After finishing high school, she enrolled in the Mannheim business school to train as a bilingual secretary.

There, she met Heinrich Himmler in 1934, who offered her a job in Berlin in the state offices of the secret police.

Eventually, in 1938, she became his lover.

For a man of such importance to be openly unfaithful was an affront to German society at the time.

In an attempt to clean up his image, Himmler tried to justify his extramarital relationship with Poast by allowing SS men to have children outside of marriage, including himself.

German society and the upper echelons also condemned this, but that did not stop Poast from having several children with Himmler.

By 1941, Himmler took Hedwig Poast out of the rented apartment where she lived and installed her in a villa that the SS had built for her in Grünwald, financed by an 880,000 mark loan that Himmler took out.

There are differing opinions on whether Poast, who was Himmler’s secretary, or even his wife Margarete, had any knowledge of his involvement in the final solution.

The course of the war limited contact between Himmler and Hedwig, as they managed to see each other for the last time in mid-March of 1945.

From then on, they kept in touch through phone calls.

Himmler was arrested by the British on May 21st and committed suicide two days later.

When Poast found out, she left her home in Arany and went with her children to the Pole family’s house in Rosenheim, where she was arrested at the end of June by the United States Army.

However, she was soon released after claiming she had nothing to do with Himmler’s affairs or ideology.

She then moved to Tys andorf, adopted a different name, and lived discreetly until she passed away in Baden-Baden in 1994.

Another partner of the great SS leaders is Lena Matilda Von Austin, a vocal National Socialist activist who eventually married Reinhard Heydrich, who until then had little interest in Nazism.

That same year, Lena convinced him to join the SS.

Heydrich joined the Nazi party on June 1st, 1931, and secured an interview with Heinrich Himmler, during which he was offered a job.

By August 1st, just 15 days after joining the SS, Heydrich was promoted to head of the Seeker Heights de Ice Fur’s SS, the SS intelligence service.

By the end of the year, he was again promoted to Stanfura, commander of the assault unit.

Later, the couple set out to form the typical German family with four children, as the Reich aspired to.

If Himmler gave the Reich a bad image because of his infidelity, Lena gave it a bad image for allowing her own infidelities.

It is said that Reinhard Heydrich was a workaholic to the point that he completely neglected his marriage and rarely slept at home.

It is also said that Lena Heydrich was unfaithful to him with Walter Schellenberg and the painter Wolfgang Wilr.

On July 4th, 1942, Heydrich died from wounds sustained on May 27th during an assassination attempt carried out by Czech commandos in Prague on his way to his office.

Lena was pregnant with their daughter Marta.

Because of her husband’s death in action, Lena, who had become something of a Reich widow, received a lifetime pension from the government.

She continued to enjoy her residence on the outskirts of Prague and was given a palace as a permanent residence in Fean at the end of the war.

Lena was arrested and denied having any knowledge of the infamous acts her husband had been involved in.

After her release, she moved to Fean with her four children.

Germany’s first lady, the life of Magda Goebbels, one of the most influential women in the National Socialist Party, was Johanna Maria Magdalena—better known as Magda Goebbels.

At the age of 17, Magda met Günther Quant, a widowed and wealthy German industrialist who had two young children.

Quant courted Magda until they married on January 4th, 1921.

Ten months later, on November 1st, their first child, Harald, was born.

However, the luxurious life she led with Quant was not enough.

Constant arguments and accusations of adultery, which were never proven, led to the end of their relationship in 1929.

Quant filed for divorce, leaving a generous amount of money in the settlement for his now ex-wife.

Afterward, Magda and her son Harald moved to Berlin.

Thanks to her youth, beauty, and financial position, she had no trouble integrating into Berlin’s upper class.

On September 1st, 1930, she attended an electoral rally of the National Socialist Party at Berlin’s Sports Palace, where Joseph Goebbels delivered a speech.

Goebbels’ oratory and rhetoric impressed Magda, leading her to join the party that same month.

She volunteered for some time and quickly became a local leader.

This caught the attention of the National Socialists, who decided to move her to headquarters as the secretary to Deputy Hans Mous, who was close to Goebbels.

There, Goebbels asked Magda to organize his newspaper article archives.

Soon they began a relationship.

On December 19th, 1931, Magda married Goebbels, and they subsequently had six children: Helga, Hildegard, Helmouth, Holder, Heder, and Haider.

Each name began with “H,” something attributed to the reverence that both Magda and Goebbels had for the leader of the Reich.

By 1938, Magda was practically the first lady of the Reich.

Despite being married to Goebbels, Magda earned the honor of being awarded the newly created Mother’s Cross of Honor of the German Mother.

