Hitler's Niece

She obediently got up from the floral-patterned chair and nearly tipped with wooziness as she went to him. Would he strike her? Would he make her kneel? She felt he could slay her with a look. She saw his trousered knees lock together and heard him tell her to bend over them. She shocked herself by giggling with scorn as she asked, “You’re going to spank me?”

Then his left hand flashed up and he hauled her down so hurtfully by the hair that she did what he wanted, squinting her watering eyes tightly shut and locking her knees as she tilted forward, letting his left hand firmly grip her left wrist as his right flipped her pleated skirt up to her waist and struck her hard enough on the left buttock that she jolted forward. She was wearing pink satin panties and his hand seemed to scald through them with his second blow. And his third was like fire. But then he seemed to hesitate, and his fourth strike was far softer. She felt Hitler altering further as he hesitated again, and for a moment she was afraid he’d caress her. She felt sure his hand was floating over her panties, fondling a curve in the air, and then he gently tugged her pleated skirt until she was covered, and she knew the shift of power was complete.

She stood and faced him, but he shied away from her stare. “Have I learned my lesson?” she asked.

Hitler w

as not an unintelligent man. “Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid you have.” And then it was his turn to be embarrassed. Calling for Prinz, he escaped her watching by roughhousing with the hound, and he pretended not to notice when his niece walked haughtily upstairs.

CHAPTER NINE

THE PENSION KLEIN, 1927

In October she moved into a white, furnished room in the Pension Klein at Königinstrasse 43, in the Schwabing area of München. The house faced the west side of the Englischer Garten so she had a third-floor view of green lawns and horse paths from her desk, and it was just a short walk from the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität, where Angelika Raubal was registered for premedical courses in biology, chemistry, zoology, and English.

Geli began each morning with a buffet breakfast of hard rolls, fruit, and hot chocolate in the pension’s dining room, then got her textbooks and, with a friend named Elfi Samthaber, walked up Veter-inärinstrasse to the first-floor lecture hall of the university for an eight o’clock biology class. She went upstairs for a far smaller class in English, and afterward was free for an hour, generally going to the Café Europa on Schellingstrasse, near Heinrich Hoffmann’s photography studio and the editorial offices of the Völkischer Beobachter. She did not try to find her uncle there, for it was not yet noon.

She was an affectionate, fun-loving woman with a gift for female friendship and an affability with men, so she would not have been without company for long anyway, but the fact that many of the university students were fanatically pro-Hitler meant she was often the focus of attention. She’d be offered Italian coffee, and handsome young men with fresh dueling scars would huddle around and tire her with questions about her Uncle Adolf—whom the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten was calling “the uncrowned king of Bavaria”—while her female classmates looked on with jealousy and Gauloise cigarettes held near their faces.

She freed herself from observation only by heading to the first-floor laboratory of the science wing for chemistry. She finished her English homework just before zoology class, and after that strolled to the south end of the Englischer Garten where her famous uncle would be in the fashionable Café Heck on Galerienstrasse, holding forth to a group of six or seven passive, reverential men at his Stammtisch, his reserved and increasingly popular table in the farthermost corner on the right.

She would see him agitatedly glancing around the café even as he talked, hunting for some sign of his niece, and as soon as he saw her, Hitler’s face would shine with glee and he would promptly stand up, as would the others. “And here is my Princess at last,” he’d say, and kiss her on both hands. All talk of politics would cease—“We do not mix business and family,” Hitler had objected once—and he would order a late lunch for them both while courteously inquiring about her classes. She’d practice English with Herr Hanfstaengl, she’d say nothing to Herr Rosenberg, who fiddled with his fork or wristwatch whenever she was around, she’d ask Herr Hess about Ilse, whom he’d just married; she’d hear from Herr Hoffmann about Henny’s high school functions, and she’d perhaps be introduced to a visiting Gauleiter (a party regional governor) from Essen or Mecklenburg. She’d try to be charming and Hitler’s men would try to seem enchanted and after she’d eaten she’d find a reason to exit so they could all get back to their worries and scheming.

She’d study from four until eight if her uncle was free for the evening, or until ten if he was giving a speech, and then she’d put on a fine dress and talk with the other boarders in the parlor until Emil Maurice was impatiently there at the front door, Hitler’s Mercedes idling behind him on Königinstrasse and Hitler either in it, drumming his fingers, or still in his shabby bachelor’s flat on Thierschstrasse getting changed for their night on the town. After the cinema or opera, they’d dine at the Café Weichard, next to the Volkstheater, or the Osteria Bavaria, the garden restaurant in the Bayerischer Hof Hotel, or the Nürnberger Bratwurstglöckl am Dom, and then, well past midnight, Emil would return Geli to the pension and take his employer to the Café Neumaier near the Victuals Market where he’d talk with worshipful old friends until three or four in the morning.

