When we talk about Adolf Hitler, the image that instantly pops up is that of a man whose name is synonymous with evil and mass murder. Yet, hidden behind the iron curtain of his regime were ten women whose devotion, ambition, and sometimes tragedy added a strange, personal dimension to the Nazi saga. In this look at the 10 women hitler kept close, we’ll uncover the love, intrigue and dark loyalty that bound them to the Fuhrer.

10 Eva Braun

Any list of Hitler’s inner circle would be incomplete without Eva Braun, the young photographer’s assistant who first met the future dictator when she was just 17 and he was already 40. Their relationship was a roller‑coaster of jealousy and obsession, with Eva reportedly attempting suicide at least twice, yet they managed a seemingly ordinary marital life behind closed doors.

Unlike many of the regime’s public faces, Eva remained largely invisible to the German populace. She acted as hostess at Hitler’s secluded Alpine retreat in Obersalzberg, but never stepped onto the national stage, keeping her role strictly private.

When the war’s end loomed, Eva stayed by Hitler’s side in the bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery. On April 29, 1945, they exchanged a brief marriage ceremony, and just hours later the newlyweds took their own lives—Eva crushing a cyanide capsule as Hitler shot himself.

9 Magda Goebbels

Magda Goebbels, wife of the notorious propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, married more for mutual advancement than romance, yet she bore him six children. Their union was riddled with infidelity on both sides—Joseph’s unending affairs and Magda’s own romantic liaisons made the marriage a turbulent affair.

Although long‑viewed as a fervent supporter of the Third Reich, evidence suggests Magda’s confidence began to crack as the war turned against Germany. In one of Hitler’s radio broadcasts she allegedly turned off the set in exasperation, muttering, “What a load of rubbish.”

When Hitler committed suicide, Magda and Joseph followed suit, murdering their six children first with morphine to induce sleep, then crushing cyanide capsules in each mouth. Their deaths could have been avoided, as Magda was offered chances to evacuate the children, but she chose to stay and end it all on that grim day.

8 Geli Raubal

Geli Raubal, Hitler’s half‑niece through his sister Angela, moved into his Munich apartment while studying medicine at Ludwig Maximilian University. Hitler quickly became overprotective, even forcing her to break off a romance with his chauffeur, Emil Maurice, and insisting on a chaperone for all her outings.

In late 1931, after a heated argument over a planned trip to Vienna, Geli allegedly took a pistol and ended her own life. The exact nature of their relationship remains debated—some claim a sexual liaison, others see a purely obsessive, possibly abusive, bond.

Despite the mystery, Hitler later declared Geli the only woman he ever truly loved, preserving her bedroom at the Berghof just as she left it and displaying her portraits in the Chancellery.

7 Unity Mitford

Not all of Hitler’s confidantes were German. The striking English aristocrat Unity Mitford, one of the famed “Mitford girls,” became perhaps the most eccentric of the bunch. Obsessed with meeting the Fuhrer, she journeyed to Germany in 1934, eventually tracking him down in a Munich restaurant.

Hitler offered Unity an apartment in Munich—ironically still occupied by a Jewish couple. Unity reportedly entered the flat to assess it for refurbishment while the displaced family wept in the kitchen, a chilling illustration of her devotion.

When war erupted, Unity attempted suicide by shooting herself in the head. Though she survived, the bullet remained lodged near her brain, causing chronic issues that eventually led to meningitis and her death in 1948.

6 Emmy Goering

Emmy Goering, a German actress turned “First Lady of the Third Reich,” married Luftwaffe commander Hermann Goering as his second wife. She quickly became the public face of many state functions before World War II, sparking jealousy from Eva Braun, who reportedly disliked Emmy.

Emmy’s fame was amplified by German media; she lived a lavish lifestyle, frequently appearing in magazines and newsreels. Together with her husband, she amassed countless artworks confiscated from Jewish owners, filling their numerous mansions.

After the war, Emmy was convicted as a Nazi and sentenced to a year in prison. Released, she was barred from returning to the stage and spent her remaining years in a modest Munich apartment, passing away in 1973.

