Good Old Adolf

"If Hitler walked through the door today, I would be just as glad and happy to see and have him here as ever." So says sprightly, white-haired Winifred Wagner, English-born daughter-in-law of Operatic Giant Richard Wagner and close friend of Adolf Hitler for 22 years. Frau Wagner, 78, broke a 30-year public silence to talk about herself and Hitler in a five-hour film, Winifred Wagner and the History of Haus Wahnfried, 1914-1975, which premiered in Paris recently. Her basic message: anybody who thinks that Hitler was cruel, malevolent and even megalomaniacal is mistaken about his "good and human" nature. He was the sort of man, she recalls, who could be tempted into cheating on his vegetarian diet with liver dumplings. As Winni tells it, der Fuehrer had "immensely appealing" eyes, played the piano "very nicely," and was "really touching with the children."

With Jews, too? Their persecution, insists Winni, was not der Fuehrer's doing. "The main instigator was [Julius] Streicher [Gauleiter of Franconia]," Winni says, though she does concede that Adolf "let himself be influenced too much and shouldn't have given in to these radical demands." In any case, she adds, such things "were happening on the outside. But that didn't affect me."

Muzzling Mother. Not surprisingly, Winni's recollections did affect the rest of the Wagner family. "I can't put a muzzle on my mother, of course," said Wolfgang Wagner, director of the annual Bayreuth festival that celebrates his grandfather's music. Nonetheless, this year the embarrassed Wolfgang has banned Winni from setting foot in the festival house, which Hitler attended regularly even at the height of World War II.

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