The Castle in the Forest (3 page)

^{the century-old records. No man named Frankenberger was to be found in the city ledgers. I pored over the
Israelitische Kultusge-meinde
of the Jewish Registry of Graz, and this finding was confirmed. Back in 1496, the Jews had been expelled from the region. Even three hundred and forty-one years later, in 1837, at the time Alois was born, the Jews had still not been permitted to come back. Had Hans Frank been lying?}

^{After looking at these results Himmler declared, “Frank is one bold fellow!” As Heini put it together for me, one had to go back from 1938 to 1930. At that time, when the missive from William Patrick Hitler arrived, Hans Frank was just one more lawyer ready to hang around our people in Munich, but it was clear enough now what he had done. He had invented the compromising letter in order to stimulate a closer relationship to his leader. Given the absence of the document, Hitler could not know whether Frank was making it up, telling the truth, or, worst of all, actually in possession of such a paper. It could have been the end of Hans Frank, if Hitler had sent a researcher to Graz, but the lawyer must have been ready to wager that Hitler did not want to know.}

^{Since Himmler was grooming me to become his close assistant, he also confided that he would not use my 1938 research to tell Hitler that there were no Jews in Graz back in 1837. Rather, he told Hans Frank. We laughed in unison, for I understood immediately. Could there be one official within our ruling group who was not searching for a dependable grip on any and all of the others? Frank was now in Himmler’s grasp. Given this mutual understanding, he did serve Himmler well. In 1942 (by which time Frank was known as “the Butcher of Poland”) Hitler became nervous again about the Jewish grandfather and asked us to send a good man to Graz. Himmler, looking to protect Hans Frank, told the Führer that he had sent an agent and no tangible evidence was found. Given everyone’s preoccupation with the war, the matter could be put more or less to rest. Such was Himmler’s advice to Hitler.}

^{BOOK II}

^Adolf’s

^Father

¹

^T

^{he year 1942 is, however, a century and more away from 1837. For that matter, so is 1938. I mention the latter date once more because of a minor episode that occurred in Austria during the Anschluss. It does provide an insight into Himmler. If, behind his back, he was still ridiculed as Heini—ill gaited, pompous, wide assed and flat assed, as pious a mediocrity as any other man who has risen too high—the detractors were merely describing the shell. Nobody, not even Hitler, believed more profoundly in Nazism’s philosophical principles.}

^{I remember that on the first morning after the Brown Shirts marched into Vienna, a squad of them—beer-hall types with big bellies—collected a group of old and middle-aged Jews, professional class, pince-nez absolutely in place, and put them to work scrubbing the sidewalk with toothbrushes. The Storm Troopers laughed as they watched. Photographs of the event were featured on the front pages of many a newspaper in Europe and America.}

^{Next day, Himmler spoke to a few of us. “That was an expensive indulgence and I am pleased that not one of our SS men had anything to do with such a crudity. We all know how this kind of action lowers morale among so many of our best people. It will certainly encourage rowdyism in Vienna. Nonetheless, we do well not to reject out of hand the primitive instinct revealed by the act. After much reflection, I can say it was a successful piece of mockery.” He paused. He did have our attention. “There is a curious, even, I would declare, a hidden sense of inferiority among many of our folk. They feel that the Jews are capable of bringing more con-}

^{centration to a task than most of us can—the Jews do know how to study—which is why so many of them have been grossly successful. It is very much a notion among these people that in the end they will win everything by working harder than the host race of any country they happen to inhabit.}

^{“So, I would say this act burst out of the rough but nonetheless instinctive understanding of our German people. It does tell the Jews that work, if it is not attached to a noble purpose, is meaningless. ‘Scrub away with those toothbrushes,’ our street boys are saying, ‘because you Jews, whether you know it or not, do exactly the same thing every day. Your virtuous scholarship goes nowhere but into endless contradictions.’ Therefore, on second thought,” Himmler concluded, “I will not condemn out of hand the deeds of these low-rank Nazis.”}