Weekends she was Hitler’s from noon until night. Often Henny Hoffmann would join them and they’d lunch at the Carlton Tearoom on Briennerstrasse, and Hitler would flatter them with fulsome praise for their beauty, and charm them with funny imitations of his pompous subordinates. Then they’d stroll through the galleries and the jewelry, shoe, and millinery shops off the Odeonsplatz, or the high-fashion stores on Prinzregentenstrasse. Geli was new to luxuries and having money, and with a flirtatious tyranny forced her uncle to wait like a forbearing husband as she tried on twenty hats then settled on a beret, or dotted her wrists with French perfumes and held them to his fussy and defenseless nose.

With his niece Adolf Hitler was often affectionate, softhearted, and helpless. Emil Maurice would lean against a fender of the Mercedes-Benz with a cigarette and watch his otherwise fearsome boss bashfully follow the tittering girls as they went from one shop to the next, and in the late afternoon he’d be fascinated to find the führer tilting toward him under a high stack of parcels, chagrined but grinning—fatherly, flushed, and perfectly content.

Emil himself was enthralled by Geli, but at first he tried to give the impression that being with her was his duty when Hitler was away. But one Saturday morning in late October Emil simply showed up at the Pension Klein and told Geli her uncle was on party business in Berlin. And then he hesitantly asked if she’d like to visit the famous Auer Dult flea market at Mariahilfplatz, across the Isar river.

She wanted to further furnish her white room, so she went, and they found a Halali hat for Emil, and for Geli a fairly good Köhler sewing machine, a faintly worn Axminster rug, and a fine, gold-plated Tellus clock that wasn’t working, but that Emil, a former watchmaker, said he would fix, and did.

Emil drove her to the Haidhausen district and a pub called Löwen-Schänke where they shared a late lunch of hard rolls and salami and tall steins of Spatenbräu. He took off his white Halali hat and told Geli he’d been born in Westmoor in 1897, so he was eleven years older than she was, and a former Unterfeldwebel, or sergeant, on the western front, where he had been put in charge of a reconnaissance patrol because his family were originally French Hugenots and his father had forced his children to learn the language. Without a high school Abitur or even a lesser Matura, Emil had had few work prospects after the armistice; he was just one of the injured millions and had found and lost a dozen jobs—as a horse dealer, a butcher’s apprentice, a watchmaker, a nightclub bouncer. Anything. And whenever he was out of work, he was a street fighter for the Ehrhardt Naval Brigade, paid to heckle Communist speakers and disrupt rallies during Spartakus week. “What we wanted, we didn’t know,” he said. “But what we knew, we didn’t want.” And then that changed in 1920 when he’d first heard Adolf Hitler speak. Immediately he’d joined the party as number 19, and had been given the job of Ordnertruppe, whose duty it was to protect her uncle at mass meetings. “I was the first SA man,” he said. “The very first storm trooper. And I still would gladly die for him. A former soldier like I was, with no education, no money, no family, really, and he knew what I was feeling, the furies inside me, the fears and longings, the things that were ugly, and he made them seem right. Even glorious. It’s never intellectual or head-to-head when Hitler talks. Always heart-to-heart. And so I could feel how much he hated the same things I did: the Weimar Republic, Bolshevism, the Reichstag, unemployment, inflation, crime and disorder—”

“The Jews?” Geli asked.

Emil reddened with irritation. “Are you thinking I’m Jewish?”

She was stunned. “I just thought that was part of his program.”

“Are you an Anti-Semite?”

She shrugged. “No.”

Emil smiled as her uncle did, with falseness and condescension. “In time,” he said.

“Are you Aryan?” she asked.

“Naturally. But I hear party members talking. ‘Look at Emil Maurice,’ they say. ‘Look at that Alfred Rosenberg.’ And others, too. ‘They’re trying to hide that they’re Jews by hating them.’” Emil drank from his stein with his hot stare held on her. “Even about the leader they say that.”

She was fearless in the face of contention, but was fundamentally a conciliator. She slid off to friendlier terrain. “I remember when I first saw you at Landsberg am Lech,” she said. “Your skin was so dark. I thought you looked Corsican, or Greek.”

Emil grinned. “Yes? Is that good?”

“Excellent,” she said.

He hunched forward on the pub’s table, his chin on his hands, conquered by flattery. “Was it love at first sight?”