Uncle Adolf — Jeffrey Sackett

It is December of 1927, the dead of winter in Linz, Austria. Geli Raubal is almost nineteen years old, and she feels that life is passing her by. She lives an unpleasant existence with her stuffy, provincial mother and her insufferable, oh-so-proper younger sister in a backwater town in what she regards as the middle of nowhere. Thus she is overjoyed when her mother receives an invitation to come to Munich, Germany, to act as housekeeper for her bachelor brother. Geli's uncle is a man some twenty years older than she is, a man who is becoming increasingly important in the politics of Weimar Germany, a man who inspires both devotion in his followers as well as hatred in his enemies, a charismatic man whose piercing blue eyes and towering oratory can both mesmerize and horrify. Her uncle is Adolf Hitler.

In Munich, and at her uncle's alpine villa on the Obersalzberg above Berchtesgaden, Geli becomes acquainted with his strange circle of friends: Joseph Goebbels, an idolater who found God in Adolf Hitler; Hermann Goering, a World War One air hero who led the Richthofen squadron after the Red Baron's death, and is now Hitler's ruthless right-hand man; Heinrich Himmler, a quiet, subdued, reptilian man whose calm exterior masks as an inner demon; Ernst Röhm, leader of the S.A., the Brown Shirts, the private army of the Nazi Party; Rudolf Hess, a slavish devotee of the Führer to whom Hitler dictated Mein Kampf while in prison: and many others.

In the bloody politics of Weimer Germany, with Nazis and Communists murdering each other on the streets as the democratic parties stand by and watch in impotent dread, all political groups prepare as best they can for whatever contingencies may arise. But the one thing that no one could anticipate, neither red nor rightist nor republican, is that Adolf Hitler and his niece Geli Raubal would fall hopelessly in love.

This novel tells the true story of the strange love affair between Geli and her Uncle Adolf, an affair that began in 1927 and ended in heart-rending tragedy in 1931.