HITLER’S KINSFOLK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 September 1942, Page 4

HITLER’S KINSFOLK

NUMEROUS BUT KEPT IN BACKGROUND SOME VERY ORDINARY PEOPLE, PUBLIC MENTION OF THEM PROHIBITED. Let us make the pleasant supposition that Hitler, who is now 53 years of age, all of a sudden passed away without having made a valid will (writes an Austrian in the “Manchester Guardian.”) How astonished, how thunderstruck would the Germans be to learn that a lot of near relatives are coming into his gigantic fortune! They never had the least notion that Hitler had so many next of kind. In his autobiography “Mein Kampf” he made not a single mention of his brothers and sisters, and the German people assumed therefore that his parents had only one child, the beloved Adolf. Later on a rumour was afloat that the affairs of his household were managed by his elderly sister. But she married a Herr Professor about ten years ago, disappearing entirely from the scene. And ever since then the Germans have thought that Hitler is without kith and kin, alone in the. whole world—all alone.

In this belief they were fortified because in the newspapers also there is always a dead silence about Hitler’s relatives. How gladly would they report in personal paragraphs or in the column “Inside Society” about the Fuehrer’s kinship! How interesting would it be for the people all over the Reich to read in the papers that Hitler's brother had a chat with Frau So-and-so, or that Hitler’s sister-in-law danced a waltz with Herr Somebody. But this is . sternly forbidden—verboten. The relatives of the Fuehrer are for the newspapers a hush-hush business, a dangerous taboo. Why? Why did Goebbels recently go even a step farther, emphasising repeatedly the perfect vacuum around the Fuehrer, his extraordinary loneliness? I mused often on this, but suddenly I found the solution, remembering my conversations with Adolf Raubal —the nephew of Adolf Hitler. One day, only a couple of months before I left Austria, I was asked by the son of an old colleague, who sometimes came to see me when he was out of cash, if I would like to make the acquaintance of the nephew of the Fuehrer. Astonished, I raised my eyebrows. “Oh, that’s nothing to be wondered at. Raubal is merely a supergraduate at the technical collegfi in Berlin, and his only hobby is to fake useful and, if possible, profitable inventions. I spoke about you and he knows that you are emigrating in a short time. He thinks you could perhaps render him assistance in exploiting some of his inventions in England or America.” I agreed, and I met Raubal during the next few weeks very often in a cafe where he had, mostly in the company of some friends, his breakfast, usually at lunch-time. Fie was half-way between twenty and thirty, rather short and stout, but of good appearance; his manners were unpretentious. He was happy to be in Austria and to spend his days in gay company. His holidays were drawing to a close, and he had shortly to return to Berlin, where he was living modestly in a student hostel, having only a small allowance at his disposal. Hitler, who generally talks and talks, is extremely taciturn in the presence of his relatives when he chances to see them once again after a lapse of many years. He had made it possible for one of his relatives, a farmer in Styria, to enlarge his estate, but he never called on him. He was not even present at the wedding of his elderly sister, his ex-housekeeper, whom he could only tolerate because she was an artist in preparing his favourite vegetable dishes. She learned cookery in a canteen for Jewish students in. Vienna, where she was cook general. The catering business seems not to be disliked by the members of Hitler’s family: his brother was the keeper of a popular restaurant in Berlin. The Fuehrer keeps a strict eye upon his kinsfolk and they have to carry out his orders most carefully. A friend of Raubal, a young man of not quite pure Aryan extraction, boasted once in a public-house of his intimate friendship with the Fuehrer’s nephew. A few hours later he was arrested by the Gestapo. Raubal himself was reprimanded by the Private Chancellery of the Fuehrer. And only through the medium of this Chancellery does the Fuehrer condescend to write on very rare occasions to his sister in Vienna, whose name is, if I remember rightly, Frl. Paula Hitler.

What is the real reason for this strange behaviour? Napoleon was also a dictator, but he was fond of his relatives. This applies even to Tamerlane and Genghis Khan. And also to the modern dictators —Attaturk, Franco, Mussolini are not ashamed of their tribe. Only Hitler uses all his cunning, all his might, to make the Germans believe that he is the only child of his parents. Why? The answer is simple. Hitler thinks he is, in addition to being a dictator, also a legend, a myth, a god in lifetime! A great part of the German people are unfortunately of the same opinion. But a large relationship would not harmonise with this deification. God has no brothers and sisters, no brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, no nephews and nieces. God Hitler must be unique, unparalleled. His feet are in his airy abode on the snowcapped summits of the Alps, but his head is looking heavenwards, touching already the borders of Valhalla. But Hitler is not a god. Neither is he a devil who is known to look after his own. He is not a superman. He is only a monster, the • most horrible monster in history.