Last Stop Vienna

by Andrew Nagorski

  “You made it—I didn’t think you would.”

  “I said I would, didn’t I?”

  “And your uncle?” I asked, glancing at the car. It wasn’t dark yet, but I couldn’t see inside.

  “He’s there.”

  “Shouldn’t I go greet him?”

  “Not yet. He said he wanted to watch and for everything to continue the way it is. Maybe he’ll come out later.” She paused, plopped down on the log where I had been sitting and swiftly pulled off her shoes and socks. She reached out her hand for me to pull her up. “Let’s go. I haven’t done this for I don’t know how long.”

  “Jump over the fire?”

  “What do you think I mean?”

  The others must have been watching us, but I had been too absorbed to notice. As I stood hand in hand with Geli, the kids cheered us on. I saw Monika and Klaus laughing as they joined in.

  A log tumbled, and a flame briefly shot up from the dying fire.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Geli broke into a run, pulling me forward with her. We didn’t have much running room, and I wasn’t sure we’d clear the fire, but she wasn’t about to stop. I accelerated as much as I could, and we flew through the air, feeling the heat of the low flames lick the bottom of our feet. Geli stumbled as we hit the ground on the other side, and I tightened my grip on her hand to prevent her from falling.

  “My knight, my hero,” she said, offering a mock curtsy. The kids applauded.

  “May I present Fräulein Raubal,” I said to the group with a sweeping gesture. “She’s a friend who wanted to see what kind of activities we have on these outings.”

  The teenagers looked at one another uncertainly. Geli leaned over and whispered in my ear, “They think I’m your girlfriend.”

  “This young lady is related to someone who is very important for all of us,” I said. “But I’ll explain this later. Let’s continue before it gets too dark out. So, more songs or a game?”

  They wanted a game, and we decided on hide-and-seek with two teams. One team had to tag the members of the other team before they reached the bonfire, but they couldn’t guard it. Everyone was supposed to spread out and find hiding places.

  Geli and I were on the team that had to hide. She took my hand again. “Let’s go,” she urged, and we ran to the nearby trees.

  “This way,” I ordered, pulling her to the left, where I knew the trees and bushes were dense and provided good cover. We had to sprint across an open field before we reached the better hiding places, and we could be caught on our way. We crouched for a moment, and then I whispered that we had to run for it. I glimpsed one of the boys from the other team at the edge of the field, starting to run in our direction, but we sped up and plunged into the thicker woods on the other side before he came close.

  “Farther, farther,” I said, pulling Geli on until we reached a line of trees with broad trunks. She was panting and laughing as we rushed behind one of them. I leaned against the tree, and she abruptly pinned me against it, putting her arms around my waist. “Shhh,” she whispered. “We have to be quiet. If you hold me tight, we’ll be invisible.”

  My arms enveloped her, and I felt every part of her body pressing against me, her lips searching mine and her mouth opening with a hunger I couldn’t recall ever feeling from Sabine, even before we were married. I no longer cared who might be near and pulled her even tighter, so she couldn’t escape feeling the full force of my arousal.

  She withdrew slightly and gave me a bemused look. “It’s all part of the game, Karl. You’re the group leader, we have to make sure you don’t get caught first. In anything.”

  Her face was flushed as I stroked her cheek with my right hand and let it descend to her neck, wanting desperately to let it wander farther down, to where she had once pressed it. I encountered a gold swastika necklace.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “Uncle Alf gave it to me. Don’t you think it’s pretty?”

  I pushed myself away, but Geli still had her arms around my waist and tightened them. “You don’t approve.”

  “No, it’s none of my business.”

  Geli dropped her arms, and we stood facing each other. “Maybe you’re right, Karl, maybe I shouldn’t accept his gifts.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But he’s nice to me, at least most of the time.”

  “What about the other times?”

  “It doesn’t matter. He’s good to me, he takes me to the opera, to concerts, to cafés. All the girls envy me.”

