She watched his shadow shift shapes on the floor as he crossed to her. She shivered with cold. She felt the feather bed sag with his weight as he sat just beside her. ‘Aren’t you the randy harlot,’ he said with a smile. ‘To try to rush me like that.’ In a way he should be commended for it, but in fiction it does not always serve the author's end to show such great concern for detail and historical truth. Your uncle, Angelika,” Angela said, and shook the baby, trying to get her to smile, but Geli only stared at his hair. “See? She loves you.” Mine rhymes with whittler which is an English word meaning one who complains a great deal. But you can call me Uncle Adolph.”

n her poem ''Hitler's First Photograph,'' Wislawa Szymborska, the Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet, asks: ''AndShe died of a gunshot wound, in what was ruled a suicide, but many (including Hansen) speculate that there was foul play behind the deed and that she was, in fact, murdered.

She tore off the paper and found underneath it a fat and difficult novel, Don Quixote. “You say the title how?” she asked. Hitler told her. She opened the book, and inside, where she hoped for a sentimental note from the older brother she worshiped, or even a “To My Dear Paula,” she instead found Hitler’s handwritten list of other books in history, biography, politics, and literature that would possibly benefit her. Her face fractured with disappointment as she said, “Thank you, Adolf,” and hurried to put Don Quixote away. Even after her death, the loyalty to Hitler is undeniable and unchanging by most--including her own mother, despite the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death. Read more For a fleeting, agonizing moment Hess was like a dog beseiged with thought," is one small example, complete with misspelling (that "i before e except after c" rule apparently vexing Hansen and his editors). I was more pleased with Last Stop Vienna, and that may be because Geli was not the main character in this book. The main character is an SA man named Karl who falls in love with Geli. I enjoyed following Karl's ups & downs in 1920's Berlin & Munich, and probably would have liked the book, even if Geli had not been a part of it. Karl is not present when Geli dies in this book, so the death is a mystery to him. I think the author made a good choice in that respect. I have mixed feelings about how Nagorski wrote the character of Geli. He captured both a bubbliness and moodiness that I think Geli was capable of. But his portrait of Geli was not at all respectful to her memory. He depicts her cheating on her fiancee Emil and having an affair with a married man. It makes for a juicy novel, but I doubt she would have done that in real life. This author uses Otto Strasser's infamous "watersports" story , but he does manage to write about it without lapsing into gratuitous sleaze. A) distinctly uninspired rendering of Adolf Hitler's weird and ominous relationship with his young niece Geli." - Nan Goldberg, SalonAll also make fun of aspects of Hansen's writing, but can generally find redeeming qualities to it as well. I have no interest in contracting syphilis, I assure you. In fact, August and I have solemnly vowed to keep forever pure the holy flame of life. But if it is my goal to form the ideal state, I have an obligation to investigate from afar those festering and illicit monuments to the perversion of our times.” The child’s a miracle at music,” the old priest told Raubal. “You play, what, violin, viola, piano…. What else?” The niece in question, Geli Raubal, was born in 1908 and died under somewhat mysterious circumstances in 1931.