Chapter Twenty-Two Continued: The Aftermath

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

The official cause of Geli's death was recorded as suicide, but the evidence suggests that she was murdered.

The bullet had entered above the heart and lodged in her lower back at hip level, meaning the gun had to be pointing downwards and the hand holding it higher than her heart - a strange way to commit suicide.

None of Hitler’s servants admitted hearing a shot but they soon began to contradict themselves. Three different people claimed to have broken down Geli’s door. (1)

It was reported that her nose had been broken and there were several other injuries. It was also rumoured that she was pregnant, and if it's true that Hitler was impotent, the baby wouldn't have been his. This was definitely a scandal they didn't need when the Party was on the verge of gaining power.

The first detective on the scene, Heinrich Muller, rose to become head of the Gestapo while the Bavarian Minister of Justice, who hurriedly called off the investigation, became Reich Minister of Justice.

Geli was given a Catholic burial, even though to bury a suicide in hallowed ground was against church rules. The priest, Father Johann Pant, wrote to a French newspaper in 1939: “They pretended she committed suicide. From the fact I gave her a Christian burial you can draw your own conclusions.”

Hitler said he was 100 miles away in Nuremburg when he heard the news of Geli’s death, but at least one police investigator believed he was in the flat when the fatal shot was fired. He wanted to charge Hitler with Geli’s death but was overruled by
pro-Nazi officials.

FRITZ Gerlich, a German journalist, claimed that, instead of leaving that Friday, Hitler had dined with Geli in a restaurant and that Hitler, who seldom touched alcohol, drank beer. When they went back to the apartment, there was a row and he shot her. (1)

Whether he actually murdered her or not, her death had a devastating affect on him, though he would soon replace her with another niece, Eva Braun.

Cleaning up the Mess

Between June 30 and July 2, 1934, the Nazi regime carried out a series of political executions which became known as the Night of the Long Knives. At least 85 people died during the purge, including the Strasser brothers, their lawyer, who held their private papers, and Father Bernhard Stempfle. Problem solved.

Adolf Hitler was just a man. A sado-masochist and sociopath who was guilty of incest. He was not a hero or even a great leader. He attempted suicide after the Beer Hall Putsch and again after Geli's death. Ironically, it was Gregor Strasser who talked him out of it the second time.

The problem with making him the embodiment of the Holocaust and the Nazi regime, is that he alone shoulders the blame. And because of the Holocaust he has earned a hero worship from haters, past, present and future.

He had a lot of people pulling the strings for this movement and they made him appear all powerful, when in fact he was a weakling. But he had the best propaganda machine in history, led by Joseph Goebbels, the man who would engineer his every move.

Sources:

1. ‘SHOT BY UNCLE ADOLF’, By: Murray Davies, The Mirror, September 16, 2006

Chapter Twenty-Two: When the Canary Doesn't Sing

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

After being estranged from his family for more than a decade, Adolf paid a visit to Linz, Austria where his widowed stepsister Angela was living.

Finding her in an impoverished condition, he agreed to hire her as his housekeeper, but his interest appeared to be in her seventeen-year-old daughter, also named Angela, who went by the name of 'Geli'.

He enjoyed taking the young girl out and showing her off, riding through the countryside without a care in the world. I suppose he felt like his father, who would not return home until he'd made his fortune, and when he did, also brought his young niece back to keep house, until they were eventually married. That young girl was Adolf's own mother.

Hitler also liked to play the macho role with her, demonstrating how he "could bewitch the masses and scare his lieutenants out of their wits." (1) But not everyone was impressed, and many resented how much money he was spending on himself, while playing the role of a frugal leader.

While he didn't take money directly from the party coffers he charged exorbitant rates for articles that he wrote for their various publications, while paying the editorial workers starvation wages.

He also published his book at this time, which he wanted to call Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice, but settled for the suggested title of Mein Kampf, or "My Struggle."

In the meantime there was someone else in the party with leadership aspirations and he too had quite a following. His name was Gregor Strasser and he and his brother Otto had joined the Nazi party during the early days. They were there for the Beer Hall Putsch, that netted Gregor a year and a half under guard.

