When I was three years old, my mother joined a bridge club. As a consequence, every Wednesday, I was left alone in the house with my dad. I would ask him to tell me a bedtime story as I had practically memorized all of the golden books and volumes of Dr. Seuss on my bookshelves. My dad, who I still argue had no business having children, didn't know any faerie tales and so told me stories he knew... most notably the stories of PT 109, the Graf Spee, and the final days of the Führerbunker; the latter being my favorite.
I can still remember sitting on the bottom of the stairs in to our den, listening intently to my father's description of the conditions in the bunker and the Russian advance on the city. And there was one line that stuck in my little three-year-old head, "then he married Eva Braun... made an honest woman out of her." I can still hear that sentence in my head twenty years later. After the first time I heard that story, I would always ask him to tell me that at bedtime.
I was little, and I had no clue of what was happening in my little head, but I was enamored with all things National Socialist. Luckily, others around me took it as nothing more than the influence of my father who was and is an avid military history buff. I got to where I could tell the bunker story as well as he could. My dad taught me how to shoot a pistol, rather, he took me pistol shooting. I was eight years old and nearly as good a shot as he was. I took dancing and gymnastics lessons (after much begging and pleading to be allowed) and was told I had natural talent for both. At the time (ages 7-13) I really had no idea that I had all these activities in common with my PL self. I didn't even know of the existence of a 'past life'. I was raised in a Southern Baptist (for the most part) household and there had never been any talk of such things. But my PL self was about to make a shocking appearance.
In second grade, I gave the world a hint of who I was - or rather, had been. My teacher would pass out letters of the alphabet to us and have us write a word on the chalkboard beginning with that letter. One day I found myself in the possession of the letter 'T'. I strode right up to the blackboard (boards were still black in those days) and wrote the only word that I could: "TOTALITARIANISM". The teacher called my mother- she bought me ice cream after school that day. I let my interest and compulsion toward all things National Socialist lie dormant for a long time after that, but the truth reared its head again a little less than a decade later.
I read the Toland biography in the tenth grade for a school project and remember being thrilled at all of the references to Hitler and Eva and found myself wanting more and more to know more than the book had to offer. This was before the advent of the history channel, so there was very little to be found on the subject, seeing as I lived in a silly little city in north Florida. Again, I had to be satisfied with a tidbit here and there, but thoughts of this relationship were never far from the front of my mind from then on.
The next spring, I was sixteen and playing Liesl in a local theatre production of The Sound of Music. I was wearing my red Tyrolean "festival" costume and sitting on a ledge backstage, waiting for the photographer to call for the VonTrapp children. One of my cast mates came up to me and said, "right now, you look just like a picture in a book I have of Eva Braun." And my dad's voice sprang into my head again, "then he married Eva Braun...made an honest woman out of her." I was amazed to learn that I resembled this woman I had been fascinated by for most of my life and my intrigue was piqued again. I was again enamored, but again, I found very little outlet for research or expression.
I had always liked old movies better than new movies. When I was twelve years old, I became fascinated by the movie Gone With the Wind. I had posters on my wall, pictures of Clark Gable everywhere, music boxes, collector's plates, even Gone With The Wind perfume!! I spent hours watching Clark Gable movies and quoting GWTW with my best friend, Sharon. I was convinced that I had loved Clark Gable before and that maybe I had been a contemporary of his in a former lifetime.
By this age, I had gotten past my Southern Baptist upbringing and was actively practicing Paganism. This practice included the pursuit of Astral projection. I quickly called a halt to the pursuit, however, when I began to experience horrific sensations and visions much more realistically than anyone else in my circle would describe. I learned self-hypnosis as a function of a stress-management group at a summer program for musical theatre performers that I attended for 4 years starting at age 14. We were asked to go back to a time when we were angry, or sad, or in love, or whatever... it was supposed to be an aid to finding our emotions for method acting. I never told anyone, but my most vivid emotional memories were not consistent with this lifetime.
And so I moved on with life, went to Junior College, bummed around with a hockey team, and went to a lot of parties. Also, I had picked up in my young adulthood a penchant for shopping and the habit of taking several baths a day, this is usually referred to as being 'high maintenance' by today‘s standards. I started smoking on the sly (my parents didn't know for almost 5 years) and discovered a love for WWII-era jazz and swing music. I developed a pattern of dating guys who said they loved me, but for some reason or another, couldn't take me out in public very much if at all.
Then I went away to a University 1400 miles from where I was raised and into a metropolitan city. The first class I took was called "Hitler and the Constitution". It was a lame class that met the State and US Constitution requirements at my University. But I was still thrilled about the chance and bragged to my dad about what a good university I had chosen because I could take a class about nothing but the Third Reich. I only went to class a few times (really dull teacher) and still had the best grade out of the 150+ people in the lecture. I would attend my study/discussion group and fascinate my classmates with tales that I knew about the people involved- my classmates thought that my stories were fascinating and wondered why the teacher didn't tell interesting stories like mine. Our final exam had been a paper, which I had turned in early...but I still went the last day to hear my favorite story again, the one that included the wedding. Unfortunately, the teacher was a cure for insomnia and it was less enjoyable than I could have made it.
