Cruising The Past Cruise News Eva Braun aboard the MS Milwaukee in 1939. Fragments of one of the best film from the Eva Braun’s collection. We can see Eva reflected in the glass of the Hamburg America Line agency while filming her mother’s arrival in a black Mercedes-Benz. The parts of the film with shots of the ocean and seagulls reveal the great skills Eva achieved with the movie camera.
Cruise and Social History: EVA BRAUN (Hitler’s wife) aboard Hamburg-America Line’s MS Milwaukee on a 1939 cruise.
MS Milwaukee in Port Said, Suez Canel, Egypt – circa 1930’s.
MS Milwaukee (left) at Port Said. Unidentified ship at right. Seen from roof of Palace Casino Hotel, showing ward memorial, Australian and New Zealand.
The MS Milwaukee was a passenger ship built by Blohm & Voss for the Hamburg America Line in 1929.
Her maiden voyage was from Hamburg to New York via Boulogne and Southampton.
She served on the trans-Atlantic service until 1936 with accommodations for 270 in cabin class, 259 in tourist class and 438 in third class.
The MS Milwaukee was then rebuilt as a first class cruising liner with 559 first class passengers.
The ship had facilities for Spa-type medical treatment. She cruised to the Mediterranean and Scandinavia.
In 1940 she was converted to an accommodation ship for the war.
The British captured the MS Milwaukee in 1946 but the ship was badly damaged by fire at a dock in Liverpool. She was re-floated and scrapped in 1947.
Eva Braun aboard the MS Milwaukee in 1939 – just prior to World War 2 – sailing from Hamburg. Nazi influence is seen on the pier as the ship leaves on a cruise.
About Eva Anna Paula Hitler (née Braun; 6 February 1912 – 30 April 1945). She was the longtime companion of Adolf Hitler and, for less than 40 hours, his wife. Braun met Hitler in Munich when she was 17 years old, while she was working as an assistant and model for his personal photographer, and began seeing him often about two years later. She attempted suicide twice during their early relationship. By 1936, she was a part of his household at the Berghof near Berchtesgaden and lived a sheltered life throughout World War II. Braun was a photographer, and many of the surviving colour photographs and films of Hitler were taken by her. She was a key figure within Hitler’s inner social circle, but did not attend public events with him until mid-1944, when her sister Gretl married Hermann Fegelein, the SS liaison officer on his staff. As the Third Reich collapsed towards the end of the war, Braun swore loyalty to Hitler and went to Berlin to be by his side in the heavily reinforced Führerbunker beneath the Reich Chancellery. As Red Army troops fought their way into the neighborhood on 29 April 1945, she married Hitler during a brief civil ceremony; she was 33 and he was 56. Less than 40 hours later, they committed suicide together in a sitting room of the bunker, she by biting into a capsule of cyanide. The German public was unaware of Braun’s relationship with Hitler until after her death.