5 Margarete Himmler

Margarete, a nurse by training, met Heinrich Himmler after divorcing her first husband. She was seven years his senior and, notably, a Protestant—both factors that initially raised eyebrows among Himmler’s family.

Described by in‑laws as a cold‑fish who preferred domestic duties, Margarete dutifully fulfilled the social obligations expected of an SS officer’s wife. Yet she clashed with other SS spouses, most notably Lina Heydrich, with whom she shared a mutual loathing.

Following the war, Margarete and her daughter Gudrun were detained in several internment camps. Interrogations revealed she knew little about Himmler’s atrocities, leading to her eventual release. She resumed a quiet life in Munich, steadfastly maintaining her National Socialist beliefs despite claims of ignorance about the Holocaust.

4 Lina Heydrich

Lina, the wife of Reinhard Heydrich—the chief architect of the Gestapo, Kripo, and SD—proved herself a force behind the scenes. When Reinhard was dismissed from the navy for breaking an engagement promise, Lina took matters into her own hands, urging him to apply for a counter‑intelligence post.

Although Heinrich Himmler initially cancelled their interview, Lina ignored the message and sent Reinhard anyway. The gamble paid off; Heydrich was hired on the spot, propelling his rise to one of the regime’s most feared figures. He was later assassinated by British‑trained Czech and Slovak operatives in 1942.

After the war, Lina controversially secured a German pension, classified as a war‑dead colonel’s widow. She defended her husband’s legacy until her death in 1985.

3 Eleonore Baur

Eleonore Baur, a nurse‑turned mother of two illegitimate children, led a peripatetic life that saw her marry, divorce, and eventually settle in Munich in 1920. A close confidante of Hitler, she was a founding member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and took part in the infamous Beer Hall Putsch—the only woman to do so.

She played a pivotal role in establishing and managing the Dachau concentration camp, allegedly using prisoners to renovate a villa Hitler gifted her. Within the camp, she earned a reputation as a harsh bully, with inmates recounting beatings and other abuses.

After the war, Eleonore was arrested but never convicted due to insufficient evidence. She received a ten‑year sentence from the denazification court, later securing a pension. She never renounced National Socialism and died in 1981.

2 Elsa Bruckmann

Born Princess Cantacuzene of Romania, Elsa Bruckmann married German publisher Hugo Bruckmann. Both became ardent supporters of Hitler, financing his early political career before and after his 1923 failed coup.

Elsa cultivated a high‑society salon that introduced Hitler to influential industrialists and financiers. She also published the philosophical treatises of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, whose seminal work, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, heavily influenced Nazi anti‑Semitic ideology.

Elsa passed away in 1946, leaving behind a legacy intertwined with the early financial and intellectual scaffolding of the Nazi movement.

1 Winifred Wagner

Winifred, an English‑born daughter‑in‑law of famed composer Richard Wagner, ran the Bayreuth Festival after her husband’s death. Her friendship with Hitler began in the early 1920s, and she famously supplied the paper on which Mein Kampf was penned during his incarceration after the Beer Hall Putsch.

Rumors swirled in 1933 that she might marry Hitler—a union that never materialized—but the two maintained a close bond. While some family members claim she was disgusted by Hitler’s anti‑Jewish policies, she remained unwaveringly loyal to him even after the war, entertaining former high‑ranking Nazis and refusing to renounce her association.

Forbidden from directing the Bayreuth Festival post‑war, Winifred continued to host political gatherings until her death in 1980.

10 Women Hitler: A Glimpse Into Their Lives

This roundup of the 10 women hitler kept close reveals a spectrum of devotion, ambition, and tragedy that shaped the private world of one of history’s most infamous figures.

From the mysterious icy opening of the original Frankenstein novel, written by Mary Shelley, to the arctic horror of John Carpenter’s The Thing, it’s no secret that the desolate, desert tundra biome makes for an excellent horror story backdrop. The yawning, chilling snowscapes found at the top and bottom of the planet are scary enough, should one find themself stranded in them.