That fall, I went skiing with my godmother and god-sister. Coming from Florida, I had never even seen snow before except on television and the five or ten snowflakes that would fall in my hometown every five or ten years. I took to the slopes like I had been skiing all my life - the ski instructor said I was a natural.
The following summer, we went to Europe. London was awful, Paris charming, Milan uneventful, Rome amazing, and then we went to Munich. I didn't hardly sleep the whole time I was there. I was able to navigate the streets with only the most rudimentary directions. I went on a "Third Reich" tour and found my way back to the train station from the site of Party Headquarters without even having been told which way to walk (and we had taken a train to get there).
And then we spent a day in the country. We went to Berchtesgaden. I was exhausted by the time we caught the train to go there, and my godmother and sister fell asleep on the train. I couldn't. I was shaking like a leaf as soon as we got into the alps and I couldn't get past the familiarity of the sound and feeling of the train as it passed over the tracks toward Berchtesgaden, We reached the train station and I was absolutely overcome. There was an amazing feeling of coming home when I stepped off the train and it became more and more intense as we got nearer to the top pf the Kelstein.
I don't think I had ever felt anything so incredible as the joy I felt as we walked through the freezing-cold marble tunnel toward the brass elevator that would take us to the Kelsteinhaus. I looked for a chair to sit in, and there wasn't one - turns out there used to be one, but I didn't know that when I was there. We got out of the elevator and I darted to the door that led onto the terrace - don't ask me how I knew exactly where it was. I ran up the side of that mountain like I had done it a million times - and I have asthma... I normally can't run anywhere under any circumstances. I was in tears almost the entire time I looked around the inside of the house. I couldn't stand to see there restaurant tables that are there now in place of all of my beautiful furniture. And I said that out loud without thinking, "What have they done with all of my furniture". If my companions noticed the slip, they didn't comment. I was constantly touching the stones of the walls and spent a good ten minutes running my fingers over the red marble of the fireplace. I couldn't shake this feeling in the pit of my stomach that I couldn't leave this place - that the people who were running things were destroying something dear to me. I picked up a rock and several flowers before I was made to leave (I stayed until the very last bus left to descend the mountain). The flowers are pressed and in frames in my apartment now. I look at them every day and long to return there.
I returned to Munich with my head spinning. I had never felt so alive in my whole life as I did on that day. And it only got more intense. The next stop on our trip was Berlin.
Berlin is an unusual city, with traces still of its cold war past. But, as unusual as it was on one level...deeper down it felt oddly familiar. I went that very afternoon to search out the “Third Reich” tour (run by the same people that ran the tour in Munich). My brain was going at ninety-to-nothing, and my heart was pounding in my ears as the U-Bahn pulled in to the Friedrichstrasse ( I think that's right) station. I got off the train. There was a vague familiarity to the temperature of the tiny room and the sound of the floor tiles under my feet. I tried not to pay it any mind as the tour group plodded up the stairs and the guide began to speak. We first visited several sites that I had only a peripheral interest in: the former Propaganda Ministry, the Luftwaffe building, the former site of SS and Gestapo Headquarters. But then we started walking in the direction of the Chancellery building, and I experienced the most remarkable- yet indescribable feeling. I knew nothing of Berlin that I could consciously recall, but I could have led the group to where we were going.
It was with an unusual degree of disappointment that I found myself on the edge of a parking lot that adjoined and apartment complex. My disappointment was short-lived, however, because I didn't have much time to dwell on it when I felt a wave of nausea sweep over me. I didn't actually get sick, but I had to close my eyes for a moment and steady myself on the wooden railing that surrounded the parking lot. I inhaled deeply and smelled the distinct odor of gunpowder. I asked the guy next to me if he smelled anything- he looked at me oddly and said "no". I stood up straight as the tour guide started telling the story of all that happened on this spot fifty-seven years earlier and I began to shake like a leaf. I thought for a second I was going to faint, the gunpowder smell had gotten so pungent that I couldn't believe nobody else could smell it. I bent down and picked a flower there as well- it's in a frame next to the Kelsteinhaus flowers.
Before I knew it, the tour guide had stopped talking, the tour was over, and people were beginning to disperse. I was fixed in the spot where I was standing, and apparently looked so forlorn that the tour guide approached me and asked if I was alright. I nodded my head. Then I found it in myself to speak. I am still proud of myself for having the presence of mind to ask him about the subway station. I'd felt my first real pangs of familiarity there and I wanted to know if I was right or if I was just an over emotional girly-girl. I asked if the station had been there before the war, or if it was cold-war era, or had it been built since reunification. His answer only added to my goose bumps. Apparently, this U-Bahn station had existed before the war, but the Russians had re-modeled it in the post-war years The red marble that makes up the floor and pillars had once been the floor of the hallway in the New Reich Chancellery that led to Hitler's office. I couldn't believe my ears. The familiarity was genuine, or at least it was if what I was beginning to suspect was true.
