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

THE UNHAPPIEST OF ALL MEN 389ceptions, there was only one way of making good such a betrayal. To besure, she was a woman, but at the same time, in a special and eminentway, she was a member of a kind of aristocratic order with strangeconcepts of honor. We may ask what Himmler hoped to gain by theinevitable scandal; but a worse scandal was to be feared if Geli went toVienna and began to talk, ultimately to the press. But again: these arepure conjectures, though they do possess a certain inner plausibility.At all events, Geli Raubal died under strange circumstances. As forAdolf Hitler, life here played a cruel trick on an idol unfit to be a man.The story as it is related here was told by Stempfle to a friend who hadalready learned a great deal from Geli herself. And probably Stempfletalked to other people, too; perhaps in retaliation because Hitler ignoredhim after coming to power. One thing is certain: on June 30, 1934, whenHitler settled accounts with hundreds of enemies and former friends bymass murder, Pater Bernhard Stempfle was killed by three shots in theheart in the Forest of Harlaching near Munich, by a murder gang led byEmil Maurice.