Hitler's Niece

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Fans of Ron Hansen's and Atticus -- as well as aficionados of his less-famous books, The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford and Desperados -- will hardly be surprised that his new novel is a compelling, twisted psychological thriller. A longtime chronicler of the American West, Hansen here breaks new ground in his retelling of a historical mystery from another part of the world: how Adolf Hitler carried on an affair with his 20-something half-niece (his half-sister's daughter) through most of the decade in which he rose to power, and how she died, inexplicably, one morning in his apartment. Out of fascinating, little-known facts, Hansen has again constructed morally complex, sophisticated, and highly readable fiction.

Geli Raubal was, according to Hansen, who explains in his epilogue that he is quoting from history books and memoirs of the principals, the "only woman [Hitler] ever loved." Practically from the time she was a child, she and the Führer-to-be had a special bond; he played with her (in between quizzing her on the facts of his autobiography, which he had given her to read), took care of her, and indulged her. By the time she was a beautiful teenager, she had come to live with Hitler in Berlin, ostensibly as his "ward"; within a few years, she was his regular public companion, attending his speeches and state occasions as he rose through the ranks of German government, his sometimes willing pupil, and his occasional bedmate. Though young and obviously beholden to the uncle who'd lifted her out of poverty, paid for her education, and bought her designer evening gowns, Geli was neither simple nor a pushover; in Hansen's telling, she claimed never to have been "afraid" of him, even when other relatives and government subordinates admitted that they were. She'd talk back to him, roll her eyes at his lectures, and even, occasionally, openly disobey him. Throughout their odd, to put it mildly, arrangement, she also dated other men, at least one of them a chauffeur in Hitler's employ. (During this period, Hitler was also involved with Eva Braun, who is portrayed here as a bubble-headed Hollywood worshiper.) In 1931, Geli died mysteriously of a gunshot wound; rumor called it suicide (some said she was pregnant by another man), but Hansen suggests Hitler himself shot her because she was starting to pull away from him and, worse, to speak openly of their "relationship."

Obviously, this is ripe material for a novel -- so ripe, in fact, that one wonders why it hasn't been used as a plotline before. (Hansen explains in his epilogue that the affair is mentioned in some historical texts and that there is at least one nonfiction book about Hitler and Geli, but certainly none as mainstream as this.) Part of the reason may be because of the inherent difficulties in pulling off such a feat. If, for example, a novelist succeeds in humanizing the Führer, he will likely be attacked for sympathizing with a monster; on the other hand, it's nearly impossible to construct a story around a character who is wholly unsympathetic. Talk about an unlikable protagonist: It is quite simply too creepy for most readers to page through -- much less enjoy -- a novel about an unmitigated monster.

Hansen thus walks a fine line here, and if his Hitler is not completely human, neither is he without fleeting moments of humanity. The scene of Hitler accompanying his niece, whom he called Princess, on a shopping spree, and teetering behind her carrying boxes full of her purchases, is priceless. The bizarre sexual scenes -- rendered as unpruriently as possible, to Hansen's everlasting credit -- are pretty much what you might expect from a despot who popularized the wearing of jackboots. One particularly striking passage is a note from Geli's diary, in which she lists the things that make her paramour unhappy: "Questions...Contradictions...Any touching...Any mention of cancer." And those that make him happy: "My asking permission...Head and neck massages (Wagner playing)...Watching me shave my legs." So predictable and yet so weird, monstrous and ultimately unknowable: Ultimately, these are Hansen's conclusions about Adolf Hitler.

The novel's greatest strength -- aside from its catering to a universal fascination with evil (think Hannibal Lecter) -- is that it combines a history lesson about the early years of the Nazi Party with a portrait of characters we've heard so much about but rarely met. Hansen's portrayal of Joseph Goebbels as a kind of frat-boy-on-the-make, for example, is particularly interesting And then, of course, there's Geli herself, a young woman who, by all accounts, was delightful and beautiful and funny and warm. (She was also unabashedly opposed to her uncle's anti-Semitism and told him so.) Why such a woman would give herself to a man who was her opposite is the central and perhaps unanswerable question that drives this narrative and will obsess all those who read it.

