The Vengeance of Rome

Geli Raubal had made her last threat, engineered her last scene, attempted her last blackmail. Someone, either Hitler or a friend, had finished off the ‘yowling alley cat’ at last. The Führer was free.

I hold no brief for murder. There are few excuses for taking another human life. The Lutherans and the Catholics were wholly agreed on that. In times of war or during certain national crises the taking of life could be condoned, said the pastors and the priests. Well, whoever killed Geli Raubal might claim those precise reasons. My own view was that it would not have mattered had she lived or died. The important thing would have been to find any incriminating papers and get rid of them. Her word was worthless without some kind of proof.

Had someone shot her while trying to find those pictures? I knew Röhm would probably enlighten me to a degree. He might even know whether Hitler himself had done it or not. If Hitler had killed her, it had probably been an accident. I felt rather sorry for her. She had seemed an ordinary, silly Bavarian Mädchen. As Mrs Cornelius’s youngest son Frank said the other day, she must have felt like Lois Lane being fucked by Superman! The reality was a little bit more than she bargained for. A superhuman, after all, has superhuman needs. This must have seemed very bizarre to a typical little girl from the country! The two of them could never have known anything close to ordinary life. She was, after all, also his niece. The whole thing was perverse, why so many of Hitler’s people had begged him to give her up. They saw nothing but disaster in the situation. One way or another she would not have lasted.

I remember hoping that Hitler’s political ambitions would not be threatened by any scandal. I did not think it his fault, after all, that the strain of being the mistress of a great politician had told on the weaker type of girl.

Since Röhm had arranged to pick me up there, I went down to the Bratwurstglockl where I expected to find an acquaintance who knew me from the villa. Becker was already installed at a table with some of his Hitler Youth chums. The place was alive with gossip. Everyone had their stories to add. The details were often incredibly gory and related with great relish! Eventually I pieced together the account which Hess gave me later. Hess apparently believed that after one of her canaries had died, Geli had quarrelled with her ‘Uncle Alf’. She still wanted Hitler to let her go to Vienna to become an opera singer. Suspecting she intended to keep a liaison, Hitler refused. Geli had threatened to ‘talk to the papers’, let some of his ‘big friends’ in on a few of their secrets. With harsh humour he had reminded her of the fate of Mata Hari. He was busy with intense cattle-trading politics in Berlin. They were on the brink of victory, with a real presence in the Reichstag, backed by an SA now larger than the regular army. Later he would discuss the matter reasonably. For now she must be patient. A subsequent screaming match had aroused the entire apartment house. Witnesses were clear from her urgency that she had another agenda. She planned to embarrass him so badly he would give in. Hess believed she had an arrangement with some SS man she knew, the mysterious Zeiss. She, of course, had denied this. A car called for Hitler. Her uncle had meetings of the deepest importance and secrecy. He left. As he got into his car, she appeared on the balcony. ‘Won’t you let me go to Vienna?’ she cried, for all the world to hear. He answered abruptly, and the car drove away.

The next morning the housekeeper found her in her bedroom. She had been shot through the heart with Hitler’s Walther PPK 38. The gun was near her hand, suggesting suicide. She had been beaten. Her mother’s first thought was that Geli had been murdered by Himmler. She called Hess who had good connections with the Munich police. He arranged for an inconspicuous investigation, a verdict of suicide. Geli had been a good Catholic. No note was found.

‘The strange thing was,’ said Röhm as we drove back to the villa, ‘that all that day she’d been carrying Kutzi around. Like a sort of warning — like fate. Don’t you find that a bit spooky, Mashi? A dead canary? The bird was still there when she died.’

Of course, he said, he had not intended to kill her. She was still hysterical when he arrived. He thought she might have been expecting someone else. They both knew Hitler would not be back. He had gone there to warn her off and collect any letters and other material she might be hiding.

‘I tried to calm her down. She’d go quiet and then start screaming again, and I’d have to slap her. Oh, you know. She was like a mad animal. She never had much reason to begin with. She wouldn’t tell me where the stuff was, so I started looking for myself. I was pissed off with her, I’ll admit.’

While he was looking through her purse for her keys, she had threatened him with Hitler’s automatic.

‘She didn’t even know about the thumb safety,’ said Röhm. ‘You can’t pull the trigger without pressing down the safety at the same time. I took it away from her. I told her she was in a game whose stakes were far too high for her. She should go back to Obersalzberg or wherever she’s from. She was dragging the Chief down. I don’t know. She got hysterical again, and she got shot. She’d made me so jumpy. My own nerves were on edge. I’m not a bastard. I don’t go around killing civilians. I only meant to warn her off. But at least it’s over now, and Hitler can get on with his work.