Page 25

THE FÜHRER DREW A deep breath and put a shaky hand against the wall. He looked through the glass partition into the room. “Promise me again, Rudolf,” he whispered. “I don’t want to see that part. I can’t see it.”

“They’ve already performed the necessary incisions, mein Führer.” Hess stood close to Hitler but did not touch him. “They’ve assured me.”

“All right,” he said to Hess. “I only care about two things.”

“Yes, mein Führer.” Hess knocked on the glass wall. In the adjoining room, two doctors in scrubs and masks nodded back. They turned to the body and pulled back the sheet. They removed their instruments and began work on Geli Raubal’s body.

Hitler immediately broke into a sweat, though the room in which they sat was quite cool. His knees buckled. Hess reached for him, but Hitler maintained his balance.

“Perhaps we should sit, mein Führer?”

“No,” Hitler whispered. “I must see this.”

In reality, there was little to see. At Hess’s insistence, the doctors had their backs to the glass partition, so to the extent the surgeons were required to navigate their instruments through Geli’s organs, the Führer would not see it.

“Oh, mein prinzesschen!” Hitler suddenly wailed. “Why did you make me do this? Why?” He pounded his fists on the glass. The surgeons turned at the sound, but Hess waved them off.

“This was not your fault, mein Führer. I am so sorry. Come, let us sit.”

Hitler relented, dropping into a chair, his head in his hands, trembling and sobbing uncontrollably.

Hess stood next to Hitler, a hand on his shoulder. It was out of the ordinary to casually touch the Führer, but this situation was out of the ordinary.

After a very long ten minutes, the principal surgeon turned and nodded to Hess.

“Mein Führer, I will be back in a moment.”

Hess left the room and met the surgeon, a tall, bearded fellow with thick glasses, in the adjoining quarters. The surgeon handed Hess a small container that housed the bullet taken from Geli’s body. “It was lodged in her lung,” he told Hess.

“Very good.” Not that Hess cared, but the Führer might. For some reason he didn’t explain—the Führer never had to explain himself to anyone—he wanted the bullet removed from Geli’s body before burial.

“And the question?” Hess asked, steeling himself.

“The answer to the question is yes,” said the surgeon.

When Hess reentered the room, the Führer looked up at him, broken and despondent, his eyes bloodshot and deep-set, his face washed out.

“For you, mein Führer.” He placed the container into Hitler’s outstretched hand.

“And?” Hitler asked.

Hess nodded. “It is confirmed, mein Führer,” he said. “She was pregnant.”

14

September 23, 1931

Zentralfriedhof (Vienna Central Cemetery)

THE DRIVE HAD BEGUN at three in the morning under the cover of darkness. Joseph Goebbels sat silently in the back cabin of the Mercedes with the Führer and Rudolf Hess. They had decided that Heinrich Himmler would stay behind if any further exertions of influence were necessary, and Martin Bormann would maintain contact with the Justice Ministry.

A heavy sorrow continued to engulf Adolf Hitler, his eyes frequently downcast or shut entirely, his movements tentative. Though he had begun to rebound and regain his old form, his mood swung wildly; he would still revert to the abject torment that plagued him immediately after Geli’s death.

Goebbels watched him carefully, if circumspectly. He’d never known the depths of Hitler’s relationship with Geli. There were rumors, of course. And there was no doubt that Hitler had been entranced with his niece, and deeply, jealously possessive of her. Yet he had routinely renounced the notion of marriage—his only bride, he often said, was Germany.

“Rudolf,” said Hitler now, his head rising from his hands, “tell the staff at Prinzregentenplatz that the door to her room shall be locked. No one shall enter but Frau Winter, who shall place fresh flowers in the vase by her bed every day. Otherwise, the room shall not be changed.”

“Yes, mein Führer.”