But what if something supernatural dwelt out there in the winter wonderlands? Ghost stories are quite plentiful in the far north if the legends are to be believed. And though some believe that Antarctica also has its haunted nooks, this list will cover ten different stories from above the Arctic Circle.

10 King William Island Zombies

While the first entry on this list steers a bit away from a classic ghost story, the Natsilik Inuit people who lived on King William Island tell stories of invasions from another sort of undead being: zombies. Originally named “Quikiqtak,” King William Island can be found in the province of Nunavut and was first found by British explorers in 1830. However, the Indigenous people had lived there for far longer.

Being this far north, the Natsilik Inuit had never come across other indigenous before, let alone white European explorers. So when people reported witnessing shambling, blue-skinned shells of men, legends of the undead walking once more arose. Indeed, many expeditions above the Arctic Circle were ill-fated, and many explorers, most notably the 1845 British Franklin expedition, were often grisly to behold as men froze to death. These “Death Marches” were real, though some were reported when no expeditions were documented to have taken place in the area. Perhaps these doomed explorers became ghosts after all.^[1]

9 Kola Superdeep Borehole

Though many Soviet accomplishments were once obscured in Cold War secrecy, it was a known fact that the nation succeeded in digging the world’s deepest man-made hole on the Kola Peninsula, a project that went on from 1970 to 1994. The hole itself was able to breach 40,230 feet (12,262 meters) into the Earth’s crust, a depth deeper than the Mariana Trench. Although such a feat also came with a plethora of rumors.

It is widely accepted that the project was abandoned due to a lack of funding, but some rumors speculate that the drill had breached into an extremely hot cavern unexpectedly. The microphone picked up alleged “screams of the damned,” driving the scientists to madness. Some allege that the scientists had indeed dug all the way to Hell itself, though this entry on the list is by far the most likely to be a mere urban legend.^[2]

8 Ghosts of Tromsø

With a population of over 70,000 people as of 2022, the Norwegian city of Tromsø is the third most populated area above the Arctic Circle. Though it is far from the oldest town in Scandinavia, the city of Tromsø was officially founded in 1838, which leaves more than enough wiggle room for those trying to find a deep enough history to find ghost stories.

Tales are often told of sea trolls and wraith-like wights prowling the beaches on the oceans, searching for victims in the night, and ghosts have been witnessed haunting each and every building downtown. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the city center was built on an ancient graveyard. Local historian Aesgir Johansen even hosts a Tromsø Ghost Walk through the chilly city.^[3]

7 Arctic Circle Hot Springs Resort

Though the specific hot springs in question are just shy of being able to claim to be above the Arctic Circle, parts of the land first claimed by Franklin Leach in 1906 would reach northerly enough. The community of Circle Hot Springs was a boomtown for the local Yukon Gold Rush, after having been inhabited by the Athabascan people, and would eventually become a ghost town as the gold ran dry.

A resort would open far later in history, and in the nineties particularly, the owners of the establishment would report a slew of poltergeist activity. Objects would fly across the room, footsteps would be heard when no guest was present, and the translucent, gossamer-like visage of a woman would often be seen. It is thought to be the spirit of Emma Leach, Franklin Leach’s wife, who is buried at the property.^[4]

6 The SS Baychimo

This next entry takes us to the Arctic Ocean itself, as it is claimed that a ghost ship sometimes haunts the waters near the Sea Horse Islands near Point Barrow in Alaska. After twenty years of operation, the Swedish cargo steamer known as the SS Baychimo was trapped in the ice and forced to be abandoned in 1931. It dislodged and floated about the Arctic before anyone could return to salvage it.

