Read Online Hitler's Niece by Ron Hansen - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Ron Hansen
Tags: Biographical fiction, Fiction, Literary, General, Reading Group Guide, Historical, Historical - General, Fiction - Historical, Mystery & Detective, History, Family, Germany, Europe, hitler, Adolf, 1918-1933, Germany - History - 1918-1933, 1889-1945, Adolf - Family, Raubal, 1908-1931, Geli
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the hostel, so we have it better than most.”
“We have lost a war,” he somberly said, “and the world won’t let us forget it.” Then his gaze shifted farther down the hallway, and Angela saw that he was smiling at Geli.
She’d been studying geometry on the floor of the bedroom that Angela shared with Paula, but she’d been so intrigued by the American accent she’d heard that she’d hastily fussed with her hair and changed into her finest gray wool skirt and the pink angora sweater that Angela thought was too formfitting for a girl of fifteen. And then she’d sashayed out to find in the foyer a homely but jolly man with a jutting jaw and underbite, fully six feet four in height, in a chalk-gray English suit and black cashmere topcoat, a gray fedora in one huge hand, his brown hair oiled slick and middle-parted and still grooved by his hat.
“And you must be Angelika,” he said. “Aren’t you pretty!”
“My friends call me Geli.”
She felt her hand lose itself in his as he introduced himself first as Herr Ernst Sedgwick Hanfstaengl, and then as his friends and family knew him: Putzi, a childhood nickname that meant Cutie. “Say it, please.”
“Putzi.”
“And so we are done with formalities,” he said, and offered Geli’s hand back to her.
Angela held up the gift box and said, “Look, Geli, chocolates!” And then she shouted to the kitchen, “Paula, won’t you have some?”
“Hah!” Paula said.
Putzi Hanfstaengl’s hand found Geli’s forearm as he tilted toward Angela to offer, “You know what I would like to do, Frau Raubal? Rather than have coffee with you here, I’d far rather take your family out.”
Leo Raubal was still at his high school, where he assisted the night janitor, and The Straggler preferred to stroll Stadtpark as she always did, one hand in a sack of crushed zwieback toast, hunting in vain for pigeons to feed. So only Angela and Geli went with Hanfstaengl to the swank Café Sacher for mocha mit Obers and their famous Sacher torte.
Riding there in a taxi he cordially lectured Angela on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , a little pamphlet that Adolf insisted she read in order to understand fully who the party’s archenemy was. With an intensity she associated with high school acting, Putzi informed Angela that the Jewish Nationalist Movement of the Zionists had been founded at a congress in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897. Ostensibly their intention was to lead the Jews back to a homeland in Palestine, he told her, but in their secret sessions the Zionist elders had been hatching a heinous plan for a Jewish conquest of the world. Each of their speeches had been recorded in shorthand and the collected papers had been sent by courier to Frankfurt am Main where they were to be stored in the archives of the Rising Sun Lodge of Freemasons. Czarist secret police had somehow intercepted them, however, and the pamphlet had been published in Russian just before the revolution. It was then that Alfred Rosenberg, a Baltic architect who was often called “Hitler’s co-thinker,” had fled to München and, fearing that a Jewish conquest was already well under way, had joined the National Socialists, for whom he had translated the text into German. The famous automaker Henry Ford had been so shocked by the protocols that he’d had them published in America under the title The International Jew .
“And what do they say?” Putzi rhetorically asked. “‘We’—the Jews—‘shall create unrest, struggle, and hate in all of Europe and thence to the other continents. We shall poison the relations between peoples by spreading hunger, destitution, and plagues. We shall stultify, seduce, and ruin the youth. We shall use bribery, treachery, and treason as long as they serve the realization of our plans. We shall paint the misdeeds of foreign governments in garish colors and create such ill-feeling toward them that the people would a thousand times rather bear a slavery that
“We have lost a war,” he somberly said, “and the world won’t let us forget it.” Then his gaze shifted farther down the hallway, and Angela saw that he was smiling at Geli.
She’d been studying geometry on the floor of the bedroom that Angela shared with Paula, but she’d been so intrigued by the American accent she’d heard that she’d hastily fussed with her hair and changed into her finest gray wool skirt and the pink angora sweater that Angela thought was too formfitting for a girl of fifteen. And then she’d sashayed out to find in the foyer a homely but jolly man with a jutting jaw and underbite, fully six feet four in height, in a chalk-gray English suit and black cashmere topcoat, a gray fedora in one huge hand, his brown hair oiled slick and middle-parted and still grooved by his hat.
“And you must be Angelika,” he said. “Aren’t you pretty!”
“My friends call me Geli.”
She felt her hand lose itself in his as he introduced himself first as Herr Ernst Sedgwick Hanfstaengl, and then as his friends and family knew him: Putzi, a childhood nickname that meant Cutie. “Say it, please.”
“Putzi.”
“And so we are done with formalities,” he said, and offered Geli’s hand back to her.
Angela held up the gift box and said, “Look, Geli, chocolates!” And then she shouted to the kitchen, “Paula, won’t you have some?”
“Hah!” Paula said.
Putzi Hanfstaengl’s hand found Geli’s forearm as he tilted toward Angela to offer, “You know what I would like to do, Frau Raubal? Rather than have coffee with you here, I’d far rather take your family out.”
Leo Raubal was still at his high school, where he assisted the night janitor, and The Straggler preferred to stroll Stadtpark as she always did, one hand in a sack of crushed zwieback toast, hunting in vain for pigeons to feed. So only Angela and Geli went with Hanfstaengl to the swank Café Sacher for mocha mit Obers and their famous Sacher torte.
Riding there in a taxi he cordially lectured Angela on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , a little pamphlet that Adolf insisted she read in order to understand fully who the party’s archenemy was. With an intensity she associated with high school acting, Putzi informed Angela that the Jewish Nationalist Movement of the Zionists had been founded at a congress in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897. Ostensibly their intention was to lead the Jews back to a homeland in Palestine, he told her, but in their secret sessions the Zionist elders had been hatching a heinous plan for a Jewish conquest of the world. Each of their speeches had been recorded in shorthand and the collected papers had been sent by courier to Frankfurt am Main where they were to be stored in the archives of the Rising Sun Lodge of Freemasons. Czarist secret police had somehow intercepted them, however, and the pamphlet had been published in Russian just before the revolution. It was then that Alfred Rosenberg, a Baltic architect who was often called “Hitler’s co-thinker,” had fled to München and, fearing that a Jewish conquest was already well under way, had joined the National Socialists, for whom he had translated the text into German. The famous automaker Henry Ford had been so shocked by the protocols that he’d had them published in America under the title The International Jew .
“And what do they say?” Putzi rhetorically asked. “‘We’—the Jews—‘shall create unrest, struggle, and hate in all of Europe and thence to the other continents. We shall poison the relations between peoples by spreading hunger, destitution, and plagues. We shall stultify, seduce, and ruin the youth. We shall use bribery, treachery, and treason as long as they serve the realization of our plans. We shall paint the misdeeds of foreign governments in garish colors and create such ill-feeling toward them that the people would a thousand times rather bear a slavery that
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