^{The story is useful if one is to understand Himmler, but does interrupt my account of how I came to learn the truth as to who, really, was Alois’ father. While I am prepared to give his name and describe the occasion, I recognize that some readers will be annoyed that these disclosures will be presented without accounting for my sources. A fact is not a fact, some are ready to say, if the means by which it was obtained cannot be presented.}

^{I agree. Nonetheless, my real means are not to be revealed, not yet. Using the assets of Section IV-2a proved insufficient on this occasion, but I did piece together an answer for Heini—I knew that if my end product could support his case, he would accept it.}

^{Let us content ourselves for now, then, with the conclusions presented to Himmler in 1938. Once I brought back the information that the Jew from Graz did not exist, I suggested that we shift our inquiry to the actions of the one brother of Maria Anna Schicklgruber who had actually been resourceful enough to leave the mud of Strones and make a little money as a commercial traveler. What was best about this brother is that he did pass regularly through Graz, so, at first, I decided to build our case on him and ignore the actual family Maria Anna had worked for—a widow and two daughters. By study of their old bank accounts, it was clear that}

^{no extra money ever came to her from these ladies and, indeed, they discharged Maria Anna when they discovered she had made some petty thefts. Pregnancy in an unmarried maid could be tolerated, but the loss of a few coins, no! I then decided that Maria Anna might have been looking to protect this brother by telling her father and mother that the money was coming from a Jew. That would get them off the scent.}

^{Before I passed this speculation on to Himmler, however, I concocted—or so I thought—a more promising alternative. Why not choose Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, the hardworking younger brother, as our seminal agent? While the traveling salesman, Maria Anna’s brother, would offer a prima facie case of incest, this was still one step removed from Himmler’s real objective, since it would posit that the father, Alois, was the incestuary, rather than Adolf.}

^{On the other hand, if Maria Anna conceived Alois with Johann Nepomuk, then Himmler’s thesis was strengthened. Significantly so. For Klara Poelzl, the young woman who would yet be Alois’ third wife and would become Adolf Hitler’s mother, was also the granddaughter of Johann Nepomuk. If Alois was Nepomuk’s son, then Klara could be nothing less than Alois’ niece! An uncle and a niece, Alois and Klara, had conceived our Führer. This would make a solid presentation. Moreover, I knew how to embellish it for Heini. My final scenario offered carnal flavor: I declared that Maria Anna Schicklgruber and Johann Nepomuk Hiedler had conceived Alois on the day she came back from Graz for a visit. Nepomuk, who lived in Spital, happened to be visiting Strones, and went to the straw for his hour with Maria Anna. She became pregnant on the spot. Nepomuk could not question the news, for the act had been out of the ordinary. Indeed, she told him as soon as she regained her breath, “You have given me a baby. I swear it. I felt it!”}

^{As my scenario was also ready to explain, Johann Nepomuk loved his wife, he loved his three daughters, and he would never disrupt his home. Notwithstanding, he was ready to consider this matter from Maria Anna’s point of view. He was a decent man. So he encouraged her to tell her parents that she was receiving money from}

^{Graz, but he, Johann Nepomuk, would be the one to provide steady sums for the child to come. So she told her family that the money came each montth from Graz, even if no one ever saw the envelopes.}

^{Maria Anna put up with the situation, but how could she be content? After five years had elapsed, she told Nepomuk she would have to confess the real story. It was humiliating, she told him, to face the women of Strones each time she left her door holding a five-year-old by the hand.}

^{Nepomuk proposed that his older brother Georg be installed instead as her spouse. Nepomuk did not like his brother, and Georg did not like Nepomuk, but a new source of money is life-blood to a drunk. I exaggerate, but not by much. Georg married Maria Anna for her stipend and enjoyed the knowledge that it came from Nepomuk, who worked even harder in his fields to gather the extra kronen. For Georg, it was a rare pleasure to use the hard labor of a younger brother to support his dissipations. He did possess a fund of ugly spirit. A perfect fury full of failure.}