From this point, she became a role model promoted by the Nazis for all women of the Reich.

In 1942, she and her children were filmed and photographed during the regime.

They were the ideal Aryan family.

Her popularity was so high that her children appeared 34 times in the news that same year.

However, this was only a facade, as the marriage between Goebbels and Magda was falling apart.

Both had lovers and were adulterous.

Goebbels almost moved to Japan to live with his lover.

The Chancellor himself forced them to reconcile, as a divorce of the model family would have been disastrous for Germany.

When the July 20th, 1944 assassination attempt, also known as Operation Valkyrie, occurred, Magda was at her country house on Lake Schwanen Verda, a residence she had since the bombings in Berlin began.

Upon learning of the assassination attempt, she had a nervous breakdown and telephoned Hitler to swear eternal loyalty to him and declare her willingness to die for him.

Her devotion to the Führer was so great that on April 22nd, 1945, she moved with her six children to the bunker where Hitler was, joining her husband and preparing to fulfill the promise she made to her idol.

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(1848, Macon) Light-Skinned Woman Disguised as White Master: 1,000-Mile Escape in Plain Sight

The hand holding the scissors trembled slightly as Ellen Craft stared at her reflection in the small cracked mirror.

In 72 hours, she would be sitting in a first class train car next to a man who had known her since childhood.

A man who could have her dragged back in chains with a single word.

And he wouldn’t recognize her.

He couldn’t because the woman looking back at her from that mirror no longer existed.

It was December 18th, 1848 in Mon, Georgia, and Ellen was about to attempt something that had never been done before.

A thousand-mile escape through the heart of the slaveolding south, traveling openly in broad daylight in first class.

But there was a problem that made the plan seem utterly impossible.

Ellen was a woman.

William was a man.

A light-skinned woman and a dark-skinned man traveling together would draw immediate suspicion, questions, searches.

The patrols would stop them before they reached the city limits.

So, Ellen had conceived a plan so audacious that even William had initially refused to believe it could work.

She would become a white man.

Not just any white man, a wealthy, sickly southern gentleman traveling north for medical treatment, accompanied by his faithful manservant.

The ultimate disguise, hiding in the most visible place possible, protected by the very system designed to keep her enslaved.

Ellen set down the scissors and picked up the components of her transformation.

Each item acquired carefully over the past week.

A pair of dark glasses to hide her eyes.

a top hat that would shadow her face, trousers, a coat, and a high collared shirt that would conceal her feminine shape, and most crucially, a sling for her right arm.

The sling served a purpose that went beyond mere costume.

Ellen had been deliberately kept from learning to read or write, a common practice designed to keep enslaved people dependent and controllable.

Every hotel would require a signature.

Every checkpoint might demand written documentation.

The sling would excuse her from putting pen to paper.

One small piece of cloth standing between her and exposure.

William watched from the corner of the small cabin they shared, his carpenter’s hands clenched into fists.

He had built furniture for some of the wealthiest families in Mon, his skill bringing profit to the man who claimed to own him.

Now those same hands would have to play a role he had spent his life resisting.

The subservient servant bowing and scraping to someone pretending to be his master.

“Say it again,” Ellen whispered, not turning from the mirror.

“What do I need to remember?” William’s voice was steady, though his eyes betrayed his fear.

Walk slowly like moving hurts.

Keep the glasses on, even indoors.

Don’t make eye contact with other white passengers.

Gentlemen, don’t stare.

If someone asks a question you can’t answer, pretend the illness has made you hard of hearing.

And never, ever let anyone see you right.

Ellen nodded slowly, watching her reflection.

Practice the movements.

Slower, stiffer, the careful, pained gate of a man whose body was failing him.

She had studied the white men of Mon for months, observing how they moved, how they held themselves, how they commanded space without asking permission.

What if someone recognizes me? The question hung in the air between them.

William moved closer, his reflection appearing beside hers in the mirror.

They won’t see you, Ellen.

They never really saw you before.

Just another piece of property.

Now they’ll see exactly what you show them.

A white man who looks like he belongs in first class.

The audacity of it was breathtaking.

Ellen’s light skin, the result of her enslavers assault on her mother, had been a mark of shame her entire life.

Now it would become her shield.

The same society that had created her would refuse to recognize her, blinded by its own assumptions about who could occupy which spaces.

But assumptions could shatter.

One wrong word, one gesture out of place, one moment of hesitation, and the mask would crack.

And when it did, there would be no mercy.

Runaways faced brutal punishment, whipping, branding, being sold away to the deep south, where conditions were even worse.

Or worse still, becoming an example, tortured publicly to terrify others who might dare to dream of freedom.

