German Leadership

Angela "Geli" Raubal - Fuhrer's sweetheart ...

Heinrich Hoffmann.

Heinrich Hoffmann - Hitler's favourite photographer (and Eva Braun's boss) deploys his considerable photographic skills to record the charms of Geli Raubal, Adolf Hitler's niece (through a half-sister, Angela Raubal), in this impressive studio portrait, late 1920s. Geli's story is not a happy one. Little enough is known about her character - although she does seem to have been an intelligent and bright, if impressionable, young woman. Her early life was conventional enough, notwithstanding the fact that her father died when she was just two years old. This changed when her mother became Hitler's housekeeper, first in Munich and later at the Berghof. The future Fuhrer took a shine to her - to say the least. In 1929, at the significant age of 21, she moved into Hitler's private town residence at Munich. If they were not already involved in a sexual relationship by then, they certainly were from then on. Hitler probably had intimate relationships with four or five women in the course of his life, and these relationships were invariably characterized by highly controlling behavior on his part. Geli's case was certainly no exception. The "respectable" pretext for her move in with "Uncle Adolf" in Munich may have been her enrollment in the University to study medicine - this did not proceed very far. In fact, Geli suffered something close to house arrest in the Munich residence, a circumstance that made her increasingly unhappy. A ray of hope and consolation came into her life when she formed a romantic attachment with Emil Maurice, one of Hitler's driver/bodyguards (the man who ultimately thought up the SS, and became SS #2). They seem to have intended marriage. It appears that Maurice, incautiously, broached this possibility with Hitler, who would hear nothing of it (to put it mildly). He (temporarily) dismissed Maurice, and restricted Geli's freedom more than ever before. Geli continued to contemplate schemes for "escape" and marriage away from her uncle. These appear to have been at the basis of a vigorous argument between the pair on 18 September, 1931, in which Hitler refused her permission to return to live at Linz (her native city) with her family. Following his subsequent departure on NSDAP business, it would appear that Geli shot herself (somewhat oddly, in the chest - perhaps she intended to hit her heart), and died. The pistol she used was a Walther semi-automatic, owned by Hitler. She was only 23. Since her death, and more so since the fall of the Third Reich, Geli's death has been the subject of much prurient speculation, centering on the nature of the sexual relationship between Hitler and Geli, and on the question of whether she might have been murdered on Hitler's orders. All probably nonsense. While it is true that the Bavarian police and judicial authorities had maintained a consistently benign attitude towards Hitler since the time of his trial in relation to the "Beer Hall Putsch" (he still had very powerful friends in the Bavarian administration), there is no real reason to disbelieve their conclusion that Geli's death was by suicide. Hitler seems to have been, at least briefly, distraught at her death and never forgot her, maintaining her old room at the Berghof unchanged to the end, and keeping photos of her close to hand for the remainder of his life. What Eva thought of all this is not, as far as I know, recorded ... Best regards, JR.