—Sara Nelson

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Nan Goldberg

It sometimes happens that a gifted novelist who becomes emotionally committed to a work in progress fails to notice some fundamental flaw. Hitler's Niece, by Ron Hansen, has all the markings of one of those sad cases. Hansen's novel Atticus, a retelling of the prodigal son story, was one of the most beautiful books of this decade. But he has followed it up with a distinctly uninspired rendering of Adolf Hitler's weird and ominous relationship with his young niece Geli.

The facts are these: Geli was about 16 when her mother, Hitler's half-sister Angela Raubel, became Hitler's housekeeper. Hitler paid for Geli's education, took her on vacations and to the opera and soon, apparently, fell in love with her. He moved her into his own apartment and refused to be separated from her; their relationship probably became sexual. In 1931, at 23, Geli allegedly killed herself with Hitler's gun in their Munich apartment.

You can see what a brilliant opportunity this provocative material presents: to portray Hitler from the perspective of an apolitical teenager, with a teenager's lack of awe for her elders; to solve the mystery of Geli's death; to give life and depth to a girl about whom history tells us almost nothing. Hansen makes Geli clever and moderately talented. She is repelled by the growing cult around her uncle; at the same time, she is seduced by his ardor and as susceptible to bribery fine clothes, expensive lessons, elegant vacations as any teenager might be. Within a few years she is in way over her head. She finds herself totally isolated within Hitler's small cadre of fanatics and forced into perverse sex. "The things he makes me do!" she wails to her mother, who responds by putting her hands over her ears. She cannot free herself.

It's a great story, but it presents several intrinsic problems. For one, the personalities of Hitler and his coterie are so well-known by now that it's unlikely a teenage girl's perceptions, even intimate ones, could add much. We see Hitler early on, bashful and flirtatious with Geli. We hear Goebbels and Goering and Himmler confess to Geli their love for the Fuhrer, their fawning eagerness to obey. We observe that Eva Braun is not very bright. But we knew all this.

Second, Hansen is so careful to stick with the facts as he stresses in an afterword that Geli remains, to the end, less than three-dimensional. Finally, the novel climaxes with a murder instead of a suicide, and the facts do support such a possibility. But this small distinction is a major reason the novel doesn't work. If Geli killed herself, she was driven to the act by Hitler's entrapment and perversions. If her uncle murdered her, does that make her more of a victim? Is Hitler more evil than we thought? Hardly.

Years ago, Thomas Keneally wrote a novel based on another minor figure in the history of the Third Reich. In Schindler's List Keneally used the techniques of fiction not to reinterpret the facts but to pose complex and profound questions: At what point do good deeds outweigh misdeeds? Can people stumble into heroism the way they sometimes descend into evil, with a misstep or two, a failure to consider the implications, a momentum that gathers regardless of their intent?

I suspect that Hansen, a writer who takes risks, intended something equally ambitious with Hitler's Niece. Unhappily, the result is strangely bereft of insight or effect. Geli's tragic fate was to become enmeshed in a process she could not control. Hansen's creative process seems to have undergone a similar fate.
— Salon

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Library Journal

Talk Magazine

Talk Magazine's 10 Best Books of November

Sara Nelson

Fans of Ron Hansen's Mariette in Ecstasy and Atticus -- as well as aficionados of his less-famous books, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Desperadoes -- will hardly be surprised that his new novel is a compelling, twisted psychological thriller. A longtime chronicler of the American West, Hansen here breaks new ground in his retelling of a historical mystery from another part of the world: how Adolf Hitler carried on an affair with his 20-something half-niece (his half-sister's daughter) through most of the decade in which he rose to power, and how she died, inexplicably, one morning in his apartment. Out of fascinating, little-known facts, Hansen has again constructed morally complex, sophisticated, and highly readable fiction.

