Last Stop Vienna

by Andrew Nagorski

  It was many months after my visit to Geli in Munich. Curiously enough, it was a visit that had ended in my reconciliation with Sabine, just as Otto had expected it would. After I had left the Thierschstrasse apartment, I realized that I didn’t have the strength to catch a train back to Berlin. And I didn’t have any place to stay in Munich. I ended up in front of Sabine’s building, the building I had called home for so long. I stared at it and then marched up the stairs without any consideration to what I would say or do if she was at home. Or what I would do if she wasn’t, since I hadn’t thought to bring my key with me.

  But she opened the door after my first knock, and we stood facing each other, neither of us knowing what to do. Luckily, Leo didn’t have any of our inhibitions, and he jumped all over me, keeping me busy petting him as his tail excitedly swished back and forth. “Come in, Karl,” she said finally.

  I can’t say what she must have been feeling then, nor did I particularly try to figure it out. My thoughts were still back there on Thierschstrasse.

  “You look pale and tired,” she said, examining my face. “Have you had anything to eat?”

  I shook my head.

  She had been frying potato pancakes and, within a few minutes, put them on a plate in front of me.

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “I’m not hungry—I ate something earlier.”

  I knew she was lying, but I didn’t protest. I was suddenly ravenous and quickly dispatched the potato pancakes.

  “Feel better?”

  I nodded. “Thanks, I guess I was hungry.”

  Her lips turned up in a smile, but her eyes still looked at me sadly. There was something so tender, so gentle in her face, something so vulnerable in the way she sat across the small table from me, something so familiar and comfortable in the drab confines of the apartment that I found myself reaching my hand out to grasp hers.

  I don’t remember what I said to her then, how I explained myself or my behavior. There must have been an apology somewhere, probably a bumbling one, but something in it touched her, sweeping away the barriers that had grown up between us. All I recall from that point on is a sense of relief as I settled into her arms, and then how flustered I became when nothing happened, how I tried to explain to her that I was exhausted and how she reassured me that there was nothing to explain and nothing to worry about. During the early morning hours, I awoke aroused and ready, and she straddled me as she had done the very first time, simultaneously weeping and laughing, and all I could think was why had we been apart for so long. I told myself that Geli was the past, and Sabine was both a longer part of my past and my present and future.

  It was truly amazing, the trust Sabine could still have in me. Within a couple of weeks, she gave up the apartment in Munich, quit her job in the doctor’s office—an almost insane decision, it seemed, at a time when unemployment was huge and still rising—and joined me in the tiny one-room quarters that Otto had arranged for me in Berlin. She brushed aside my apologies about the meager living conditions. “It’ll be better later, I’m sure,” she insisted. “What matters now is that we’re together.” She also refused to become discouraged by the lack of jobs, maintaining that doctors always needed nurses. And sure enough, after weeks of searching, she convinced a doctor to hire her, although he paid her less than half of what she had been making in Munich.

  During those early days with Sabine in Berlin, I still dreamed of Geli almost every time we made love—although I tried not to, since now it did make me feel guilty. Sabine was the one who, I’m still not sure why, wanted to be with me, and I told myself that Geli clearly never imagined doing the same, so it made no sense to keep brooding about her. We were poorer than we had been, but Sabine was regaining her old glow, her humor, her self-confidence, and I felt I was back with the woman I had fallen in love with a long time ago. Sometimes I succeeded in banishing Geli from my mind altogether.

  But this period didn’t last. I’m not sure when I sensed the old tensions returning. Maybe it was the night when we treated ourselves to a rare movie, and Sabine suggested we see All Quiet on the Western Front. I knew only that it was about the war, nothing about what kind of a movie it was. When the theater lights went on, I felt confused and angry. This couldn’t have been a true depiction of how my brother fought and died, I told her bitterly. It made the war look senseless, like mindless destruction. Her eyes were still watery as she replied softly: “Isn’t that true of any war?” “No,” I snapped back. “You’ve got it all wrong.”

  As we emerged from the theater, there was shouting and shoving. I couldn’t tell what was happening at first, but then someone beside us muttered, “Those brownshirts again—we’d better get out of here.”

  I saw them up ahead—a group of young men attacking the moviegoers in front of us. I pulled Sabine down as a rock crashed through the window of the theater behind us. I felt her shaking. “Run,” I commanded, yanking her up again and rushing forward. One of the men tried to block our way, but I punched him hard, and he reeled away, providing us with an opening to escape. We ran across the street and down an alleyway, stopping only when we were alone. Sabine was gasping for breath, and I pulled her to me. I could still hear shouting and more crashing of glass. “Thank God you got us out of there,” she said, clinging tightly to me.

  We didn’t speak more about the movie then. We spent that night wrapped in each other’s arms, with Sabine drawing me into her again and again at the least sign of my arousal, even when I could no longer manage any more than a few weak thrusts before slipping out.

