Hitler's Niece

Sauer went back to the flat on Prinzregentenplatz at half-past three, and found Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Hoffman there, as their friends had promised.

The photographer lit a cigarette in what he called the “coffee and cakes room,” off the foyer, and fell right into his Stammtisch role of garrulous storyteller, saying they’d left München around dinnertime on Friday, but that they were all tired and uneasy because of the Föhn, and so they’d journeyed only as far as Nürnberg before deciding to stay the night at the Deutscher Hof, the party’s hotel.

Sauer wrote that down. “All three of you registered there?”

“Well, just me. We shared the Hitler suite.”

“And what time was this?”

“About eight.”

Sauer asked him to please continue.

Well, they’d been heading north from Nürnberg this morning when Hitler had noticed the pageboy from the hotel waving for them to pull over. Hearing that Rudolf Hess urgently sought him, Hitler rushed back to the hotel, threw his dog whip and homburg on a lobby chair, and squeezed into a telephone booth. Hoffmann heard him say, “Hitler here. Has something happened?” And then in a hoarse voice he’d replied, “Oh God! How awful!” Hoffmann had been trying to put it together in his head, but had heard only, “Hess! Answer me—yes or no—is she alive or dead?”

The photographer lit another cigarette with the fire from the first and continued, “Afraid of Hitler’s legendary fury, Rudi naturally hung up. Who wouldn’t with such unhappy news? And Hitler headed toward the Mercedes, his hair awry over his forehead and a wild and glazed look in his face. ‘Something has happened to Geli,’ he said. And then he told Schaub to go back to München, shouting, ‘Get every ounce you can out of this car! I must see Geli alive again!’

“Hitler’s frenzy was contagious,” Hoffmann told Sauer. “With its accelerator jammed to the floorboards, the great car screamed its way back to München, but near Ebenhausen we were stopped for speeding by Hauptwachtmeister Probst.”

“We’ll check on that, of course,” Sauer said.

With self-satisfaction, Hoffmann said, “Schaub has the ticket to prove it. We were going twice the limit.”

“And you only heard the dread news when you got here?”

“Well, we went to the Brown House first. We heard then.”

“She was alive and well when you left on Friday?”

“Oh yes. She’d fondly kissed the leader good-bye.”

“Was she the suicidal type?”

The photographer slyly said, “The very reverse. Completely unhysterical. She had a carefree nature. She faced life with a fresh and healthy outlook. And that’s what makes it so puzzling to her friends that she should have felt impelled to take her own life.”

Sauer went to the office next to Geli’s bedroom to question Hitler, who was now in a gray suit and yellow tie with a gold swastika on the lapel. Sauer underestimated him. “Where are your homburg and dog whip?” he asked, as if he’d caught him out.

Unflustered, Hitler tilted back in his office chair and said, “I have a change of clothes at party headquarters. The tragedy put me in a foul sweat, and I did not wish to offend.”

“A tragedy? I just heard you thought your niece was still alive.”

“Oh, deep down one knows these things, even while hoping otherwise. We were quite fond of each other.”

“Were you told how she died?”

With stunning aplomb he said, “She wrapped my Walther in a facecloth to muffle the explosion. And then she fired into her mouth.”

Sauer stared at him, but Hitler offered nothing more. “Tell me about her.”

“She was born in Linz, Austria. She was the daughter of my half-sister. She was twenty-three years old.” And there, too, he halted, as if that were enough—he who was known for hour-long monologues.

“And?” Sauer asked.

Worrying his forehead with his hand in his sadness, he sighed and said, “My niece had been a medical student at the university, but she hadn’t taken to it. She therefore turned to singing lessons. She was soon to make her operatic debut, but she didn’t feel quite ready and beseeched me for further lessons from a Professor Otto Ro in Wien. Quite naturally, as her male guardian, I was concerned that she would be defiled by wild and unsavory influences in that sink of iniquity, and I agreed to the journey only on the condition that her mother, now in Obe

rsalzberg, went with her. Geli did not, for some reason, choose to oblige me, and I declared myself to be quite against the plan. She may well have been annoyed about that, but she did not seem particularly upset, and she’d taken leave of me quite calmly when I left for Hamburg on Friday afternoon.”

“At what hour?”