Ellen took a long, slow breath and reached for the top hat.

When she placed it on her head and turned to face William fully dressed in the disguise, something shifted in the room.

The woman was gone.

In her place stood a young southern gentleman, pale and trembling with illness, preparing for a long and difficult journey.

“Mr.

Johnson,” William said softly, testing the name they had chosen, common enough to be forgettable, refined enough to command respect.

Mr.

Johnson, Ellen repeated, dropping her voice to a lower register.

The sound felt foreign in her throat, but it would have to become natural.

Her life depended on it.

They had 3 days to perfect the performance, 3 days to transform completely.

And then on the morning of December 21st, they would walk out of Mon as master and slave, heading north toward either freedom or destruction.

Ellen looked at the calendar on the wall, counting the hours.

72 hours until the most dangerous performance of her life began.

72 hours until she would sit beside a man who had seen her face a thousand times and test whether his eyes could see past his own expectations.

What she didn’t know yet was that this man wouldn’t be the greatest danger she would face.

That test was still waiting for her somewhere between here and freedom in a hotel lobby where a pen and paper would become instruments of potential death.

The morning of December 21st broke cold and gray over min.

The kind of winter light that flattened colors and made everything look a little less real.

It was the perfect light for a world built on illusions.

By the time the first whistle echoed from the train yard, Ellen Craft was no longer Ellen.

She was Mr.

William Johnson, a pale young planter supposedly traveling north for his health.

They did not walk to the station together.

That would have been the first mistake.

William left first, blending into the stream of workers and laborers heading toward the edge of town.

Ellen waited, counting slowly, steadying her breathing.

When she finally stepped out, it was through the front streets, usually reserved for white towns people.

Every step felt like walking on a tightroppe stretched above a chasm.

At the station, the platform was already crowded.

Merchants, planters, families, enslaved porters carrying heavy trunks.

The signboard marked the departure.

Mon Savannah.

200 m.

One train ride.

1,000 chances for something to go wrong.

Ellen kept her shoulders slightly hunched, her right arm resting in its sling, her gloved left hand curled loosely around a cane.

The green tinted spectacles softened the details of faces around her, turning them into vague shapes.

That helped.

It meant she was less likely to react if she accidentally recognized someone.

It also meant she had to trust her memory of the space, where the ticket window was, how the lines usually formed, where white passengers stood versus where enslaved people waited.

She joined the line of white travelers at the ticket counter, heartpounding, but posture controlled.

No one stopped her.

No one questioned why such a young man looked so sick, his face halfcovered with bandages and fabric.

Illness made people uncomfortable.

In a society that prized strength and control, sickness granted a strange kind of privacy.

When she reached the counter, the clerk glanced up briefly, then down at his ledger.

“Destination?” he asked, bored.

“Savannah,” she answered, her voice low and strained as if speaking hurt.

“For myself and my servant.

” The clerk didn’t flinch at the mention of a servant.

Instead, he wrote quickly and named the price.

Ellen reached into the pocket of her coat, fingers brushing the coins William had carefully counted for her.

The money clinkedked softly on the wood, and within seconds, two tickets slid across the counter, two pieces of paper that were for the moment more powerful than chains.

As Ellen stepped aside, Cain tapping lightly on the wooden floor, William watched from a distance among the workers and enslaved laborers, his heart hammered against his ribs.

From where he stood, Ellen looked completely transformed, fragile, but untouchable, wrapped in the invisible protection granted to white wealth.

It was a costume made of cloth and posture and centuries of power.

He followed the group heading toward the negro car, careful not to look back at her.

Any sign of recognition could be dangerous.

On the far end of the platform, a familiar voice sliced into his thoughts like a knife.

Morning, sir.

Headed to Savannah.

William froze.

The man speaking was the owner of the workshop where he had spent years building furniture.

The man who knew his face, his hands, his gate, the man who could undo everything with a single shout.

William lowered his head slightly as if respecting the presence of nearby white men and shifted so that his profile was turned away.

The workshop owner moved toward the ticket window, asking questions, gesturing toward the trains.

William’s pulse roared in his ears.

On the other end of the platform, Ellen felt something shift in the air.

A familiar figure stepped into her line of sight.

A man who had visited her enslavers home many times.

A man who had seen her serve tea, clear plates, move quietly through rooms as if her thoughts did not exist.

He glanced briefly in her direction, and then away again, uninterested.

Just another sick planter.

Another young man from a good family with too much money and not enough health.

Ellen kept her gaze unfocused behind the green glass.

Her jaw set, her breath shallow.

The bell rang once, twice.

Steam hissed from the engine, a cloud rising into the cold air.

Conductors called out final warnings.

Continue reading….
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