The women who tasted Hitler’s food… and feared every meal would be their last: Film inspired by survivor’s astonishing testimony sheds light on Nazi dictator’s fear of being poisoned

It is said that if you sup with the Devil, you should have a long spoon.

But for the women who had to eat for the Devil, things were rather more complicated. 

Because the list of enemies who might have wanted to poison Hitler was a long one, and so lengthy cutlery would not have saved the Nazi dictator’s food tasters. 

In 2013, 95-year-old Margot Woelk broke decades of silence to claim that she and 14 other women were tasked with eating Hitler’s food to check it was safe.

Given that Hitler was a vegetarian, Woelk and her fellow tasters allegedly feasted on ‘delicious’ meals; including asparagus and bell peppers paired with rice or pasta.

But, every day, Woelk said, ‘we feared it was going to be our last meal’.

Now, a new film based on a novel inspired by Woelk’s remarkable story – which has been doubted by some experts – is set to be released. 

Italian production The Tasters will debut in German cinemas this month.   

Director Silvio Soldini told the Guardian his film will show, ‘how these women are affected, in this “small” world in which they are forced to do something awful: constantly play Russian roulette.’ 

Woelk claimed she worked as a taster at the ‘Wolf’s Lair’ – Hitler’s heavily guarded command centre in what is now Poland – for two and a half years. 

‘The food was delicious, only the best vegetables, asparagus, bell peppers, everything you can imagine. And always with a side of rice or pasta,’ she recalled.

‘But this constant fear – we knew of all those poisoning rumours and could never enjoy the food. Every day we feared it was going to be our last meal.’

Woelk claimed her association with Hitler began after she fled Berlin to escape Allied air attacks.   

Her husband was away serving in the Wehrmacht – the German army – and she had moved in with relatives in what was then Rastenburg in Germany.

She said she was drafted into the civilian service and, as well as being made a taster, was assigned as a kitchen bookkeeper in the Wolf’s Lair complex. 

The widow, who died in 2014, claimed she never saw Hitler in person. She only spotted the dictator’s German shepherd dog Blondie and spoke to his SS guards.

Hitler’s paranoia about his safety stemmed from several attempts that were made on his life.

The one that came closest to succeeding was what is now known as the 20 July plot, or Operation Valkyrie, which saw conspirators led by German officer Claus von Stauffenberg try to assassinate Hitler with a bomb hidden in a briefcase. 

The dictator only survived with minor injuries thanks to luck and timing.   

Woelk remembered the explosion.  

‘We were sitting on wooden benches when we heard and felt an incredible big bang,’ she said.

‘We fell off the benches, and I heard someone shouting “Hitler is dead!” But he wasn’t.’

In the aftermath, Woelk claimed the Nazis ordered her to leave her relatives’ home and move into an abandoned school closer to the compound.

With the Soviet army on the offensive and the war going badly for Germany, one of her SS friends advised her to leave the Wolf’s Lair. 

She said she returned by train to Berlin and went into hiding.

Woelk said the other women on the food tasting team decided to remain in Rastenburg since their families were all there and it was their home.

‘Later, I found out that the Russians shot all of the 14 other girls,’ she said.

According to a Soviet account of the interrogations of Hitler’s close aides, Heinz Linge and Otto Gunsche, the dictator became so paranoid at the end of his life that he demanded his toilet water, as well as the water in which his eggs were boiled, be analysed for traces of poison. 

After Hitler’s suicide in Berlin on April 30, 1945, and the fall of the German capital to Soviet troops, Woelk claimed she was repeatedly raped by the Russians.

She said: ‘The Russians then came to Berlin and got me, too.

‘They took me to a doctor’s apartment and raped me for 14 consecutive days. That’s why I could never have children. They destroyed everything.’

In 1946 Woelk was reunited with the husband she had presumed dead, and the couple lived together until his death in 1990. 

Woelk spent her final years virtually housebound in her flat in Germany. Her story received intense attention first in the German media and then globally.

Historians have documented how Hitler’s diet at the Wolf’s Lair regularly featured legumes, whilst alcohol was off the menu entirely.

Scholar Felix Bohr, whose latest book documents Hitler’s time in the Wolf’s Lair, said there is ‘no evidence’ for Woelk’s story.

He told the Guardian: ‘I spent three years in the archives researching Hitler’s time there and none of the accounts of secretaries, cooks, servants, military staff or other people who were there – up to 2,000 at a given time – mentioned a team of women food tasters.’

The Wolf’s Lair had an ‘elaborate’ system to protect the food supply, he added. 

But the historian also admitted that there was no concrete proof Woelk’s claims were untrue. 

Author Sven Felix Kellerhoff also raised doubts about Woelk’s story, saying Hitler had two cooks who tasted his food before it was served to him.

The main character in The Tasters is the fictional Rosa Sauer, portrayed by Elisa Schlott.

The film has already been released in Italy and will air in Britain later this year.