Hitler's Niece

“Another Adolf?” she asked.

“There’s only one, really,” he said. “And now are you pleased?”

She teased, “Will I still get to keep the photographs?”

“Naturally.”

She kis

sed his cheek and said, “I love you, Uncle Alf.”

He flinched at hearing the word “love” and his hooded stare fled to four parts of the room.

“We all love him,” said Rudolf Hess.

Hunting for some distraction, Hitler took the knife from beside his plate and polished it with his napkin. “And after you finish your final exams tomorrow—”

“With flying colors,” said Alfred Rosenberg.

“—you should hurry and get your things together. We’re going to Obersalzberg.”

Heinrich Hoffmann’s wife had died in the European influenza epidemic of 1928, and he was so worried about his fifteen-year-old daughter being alone and available to boys while high school was out that Hitler graciously invited Henny to stay with Geli in Haus Wachenfeld that summer.

They’d both later remember that July and August as their most glorious time in Obersalzberg. The nights were cool, the fields were green, the skies were azure blue, and the air was filled with the scent of pine and snow and wildflowers. Geli and Henny would finish their housecleaning chores by noon and have the afternoons to stroll through Berchtesgaden with chocolate ice cream in waffle cones, hike up past the treeline on Kehlstein Mountain in their hobnailed boots and feed chunks of snow to Prinz, furiously race at filling in the Sunday crossword puzzles after the Raubals came back from Mass, find hilarity in reading Karl May’s Westerns aloud on the terrace with false male voices, lie flat on the floor of the Winter Garden, their chins on their fists, tuning in a faint London signal on the radio to listen hard and seriously to American music: “Ain’t She Sweet,” “Thou Swell,” “I Wanna Be Loved by You,” “You Took Advantage of Me.”

Angela shifted her things to Geli’s room so the friends could share Angela’s full-sized bed on the first floor and watch the canaries fly around the room, and chatter and fret and giggle until one or two in the morning. With childish excitement, Henny once told the plot of a chilling film Geli had missed, a film in which a fiendish scientist took control of a prostitute and inseminated her with sperm he’d extracted from a just-hanged criminal. She became pregnant, and the girl who was born grew up to be a sleepwalking temptress named Alraune who ruined all the foolish men who fell in love with her. “You were supposed to fear Alraune,” Henny said. “But it was surprising: I found myself wanting to be like her.”

“A femme fatale?”

“Yes. To have that power.”

Geli smiled. “You aren’t a vampire or anything, are you?”

“I promise you’ll be the first to know.” With one hand behind her head, Henny tilted the lone tallow candle that was flaring in the darkness, and the flame deformed as white candlewax spilled onto the windowsill. “Are you still a virgin?”

Geli confessed she wasn’t.

“Who?”

“Oh,” she sighed, “I forget.”

“In Wien?”

“Change the subject.”

“Are you and Emil…?”

“We aren’t married, Fräulein Hoffmann.”

Henny jolted up onto her elbows to fascinatedly peer at Geli. She scoffed, “Emil is suddenly moral now? Emil Maurice?”

With false and defensive prudishness, Geli offered, “With me, yes.”

“Then he’s afraid of your Uncle Adolf,” Henny said, and fell forward onto her pillow. She spidered a few fine brown hairs from her face and seemed prepared to sleep as she said, “Who isn’t.”

“Your father?”

“Heinrich? Hah!”