was in the air?
HB: Mostly he would read. He read the Party newspapers, pamphlets, sometimes books. In his apartment he had a large library and an even larger one at the Berghof. He was a great reader, a bibliophile as we’d say. He didn’t socialize much with the other passengers, who were always close Party associates. I would say he tended to keep to himself.
JT: Did he ever show fear while flying, such as in stormy weather, or turbulence?
HB: I can say straight away the answer is no. People write to me a lot from all over the world, and often in their letters they will ask if he was afraid. No, he was not. He was fearless about such things. He believed, as he told me, that he had been chosen for a great mission in life and assassination or being killed in an air crash just wasn’t something he believed would happen to him. He said to me more than once, “I don’t know how my life will end, but I have no fear it will be ended in the air.”
JT: Did he ever come to visit you in the cockpit?
HB: Oh yes, many times. Not so much early on because our flights were short, just hopping from one town to the next. But after he became
Führer in 1933, he would come up and talk to me frequently. He liked to see the landscape below and identify where we were. He really enjoyed that and he was relaxed in the cockpit with me. He was not so much inclined to come forward when flying through clouds, when you couldn’t see below.
JT: What kinds of things did you talk about?
HB: While I was in the cockpit, you mean? Well, the
Führer loved to discuss cars, engines, plane engines, fuel, diesel fuel, technical things like that. He had an artist’s mind, but a technical bent to him too. His knowledge of car engines, for instance, that was absolutely like an encyclopedia. He knew as much or more about a Mercedes engine than their own engineers. No exaggeration. He liked too, to tell me stories of his days in the trenches in the war. He was very proud, as he told me, to have been a “simple soldier” in the war.
JT: What about temper? Did you see Hitler yell at his underlings, scream, throw things?
HB: (laughs) No, Mr. Toland, I never witnessed such things. These are the inventions of Hollywood propaganda people. He could get impatient if luggage was lost or someone made a mistake in itinerary. Once I landed outside
Nürnberg because he was scheduled to deliver a speech there, but nobody was there. No crowd at all, so we knew someone had made a mistake. It turns out we were supposed to be in another town, but I can’t remember any more which town that was. Hitler was mad about that, but not screaming. Just quietly fuming, shall we say.
Hitler actually was fairly even-tempered, though people now who never knew him like to claim otherwise. He was a volatile personality in some respects, he could be excitable or very impatient, but yelling or screaming? I personally never saw such things from him. He could get morose or quiet sometimes, then you need to leave him alone and let him get over this funk on his own. He could be quite moody, I can’t deny that.
(The next three pages of the interview are omitted, as it deals with Baur’s relationships with Goering, Hess and Martin Bormann).
JT: Can you tell me what you know about Hitler and his relationship with women?
HB: His earlier associates would know a lot more about that than I. Some of them are still alive and have many stories about Hitler in the early times with women. I came along fairly late, 1932. I would suggest you seek out people like (Hermann) Esser, Albert Bormann, Anni Winter, people like that. They would have plenty of stories about that subject. I’m afraid my personal knowledge of his love affairs is scanty compared to men who were his friends early on.
JT: So you are saying you can’t or won’t discuss the topic of Hitler and women?
HB: Not at all. I can talk about it, but not with as much authority as others. I can say that the Führer was very fond of pretty women and they were fanatical about him. I never saw a man more run after by women in my life. Never. It was comical at the time, and looking back now, it’s even more so. Some of the scenes I witnessed were just beyond my power to describe them. The hysteria he caused would be like some movie star now, but 100 times the hysteria of any movie idol.
JT: Can you give me some examples?
HB: Well, Hitler had that certain something about him. Some might call it charisma, but that word didn’t exist back then. I would say that he was so unusual, so riveting, so extraordinary that everyone fell under his spell, but especially women. They were hysterical around him and would lose their heads. I have seen women literally throw themselves at his feet. I saw this frequently. I have also seen women swallow the pebbles from the ground where he had just walked.
JT: You mean literally?
HB: Yes! Literally. Women were just crazy about him. Sepp Dietrich, as you probably know, was head of his bodyguard and he himself was a quite notorious womanizer. He threw parties which often turned into something else entirely. You know what I mean? Ladies liked Dietrich a lot, but if Hitler was around, all eyes were not on Sepp Dietrich, but on the Führer.
JT: How did Hitler react to this hysteria from ladies?
HB: Oh, he was used to it by the time I met him in 1932. It was generally understood among those close to him that he’d had a number of adventures with women before I came into his service. That’s why you should seek out Esser. I did not experience this, but I heard many things from his adjutants and also, especially from
Brückner. He was not a barren hero, a celibate or disinterested. He was just quite secretive about what he did. Very secretive. I’m sure the only two men who really knew everything about his private life were Schaub and
Brückner. Both of them have passed away, though.
JT: May I ask what things the old guard told you about?
HB: Basically I was told by people close to the Führer
that he had experienced a number of love affairs. Some were short, some more involved. But he would never marry and he never hid this from his female friends. Hitler didn’t string along any girlfriend, he told them up front and straight away, “I will never marry.” Any girl that forced the issue would be shown the door. In later years, Hitler always reiterated to me, “I will never marry.”
