How Did Geli Raubal Die?

Discussions on the role played by and situation of women in the Third Reich not covered in the other sections. Hosted by Vikki.
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Geli
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How Did Geli Raubal Die?

#1

Post by Geli » 13 Jul 2002, 06:25

[Moved from the Polls section]


Here's a link to a page with the basics:

http://www.history.und.ac.za/hitlergeli/geli's.htm

From the reading I've done, most historians lean in favor of the Hitler-murdered-her theory. The two fiction novels I've seen based on Geli's story also chose to depict Hitler as her murderer.

IMHO, this was a suicide.


"Father Pant...said...'It was I who buried Angela Raubal, the little Geli of whom Otto Strasser wrote. They pretended that she committed suicide. I should never have allowed a suicide to be buried in consecrated ground. From the fact that I gave her a Christian burial you can draw conclusions which I cannot communicate to you."

Well, Father Pant was a priest, not a medical examiner, and Hitler was no friend to the Catholic church.

"The trajectory of the bullet...it is hard to imagine why she adopted such a difficult position to kill herself."

Not so hard to imagine, if you're female. She didn't want to shoot herself in the head because she didn't want to be found with her face damaged.
Here's a quote from Dave Ausdenmoore, an Ohio detective: "Women don't shoot themselves in the head. If they commit suicide they tend toward carbon monoxide, pills, something like that. If they shoot themselves, they tend to shoot themselves in the chest. Don't ask me why, it's just what they do."

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kellysartin
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#2

Post by kellysartin » 20 Jul 2002, 11:55

well, i voted for suicide, but, basically, who COULD say? there simply doesn't seem to be enough info to reach a fair conclusion. my area of most intense interest is the early years of the party, before they came to power. maybe i'm just a lousy researcher, don't know how to prpoperly use a card catalog, but the whole story prior to 1934 seems often murky, or the slate is simply blank. for example, have you ever seen even a thin biography of karl Harrer or Anton Drexler? have you even seen any copies of any of Deitrich Eckarts writings, the only author Hitler credits in Mein Kampf? was the D.A.P. originally a politically active frount for the Thule society or not? here's a real easy one, on what date, and at what location, was the first meeting of the D.A.P.? i'll give 50 bucks to anyone who can answer that question, it has driven me right up the wall for five years. Geli Raubal seems to fall in that catagory of facts simply not recorded, or the records lost, or deliberately lost, because Hitler- the party weren't important enough then, or because later in the third reich it did not do to focus to specifically or at too great a length , on the small-time past.


Phaethon
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#3

Post by Phaethon » 20 Jul 2002, 13:15

You forgot the "shot herself accidentally while cleaning/playing with the gun" theory :wink:

K.
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#4

Post by Phaethon » 20 Jul 2002, 13:25

kellysartin wrote:here's a real easy one, on what date, and at what location, was the first meeting of the D.A.P.? i'll give 50 bucks to anyone who can answer that question, it has driven me right up the wall for five years.
Gotta luv a challenge :D Okay, here's my bid.

My first reaction, as always, is to pull down my copy of "The Encyclopedia [sic] of the Third Reich" (Zentner & Friedmann) which reports on the DAP (under "German Worker's Party" - my notes, not verbatim):

German Worker's Party was founded on January 5, 1919 in Munich by Anton Drexler and Karl Harrer. The Thule Society was the DAP's 'Foster Mother'.
Hitler was ordered by his commander, Captain Karl Mayr, to attend a meeting of the DAP at Munich's Sterneckerbrau on September 12, 1919 as a representative of the Reichswehr.
First DAP Public Meeting: October 16, 1919.
First Large Meeting: February 24, 1920 at Hofbrauhaus.
Became NSDAP on June 29, 1921.

Next, turn to the Internet and GOOGLE (http://www.google.com/ - the Google Toolbar is VERY useful :) ) and entered a few combinations of keywords like "DAP" "first meeting" and "NSDAP" (the last excludes references to modern organizations with DAP as initials). This eventually brought up this site:

http://connectionsjournal.com/files/arc ... curse.html
"...and on January 5, 1919, the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (The German Workers Party or DAP) was founded in the Furstenfelder Hof Tavern."

A page written by a Wicean (pagan) trying to rehabilitate the pagan name after it's association with Hitler and co. However, one never believes isolated referneces from the internet, so taking "DAP and "Furstenfelder" and plugging them into Google yielded three hits, one of which was:

http://www.humanitas-international.org/ ... ossary.htm
"DAP (German): The German group known as the German Workers' Party (DAP) party was formally founded in Munich at the Furstenfelder Hof tavern by Anton Drexler, Karl Harrer and others on January 5, 1919. Drexler was elected chairman and his constitution was accepted by 24 men, mostly from the locomotive works where Drexler was employed. Drexler was also an active member of the Thule Society (Germanenorden)."

