by Michael Dean
He pointed the pistol at his head. ‘If you leave, I will kill myself.’
She sighed, her eyes rolling in weariness at yet another of his threats of suicide. A reply was beneath her; she smoothed a blouse into the case.
‘I will kill myself!’ he said again.
She muttered under her breath, but it was audible to him. ‘Du lächerlicher Zwerg’ – you ridiculous gnome.
He blinked, furiously. Rainwater dripped off his nose. The person of the Führer could not survive being called that. The Führer would no longer exist; there would be only Adolf Hitler. And that was intolerable to him. He pulled the trigger, to end his life. But somehow it was Geli who lay dead on the floor.
Chapter Two
Hitler’s Private Secretary, Rudolf Hess, was the epitome of The Following, as they were called. He had joyfully relinquished all autonomy as an individual, as if shrugging off a burden. Hess had come up with the Führerprinzip – unquestioning obedience to the leader. It was the externalisation of his own psyche. Hess always referred to himself as Hitler’s harbinger, the bringer of the leader to his people. The first person ever to call Hitler ‘Führer’ was Hess.
So, early that Friday afternoon, when he answered a telephone call from Hitler’s butler-cum-valet, Georg Winter, telling him Hitler had killed Geli Raubal, Hess was apotheosised, because he knew his service was needed.
His apartment in Löfftzstrasse was outside Munich proper, well into the outskirts, nearly halfway to Dachau. The harbinger drove himself. He didn’t use a chauffeur; he was a rally-class driver, as well as a fighter pilot. To the end of his life he could remember every second of the twenty-minute drive to the Führer’s apartment; he heard the trumpets of seraphim in his head all the way.
*
In answer to Hess’s volley of knocks, the door to the Prinzregentenplatz apartment was opened by Anni Winter, Hitler’s housekeeper. Dressed, as ever, in a floral garment that was as much housecoat as dress, her eyes were gleaming in her aquiline face in a way Hess knew all too well. Anni, too, lived to be of service.
Georg Winter, Anni’s husband, appeared. His limp had got worse since Hess had last seen him. He absently saluted his commander, which is what Hess had been in the war. Georg Winter had continued to serve him when Hess had fought in a Freikorps band in the bloody battle against the Councils Republic communists – a civil war which had ripped Munich apart in 1919.
Unlike Anni, Georg Winter looked shaken. With his silver hair, he suddenly struck Hess for the first time as an old man. Hess instinctively turned to Anni for an account of what had happened.
‘Well?’
‘There was a shot from Raubal’s room,’ said Anni crisply. ‘Herr Hitler has locked himself in his room. He won’t answer us. The door to Raubal’s room is locked, too. But we can see her through the keyhole. She’s dead.’
Even in this desperate situation Anni managed to convey her contempt for Geli in the way she said her name. ‘Raubal’, in Anni’s opinion, was a low-born Austrian slut who was distracting Herr Hitler from higher matters.
Hess went to Hitler’s bedroom door and knocked twice, discreetly, with one knuckle. The three of them waited. Silence. Hess nodded to himself, then confirmed that Geli’s room was also locked. He did that by gently turning the handle. He then looked through the keyhole, seeing Geli’s body on the floor. He straightened up.
‘Break it open.’
Old man Winter looked about to shoulder-charge the door.
‘No, not like that. Use ...’ Hess looked round for inspiration. ‘... use a screwdriver.’
The old man limped his heavy way off in the direction of the quarters he shared with Anni. While he was gone the silence was tense. Anni’s skinny figure did not seem to be breathing. There was not a sound from Hitler’s bedroom.
Georg Winter returned with a large screwdriver and a hammer. He hammered the screwdriver into the soft wood near the lock until enough of it had splintered for the door to yield to a strong shove by Hess and Herr Winter together.
Inside her bedroom, Geli’s blood was darkening, congealing over the wound to her chest. Hitler’s pistol lay abandoned on the sofa. A suitcase was half-full of clothes. Both the Winters looked at Hess for instruction.
‘Put the clothes away,’ Hess commanded Anni Winter. ‘Put the suitcase under the bed. Otherwise leave everything as it is.’
‘Everything’ meant Geli Raubal.
Hess and Georg Winter watched Anni busying about for a moment or so, then Hess turned to the man who had served him for over twenty years.
‘What are the Führer’s plans? Do you know?’