^{Maria Anna, wed at last, wanted a husband who was ready to say he was Alois’ father, but Georg proved quick to tell her that she was interfering in a matter involving his personal honor. If he had managed in the course of many a spree to inform a few of his drinking companions just why he had gotten married—for the money, dimwit!—he saw all the more reason to make no fool of himself by legitimizing this brat who everyone knew was not his own. He might be a drunkard and a failure, but he was certainly not a cuckold. Let this bastard remain a bastard!}

^{Such was the legend I presented to Himmler. It was buttressed by interviews I worked up with those few of the very old inhabitants of Strones who were born before our drunk, Johann Georg Hiedler, died in 1857. The links, if examined closely, were too rusty to secure the story, but Himmler liked these conclusions and so they held up. I had delivered a family history in which there was no Jew in the Führer’s bloodstream, and his father and mother were uncle and niece by blood. I had thereby succeeded in making Adolf Hitler a First-Degree Incestuary One Step Removed.}

^{Himmler had an epiphany. “This,” he said, “more than anything else, reveals the incredible bravery and fortitude of the Führer. As I have often pointed out, early death or serious malformation is the most likely prognostication for First-Degree Incestuaries, but once again the Führer has shown us his incomparable powers of perseverance. Genius and Will, his unique properties of character, derive from the rare intensification found in First-Degree Incestuaries, even when they are one step removed. We have been blessed with the triumphant result. Our Führer’s agrarian genes fortified through the generations have found a triumphant metamorphosis into his transcendent virtues.”}

^{Here, Himmler closed his eyes, leaned back, and exhaled slowly. It was as if he must expel every errant spirit in his lungs. “I will not speak to you of this again,” he went on in a low voice, “but occasions of close incest are truly perilous. One has need of the Führer’s Will to succeed in such a situation.” (I capitalize Will since he used the word with reverence.) “It is my belief that in the world of numinous spirits surrounding us, there are many elements we are right to call evil. It is even possible that the worst of these spirits collect about a presence whom in earlier times we used to speak of as Satan. This embodiment, should it exist, would certainly be ready to pay great attention to Incestuaries of advanced degree. For indeed, how could such an Evil One not be eager to distort the exceptional possibilities that arise from the doubling of God-given genes? All the more power to Herr Hitler, then. He has actually been able, I would declare, to stand firm with the Vision in the face of the Devil himself.”}

^{Little did Himmler know that his remarks could be multiplied by an order of magnitude. I had not been promulgating a false legend, but an irony. For the story I had concocted out of no more than barely feasible evidence happened to be true. It was Johann Nepomuk Hiedler who did supply the money, and Alois Schickl-gruber was his secret child. Yet the irony within this irony was that Alois’ son, Adolf Hitler, was not merely a First-Degree Incestuary One Step Removed but had been conceived in the very center of}

^{incest. The niece, Klara Poelzl, who would become Alois’ third wife and Adolf Hitler’s mother, was not only Alois’ wife but also his blood daughter. Of that relationship, I can soon offer many details.}

²

^T

^{o fulfill such a promise, I must now expand this memoir and commence a family history much as if I were a conventional novelist of the old school. I will enter the thoughts of Johann Nepomuk, as well as many of the insights of his illegitimate son, Alois Hitler, and I will also include the feelings of Alois’ three wives and his children.}

^{We are finished, however, with Maria Anna Schicklgruber. That unhappy mother perished in 1847 at the age of fifty-two, ten years after the birth of Alois. The cause was termed “phthisis on account of dropsy of the chest,” a galloping consumption she contracted after sleeping in the cattle trough through her last two winters. The collateral cause was rage. Toward the end, she thought often of how healthy she had been at the age of nineteen, her body quick, her singing voice praised for its beauty when she had been the soloist of the parish choir in Dollersheim. But now, having suffered under the curse of three decades of lost anticipations, she was full of the added fury that Georg had brought to their occasional couplings. He, like many a drunk before him, succeeded, however, in outliving everyone’s assumption that his death would come early. After her demise, he actually kept going for ten more years. Drink had been not only his nemesis but his dear medicine, and, only at the last, his executioner. He went in a day. They called it apoplexy. Having never bothered to visit Nepomuk}