19
Munich beer hall
“YOU HAVE TEN MINUTES. I have somewhere to be.” In a corner booth inside the beer hall down the street from where he encountered Fritz Gerlich, Thomas Bauer raised his pint and took a sip of foamy lager.
The restaurant, all paneled wood with framed political cartoons on the walls, was packed, boisterous, even rowdy, but that was fine with Bauer; less chance that they would be overheard.
Gerlich was a nervous sort, fidgety and agitated. He kept adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses, playing with his bow tie, and pushing around his glass of juice (he did not drink alcohol). “You don’t think Geli committed suicide,” he said.
“Let’s say I don’t.”
“Do you know he’s done something like this before?”
“Hitler, you mean. What has he done before?”
“He was with another underage girl. About the same age as Geli was when he started up with her. Geli was twenty-three when she died, but she was a teen when it started.”
Bauer’s eyes moved around the room, just to ensure they weren’t attracting attention. “I’m listening,” he said.
“Maria Reiter. Mimi, they called her. Mimi Reiter. He started up with her when he was thirty-seven and she was sixteen. She ended up trying to commit suicide.”
“Trying?”
“She tried to hang herself. Her brother found her and saved her. But look at this pattern. Mimi had no father to speak of. Not one she loved, at least; she said he was terrible to her. Just like Geli never had a father. He died when she was a toddler.”
Bauer leaned back against the booth. “So he was like a father to them?”
“Exactly. He was twenty-one years older than Mimi, and nineteen years older than Geli. He manipulates them. He dominates them. He uses them. The only difference is that Mimi tried to kill herself. I think Geli fought back.”
Bauer thought so, too, based on the crime scene. The broken mirror, Geli’s broken nose. A struggle of some kind had occurred.
“This man is a sexual deviant.” Gerlich drilled a finger into the table. “He’s a sick, twisted man. He’s a deceitful con artist who has no ideology other than power lust and sadism.”
“Other than that, how do you feel about him?” Bauer joked.
“I know this man,” Gerlich snarled. “I’ve known him since he was hustling around the back rooms of Munich beer halls ten years ago, talking to ten drunks at a time, spewing his anti-Semitic hate.
I watched him grow in popularity, appealing to the lowest instincts of nationalism and bigotry.
I’ve watched him galvanize crowds of hundreds and thousands and take over the National Socialist Party.
I’ve seen him look men in the eye and lie to them, betray them. I was there firsthand for the putsch.”
The Beer Hall Putsch, he meant. Adolf Hitler’s earlier attempt to seize power in 1923 by using the National Socialists’ paramilitary troops, the Sturmabteilung (Storm Division) or SA, to capture Bavaria’s Commissioner General Gustav von Kahr and compel his allegiance at gunpoint.
The coup failed when von Kahr and others managed to alert the Bavarian army, which crushed the rebellion in a shootout on the street. Hitler had narrowly survived.
“You were at the Bürgerbr?ukeller when it happened?” Bauer asked.
Gerlich nodded. “I was there. And I was present a week earlier when Hitler pledged his allegiance to von Kahr personally.”
“Damn.”
“And I was there, Inspector, at Hitler’s trial for treason.
I watched him give speech after speech to a crowd of roaring spectators in the courtroom.
Even one of the judges was smiling at him by the end.
They sentenced him to five years but gave him probation after nine months.
Nine months! Nine months for staging a coup against the government. ” Gerlich waved a hand.
“I remember.”
“He even managed to grow in popularity while in Landsberg Prison,” Gerlich went on.
“They put him in a suite nicer than most bedrooms. He dictated Mein Kampf to his cellmate and lackey, Rudolf Hess. And he plotted his comeback. He strategized. He got smarter, Bauer.” Gerlich put his index finger to his temple.
“He adapted. He realized that violent overthrow wasn’t the way.
The way was political. To win elections.
Did you see how well the Nazis did in the last parliamentary election? ”
“I did.”
“He’ll be our next reichspr?sident,” said Gerlich. “You mark my words. By pure force of will, he will win. And then there will be no stopping him. He will indoctrinate the nation with his hatred and plunge us into war, internally and externally.”
Bauer held much the same opinion, but hearing someone else say it aloud was validating. He’d spent the better part of the last week trying to pry information from witnesses who were either unwilling or afraid to stand up to Hitler.
Bauer took another sip of his beer and glanced around the room again, checking if anyone was paying them particular attention. “Four newspaper offices were ransacked and torched in the last forty-eight hours,” he said. “If you’re such a crusading journalist, why were you spared?”
“I don’t know how spared I was,” said Gerlich. “I received a visit from Himmler. He fired a bullet about an inch over my head. His storm troopers ransacked my pressroom.”
“He didn’t torch it, though?”
Gerlich chewed on his lip. “The newspapers they attacked were of smaller circulation. It was a warning to the rest of us. But they’ve threatened my publisher already.
I’m getting pressure to cut back on my ‘anti-Hitler bias.’ I am now required, for the first time, to run my editorials past my publisher. ”
“Sorry for your troubles.”
“Well, it won’t be for long, Inspector. I’m going to start a new periodical. I’m calling it Der Gerade Weg.”
“The Straight Path?”
“Yes. And then I will be free to say whatever I want to say. It’s the only thing I know to do, Bauer—shine as much of a spotlight on Hitler as I can before it’s too late.”
Bauer wondered—was Gerlich the real deal? Was this bow-tied, spectacled intellectual really going to stand up to the thuggish Nazis?
Bauer checked his watch. He had to leave. “Look, Gerlich, do you have any proof that Hitler killed Geli?”
Gerlich’s expression dropped. “I’m working on a source. I’m doing what I can. When I know more, you’ll know more. But that’s not the important question.”
“No? What is?”
“The important question is, what are you going to do with the information, Bauer? The case has been closed. Your boss has warned you off the case. That hamster of a justice minister will never sign off on an arrest, much less a prosecution. So what is a mid-level cop like you going to do?”
Bauer moved out of his seat and stood, buttoning his coat. He leaned into Gerlich. “Whatever it takes,” he said. “I will do whatever it takes.”