Hitler's Women - Women In Hitler’s Inner Circle

Winifred Wagner

Winifred was the English-born daughter-in-law of the famous German composer Richard Wagner, and she ran the Bayreuth Festival after husband’s death. Her friendship with Adolf Hitler stemmed from the early 1920s. It was Winifred who provided the paper on which Mein Kampf was written during Hitler’s incarceration after the Beer Hall Putsch.In 1933, it was widely believed that the Wagner widow was about to marry Hitler, and although this did not happen, the two retained a deep friendship. Historians and members of the Wagner family have maintained that Winifred was disgusted by Hitler’s views regarding the Jews, but they also acknowledge that she remained entirely devoted to Hitler even after the war.Although she was forbidden from running the Bayreuth Festival after the war, Winifred still resumed her position as an influential political hostess, and she often entertained former high-ranking Nazis. Alas, like so many other women from Hitler’s inner circle, she remained unrepentant about her association with him. She died in 1980.