Hitler's Niece by Ron Hansen Page A

him that.”
    “Will he enjoy it?”
    Quizzically frowning at her, Hitler said, “ I will,” as if that were enough.
    They strolled farther, to the Schwabing district where on Schellingstrasse, a few blocks from the university, Hitler waved to a short, buoyant man inside the Hoffmann Photography Studio at number 50, then held open the door to the Müller Printing Press, the editorial offices of the Völkischer Beobachter .
    Putzi Hanfstaengl and a few men in brown shirts stood and offered the Nazi salute when they saw their leader walking inside behind the girls, but it was only Rudolf Hess who also shouted out, “Heil Hitler!” Geli found it puzzling that Heil , “well-being” or “salvation,” an old Teutonic salutation that was unfashionable in Austria, was now being associated with her uncle’s name; but he seemed not at all embarrassed by it, and in fact received their Fascist salutes with haughty nonchalance.
    “You may sit,” he said, and took off his slouch hat and coat. Looking around he asked, “Where is Herr Rosenberg?”
    Hess said, “He just went out for coffee.”
    Stamping his foot, Hitler played a child as he wailed, “But wasting time in cafés is my job!”
    Everybody laughed too loud and too long.
    Hitler turned to his niece. “Have you seen our paper?”
    She hadn’t.
    Hess handed him an old issue with the headline “Clean Out the Jews Once and for All,” and Hitler held it in front of himself as he fulsomely congratulated Hanfstaengl for thinking up the American format, the slogan beneath the masthead, Arbeit und Brot , “Work and Bread,” and for his getting a Simplicissimus cartoonist named Schwarzer to design the masthead. Simplicissimus , Hitler explained to Ingrid, was a famous satirical magazine with a pronounced hatred of the National Socialist Party, so he thought of Schwarzer’s—and Hanfstaengl’s—contribution as a great victory. The huge Hanfstaengl gracefully bowed to Hitler’s praise, which could not have been new, while Geli saw the forgotten Hess fuming with hurt feelings and anguish. And now he must do something extra , Geli thought.
    Hess surged forward and told the girls, “We have been thinking about calling the months by their heroic old Germanic names. We would call May Wonnemonat , which means ‘month of delight.’ Rather than June, why not Brachmond , or ‘fallow moon’? October would be Gelbhart , or ‘hard yellow.’ And Nebelung , ‘mist,’ for November.”
    “I find the idea ridiculous,” Hitler said. “We are a party of the common people, not mystics.” And as Hess’s face fell, Hitler turned to an interior page to show the girls a cartoon he thought hilarious, of a handsome Germanic knight on his steed hauling away from his fortress a squalling, fat priest and an ugly Jew whose nose was as large as a gourd. The knight was ruefully thinking, “Must we always have to deal with these two?”
    The girls looked at each other: Why is that funny ? And then Ingrid quietly hinted, “We have to go practice.”
    “What was that?” Hitler asked.
    Geli smiled. “Sotto voce.”
    “But I have so much yet to show you!”
    “I have the morning.”
    “Excellent!” her uncle said.
    Putzi Hanfstaengl grinned and asked, “Are you aware that morning generally comes before noon?”
    But Hitler kissed the girls’ hands and insisted, “You have my word of honor that I will be at the Königshof Hotel for you at nine a.m. tomorrow!”

    Instead Geli was met in the hotel lobby by a shy young man in a trench coat who introduced himself as Herr Julius Schaub, Hitler’s adjutant. A former shipping clerk at the Eher Publishing House, Schaub was a tall, sullen, old-seeming man of twenty-six with slicked-back hair, ears like handles, and staring eyes that he kept focused on the floor as he shook her hand and told her, “My job is to do whatever the leader asks. And he has asked me to give you a tour of München.”
    “But he promised me he would do it