  But the movie had restarted some of our old arguments, I realized later. After attacking theaters across the country, the Nazis managed to pressure the government into banning the film altogether, and I found myself in agreement with that decision. “You know I’m not with Hitler anymore, but he’s right about that movie—it’s a disgrace,” I told Sabine.

  “How can you say that? Was it right when they attacked us?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  We couldn’t agree, and it wasn’t only about the movie. Although I had told Sabine I was involved with Otto and his party, she had focused on my break with Hitler. When she began to realize that my life still revolved around politics, she again began to pressure me to do something else.

  “We had these same discussions in Munich.”

  “I know,” she responded. “And I thought you had changed.”

  “I have—I don’t have anything to do with Hitler’s party anymore. I’m no longer a brownshirt, you know that.”

  “Instead you’re fighting them.”

  “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  She shook her head. “I just wanted you out of all this. I just wanted you—and us—to lead a normal life.” I heard the eerie echo of Geli’s words, which only made me more reluctant to heed them.

  Since those discussions went nowhere, we’d both try to change the subject. But Goebbels and his thugs weren’t about to let us forget them. They began hunting Otto’s supporters all over Berlin, and I was attacked on the street—this time taking much more of a beating before I managed to fight my way out. Two other members of the Black Front weren’t so lucky and were beaten unconscious. At a crisis meeting, Otto instructed me and several other well-known members to leave Berlin and scatter for at least a few days to other cities, to drum up support and, above all, to get out of harm’s way. He would use a hiding place in Potsdam, just outside of Berlin, during that time.

  I told Sabine that evening that I had to leave right away, without telling her why. But she didn’t need an explanation: She knew from my bruised face and from seeing me wrap up my Browning. “Karl, think about what you’re doing,” she pleaded. “How long can this go on?”

  I said little beyond a terse good-bye. If I sensed she was right, I wasn’t about to admit it. Besides, I couldn’t disassociate myself from Otto and his party at that point even if I’d wanted to. Our enemies knew who we were.

  —

/>   My destination was Nuremberg. I wasn’t known there, and we had received inquiries from a few men who also were disaffected Nazis. My mission was to contact them and see if they could organize anything on our behalf in a city where we had no real organization yet.

  I knew the route well. It was the same train I had taken several times between Berlin and Munich; I’d just be getting off earlier. But this meant that the train carried passengers to and from Munich, which was why, when I reached down out of boredom for a newspaper that must have been dropped by someone traveling in the other direction, I came up with the Münchener Post. It was a paper I had scorned as a leftist rag that always attacked Hitler, but now that no longer mattered. In fact, I realized, I’d probably agree with most of what they’d have to say about the threat he represented. As far as I was concerned, they didn’t know the half of it, and the saner half at that.

  I almost grinned when I saw what I was holding, thinking about how much my situation had changed. Then a headline stopped me short. A MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR: SUICIDE OF HITLER’S NIECE, it read.

  God no, I thought. No, this can’t be . . . no. In a daze, I began reading:

  In a flat on Prinzregentenplatz, a 23-year-old music student, a niece of Hitler’s, has shot herself. For two years the girl had been living in a furnished room in a flat on the same floor on which Hitler’s flat was situated. What drove the student to kill herself is still unknown. She was Angela Raubal, the daughter of Hitler’s half sister. On Friday September 18 there was once again a violent quarrel between Herr Hitler and his niece. What was the reason? The vivacious 23-year-old music student, Geli, wanted to go to Vienna, she wanted to become engaged. Hitler was strongly opposed to this. The two of them had recurrent disagreements about it. After a violent scene, Hitler left his flat on the second floor of 16 Prinzregentenplatz. On Saturday September 19 it was reported that Fräulein Geli had been found shot in the flat with Hitler’s gun in her hand. The dead woman’s nose was broken, and there were other serious injuries on the body . . .

  My eyes were swimming, and my head was pounding. I couldn’t make out the words for a while, then I reread them. As my mind began to focus, I caught an obvious error. Geli didn’t live in a flat on the same floor as Hitler’s, she lived in the same flat. A small detail, I told myself, but didn’t that mean some of the bigger things were wrong, too, that other things hadn’t been falsified to avoid admitting embarrassing truths? I tried to convince myself that Geli might be alive, but then I had to admit that this wasn’t something even a newspaper that hated Hitler could fake. But what about the suicide—was it suicide? How could they be sure? Where did the broken nose and other injuries come from? Geli had wanted to leave Hitler; had he tried to stop her with force or, realizing he couldn’t keep her prisoner there, killed her himself?

  My first impulse was to stay on the train all the way to Munich, to find out what had happened. And I might have done so if I hadn’t had time to think it over. The pounding in my head gave way to a dull pressure. By the time the train arrived in Nuremberg, I had come up with a better plan. I’d be too easily spotted in Munich, and no telling what would happen then. The war between Hitler and Otto was deadly serious now. So instead, I stuck to my plan to get out in Nuremberg and meet up with the disaffected Nazis who were eager to prove that they could help our cause. I’ll give them a way to prove themselves, I thought, a real-life test right away.