  There was a rustling nearby and a shout: “There they are!”

  “Come on, Karl,” Geli said, grabbing my hand again. “Let’s run for it.”

  We sprinted, with our pursuers—two girls and two boys from the other team—right behind us. We nearly made it, but this time I stumbled and fell, dragging Geli down with me. We were tagged only a few steps from the bonfire.

  We were both laughing as we struggled back to our feet, and it was then that we noticed the rest of my charges lined up at attention in front of Hitler. He was wearing lederhosen and holding a riding crop behind his back as he inspected the kids.

  “Heil Hitler!” I saluted.

  He nodded. “It’s not good for a leader to lose,” he said sternly. Then he smiled. “This time I’ll make an allowance for it, since I’m impressed with your young people here. They look healthy, physically strong.” Turning back to them, he added: “Strong bodies as well as sound views will be crucial for our movement in the struggle ahead.”

  He paused and took his hands from behind his back. He hit his left open hand with the riding crop, making a stinging thwack. “We must be strong, always strong. Remember that. Carry on, all.”

  I caught up with Hitler as he made for his car, where Emil was opening the door for him. “I really appreciate your visit, sir. I’m sure it means so much for these young people. And I apologize if all this looked a bit disorganized.”

  “You’re doing very well, Naumann,” Hitler responded. “You can see it by the young people you’ve attracted. Good German stock, all. But I meant what I said about the games. You’re the leader, and you should win. I know it isn’t possible to win always, which is why I don’t play any sports or games. I can’t afford to lose, ever.” He got into the car. Emil was still holding the door open. “You can afford to lose once in a while.” He paused, then added: “But only once in a while. Don’t let it become a habit.”

  I saluted.

  “It’s time for Geli to come,” Emil ordered me.

  I looked back across the field to the last embers of the bonfire. “I’ll get her.”

  Geli was walking toward the car with her shoes and socks on again. We fell into step. “Karl, come visit me,” she said softly, still out of Emil’s hearing range. “Soon. I’m living on Thierschstrasse now, just two doors down from Uncle Alf.”

  I looked at her.

  “He wanted me closer to him,” she said. “Just come, please.”

  Emil inspected Geli. “A little messy, I see, after playing with those children.”

  “Bye, Karl. See you soon, I hope.” She settled into the backseat beside her uncle.

  Emil closed the car door and sighed. “That’s one wonderful girl.”

  “Sure is.”

  “And you know what, Karl?”

  “What?”

  “We’re getting married soon.”

  I tried not to look startled. “You’ve asked her?”

  He drew himself up, making sure the passengers couldn’t see us. “I have, and she’s agreed.”

  It was as if a dense fog had seeped into my head. “Congratulations.”

  “Don’t tell anyone else yet. The boss doesn’t know. We still have to tell him. As Geli said, see you soon—at the wedding.”

  He slapped me lightly on the back and got into the car. I stood on the country road, watching until the Mercedes disappeared from view, and then turned slowly back to my young charges. The
news I had heard lingered in my head, and the rich, pungent taste of Geli lingered in my mouth.

  —

  The letter must have been hand-delivered by someone from Berlin. It showed up in our mailbox without a stamp, and I retreated into our apartment; Sabine was at work. The sender’s name wasn’t on the envelope, but I recognized the handwriting.

  Karl,

  I have to confide in someone, and Gregor is still too mesmerized by Hitler to listen to me, or at least to accept what I have to say. You may feel the same way, but I’ll take that risk. Besides, I feel I owe it to you to be honest, since it was because of me that you went to Munich in the first place and hooked up with Hitler. You’ll have to make your own choices about what to do next, and I’m not saying that I’ve decided completely myself on that score. But I feel that we are reaching a decisive moment, and I no longer can rule out the possibility that the current conflicts and tensions will lead to an open break. You, like Gregor and the others, will have to decide which side you’re on. Maybe our disagreements can still be worked out, but my doubts are growing. This letter is to tell you why.

