AUTHOR’S NOTE

Angela Maria Raubal, Adolf Hitler’s half-niece and the so-called love of his life, died in his apartment in the middle of September in 1931. Her body was removed before the police arrived. She was ruled a suicide, but buried in consecrated ground in Vienna. The priest, Father Pant, is said to have believed that Geli Raubal was murdered.

Hitler’s inner circle provided his alibi. The press did not believe it. The articles quoted here did appear in local papers, as did Hitler’s denial. The theories floated here are theories about Geli Raubal’s death. But that’s as far as it goes. Fritz is my character, and his actions and interactions are all fiction.

History’s mass murderers are not born full-blown psychopathic adults. They were children. They had histories of their own. They left trails of earlier victims. If the Munich police had conducted a real investigation, if the Minister of Justice had not ruled Geli’s death a suicide (a decision made as a political favour to the NSDAP), Adolf Hitler would have been arrested for murder – and millions of lives would have been saved.