The Aquitaine Progression (21 page)

Goebbels and Hess accepted Dr. Heinrich Leifhelm’s offer with enthusiasm. One can easily imagine the propaganda expert visualizing the image of this blond Aryan physician of “impeccable credentials” spread across thousands of pamphlets confirming the specious theories of Nazi genetics, as well as his all too willing condemnation of the inferior, avaricious Jew; he was heaven-sent. Whereas for Rudolf Hess, who wanted more than his little boys to be accepted by the Junkers and the monied class, the Herr Doktor was his answer; the physician was obviously a true aristocrat, and in time, quite possibly a lover.

The confluence of preparation, timing and appearance turned out to be more than young Stoessel-Leifhelm could have imagined. Adolf Hitler returned from Berlin for one of his Marienplatz rallies, and the imposing Doktor, along with his intense, well-mannered son, was invited to dinner with the Führer. Hitler heard everything he wanted to hear, and Heinrich Leifhelm from that day until his death in 1934 was Hitler’s personal physician.

There was nothing that the son could not have,
and in short order he had everything he wanted. In June of 1931 a ceremony was held at the National Socialists’ headquarters, where Heinrich Leifhelm’s marriage to “a Jewess” was proclaimed invalid because of a “concealment of Jewish blood” on the part of an “opportunistic Hebrew family,” and all rights, claims and inheritances of the children of that “insidious union” were deemed void. A civil marriage was performed between Leifhelm and Marta Stoessel, and the true inheritor, the only child who could claim the name of Leifhelm, was an eighteen-year-old called Erich.

Munich and the Jewish community still laughed, but not as loudly, at the absurd announcement the Nazis inserted in the legal columns of the newspapers. It was considered nonsense; the Leifhelm name was a discredited name, and certainly no paternal inheritance was involved; finally it was all outside the law. What they were only beginning to understand was that the laws were changing in changing Germany. In two short years there would be only one law: Nazi determination.

Erich Leifhelm had arrived and his ascendancy in the party was swift and assured. At eighteen he was Jungführer of the Hitler Youth movement, photographs of his strong, athletic face and body challenging the children of the New Order to join the national crusade. During his tenancy as a symbol, he was sent to the University of Munich, where he completed his courses of study in three years with high academic honors. By this time, Adolf Hitler had been swept into power; he controlled the Reichstag, which gave him dictatorial powers. The Thousand-Year Reich had begun and Erich Leifhelm was sent to the Officers Training Center in Magdeburg.

In 1935, a year after his father’s death, Erich Leifhelm, now a youthful favorite of Hitler’s inner circle, was promoted to the rank of
Oberstleutnant
in the Gruppenkommando 1 in Berlin under Rundstedt. He was deeply involved in the vast military expansion that was taking place in Germany, and as the war drew nearer he entered what we can term the third phase of his complicated life, one that ultimately
brought him to the centers of Nazi power and at the same time provided him with an extraordinary means of separating himself from the leadership of which he was an intrinsic and influential part. This is briefly covered in the following final pages, a prelude to the fourth phase, which we know is his fanatic allegiance to the theories of George Marcus Delavane.

But before we leave the young Erich Leifhelm of Eichstätt, Munich, and Magdeburg, two events should be recorded here that provide insights into the man’s psychotic mentality. Mentioned above was the robbery at the Luisenstrasse house and the resulting profits of the theft. Leifhelm to this day does not deny the incident, taking pleasure in the tale because of the despicable images he paints of his father’s first wife and her “overbearing” parents. What he does not speak of, nor has anyone spoken of it in his presence, is the original police report in Munich, which, as near as can be determined, was destroyed sometime in August 1934, a date corresponding to Hindenburg’s death and Hitler’s rise to absolute power as both president and chancellor of Germany with the title of
der Führer
raised to official mandatory status.

All copies of the police report were removed from the files, but two elderly pensioners from the Munich department remember it clearly. They are both in their late seventies, have not seen each other in years, and were questioned separately.

Robbery was the lesser crime that early morning on the Luisenstrasse; the more serious one was never spoken of at the insistence of the family. The fifteen-year-old Leifhelm daughter was raped and severely beaten, her face and body battered so violently that upon admission to the Karlstor Hospital she was given little chance of recovery. She did recover physically, but remained emotionally disturbed for the rest of her short life. The man who committed the assault had to be familiar with the interior of the house, had to know there was a back staircase that led to the girl’s room, which was separated from the rooms of her two brothers and her
mother in the front. Erich Leifhelm had questioned his father in depth regarding the inside design of that house; he was there by his own admission, and was aware of the fierce pride and strict moral code held by the “tyrannical in-laws.” There is no question; his compulsion was such that he had to inflict the most degrading insult he could imagine, and he did so, knowing the influential family would and could insist on official silence.

The second event took place during the months of January or February 1939. The specifics are sketchy insofar as there are few survivors of the time who knew the family well, and no official records, but from those who were found and interviewed, certain facts surfaced. Heinrich Leifhelm’s legal wife, his children and her family tried without success for several years to leave Germany. The official party line was that the old patriarch’s medical skills, having been acquired in German universities, were owed to the state. Too, there were unresolved legal questions arising from the dissolved union between the late Dr. Heinrich Leifhelm and a member of the family, questions specifically relating to commonly shared assets and the rights of inheritance as they affected an outstanding officer of the Wehrmacht.

Erich Leifhelm was taking no chances. His father’s “former” wife and children were virtually held prisoners, their movements restricted; the house on the Luisenstrasse was watched, and for weeks following any renewed applications for visas, they were all kept under full “political surveillance” on the chance that they had plans of vanishing. This information was revealed by a retired banker who recalled that orders came from the Finanzministerium in Berlin instructing the banks in Munich to immediately report any significant withdrawals by the former Frau Leifhelm and/or her family.

During what week or on what day it happened we did not learn, but sometime in January or February of 1936, Frau Leifhelm, her children and her father disappeared.

However, the Munich court records, impounded by the Allies on April 23, 1945, give a clear, if incomplete,
picture of what took place. Obviously driven by his compulsion to validate his seizure of the estate in the eyes of the law, he had a brief filed on behalf of Oberstleutnant Erich Leifhelm listing the articles of grievance suffered by his father, Dr. Heinrich Leifhelm, at the hands of a family cabal, said family of criminals having fled the Reich under indictment. The charges, as expected, were outrageous lies: from outright theft of huge nonexistent bank accounts to character assassination so as to destroy a great doctor’s practice. There was the legal certificate of the “official” divorce, and a copy of the elder Leifhelm’s last will and testament. There was only one true union and one true son, all rights, privileges and inheritances passed on to him: Oberstleutnant Erich Stoessel-Leifhelm.

Because we possessed reasonably accurate dates, survivors were found. It was confirmed that Frau Leifhelm, her three children and her father perished at Dachau, ten miles outside of Munich.

The Jewish Leifhelms were gone; the Aryan Leifhelm was now the sole inheritor of considerable wealth and property that under existing conditions would have been confiscated. Before the age of thirty, he had wiped his personal slate clean and avenged the wrongs he was convinced had been visited on his superior birth and talents. A killer had matured.