Free Hitler's Niece by Ron Hansen Page A

and saying in a note how much Putzi had enjoyed meeting them in Wien, and that in a porkpie hat and fake muttonchop whiskers he’d sneaked back into Germany through a dangerous railway tunnel near Berchtesgaden known as the “Hanging Stone.”
    Within the card Putzi included a journalist’s newspaper account of a living tableau that a group of artists had created at the Blute Café in Schwabing. Called “Adolf Hitler in Prison,” it featured a jail cell and snowflakes falling behind a barred window as a dark-haired man hunched at a desk with his face buried in his hands. A hidden chorus softly sang “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht” as a female angel gracefully carried in an illuminated Christmas tree and placed it on a table. Looking up in surprise, the prisoner showed his face “and the crowd in the café gasped and sobbed, for many thought it was Hitler himself.” When the lights went up, the journalist had noticed some wet-eyed men and women hastily putting away their handkerchiefs.
    After she’d read the account aloud to Angela, Geli was astonished to see that her mother’s face was streaked with tears. “Are you weeping? ”
    Wiping her cheeks with her palm, Angela said, “I just wish you children could have gotten to know your Uncle Adolf better.” She got the Christmas card from Geli and displayed it on the fireplace mantle. “And I suppose I’m crying because I’m ashamed that it was strangers who first pointed out to me what an admirable man my brother is. The family always, always underestimated him. No wonder he was so distant.”

    In February 1924, Adolf Hitler, Erich Ludendorff, Ernst Röhm, and seven codefendants went on trial for Hochverrat (high treason) in a classroom of the old brick infantry school. Hitler was the first to be called to the dock and immediately accepted full responsibility for the putsch, regretting only that he had not been slaughtered along with his fallen comrades, and consigning “the other gentlemen,” including General Ludendorff, who was pompously there in full dress uniform, to the weaker, subordinate roles of those who “have only cooperated with me.” Calculating that the conservative judiciary preserved nationalist sympathies and despised socialism, just as he knew the police and army did, Hitler immediately upset judicial proceedings by becoming the accuser, arguing in a strong, baritone voice that he was not a traitor but a patriot, that he alone was trying to lift Germany up from its oppression and misery, that he alone was forming a bulwark against Communism in whatever form it took.
    In front of a huge international press corps, Hitler proclaimed that “the man who is born to be a dictator is not compelled; he wills. He is not driven forward; he drives himself forward. There is nothing immodest about this. The man who feels called upon to govern a people has no right to say: ‘If you want me or summon me, I will cooperate.’ No! It is his duty to step forward.”
    Employing his mastery of rhetoric and effrontery, he thoroughly dominated the little, goateed presiding judge, the three thunderstruck lay judges, and a chief prosecutor so harried by the hoots and jeers of university students that he began offering platitudes to the principal defendant, congratulating him on his self-sacrifice, his military service, his private life that had always been proper in spite of many carnal temptations, and calling Hitler “a highly gifted man who, coming from a simple background, has, through serious and hard work, won for himself a respected place in public life.”
    Hitler held sway throughout the forty days of the trial, inventing himself as a popular hero as he shouted ridicule, interrupted testimony, and orated at one point for four whole hours—about which the presiding judge meekly explained, “It is impossible to keep Hitler from talking.”
    The Münchener Neueste Nachrichten noted in an editorial, “We make no bones about the fact that our human