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September 18, 1931

The Franz Kabarett

Munich

THE FRANZ KABARETT NEAR the city center was a vision in gold, from its wallpaper to the lanterns that hung from the ceiling to the gilded bar in the corner serving every possible liqueur. Seats rose on platforms two stories high, with gold chairs arched around each table, while high-tops with white linen tablecloths dotted the main floor around the stage. Onstage, a small jazz band belted out “Ich bine die fesche Lola” as tobacco smoke rose to the ceiling painted in hues of gold and green, a glittering mural of dragons and other creatures. It was a place to escape reality, at a time when people were looking to do so.

Humiliated in defeat just over a decade earlier, the German people as a whole felt saddled by the reparations demands made by the victorious Allies in the Treaty of Versailles, humbled by the crushing worldwide economic depression, and altogether skeptical of the fledgling post–Great War democracy that had thrust austerity programs upon its citizens. The people wanted new. They wanted better. They wanted something—anything—different.

No political party understood the nation’s mood better than the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or NSDAP. Known in English as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or—by the critics who derided them and the intellectuals who dismissed them as unserious, opportunistic, bigoted hacks—as the Nazis.

The Nazis had stunned all political observers and captured the second-highest number of seats in last year’s national legislative elections. Their leader was a man who knew how to appeal to their particularized interests. He seemed able to quench the thirst of whatever group he addressed, to touch the masses with speeches so electrifying and intimate as to border on the erotic. A man who was addressed not by name but only by title: the Führer.

“He’s here. That’s his car!”

Over the clamor of chatty merriment and jazz music inside the club, Rudolf Hess, a square-jawed and handsome man in a gray double-breasted horsehair suit, clutched the arm of the club’s owner as they looked through the window onto the street, the black Mercedes limousine pulling up to the curb. “I must confirm once more the details of the show tonight. There will be no political humor?”

“None,” said the owner, Walter Kubizek. “I screened the content of every performer, as you asked.”

“Will there be nudity of any kind or sexually suggestive dance?”

“No—”

“And nothing…” The man lowered his head and his voice. “Nothing portraying homosexuality, I trust.”

“No, Herr Hess,” Kubizek sighed. The cabaret, known for its hedonistic nightly revue of burlesque dancers, sexually liberated performances, and political humor aimed in all directions—including at the Führer—had drastically toned down its show that night in anticipation of its guest of honor, Adolf Hitler.

Joining Rudolf Hess, the Führer’s personal secretary and adjutant, were the rest of the inner circle of NSDAP. Hermann Göring, the portly war hero, stood alongside his sickly wife, Carin, the Swedish baroness. Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS, NSDAP’s security unit, stood next to Bunny, his mistress and personal assistant. Then there was Joseph Goebbels, the only one nearly the Führer’s equal in understanding the power of propaganda—a good man, the Führer believed, so much so that he was willing to overlook Goebbels’s deformed foot and unsightly limp. With him was his fiancée, Magda Quandt.

Goebbels crushed his cigarette in an ashtray and handed it to a waiter. Der Führer was vehemently opposed to tobacco, having dropped the habit years earlier.

“Oh, one moment, my dear,” Hess said to his wife, Ilse. He rushed back to the club owner and whispered in his ear. “There are no Jews in attendance, I hope?”

“This I could not say, Herr Hess.” Kubizek’s eyebrows rose. “I can think of no reason why I would bother to ask such a thing.”

Hess, displeased, straightened his tie and patted down his suit coat. “I assured him this cabaret would be tasteful.”

“I’m surprised he’d want to come at all, Herr Hess.”

“He didn’t.” The hint of a frown appeared on Hess’s lips. “She did.”

The chauffeur opened the rear door of the limousine. Out stepped the Führer, wearing a black trench coat, his hair slicked and sharply parted as always.

Hitler stood at attention a moment, looking over the Franz Kabarett before he put out his hand for the woman accompanying him. She took it with her delicate, manicured fingers and emerged from the Mercedes.

As the couple entered the cabaret, the bustle and gaiety inside ceased with the suddenness of a gramophone needle screeching off a record.

“Heil, mein Führer!” Hitler’s trusted lieutenants and their women extended their right arms at forty-five-degree angles in the familiar (and among party members, mandatory) salute. Other patrons quickly followed suit, heels clacked together and arms thrust outward. The room was split in that way, roughly two-thirds of the people on their feet in salute, the others looking at the man with the truncated mustache whom they’d heard so much about during the last elections. Some were energized by the charisma of the movement, others suspicious and wary, but all agreed that this man was a force.

While the jazz band played onstage before the festivities were to begin, the Führer worked the room. He wore a black tailcoat and waistcoat, cut in Bavarian provincial fashion, with the Iron Cross First Class on his lapel and his ever-present riding whip on his side. He shook hands and waved, spoke briefly to patrons congregating around him, smiled and even laughed. He was, in this way, a politician like none Germany had ever known. No politician had ever tried to charm them before.

Upon his release from prison six years ago after the unsuccessful coup attempt, Adolf Hitler had started building a coalition of followers—town by town, beer hall by beer hall, speech by speech—claiming to feel their pain and share their outrage, and pinning all the blame for the loss of the war and the decrepit state of the democracy at the feet of two groups: the Communists and the Jews.

But if the Führer held the room’s respect and curiosity, nearly all the attention was devoted to the young lady who had entered on his arm, with her expressive eyes and wide smile. She wore a sleeveless blue silk dress with a low-cut tight bodice, and a form-fitting skirt that complemented her curves.

Twenty-three-year-old Angela Raubal, called Geli, was the Führer’s niece—more accurately his half niece, daughter of his half sister.