‘He has a Party meeting in Hamburg, sir,’ Georg Winter said. ‘Herr Schreck is to bring the car in ...’ he consulted his watch, ‘just over one hour’s time. Hoffmann is accompanying Herr Hitler.’
Hess gave a thin-lipped smile at the lifelong servant’s ability to convey his opinion of his masters by small signs:
Schreck was nominally a chauffeur, Emil Maurice’s successor. But like Maurice and everybody else close to Hitler the menial job designation was misleading. Schreck was so senior in the SS his number was one. Though they hid it beneath a mantle of smooth servant behaviour, both the Winters were terrified of him.
Hoffmann, on the other hand, was regarded by the Winters as a bohemian drunkard and wastrel. They did not consider the way he earned his daily bread – photographer – as an occupation at all. Hess knew better; if asked which of the Führer’s inner circle he could least afford to lose, Hess would have unhesitatingly named Hoffmann.
Now, however, the Deputy Leader of the Nazi Party was mildly annoyed with himself for having forgotten his Führer’s itinerary for a moment. Hamburg, addressing a Party rally, pushing Party influence into the north. Of course. Hess made a strange wincing grimace. For the first time he looked odd, even slightly mad. The Winters glanced at each other.
‘Yes,’ Hess said, speaking to himself. ‘The Führer’s entourage must break the journey in Nuremberg, as usual. Nuremberg is good. I will make some phone calls to the Party authorities there.’
Georg Winter nodded, showing mute support without understanding remotely what Hess was taking about.
Hess went on. ‘But meanwhile we have more immediate tasks at hand. Where are the rest of the servants?’
‘I sent them home.’ This from Anni. She had finished putting Geli’s clothes away.
‘Get them back. I will speak to them here in forty minutes’ time. I have instructions for them.’
Hess made to leave.
‘Yes, sir. But ... Herr Hess. I need to speak to you in private.’ Anni was as flustered as Hess had ever seen her.
‘Oh yes?’
Anni nodded to herself. ‘Yes, sir. It’s about Raubal. It’s ... it’s important, sir.’
*
A few moments later Hess was making his way to Äussere Prinzregentenstrasse 10, the home of the Minister of Justice for Bavaria, Franz Gürtner. Handily enough, this was just a cat’s jump away, round the corner.
Hess had calculated that there was no time to telephone the Minister’s house to warn him of his arrival. And in any case it was more urgent that Anni use the telephone to recall the servants, so he could coach them in what to say. So when Hess rapped on the door of the Minister’s first-floor apartment and presented his card to the maid, it was as a caller without an appointment.
Normally, such louche behaviour would be given short-shrift by the meticulously correct Dr Gürtner; the caller crisply dismissed by the staff. But Hess, even out of uniform and in a lounge suit, was an authoritative figure. And he was a senior political ally. He was therefore left waiting in the wood-panelled vestibule for less than five minutes.
During that time Hess planned his line for this coming conversation, on which the very future existence of the Nazi Party depended. He came to the typically shrewd conclusion that giving help can create as much of a debt as taking it, especially in politics. Gürtner had helped the Nazis before,
so he must help them again.
Gürtner was a member of the German nationalist Mittelpartei – right-wing, nationalist, monarchist. But, to date, he had helped the Nazis more than anyone on earth, other than Hitler himself. Without Gürtner, Hitler would have been deported back to Austria after the failed Munich Putsch. Even if he had somehow stayed in Germany, he would not have been able to speak in public because there had been a ban on Nazi rallies until Gürtner had it lifted.
The returning maid ushered him into Gürtner’s office. Hess had gambled heavily on Gürtner being at home so early on a Friday afternoon. But he knew his man. Most state officials took Friday afternoon off and Gürtner, beneath his stiff carapace of rectitude and correctness, was lazier than most.
‘Herr Hess!’ Gürtner stood in welcome, behind his desk. ‘What an unexpected surprise.’
The tautology, reflected Hess, was typical of a mediocre mind. As Gürtner touched some papers to indicate work interrupted – a fiction Hess was sure – Hess sat down. And came straight to the point.
‘Dr Gürtner, I have the sad duty to inform you that Herr Hitler’s treasured half-niece, Angela Maria Raubal, has taken her own life. Unfortunately, this tragic event has taken place on Herr Hitler’s premises, at his apartment.’
