The Castle in the Forest Read Free

SS.
    For now, that may prove enough. There are particulars to offer concerning his family roots. In Special Section IV-2a—as already
    explained—we surrounded our findings with immaculate secrecy. We had to. We were the ones most ready to look into the most unpalatable questions. We had to live with the fear of unearthing answers poisonous enough to imperil the Third Reich.
    On the other hand, we had a special confidence. Once we obtained our facts, even should they prove disruptive, we would still be able to choose the mistruths that would bolster patriotic feelings in the populace. Of course, it could not be guaranteed in advance that every finding would be manageable. We might uncover an explosive fact. As one example: Had Adolf Hitler’s paternal grandfather been a Jew?
     
     
    4

    T
    hat was one possibility. Others were nearly as dire. For a period, we played with an inquiry into a semicomic but delicate rumor. Monorchidism. Did our Führer belong to that group of unhappy and hyperactive men who possess only one testicle? It is true that he invariably covered his groin with a protective hand whenever a photo was about to be taken, a classic gesture, understandably, if you are ready to shield the remaining testicle. But it is one thing to note such a vulnerability, another to verify it. While results could be obtained easily enough by interviewing the few women who had had intimate relations with the Führer and were still alive, how were we to control the repercussions? What if word got back to Hitler that a couple of officers in the SS were, so to speak, fingering his genital(s)? We had to give up the project. That was Himmler’s decision: “If our Esteemed Leader proves to be a first-degree incestuary, then all questions of monorchidism are subsumed. Monorchidism is, after all, a likely by-product of first-degree incest.”
    It was obvious. We were to go back to the best explanation for the legendary Will of the Führer—Blood-Drama!
    Moreover, we all detested the possibility that Adolf Hitler’s paternal grandfather might have been a Jew. That would not only destroy Himmler’s thesis, but oblige us to bury a major scandal. Our uneasiness derived in part from a rumor that had begun to stir among us eight years before, back in 1930, when a letter reached Hitler’s desk. The young man who penned it was named William Patrick Hitler, and he turned out to be the son of Adolf’s older half brother, Alois Hitler, Jr. The nephew’s letter offered its hint of blackmail. It referred to “ shared circumstances in our family history. ” (The fellow had gone so far as to underline those words.) That would have been a dangerous letter to send if the nephew lived in Germany, but at the time he was dwelling in England.
    What, then, were these “shared circumstances”? William Patrick Hitler was speaking of the Führer’s grandmother, Maria Anna Schicklgruber. Back in 1837, she had given birth to a son whom she named Alois. Living then and thereafter in a miserable place called Strones, a wretched hamlet in the Austrian province of Waldviertel, Maria Anna used to receive small but regular sums of money. Those near to her assumed it came from the unnamed father of her boy.
    Yet that same boy would grow up to be Hitler’s father. While Adolf would not be born until 1889, and would not come to power until 1933, one story did manage to stay alive among the peasants in Strones. It was that the stipend had come from a well-to-do Jew who lived in the provincial city of Graz. According to the legend, Maria Anna Schicklgruber worked as a maid in this Jew’s house, became pregnant, and had to return to her hamlet. When she brought the infant to be baptized, the parish priest listed the birth as “Illegitimate,” a common declaration in those parts. The Wald-viertel was known, after all, as the poorhouse of Austria. One hundred years later, following the Anschluss in 1938, I was sent down to the region, and my findings