  As you know, I wrote to Hitler protesting what is happening here, how Goebbels is trying to intimidate us and supplant our newspaper with his own. Gregor backed me up on this point, since he also feels committed to our paper and hates what Goebbels is doing. It took a long time for Hitler to respond to my letter, but when he did, he wrote: “Your paper is certainly the official party organ in Berlin, but I can’t stop Goebbels from running a private sheet of his own.” The audacity of that reply! Does he take us for fools who could really believe that Goebbels is just a free agent, not his agent?

  I was furious and didn’t respond to what I considered a provocation. And then the most extraordinary thing happened. I was sitting in my office one morning, examining the layout of the next issue, when who should show up unannounced but Hitler himself. I hadn’t known he was in Berlin.

  He simply walked in, didn’t even bother to say good morning and sat down opposite me. All he said by way of greeting was: “This can’t go on.”

  “What can’t go on, Herr Hitler?” I asked him.

  Hitler accused me of quarreling with all his people. He named Streicher and Rosenberg and asked what I had against them. I told him that Streicher’s paper in Munich is nothing more than pornography, filled with rantings about how Jews deflower German women. As for Rosenberg, I told him, his so-called ideology is nothing more than paganism. It has nothing to do with Christianity and can only bring us into conflict with Rome.

  Hitler defended both men. He called Streicher an important racial theorist, and he called Rosenberg’s ideas about the superiority of the German soul, and why it should be unfettered by the rules of lesser beings, “an integral part of national socialism.” I reminded him that the party hadn’t declared war on the Catholic Church, as far as I knew, or on any of the other Christian churches, and that such a step would be suicidal. “I may not be particularly religious; for me, socialism is my most important ideal,” I told him. “But I know better than to think a party that goes to war with a nation’s core beliefs can succeed.”

  It was a point that I felt any reasonable politician would concede. But Hitler, while admitting that Christianity was included in the party program “for the moment,” called Rosenberg a prophet. “His theories are the expression of the German soul,” he told me. “A true German cannot condemn them.”

  I didn’t know what to say; it all seemed so outrageous and beyond any rational discourse. But Hitler waved his arm as if to indicate that we should forget this quarrel, perhaps forget what he had just said. “It’s the Goebbels business that I’ve come about,” he said. “I tell you again, this can’t go on.”

  My response was simple: He should tell that to Goebbels. I pointed out that Goebbels had come to Berlin after I did, and that I had founded my paper earlier than his. I was in the right here, I insisted. There was no ambiguity about the sequence of events.

  “It’s not a question of right but of might,” Hitler said. “What will you do when Herr Goebbels’s storm troopers attack you in your office?”

  I was not ready for such a brazen threat, but I felt oddly calm. I pulled out the big revolver from my drawer and put it on my desk. I told Hitler that the revolver had eight bullets and that if such an attack were mounted, there’d be eight dead storm troopers.

  Hitler became angry. “I know you’re mad enough to shoot,” he said. “But you can’t kill my storm troopers.”

  I asked him whether they were his storm troopers or Goebbels’s. If they were his, I said, he’d be better off not sending them. And if they were Goebbels’s, he should make sure they weren’t sent. “I will shoot anyone who attacks me,” I told him. “No one can frighten me into surrender.”

  He used my Christian name for the first time. “Otto, be reasonable,” he said, his voice trembling and his eyes suddenly misty. “Think it over—for your brother’s sake.”

  There didn’t seem anything more to say, but I told him I’d think everything over if he’d do the same. He left as abruptly as he had come.

  I still can’t quite get over this meeting. I think it tells you quite a lot about our leader. I told Gregor what happened just as I’m telling you, but he claimed I shouldn’t get too excited. He pointed to the Reichstag elections where the party only won 2.6 percent of the vote—this in May 1928, after several years of hard work—as evidence that we needed to keep working with Hitler, since he’s the only one who can draw the big crowds. I conceded this point but argued that our dismal performance in those elections showed the party was on the wrong path no matter how good a performer Hitler is. I reminded Gregor that Hitler was making deals with the capitalists, and that we had always backed the workers. And that his other ideas were increasingly dangerous, particularly his scorn for Christianity, which I saw during our confrontation.

