Epilogue
Present Day
Washington, DC
Undisclosed location, FBI protective custody
I SEE HER. FOR the first time, in this dark room, a beam of light projecting onto a screen, the flickering of the projector behind me, I see Geli Raubal in motion, not in a still photo. However grainy and choppy the black-and-white footage may be, she is real to me now in a way she was not before.
She looks younger than her age. I would swear she was a teenager. But even a historian can do simple math. Geli Raubal was born in June 1908, and her uncle did not move into his flat in Prinzregentenplatz until 1929.
So by the time this reel of film was shot, from a camera perched in the corner of her bedroom in Prinzregentenplatz 16, Geli was at least twenty. Technically an adult, though still so young. Almost the same age as my daughter Annabelle.
On the screen, Geli’s moves are tentative, though it’s clear she has done this before. She is naked, her hands cupped over her breasts, as she enters her bedroom. Does she know there’s a camera recording her? She must. Cameras were not easily hidden at the time.
Her Uncle Wolf, the fortysomething future despot, is seen wearing only his underwear, lying on some kind of tarp spread neatly over the bedroom floor near the bed.
Something inside me snaps. I instinctually avert my eye—my one good eye—though I know that I must watch this at least once. The historian in me must see this in full, at least a single time, to verify that it is what I think it is.
So I force myself to watch as Geli moves reluctantly toward her uncle, stepping onto the mat, straddling him. I watch her uncle speak to her, direct her movements. Complete control, utter domination, is part of the fantasy, I guess.
I watch her slowly squat down over him.
I watch it all. I watch his reaction, too, the reaction of this predator twice her age and just years away from becoming Germany’s dictator.
Even in the grainy black-and-white footage, it’s clear that only one of these two people experiences any pleasure whatsoever.
The angles, the positioning of the camera, clearly capture the faces of both uncle and niece throughout this depraved act.
From a director’s perspective, the choreography is perfect.
From a historian’s perspective, one could not ask for clearer proof of identity.
But to the predator, of course, his only intent was capturing the best view possible for when he replayed it over and over again for his sick pleasure.
When Geli has completed her act, and her uncle has completed his, she stands and walks lifelessly toward the camera.
As she approaches, coming more into focus than ever, the expression on her cherubic face says it all, the downward cast of her eyes, the snarl of her mouth, trying to suppress her emotions.
She is disgusted, yes, but more than that.
She is defeated. She is lost. She is a prisoner.
The screen goes black. Geli has turned off the camera.
“You poor, poor girl.” I release a long-held breath, feel the adrenaline drain from me, wipe a tear from my eye. The entire episode of sexual depravity—undinism, the technical term—spanned mere minutes.
But then, to my surprise, the screen comes alive again.
The same scene: Geli’s bedroom once more, the same tarp beneath Adolf Hitler, the identical choreography.
But minor differences. The pillows on Geli’s bed displayed differently.
The chair pushed into her vanity is slightly askew.
The makeup arranged differently on the vanity.
Why not, from the predator’s perspective? Why not film multiple episodes for variety’s sake?
Three consecutive episodes, as it happens, each roughly the same four-minute duration. Uncle Wolf kept a tight schedule and tight control of the stage movements. Geli did precisely as she was told.
I pray there won’t be a fourth episode. The historian always wants more, more, more. More evidence. More data. More proof. But I don’t think I can bear to watch.
Be done, I silently beseech the reel of film. No more.
But there is more. The screen flickers alive once again. But this time, it is different. Uncle and niece, alone in Geli’s bedroom, yes, but otherwise different.
This time, they’re fully dressed. Hitler in a formal tailcoat. Geli in a sleeveless silk evening dress.
I pop out of my chair, my heart racing.
That’s the dress, according to both Thomas Bauer’s and Peter Helldorff’s journals, that Geli was wearing when she was found dead.
What I am watching is the night she died.
Hitler, not Geli, is standing close to the camera, meaning he, not Geli, must have turned it on. There’s only one reason, apparently, that he ever turned it on; he is demanding the same sexual act. But this time, Geli is defying him.
She is, in fact, packing, removing clothes from her dresser and throwing them in a suitcase lying on her bed.
Hitler’s back is largely to the camera, Geli generally faces it.
What I wouldn’t give to have audio, but the body language and facial expressions leave no doubt they’re arguing, most likely about Geli leaving.
And based on the amount of clothes she stuffs into the suitcase, probably leaving for good.
I watch it unfold, hands on my face, heartbeat banging against my chest.
She buckles the suitcase and faces her uncle, faces the camera, standing tall, chin high, as if summoning the courage to stand up for herself.
Whatever words she’s using, she is clearly telling her uncle in one way or the other that it’s over, that she’s leaving, that she will no longer be captive to his obsessive and predatory behavior.
I groan as Hitler removes his tailcoat, as if bracing for action.
I jump as his fist flies forward, striking Geli, knocking her against the vanity, spilling bottles, causing the mirror to crash onto the dressing table.
I brace myself as she defiantly rises to confront her captor, and Hitler rushes her once more, grabbing her shoulders.
“Oh, my God,” I whisper, when he steps slightly back, allowing the camera to capture the fact that Geli managed to slyly disarm her uncle and is now pointing his gun at him.
Shoot him, my dear, shoot him, I think. Which of course is foolish, as I already know how this scene will end.
For just as Thomas Bauer could not shoot Hitler in cold blood in the Brown House, long before he became chancellor, just as Erich von der Haas, aiming a firearm at the man responsible for his family’s death, could not pull the trigger on April 30, 1945—Geli cannot bring herself to discharge the weapon.
I drop back into my chair in resignation as Hitler quickly and decisively grabs the gun back, they argue more, Geli appears to plead with him—and then he shoots her, just above the line of her low-cut dress.
Hitler remains frozen as he watches Geli collapse, struggling for her last breaths, and ultimately go still. Only then does he lower the gun.
“You were right, Thomas,” I whisper in a shaky voice. “Everything you thought was right.” Adolf Hitler killed his half niece, and the Nazi sympathizers in law enforcement covered it up.
Detective Inspector Thomas Bauer was right.
He never doubted it, not during his investigation, not while he spent all those years fighting the Nazi war machine, and not during the forty-five years he later spent in the United States, living outside Chicago with his wife, Amalie, after he and Erich von der Haas escaped Berlin in that tiny Storch plane.
Soon, the world will know. Tomorrow I will meet with a team of experts from the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Film Preservation Board, and the FBI. They will authenticate the film reel, no doubt.
With that official confirmation, then, finally, the whole world will know what Hitler did to his half niece, and how everything that happened thereafter could have been prevented, if honest people had been allowed to simply do their jobs.