JT: Because he was “married to Germany?”
HB: Exactly. Yes, that was the line he repeated many times. He would often add, “I am away too often and cannot behave to a wife as a husband should. A woman would get nothing from me with my schedule.”
JT: When you flew for him, did you see him having any love affairs?
HB: Not at all. By the time I was flying the
Führer, he had Eva Braun in Munich. Perhaps there was someone in Berlin, one or two. But remember, I was not part of his inner circle yet. I flew him, we had a meal in the evening together with his entourage and that was it. I was not around him in any informal way, that happened later on. But he had some women in Berlin whom it was said, he visited.
JT: Would you be referring to Leni Riefenstahl?
HB: Not her, someone else, who I would prefer not to name, though this woman is long since deceased (note: Baur almost certainly is referring to Magda Goebbels, as Toland noted in the margin). Leni Riefenstahl tried hard to get close or to become intimate with the
Führer, but this was unsuccessful.
JT: How did you find this out? Did Hitler tell you this personally?
HB: Heavens no, he was the most secretive man I ever met or knew. No, Hitler would never discuss his personal life to me like that. It was Sepp Dietrich and another party comrade of Hitler who told me many of these stories. Hitler never to my knowledge ever discussed his personal life with anyone. As I said, he was without doubt the most private and secretive man I ever knew. Most men will boast about their conquests or their love life, but Hitler? You couldn’t get one word out of his mouth about these subjects.
- Hitler and Baur shaking hands in Munich, 1933
JT: And what Sepp Dietrich say to you about Hitler?
HB: He simply made it obvious to me that Hitler enjoyed women and women always flocked to him and he had indulged in that. But he was very discrete and he was protected by the old guard of men around him. For them it was a case of “didn’t see, won’t tell.” By the time I came into his service, much of that had gone away. As I said, he had Eva Braun in Munich and one or two others in Berlin in 1932. As for any other potential love affairs then? I wasn’t aware of them, if they existed. Really that is all I can add to this topic.
JT: You mentioned Eva Braun. In your book you describe how you met her in Munich. Can you tell me all about that?
HB: I walked into Heinrich Hoffmann’s studio in Munich. Hoffmann was Hitler’s photographer and sort of the court jester around Hitler. I walked into his shop to get some of my photographs developed,and there was Eva behind the counter wearing a white blouse and skirt. All white, what a vision. My wife was with me and I coudn’t take my eyes off Eva Braun. I thought she was strikingly beautiful. I always felt that way about Eva, incidentally. She didn’t photograph well, I never saw a photo of her that did her justice. I would say the same thing about the Führer .
JT: That he didn’t photograph well?
HB: Precisely. The only two photos I ever saw that looked as he looked and did him justice were two portraits Hoffmann made. One in profile, the other standing. These were the two photographs of himself that he happily autographed because they were really authentic representations (see these two photos below).
JT: And you’re saying Eva Braun photographed badly as well?
HB: Not “badly,” but she was far prettier in person than in any photos I have seen of her through the years, or the ones they show of her now on TV or in magazines. When I met her she was very young, I think probably a teenager but she had a woman’s body and a very appealing way about her. I didn’t know many men around Hitler who didn’t covet Eva, though this went unspoken. Of course they wouldn’t have dared gone after her.
JT: I can imagine nobody would have had the nerve. You liked her then?
HB: Oh, I liked her. I liked Eva Braun very much and I feel she has been maligned a little bit in history. Some of the fanciful things I have read are ridiculous and some is written by people who actually knew the Fuehrer and Eva. She was not a Madame Pompadour or a woman who put on airs. She was just a simple girl who fell in love with the Führer and was always there for him. That’s really all there was to it. I have to add that I never got to know Eva until later on, after Hitler had turned his home into the Berghof. Then I got to know her well.
JT: She did try to kill herself twice, did you know about that then?
HB: I heard about the first attempt. I heard it from Sepp Dietrich and from Schaub, who always loved to gossip. The second attempt I never heard about until after I was released from prison and returned to Germany. I can’t tell you anything about that or whether she was serious or not.
JT: Did Eva Braun seem happy to you? Some of the old guard around him have told me that she seemed unhappy, especially late in the war.
HB: She was happy when she was with the
Führer, that’s how I saw it. Her life wasn’t easy, I can tell you that. His first priority was Germany. In the early years, she didn’t see him in Berlin, only in Munich and on the Obersalzberg. They grew together gradually. Early on, she was kept very much in the background and few knew of her existence. She was introduced to people as “Hitler’s secretary.” That probably fooled most outsiders, nobody was going to stick their nose into Hitler’s business anyway.
HB: Did Hitler discuss Eva Braun with you?
JT: Not in the early days. I knew she was his girlfriend, we all knew that. She was an official state secret, but nobody in the close inner circle was kept in the dark. We knew about her, all of us did. People in Munich knew too, I was asked by various people there, so was my wife. I just shrugged my shoulders. I knew better than to discuss something the Führer wished kept secret.