  Gregor wouldn’t budge. “I will tame him,” he insisted. “I won’t allow myself to be unhorsed.”

  I warned him that he had lost control of the reins a long time ago, and that he may get entangled in and dragged by those reins if the horse runs wild. Gregor wasn’t convinced; he stuck to his position. So—and not because Hitler told me to—I will stay in the party for now because of my brother. But I told Gregor he should be ready to jump free of this horse. I certainly will if I feel I can’t do anything else. And I think you may have to consider doing the same. That’s why I’ve written you this long letter. I felt I had to prepare you for what may be a critical decision ahead.

  Yours in the struggle,

  Otto

  I relied on Otto’s judgment. Maybe it was his bluntness, the trust he placed in me by confiding his thoughts even as we both ostensibly continued to work for Hitler and his party, that kept up my own trust in him. Maybe it was our old Berlin ties and his fierce dedication. And, of course, there were the ties forged by his courage in Landshut. In any case, I never thought of him as a potential traitor, which, I realize in retrospect, Hitler was already doing.

  But if I wasn’t about to question Otto’s judgment or motives, I was oddly calm about his letter. I simply figured that Otto was saying we should all continue what we were doing until he indicated otherwise. I was perfectly willing to do so—in effect, leaving the difficult decisions, if there were to be any, to him. When Sabine ventured a question about Hitler and the party, implying but never directly saying that I should abandon them, I changed the subject. I wasn’t sure what I thought.

  That didn’t make life easy at home. Sabine resented my evasiveness. And I felt she might reproach me for contributing so little. We survived on her pay, much as I hated to admit it. She never reproached me for that; nor did she remind me about the abortion even when she raised the possibility of having a baby and I hastily agreed. But when she failed to get pregnant, I sensed—and resented—a silent reproach.

  When we made love, it was not as it was in the beginning, and I found myself imagining that I was in bed wi
th Geli, only then feeling a moment of true excitement. The first time I felt guilty about it. Then I became immersed in my fantasy and almost wanted to shout out Geli’s name.

  “What are you thinking?” Sabine would ask me. “You aren’t here.”

  She was imagining things, I said.

  “I’m not blind, you know. Something is wrong, something is making you distant. What is it?”

  “I’m a bit preoccupied.”

  She propped her chin on her fists in a gesture I had once found endearing. “But you won’t tell me with what.”

  “All right, some of it has to do with the party.”

  “And the rest?”

  “No, I guess all of it is about the party.”

  When I didn’t say anything else, she allowed the silence to lengthen between us. Her voice dropping so low that I had to strain to hear, she finally said: “Karl, I once felt I knew you, everything about you. That seems like ages ago.” She reached out and ran her hand over my face, then all the way down the front of my body until she cupped me in her hand. “Come back to me, Karl.”

  My body responded to her touch even as my mind continued along its own trajectory.

  “I’m here,” I assured her.

  —

  I didn’t see Geli for a long time, but I heard about her frequently from party members, catching veiled references to Hitler’s preoccupation with her. They were constantly out together. There were plays, operas, dinners at his favorite Italian restaurant, the Osteria Bavaria, where he ate the same spaghetti dish each time he took his seat at a corner table that was permanently reserved for him in one of the two back rooms.

  At parties, I heard, Hitler would come in and introduce her with a curt but proud “My niece, Fräulein Raubal.”

  Emil still drove them out of the city for picnics and other outings, and I detected grumbling among some party leaders that Hitler was spending too much time and party funds squiring her around. I passed on this gossip to Otto, who assured me I was providing valuable information. I didn’t feel any of his satisfaction about such news, only a growing sense that I must have been an idiot to imagine Geli could have been interested in me. She was floating in a different world.