The tour guide, satisfied that I was okay, departed. I was left alone at the site of the Fuhrerbunker. From the guide's description, and depictions I had seen and read, I was able to discern where certain rooms were- or rather-had been. I walked along a chain link fence to the spot above the antechamber where Hitler and Eva had been married...and I knew the instant I was standing on the spot. I can't put the feeling of that moment in to words, but it was as intense as any feeling I have ever felt. In fact, it was as intense as all of the feelings I have ever felt all rolled in to one. There was an awful sadness, an incredible yearning, a terrible fear and an intense feeling of anticipation, all permeated by flashes of elation and belonging, and underscored by dread. It was the most intense moment of my life.
I stood there, crying... for half an hour. I finally realized how cold I had gotten and started to head back toward the train station. I was barely aware of myself as I got on the train back to Charlottenburg where my hotel was. I can't say how I got on the right train, but something in me knew where I was going.
After Berlin, the rest of my trip was less than remarkable. On the way home, we had two hours in Heathrow airport in London, and I found a bookstore with a history section. And I did it, I took the plunge and decided I couldn't wait another minute to learn everything there was to know about everything. he first book I bought was Hugh Trevor-Roper's The Last Days of Hitler. I read the whole thing cover to cover on the plane ride home and highlighted every single reference to Eva Braun in blue, then I underlined everything I had ever seen in a dream or under self-hypnosis in pencil. There were moments described that I could see in my head in vivid color.
And that's how it started, I mean really started. I went out and bought a copy of Toland and started reading, I had read it years before, but now I had a mission to fulfill... I had to know if I was right about things. I looked at the pictures, all black-and-white, and could (almost without exception) tell immediately what color things were. At first, I had never seen any color photos, and the more I see today in color, the more and more my assertions are confirmed. I have yet to be wrong about the colors of things.
The more I read, the more I convinced I became of having had these experiences. There are so many aspects of my behavior today that reflect who I was. The outright obsession with Gone With The Wind and Clark Gable that I had at age 12 mirrors my PL self's love for the film and its star that eventually got the movie banned from German theatres. I/she was one of very few women in Germany at that time who shaved their legs and underarms, and she bathed two and sometimes three times a day. I have often been chided by friends about the number of baths I take a day and the fact that I insist on shaving my legs at least once daily. Then there's the natural affinity for skiing, ice skating, and my childhood love of gymnastics... all of these things are common to my former life as well. I love to make home movies, and to look at pictures, as did she. I listen to the exact same music she liked, perform in amateur and semi-professional theatre just as she did, smoke on the sly, love to dance and to swim, drink strong coffee and like extra butter on everything...all just the same as she did.
And then there are the dreams. I sometimes see faces so vividly, I feel like I could touch them even after waking up. I awake lonely or scared sometimes and can't even think straight. I've dreamt about Hitler often enough that I should have known a long time before I did. And the dreams about him have never been nightmares, on the contrary, they are some of the best nights of sleep I have ever gotten. I wake up sometimes and want to run “downstairs”. I was raised in a one-story house, and live on the ground floor of my apartment complex. I have never had a downstairs. I hear loud noises in my sleep and awaken to silence. Once, I was awakened by the ringing of my bedroom telephone and answered it, "Ja?" I was fifteen when this happened. I've tried lucid dreaming, but There's always a moment when I feel like I've gone out of control... like events in my dream (or memory as it were) are completely beyond my immediate influence.
My taste in music has always been what it is now, I like Glenn Miller and Ella Fitzgerald. My friends always thought this was odd, but I managed to be ahead of my peer group during the 'swing dancing' craze of the late 1990's. I already had most of the 'popular' swing music on LP or reel-to-reel tape.
Perhaps spookiest of all, maybe my most certain proof is this: even at three years old, I could have described both the dress Eva wore to be married (and it was black, not white- as most wedding gowns tend to be), and the dress she was wearing when she died. To this day, I haven't seen these dresses, no photos are known to exist, but the pictures have always been very vivid in my head. I have recently read descriptions, though, and it was like the writer had reached into my head and pulled out the descriptions. This author had interviewed several people who were present for both the wedding and suicide, and I feel his work to be trustworthy.
Recently, I have met others who share similar feelings. It makes sense to me that those of us who shared such an intense period of time would seek each other out again to resolve any residual issues... we did leave that life quite abruptly. I guess I've always believed in reincarnation, deep down, and I am actually surprised at myself for being so hesitant to accept what I've known on some level since I was three years old. I guess it's just the generation-Y American in me that didn't want to accept the stigma attached. I mean, who wants to admit, "I was in love with Adolf Hitler"? It's been the hardest thing I have ever come to terms with. I have only outright said it a few times in my life, and only a handful of people know.
But now I can say it... I hadn't ever put it into writing until today, actually (if that gives any insight into what stage of my journey I have reached). I know there are people out there who will doubt my story, and that's okay. I denied it to myself for nearly twenty years. But here I am... alive again, and searching: searching for why, and searching for others who I can share these experiences with.
Amanda