He was well educated, was a decorated officer, but more importantly was German. Hitler was not. He was Austrian, and while he applied for citizenship, he still lived under the constant fear that he would be deported.

Another advantage that Strasser had over his opponent was the fact that he was already a deputy in the German Reichstag, which meant that he could travel on the German railways for free. Thus he would go from town to town, gaining support while speaking out against Adolf Hitler.

But he did not travel alone. A constant companion was a young crippled man who had been turned down for military service, so instead studied literature and philosophy at six different universities, and was a master at propaganda. His name was Paul Joseph Goebbels, and along with Gregor's brother Otto, the three created their own political force.

Strasser and Goebbels believed that the party belonged to the proletariat; while Hitler intended that they should capture the proletariat and hold it in check. He had no real interest in socialism, only in how the fervour of socialism could be exploited.

Hitler also had the support of the Bourgeoisie, who feared losing their possessions in a socialist scheme. They provided much needed funds to the party, and eventually even Goebel jumped ship and joined the Hitler team. Strasser didn't stand a chance.

Geli

While Adolf and his niece were enjoying an intimate relationship, she was also becoming "intimate" with others. According to Geli, her uncle was impotent and rather perverse in his sexual habits. As a result she began seeing other men, including Hitler's chauffeur, Emil Maurice, and if the rumours are true, also Adolf's nemesis Gregor Strasser.

According to Strasser she shared stories of her uncle's perversions*, which fit what she had been saying to friends: "you wouldn't believe what he makes me do". (2)

In one of his unguarded moments, a desperate Adolf wrote a love letter to his niece. Well not exactly a love letter, but a detailed description of their time together, which he carelessly left lying on a table, where it was discovered by his landlady's son. Knowing that if the letter was ever made public, it would have ended his political career, he spoke to his advisers.

They decided it would be too obvious if they themselves went to the holder of the infamous letter, so instead sought the help of a local eccentric, who collected political papers. They had him buy the letter for his "collection" but Hitler paid dearly, and would continue paying.

Aiding in the scheme was Father Bernhard Stempfle, from the Catholic order of Saint Jerome; an anti-Semitic journalist, and "armed bohemian". He was a supporter of Hitler and some say his confessor. Regardless he was aware of the contents of the letter and knew that it had to be retrieved.

In the meantime Geli was becoming restless and wanted to move to Vienna to study music. Her uncle had promised to support this career move, but was not willing to let her go. They fought constantly and to add insult to injury, Adolf also had to deal with the continued embarrassment of the letter, and though rumours had already circulated about his strange desires, there was now proof. This no doubt brought up insecurities, especially given the fact that Strasser was in on the secret, courtesy of his sometime lover Geli.

Things finally reached a tipping point and the neighbours reported that as Hitler was leaving the house one morning, his niece called down from her bedroom window, pleading one more time for permission to go to Vienna. Hitler yelled back with a firm no.

In a tone of indifference she announced that next day she was going to Berchtesgaden to see her mother, who was living in the mountain house on the
Obersalzberg. She went about the apartment with a little box bearing a dead canary, bedded in cotton; she sang to herself and wept a little and said she meant to bury poor dead 'Hansi near the house on the Obersalzberg. She began a letter to a friend in Linz an everyday letter without special content. That was her last known act. Next morning she was found shot to death. It was September 18, 1931. Geli Raubal was twenty-three years of age. (2)

Chapter Twenty-Two Continued: The Aftermath

Footnotes:

*The first published statement that Hitler may have had a perversion was made in an article appearing in 1971 and drawing on a valuable psychological investigation of Hitler prepared for the OSS in 1943 by Dr. Walter C. Langer and other American psychoanalysts and clinical psychologists. This wartime report, subsequently published in 1972, reached the following conclusion with regard to Hitler’s aberrant sexual activity:

It is an extreme form of masochism in which the individual derives sexual gratification from the act of having a woman urinate or defecate on him. (3)

Sources:

1. Der Fhehrer, Hitler's Rise to Power, By: Konrad Heiden, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1944, Pg. 279

2. Heiden, 1944, Pg. 387

3. The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler, By: Robert G.L. Waite, Basic Books, 1977, p.237–243.