‘Indeed? Please convey my deepest condolences to Herr Hitler.’
Hess nodded, only slightly impatiently. He was ready to spell out the implications. Gürtner was not exactly dim, but narrowly constrained, mentally.
‘The socialist press would have a field day with this.’ Hess meant the Social Democratic Party’s newspaper, the Münchener Post, scourge of the Right since the Party’s early days in the early 1920s. ‘At this delicate time, the right-wing grouping could take a heavy blow from which it may not recover.’
Hess’s phrase ‘this delicate time’ was code for the latest sex scandal involving the SA leader Ernst Rôhm and large numbers of SA and boys.
‘So ...?’ Gürtner fiddled with a gold Parker pen, thoughts slowly gathering.
‘It would be helpful if the processes involved following a death could be speeded up, so that too much fuss is avoided.’
‘Speeded up ...?’ The concept was clearly alien to Gürtner.
‘A sympathetic coroner would help, greatly.’
Gürtner hesitated. Hess shut his eyes for a second. He simply could not fail, not now, not after the Party had come so far.
But Gürtner had made up his mind. ‘All right. I’ll make sure it’s Müller. He’s one of your people.’
He meant a Nazi Party member. Gürtner had nearly said ‘your crowd’. He regarded the Nazis as a mob of wild youngsters whose hearts beat for Germany all right but who were a little uncouth, rough at the edges and in need of counsel from time to time from cooler, wiser heads, like his.
Hess nodded. ‘Good! And the investigating authorities?’
Gürtner shrugged. ‘Much more difficult to control.’ His heavy, patrician-looking face creased with distaste at some of the independent spirits to be found both at the Prosecutor’s Office, where the worst was Glaser, and the police.
‘The best policeman for you is probably Forster, but with a case as important as this his superior, Sauer, would be involved. I could ring Forster. He’s a keen enough chap.’
‘No, don’t. We’ll report it in the usual way. Tomorrow morning.’
‘Tomorrow? Er ...’ Gürtner’s brow furrowed.
This was the difficult part. ‘You see, Dr Gürtner, Herr Hitler was himself present when Fräulein Raubal committed this godless act.’ Hess was pleased with ‘godless’. Gürtner was a Catholic. ‘The Münchener Post would make insinuations, as is the way with the gutter press. No doubt the Social Democrats will join in. Hoegner and his mob.’
That was clever. The SPD Deputy Wilhelm Hoegner had tried to have Gürtner removed as Minister of Justice. This was for suborning the judge, Georg Neithardt, at the Nazi trial after the Munich Putsch, over the issue of Hitler’s deportation to Austria.
One more push: ‘Quicker and cleaner to have Herr Hitler clear of the scene, the formalities with Raubal disposed of quickly. What do you think?’
It was masterful. Hess was playing Gürtner like a violin. That final phrase was designed to give the dim plodder the illusion that he was actually making the decision himself, that he had even thought of the plan himself.
Gürtner nodded. It was enough.
*
Back in the dining room of Hitler’s apartment, at 1 Prinzregentenplatz, Hess drilled the servants in what they were to say to the police, when they were brought in tomorrow morning.
The only problem was Hitler himself. He had given curt replies to Hess’s cajoling and wheedling through the bedroom door, but was showing no sign of unlocking the door, let alone coming out.
Fortunately, from Hess’s point of view, Schreck and Hoffmann arrived early. The squarely built, stockily short photographer, red in the face from whisky even at this early hour, had Hitler out in minutes with that jocular tone to which he had a court jester’s licence. He was another of the three Hitler intimates who used the familiar du form to him, as well as Emil Maurice. The third had been Geli.
Georg Winter, every inch the military man, had Hitler’s case packed quickly, even helping the Führer to wash before the journey. Hitler, the while, was stone-faced. He answered one or two routine questions Hess put to him about the meeting in Hamburg, questions designed largely to make sure he had not lost his mind – always an issue. Neither Hitler nor anybody else mentioned the dead Geli Raubal.
*
As soon as Hitler and Hoffmann were safely on the road, with Schreck at the wheel of the Mercedes, Hess phoned Nazi Party headquarters in Nuremberg. Tomorrow morning, he explained, he intended to phone Hitler’s hotel, the Deutscher Hof, with the terrible news that Fräulein Raubal had committed suicide. This news would reach the hotel after Hitler’s party had left, to create the maximum fuss and to establish Hitler’s whereabouts in another city unequivocally.
