Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

384 DER FUEHRERwoman, who must exercise the greatest self-control to avoid committinga crime, or at least to avoid creating a scandal ? His psychology hasbeen interpreted in this way, and inventive informants have even toldstories to this effect with full details. The truth is that in private relationsas well as in public life he much too easily falls into a seeming brutalitywhich does not exactly indicate strength, and which makes nodistinction between man and woman. But he is not in the least ashamedof this brutality; he is proud of it. He publicly declares that the womanlongs for domination by man, and hints that this is his own insightgathered from a wealth of experience. With these utterances he adds aharsh and jarring splotch of color to the public picture which he hasmade of himself, and which he himself admires and worships. Behind itis concealed the realm of his most private experience: Hitler feels thathis inner life is a humiliating, embarrassing contradiction to his publicimage; he feels that this contradiction fills his whole life with untruth.He longs for humiliation — but no one must know this.In his most intimate private life he is not a sadist, but the contrary.Here it is not intended to describe his various experiences, with namesand addresses; but there is one case worth reporting because it reallysheds some light on the human figure behind the gigantic image, andbecause it plunged Hitler the man into a real catastrophe and mayperhaps be called the tragedy of his private life.One day his parental relations to his niece Geli ceased to be parental.Geli was a beauty on the majestic side, with an abundance of blond hair,simple in her thoughts and emotions, fascinating to many men, wellaware of her electric effect and delighting in it. She looked forward to abrilliant career as a singer, and expected 'Uncle Alf' to make things easyfor her. She, her mother, and a less conspicuous younger sister, namedFriedli, lived with Hitler in his mountain house at Berchtesgaden, andafter 1929 often shared his Munich dwelling. Her uncle's affection,which in the end assumed the most serious form, seems like an echo ofthe many marriages among relatives in Hitler's ancestry.At the beginning of 1929, Hitler wrote the young girl a letter couchedin the most unmistakable terms. It was a letter in which