  This was how I ended up sending one of them on that very same day to Munich, explaining that since he wasn’t known there, he could safely carry out the mission. His assignment: to find Emil Maurice, the one person who might know the truth of what had happened, give him a message from me and then await a response. Otto would want to know the truth about Geli as much as I did, I told myself, so I wasn’t acting purely out of selfish interests. Even if my concern was personal.

  The fidgety young man, who hardly inspired confidence, performed better than I expected. The next day he was back, a big smile on his face. “The reply,” he said, saluting and handing over a letter.

  I hastily tore it open and read:

  Tuesday, September 22, 1931

  Dear Karl,

  I know how shaken you must be by the news about Geli. I knew you were taken with her, although I’m not sure how involved you were. If I had my suspicions earlier and resented you at times, I’m way beyond that now. Geli was too much of a free spirit to be satisfied with just one man. Which, I suppose, may have ultimately been the reason she died.

  You ask how she died. I don’t know for sure. As best as I can tell, Hitler really wasn’t there at the time. They quarreled, as the papers reported, and then he left. Or so go both the official and unofficial versions of events circulating here. There are some rumors that she may have been pregnant. I don’t know about that, or who the father would be if that were true. But it is true that she was planning to leave for Vienna, and that she seemed happy about it. She had been writing a letter to a girlfriend about her plans, and the letter was interrupted in midsentence with no sign of trouble. Hitler’s people are spreading the story that she was to have some kind of musical debut as a singer, and that she may have been frightened that she’d fail. But there’s no evidence to support that. And you know Geli—she wasn’t ever serious about any of her studies. I think they’re just trying to cover up the real reasons, whatever they were.

  All I know for sure is that she died from a bullet fired from Hitler’s Walther 6.35, the same one you taught her how to shoot. I also know that there are plans to bury her in Vienna, at the Central Cemetery. Her body was sent to Vienna yesterday, and I believe the funeral will be held soon.

  I wish we had managed to have that beer together before you disappeared. But I understand why you can’t come here now. I’m still safe; none of Hitler’s people will dare touch me. They know I have too much evidence that could be used against him, especially now. But I doubt we’ll ever know exactly what happened to Geli. God rest her soul.

  Yours, Emil

  I read and reread the letter. First I focused on the pregnancy rumor but then dismissed it. She had been happy, writing a letter to a girlfriend, breaking off in midsentence. Someone who is thinking about suicide doesn’t do that, I thought. And the talk about a musical debut was nonsense, as Emil pointed out. They were lying about everything. Hitler was lying.

  I had slumped back against the wall of the room where I had met the messenger-recruit, and I realized that he was still standing there, looking at me strangely. I tried to pull myself together. “Good job,” I said. “You’ve performed your first assignment very well. Now I have to return to Berlin.”

  “Already? I thought you said you’d be here for at least a few days.”

  “This changes everything. It’s important information that our leaders need to have as soon as possible.”

  In reality, I hadn’t decided what to do or where to go at that point. I just needed to get away, to be alone. I also needed to learn more. I wouldn’t be able to do that, hiding in Munich, and it slowly dawned on me that going back to see Otto in Potsdam might be the most promising course of action. After all, Otto and Gregor, although now in opposing camps, were still brothers. I knew they hadn’t cut off all contact with each other. Maybe Otto would know something. But it was too late to catch a train that evening; I had to wait another day.

  It wasn’t until two days later that I reached Otto in our safe house—an attic, really, in a dilapidated house owned by an elderly couple delighted to collect rent and rarely be bothered by tenants.

  “Who is it?” Otto asked gruffly when I knocked.

  He opened the trapdoor of the attic enough for me to see that he was holding a gun. When he saw I was alone, he opened it all the way so I could climb up. “Why are you back so soon?” he demanded.

  I explained what had happened on my trip to Nuremberg, how I had learned about Geli. I showed him the letter from Emil, which he read and handed back to me. “You realize that you’re thinking more about her than abo
ut your instructions? How well did you know her?”

  I didn’t reply, and Otto chose not to press further. “I heard the news, too. It wasn’t just in the Munich papers, although that’s where it got the biggest play.”

  “And what else do you know?” I asked.

  “The same from the papers that you do. I did hear from Gregor, who says it’s true Hitler had left the apartment and was on his way north to start another political speaking tour. When he heard the news, he was in Nuremberg, at the Hotel Deutscher Hof. Hess called him there, but the phone connection was bad, and he wasn’t sure if Geli was alive or dead. Hitler rushed back to Munich, where he was too late to do anything but answer a few questions from the police. And then issue denials to the newspapers that he and Geli had quarreled.”

  “I don’t believe him,” I said stonily.

  “Sure, he’s probably lying. Especially about the quarrel, since his servants even testified about that. But who knows?” Otto shrugged. “At the very least, this should make people think twice about him.”

  “What else do you know?”

  “The funeral has already taken place in Vienna.” He looked at me carefully and appeared to be making up his mind about something before he continued. “I received an interesting tidbit, not from Gregor, mind you. I still have a few other sources in Munich.”