Geli Raubal was, according to Hansen, who explains in his epilogue that he is quoting from history books and memoirs of the principals, the "only woman [Hitler] ever loved." Practically from the time she was a child, she and the Führer-to-be had a special bond; he played with her (in between quizzing her on the facts of his autobiography, which he had given her to read), took care of her, and indulged her. By the time she was a beautiful teenager, she had come to live with Hitler in Berlin, ostensibly as his "ward"; within a few years, she was his regular public companion, attending his speeches and state occasions as he rose through the ranks of German government, his sometimes willing pupil, and his occasional bedmate. Though young and obviously beholden to the uncle who'd lifted her out of poverty, paid for her education, and bought her designer evening gowns, Geli was neither simple nor a pushover; in Hansen's telling, she claimed never to have been "afraid" of him, even when other relatives and government subordinates admitted that they were. She'd talk back to him, roll her eyes at his lectures, and even, occasionally, openly disobey him. Throughout their odd, to put it mildly, arrangement, she also dated other men, at least one of them a chauffeur in Hitler's employ. (During this period, Hitler was also involved with Eva Braun, who is portrayed here as a bubble-headed Hollywood worshiper.) In 1931, Geli died mysteriously of a gunshot wound; rumor called it suicide (some said she was pregnant by another man), but Hansen suggests Hitler himself shot her because she was starting to pull away from him and, worse, to speak openly of their "relationship."

Obviously, this is ripe material for a novel -- so ripe, in fact, that one wonders why it hasn't been used as a plotline before. (Hansen explains in his epilogue that the affair is mentioned in some historical texts and that there is at least one nonfiction book about Hitler and Geli, but certainly none as mainstream as this.) Part of the reason may be because of the inherent difficulties in pulling off such a feat. If, for example, a novelist succeeds in humanizing the Führer, he will likely be attacked for sympathizing with a monster; on the other hand, it's nearly impossible to construct a story around a character who is wholly unsympathetic. Talk about an unlikable protagonist: It is quite simply too creepy for most readers to page through -- much less enjoy -- a novel about an unmitigated monster.

Hansen thus walks a fine line here, and if his Hitler is not completely human, neither is he without fleeting moments of humanity. The scene of Hitler accompanying his niece, whom he called Princess, on a shopping spree, and teetering behind her carrying boxes full of her purchases, is priceless. The bizarre sexual scenes -- rendered as unpruriently as possible, to Hansen's everlasting credit -- are pretty much what you might expect from a despot who popularized the wearing of jackboots. One particularly striking passage is a note from Geli's diary, in which she lists the things that make her paramour unhappy: "Questions...Contradictions...Any touching...Any mention of cancer." And those that make him happy: "My asking permission...Head and neck massages (Wagner playing)...Watching me shave my legs." So predictable and yet so weird, monstrous and ultimately unknowable: Ultimately, these are Hansen's conclusions about Adolf Hitler.

The novel's greatest strength -- aside from its catering to a universal fascination with evil (think Hannibal Lecter) -- is that it combines a history lesson about the early years of the Nazi Party with a portrait of characters we've heard so much about but rarely met. Hansen's portrayal of Joseph Goebbels as a kind of frat-boy-on-the-make, for example, is particularly interesting. And then, of course, there's Geli herself, a young woman who, by all accounts, was delightful and beautiful and funny and warm. (She was also unabashedly opposed to her uncle's anti-Semitism and told him so.) Why such a woman would give herself to a man who was her opposite is the central and perhaps unanswerable question that drives this narrative and will obsess all those who read it.

Sara Nelson, formerly executive editor of The Book Report, and book columnist for Glamour, is now editor-at-large of Self magazine. She also contributes to Newsday, the Chicago Tribune, and Salon.

Helen Schulman

Kirkus Reviews