By now smiling, Hess asked for the name of any Nuremberg motor-police who were ‘reliable’ – he meant Nazi Party members – and would be on duty tomorrow. He was given the name of one Hauptwachmeister Probst and his telephone number in Nuremberg.
Hess’s luck continued. Probst was in when he telephoned and was mightily honoured to receive a telephone call from the legendary Freikorps hero, Rudolf Hess. The next day, Saturday, he carried out his instructions to the letter.
And to the end of his days Hess was secretly amused that a speeding ticket issued by Hauptwachmeister Probst to chauffeur Julius Schreck at 1.37 p.m. on Saturday 19 September 1931, was held to provide the Führer with an alibi for the death of Geli Raubal, which had taken place around twenty-four hours earlier.
Chapter Three
Inspector Forster was not a member of the Nazi Party, but its activities had given him a great deal of pleasure. His local branch, in the suburb of Schwabing, threw its social programme open to everyone. There were regular German Evenings. There was a fancy-dress parade, on Carnival Tuesday. There was a party for Hitler’s birthday. Christa Forster hadn’t joined any of the ladies groups, as she liked to spend her time with her husband. But the Forsters were in the choir, trained by Sepp Summer, the eminent composer and musician.
Only last week, the Schwabing Nazis put on a theatre performance entitled Schlageter’s Hero’s Death. In vivid tableaux, SA-men acted out the death of the martyr Leo Schlageter, killed by French troops during their wicked occupation of the Ruhr. The Forsters had taken the children along. Little Helga, aged nine, and little Erwin, six, had been saucer-eyed.
After the performance, the branch leader – the tall, scholarly-looking Karl Fiehler – took the Forsters aside. He invited Helga and Erwin to use the 1,000-book SA library, behind a cigar shop in Arcisstrasse, to help them with their schoolwork.
Herr Fiehler laid on fortnightly talks about the Jews, too, at the Blüte Inn. The last one, Forster recalled, was on why women giving b
irth should refuse to have Jewish medical students present. But dry subjects like that were not Karl-Heinz Forster’s idea of an evening’s entertainment. He and Christa didn’t go.
*
Early for his appointment, Forster sauntered along the elegant boulevard of Briennerstrasse. As the Brown House, the Nazi Party headquarters, appeared on his right, he glanced up at the Blood Flag on the roof, flapping stiffly over Munich in the autumn breeze. Opposite the house of the Papal Nuncio, the massive bronze doors came into view, topped by the Nazi slogan, ‘Germany Awaken’. Forster’s permanent smile widened.
He had been told to go in the west entrance, by the cafeteria. At the window of the guard station, he presented the pass, which had been hand-delivered to his apartment.
‘Heil Hitler!’ he said. Forster did not know himself why he said that. He usually said Grüss Gott. It just came out.
‘Heil Hitler!’ The brown-shirted guard studied the pass. He was armed with a gas pistol. The SA were not allowed weapons; yet another temporary ban by the Bavarian Parliament. Forster regarded them all as absurd.
‘Inspector Forster to see Herr Hess.’
The guard nodded and waved him through. Forster smiled. He was proud to have an appointment with Herr Hess. Herr Hess was a hero of the Freikorps – wounded in the leg fighting Bolshevik criminals. Hess had been a vital adjutant to the revered Count von Epp, leader of the Freikorps group which bore his name – the Saviour of Munich, the Terror of the Reds.
Von Epp, Hess and the rest of the Freikorps heroes had marched on Munich, smashing the Rule of Horror – the Councils Republic, led by the Jew Eisner. Without them, Munich might be under the heel of Marxists, even now. Not to mention the Social Democrat fellow-travellers, who brought Germany the humiliations of the Weimar Republic. Democracy had been tried once and found wanting in Germany. Never again!
Germany Awaken! – as it said on the doors to the Brown House.
Forster made his way into the vast rectangular Flag Hall. There, under four-man guard, lit from above, stood the holy relic of the tattered Blood Flag from the Beer Hall Putsch – Hitler’s failed attempt to take Munich by force, eight years ago. The flag was said to be stained with the blood of Nazi martyrs, killed at the putsch, and riddled with police machine-gun bullets. Forster could see neither blood nor bullet holes, but his belief was undimmed.