A second hit from the same site gave the same information in a timebase format:
http://www.humanitas-international.org/ ... 20tbse.htm
which appeared to reference something called "roots". Starting at the home page of the site:
http://www.humanitas-international.org/ ... epage.html

I found the bibliography (frame within above URL) and the roots reference gives:

"(Roots) -- The Occult Roots of Nazism, Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology. Nicholas Goodrich-Clarke"

This appears to be the basic reference for this information.

Another |Google search for just "Furstenfelder Hof" threw up:

http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Barra ... apsc04.htm
"What was to become the Nazi Party began as an outgrowth of
the Thule Society in late 1918. It started as a nationalist discus-
sion group called the Political Workers Circle whose goal was to
"extend the appeal of the Thule's nationalist ideology for the
working classes" (Goodrick-Clarke: 150). The discussion group
developed the idea of forming a political party in December of
1918, and did so on January 5, 1919, at the Furstenfelder Hof
tavern in Munich."

This references the same work (Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and
their Influence on Nazi Ideology. New York, New York University Press, 1992)

It would seem the next step would be to get hold of a copy of Goodrick-Clarke who will hopefully source the Furstenfelder Hof information.

I'm overdue for a jaunt to the British Library, so I think I'll look it up myself in the next few weeks

Donate the 50 bucks to Marcus. :idea:

Cheers,

K.

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#5

Post by Ken Jasper » 20 Jul 2002, 14:21

One theory I have heard is that Franz Xaver Schwarz, NSDAP Treasurer. murdered her and was instrumental in the coverup. Supposedly he did it because he was concerned that she was distracting Hitler to the point where he was becoming ineffective..

Homer martin
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Hi

#6

Post by Homer martin » 21 Jul 2002, 18:01

It was a murder, who did it is the only question. One doesn't hold a gun over a foot away from your body to kill yourself and also the angle of the shot is a downward and about a 30 degree angle.

Now get a friend (woman) to knee at your feet and act as if she is begging, get a gun (not loaded) and point it down at her breast, that is how she was shot.

At whos knees was she at when she was shot is the question? Hitler is the best choice but not the only one.
My quess is Geli was asking Hitler to forgive her for sleeping with the driver and he shot her.

Just opinion not fact.


/hgm

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Re: Hi

#7

Post by Homer martin » 21 Jul 2002, 18:13

I forgot to mention Geli had plans for the next week and month.


/hgm

Phaethon
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Re: Hi

#8

Post by Phaethon » 21 Jul 2002, 20:13

Homer martin wrote:I forgot to mention Geli had plans for the next week and month.
There is also the small point that she was apparently in the middle of writng a cheerful letter to someone and broke off in mid-word, suggesting interruption. (Hayman, "Hitler & Geli" citing slightly conflicting testimony from von Schirach and a Munich Police Report)

Of course that does not exclude the possibility the letter was interrupted with news that then changed her mood entirely and prompted suicide.

K.

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Geli
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forensic evidence

#9

Post by Geli » 22 Jul 2002, 02:01

Homer martin wrote:One doesn't hold a gun over a foot away from your body to kill yourself...
Hmm, I had heard about the angle, but not that there was proof that the gun had been held over a foot away from her body. What is your source for this?

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White Leopard
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Geli

#10

Post by White Leopard » 22 Jul 2002, 03:20

The most favored suspect for this of course is Hitler. But his ailbi is solid. He was in Nuremburg when the shooting was done. I have read fictional stories that have him shoot her before he left, but he and Geli had an argument that went on until the moment he left. Geli apparently leaned out of a window and hollered down at him and he yelled back, "NO!" So she wasn't dead before he left. Dead end.

Hitler left Nuremburg the next morning. He was chased down by a messenger in a taxi from Nuremburg with the news that he needed to call Munich immediately. He turned around and rushed back to Nuremburg. There he phoned the party headquarters and was given the actual word of her death by Rudolph Hesse who had been summoned to the apartment by the household staff. Hitler, stricken with shock and white-faced, immediately drove back to Munich. He was pulled over and given a ticket for speeding by a traffic cop en route. This proves that he could not have sneaked back into Munich by train and committed the killing as some other fictional stories have him do.

Hitler may have been a great actor, perhaps the greatest actor turned politician there ever was, but his profound shock and distress at the news of Geli's death would have been more than Oscar-class material. The idea that he might have been protected by others in the party who engineered a cover-up with false testimony collapses with the ever-increasing number of people who would have to had to been involved. To whit--the more people who know something, the more likely one will spill the beans. Think of Nixon and the Watergate conspiracy.

I think it is most likely that she was shot by somebody else. Who? One piece of fiction I read had Himmler do the deed. Interesting, but given his tendancy to faint at the sight of blood, unlikely. Whoever would have done it would have to remain silent and well-hidden because Hitler surely would have gotten the piano wire out for them if he had found out.