JT: But he did discuss her with you?
HB: Not in any deep or meaningful way, he wasn’t that type of man. Like I told you, the
Führer was very private, he never talked about his personal life, I don’t think, to anyone. You know, for instance, he would ask me to make sure Eva took the service car to the Chancellery when I would fly her from Munich to Berlin, which I did often in later years. I started flying her to Berlin in late 1935. She would also occasionally take the train. Her sister or her friend accompanied her sometimes. He would instruct me to make sure she and her sister or parents were comfortable on the flight, to have snacks and blankets on board, which were available anyway to all who flew with me.
JT: Did Eva ever discuss Hitler with you?
HB: She wouldn’t discuss their personal life to me, that never came up. But she was very concerned about his safety. That’s another thing people don’t seem to know about these days. She was worried he would be killed by someone in a crowd, assassinated. I remember her telling me she didn’t like it that he always stood up in his car when driving through towns. She said he told her he would never change that because ‘people wait for hours to see their Führer, and they can’t get a look at me if I am seated.’ I think they had that discussion more than once.
JT: How often did you fly Eva Braun?
HB: Oh, many, many times. I piloted her to Scandanavia and Italy as well, along with her family. The Fuehrer allowed her vacations on her own when he was preoccupied with state matters or military issues. He insisted I fly her since he trusted no other pilot.
- Eva Braun with Hans Baur at Hitler’s home in 1935
JT: You mentioned that you would have meals with Hitler. What were those like?
HB: If you mean what happened during the meals, I can tell you straight away. Hitler did most of the talking. We mostly listened. He could be very funny and was an excellent mimic. He could imitate anything, whether it was a person’s voice, birds, artillery, opera singers, anybody! It was uncanny. He was also the best whistler I ever heard. He could whistle in an odd vibrato, almost all of Lohengrin or The Merry Widow.
JT: People in Hitler’s circle tell me that dinner was a different type of meal in Berlin than when Hitler was at the Berghof.
HB: Oh yes, I agree there. I dined with him often enough in both places. In Berlin, Dr. Goebbels reigned supreme. He came for meals a lot, sometimes with Frau Goebbels. Hitler and Frau Goebbels were very fond of one another. Goering came very rarely. Hess almost never. Speer would be there, Werlin, and the adjutants and chauffeur. Hitler was never as relaxed in Berlin as he was in other places because he was officially the Führer there. He was constrained a lot with work, he didn’t seem at home in Berlin.
JT: And at the Berghof?
HB: That was much more relaxed! He was at home there, and the fact Eva Braun was there, made it more homelike for him. She had a stabilizing and I believe a good influence on him. Her friends would be there, our wives would be up there. We’d watch two films a night, go to bed around 3:00 in the morning and just enjoy ourselves. Especially in the summer. The Berghof in the winter, however, was not as nice. It was cold and dark much of the time.
JT: How often did you and Hitler have private conversations?
HB: Oh, quite regularly. Not just about flying or an upcoming trip we would have to take, but about normal, everyday things. How was my wife, was my daughter doing well in school? He remembered birthdays, anniversaries, things like that. Maybe Bormann reminded him about those things, I don’t know. He was actually very thoughtful in such things. He once handed me a check for 5,000 Reichsmarks and said, “this is a personal gift from me and I would be offended if you try to decline it. Accept it and please use this reward to make your wife and daughter happy in some way.” I used the money to refurnish our home. When Hitler visited, I told him this and he was so pleased.
- Two photos of the interior of Hitler’s Junkers airplane
JT: Did Hitler ever mention Jews to you or make anti-Semitic remarks?
HB: Well, let’s be clear. Everyone knew Hitler was not a fan of the Jews. He made that plain in his book and in his many speeches. I don’t remember him talking about Jews to me at any time. Maybe he would mention a Jewish singer and then imitate her shrieking. Things like that on occasion, but he never made any political remark to me about them.
JT: What would he talk about in general?
HB: He railed against smokers. He absolutely hated them and hated cigarettes. He told me that as a youth in Vienna, he had smoked for a period of a year or so. Then one day when he was hungry and hadn’t eaten for a day or so, he realized he was spending precious money on cigarettes. He told me he tossed his cigarettes into the river and never smoked again. He also railed against hunters, killing animals or harming animals in any way. Goering’s hunting made Hitler sick. He positively hated hunting or hurting animals.
JT: Did you know Blondi, Hitler’s dog?
HB: Definitely I knew Blondi. She flew in my airplane many times. Blondi was, I have to say, a one man dog. She was completely Hitler’s dog and nobody else really got close to her. She was not mean, but she was aloof to anyone but Hitler. I know Eva Braun didn’t like Blondi and made no secret of that. The secretaries, especially the oldest one, actively disliked Blondi. The dog became 'nicer,’ after she became pregnant. When Blondi was pregnant and after giving birth to her puppies, she was more approachable and friendly.
Part II of this interview with Hans Baur will be posted in the near future. The next installment will cover the war years and Baur’s last meeting with Hitler in the Bunker in April, 1945.
This interview is contained the John Toland papers in the Library of Congress, box 38/39.