Unlike most ghostly vessels, sightings of the SS Baychimo were indeed real sightings of an abandoned ship, and some people were even able to get on board throughout the 1930s. Sightings of the vessel would continue up to 1969, either coming from Inuit people living in the area, or other explorers, though none dared to board or salvage the ship ever again. Though the ship’s wreckage was never discovered, even after a concentrated effort to locate it in 2006, some claim that the apparition of the SS Baychimo still glides silently on the icy waters of the Arctic.^[5]

5 Salekhard-Igarka Railway

From 1947 to 1953, gulag prisoners of the Soviet Union were forced into the arduous task of building more than eight-hundred miles of railway track in the frigid North of Siberia. Only around half of the track would succeed in being built, the project grinding to a halt after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, but the Salekhard-Igarka railway project wouldn’t end before leading to the deaths of over 300,000 people.

In time, the incomplete railway would achieve another name, “Stalin’s Railway of Death,” and the deaths didn’t just stem from overworking and exhaustion. It is said that many prisoners bled out due to the massive swarms of mosquitoes in the area. Many of the abandoned, dilapidated structures still stand to this day, and some urban explorers claim to hear tormented, ethereal screams, sounds of labor, and other ghostly activity amongst the ruins.^[6]

4 Qivittoq

The next legend on this list can be found on the less-than-aptly named Greenland. The legend of the Qivittoq pertains more to multiple beings than a single ghost, but it is a haunting figure nonetheless. The people of Greenland claim that large, brooding, spectral figures prowl the icy tundra, hunting after people unlucky enough to cross paths with them.

The word “Qivittoq” also pertains to people who are banished from communities and effectively left to freeze to death with little chance of survival. Over time, however, people claim to see these banished folks, nonetheless, somehow surviving in the tundra against all odds. Perhaps this is where their penchant for hunting people comes from; dire survival instincts. The legend of the Qivittoq was made famous by a 1956 Danish film titled simply Qivitoq, dropping one of the “T’s” in its name.^[7]

3 The Ghost of Augustus Peers

In 1853, a fur trader by the name of Augustus Peers tragically passed away in his thirties due to natural circumstances. However, before his passing, Peers made it very clear that he didn’t want to be buried where he worked; Fort McPherson. And so, a colleague and dogsled runner by the name of Roderick Macfarlane offered to transfer Peers’s body down the Mackenzie River to a new location.

What occurred during the trek, however, would leave Macfarlane very unlikely to ever agree to such a task again. According to his journal, the dogsled driver reported hearing a commanding voice ring out from nowhere, telling the dogs to protect the body from wild scavengers. The dogs complied, but this would be far from the only harrowing occurrence. A spectral form would float outside of Macfarlane’s tent during the night, frightening the man beyond words. ^[8]

2 The Myling

Harrowing tales of the Myling are told all across Scandinavia, as they are certainly in the upper echelons of Norse legend notoriety. However, unlike Thor and Loki, stories of these spirits really took off the more Christianity made its way into Scandinavia. The Mylingar are said to be the ghost of a child born out of wedlock, in which the mother leaves the child out in the wilderness to die, lest both the mother and child get punished by the church.

Many believed that since the child would be unbaptized, there was little to stop them from a doomed fate as a ghost. Unlike most ghosts, however, the Myling does a bit more than simply haunt a location. It constantly cries out for years and years and pesters passers-by, begging them to give the spectral child a name. More vengeful mylingar actively try to disclose their mothers’ secret to anyone who will listen, sometimes manifesting during her wedding day.^[9]

1 The Phantom Trapper of Labrador

A ghost haunts the snowy fields of the Canadian province of Labrador, and he goes simply by the name of “Smoker” to those who tell his tale. Sticking it out in the frigid north, the man, whose real name was allegedly Esau, first started off his entrepreneurship as a trapper. But meeting little success, he turned to brewing moonshine instead. This got him into trouble with the Mounted Police quite often, which prompted Smoker to double down on his plan.

He fastened a suit of all-white furs, adopted an all-white husky dog-sledding team to blend in with the snow, and escaped persecution. He met with success for a while, but a drunken fall prompted the bootlegger to break his back in the snowy north, where he shortly died. However, some claim to see a snowy, spectral trapper continuously sled through the snow in North Canada. It is even claimed that the man cried out to God himself before dying, begging to become a ghost out of fear that he’d be sent to Hell.^[10]