And then again, there is the possiblity that she was just posing around with the gun and forgot to put the safety on.....But I'll stop here.

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#11

Post by Eva » 22 Jul 2002, 21:51

I have to go with the "playing with the gun and accidentally shot herself" theory. It has been asserted that, on the day of her death, Geli had discovered a pleasant note in Hitler's pocket from Eva Braun, thanking him for a "memorable evening". Geli could not have been happy about this. She apparently ripped the letter into bits just before locking herself in her room. It think that maybe Geli was planning some bit of drama for Hitler's benefit... maybe she was going to threaten to shoot herself right in front of him, but while rehearsing the scene, the gun got the best of her.

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#12

Post by Geli » 22 Jul 2002, 23:54

Or perhaps she was rehearsing how she would murder Eva? :wink:

White Leopard --
The story about Geli and Hitler yelling to each other from the window...
What's your source for that? Do you know who the witness for this event was? Was it the chauffeur?

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Re: Geli

#13

Post by Ovidius » 23 Jul 2002, 00:09

White Leopard wrote:Hitler may have been a great actor, perhaps the greatest actor turned politician there ever was, but his profound shock and distress at the news of Geli's death would have been more than Oscar-class material. The idea that he might have been protected by others in the party who engineered a cover-up with false testimony collapses with the ever-increasing number of people who would have to had to been involved. To whit--the more people who know something, the more likely one will spill the beans. Think of Nixon and the Watergate conspiracy.
There was a story on how did Hitler become a vegetarian; after Geli's suicide, he refused to eat for many days, until someone from his staff convinced him to take a breakfast(with ham, bacon etc). When he saw the food, his face went green and said: "Take this stuff out of my view, it looks like corpses". He never ate meat from that day.

Can anyone confirm the story?

~Ovidius

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Vegetarian

#14

Post by White Leopard » 23 Jul 2002, 04:05

Ovidius--I've read that Gregor Strasser was the source for the story you cited of Hitler refusing the breakfast. But I have found another more curious version. This version goes into more detail about why Hitler refused to eat meat after Geli's death.

This comes from Otto Wagener. Wagener was a close associate with Hitler between the years of 1929 to 1934. He orginally was made Chief of Staff for the S.A. on the recommendation of Franz von Salomon who was the head of the S.A. at the time. Wagener accepted the position, but later became an economic advisor. He took the job and eventually wound up as part of Hitler's entourage. He later drifted out of Hitler's inner circle and after 1934 served in the Reichstag as a representive.

Wagener tells this story in his memoirs. One should keep in mind that he did not write it down until 1946 while he was interred in an English POW camp. And these memoirs were not published until 1978 after his death.
His version of Hitler's actions after Geli's demise differs radically from other versions of the story.

["...In the spring of 1931, an event occurred that had a deep impact on Hitler and entire outlook on life. His niece, Geli Raubal, who with her mother, ran Adolph Hitler's household....died by her own hand from al gunshot wound....

One night, while Hitler was on the sleeping-car train to Berlin, a telegram was brought to his compartment during the early hours of the morning in Saalfeld. It announced that Geli had shot herself. He left the train at the next station and hurried back to Munich by train and car, arriving just in time for the autopsy. The coroner was to rule on wheather this was a case of murder or suicide, and in the latter case whether death was intentional or accidental. THE PHYSICIAN ALLOWED HITLER TO ATTEND...."]

Wagener goes on to state that Hitler's attendance at this gruesome rite was the reason why he refused to eat meat from that point forward. And as far as I know Wagener is the only source for this reason. It's an interesting tale, but as I stated, recollected long after the actual incident. One should probably take it with a grain of salt. One's memory can play tricks.

I'm finding that out Geli, as I try to track down the source of the argument story I've written. I have several books and haven't found it yet. It might have been one that I read some a while ago in college. I know I've seen it, but I can't tell where yet. :oops: I'll keep searching.

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Hi

#15

Post by Homer martin » 23 Jul 2002, 12:07

There is a very good book on this subject:
Hitler & Geli
by Ronald Hayman


Geli body was found on the morning of Saturday Sept. 19 1931 at 9:30 am. Police arrived at the apartment by 11:00 am and Dr Muller came soon after. Dr Muller's report states she had been dead for 17-18 hours. That would put the time of death close to 4:30-6:00 pm Sept. 18.

The questions that come into play about the time of death and the time till the crime was reported should indicate some form of a cover up.

Points to remember in the case:

The pistol didn't have a silencer and the shot would be heard.
The time of day, there should be a number of persons in the apartment.
a. This is the headquarters(unoffical) of the party: Hilter spend most of his off time from travel and giving speeches at this apartment.
Hitler was at the apartment within the time range of the death.

I would like to see a translation of Dr Muller's report.

/hgm
Last edited by Homer martin on 23 Jul 2002, 15:19, edited 1 time in total.

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