that tragically were not the speculative imaginings of a novelist, crimes that have been consigned to the margins of this inept and voyeuristic novel. displayed in this author's earlier books ("Marietta in Ecstasy,""Nebraska") but also trivializes Hitler's historical crimes by dwelling, pruriently, on his private foibles.

Hitler, in Love With His Niece - The New York Springtime for Hitler, in Love With His Niece - The New York

My impression of Hitler and his close-knit circle had always been based on the impression that they were a cool, impervious, testerone-injected group of well-discplined fanatics. What I failed to realize is that they were a collection of fussy, effiminate, unathletic (although always touting the aryan, athletic ideal) sniveling, whiny, self-absorbed, sexually confused pychopathological misfits. Hitler’s Niece,a novel by Ron Hansen, suggests an answer. Hansen is the author of several other books including Desperadoes,a lucidly deadpan replay of the Wild West, Mariette in Ecstasy,a lyrical portrait of an American saint, and Atticus,a National Book Award nominee. He is an excellent writer, capable of drawing attention to his style when he wishes and letting his narrative speak for itself when need be. He is in command of words and scenes. He has a moral intelligence and a literary curiosity. He cares about letters and he cares about life. Nonetheless, Hitler’s Nieceis a staggeringly misconceived and genuinely atrocious book.I dunno. Ron does do a very good job in painting stroke by stroke Geli’s awful entrapment and predicament. This was not a situation she was going to be allowed to leave and she knew it. That part of this book grabbed me and convinced me (in one of those “yes! it must have been just like that!” moments). But, I dunno. The situation between them was one thing. But Ron goes farther and shows us what he imagines Hitler was “really like”, what he “really wanted” – the truth about Hitler. Which turns out to be fairly pervy S&M sex-game stuff. And even Ron ends up by hinting darkly at stuff he doesn’t wish to describe. “The things he makes me do!” wails Geli, without elaboration. But really, is it not facile – is it not the most lazy form of moral stereotyping, to imagine that because Adolf Hitler was a moral monster , was evil personified, his sexual life must therefore also have been depraved and horrible? Because that's what he was "really like" ? People are funny, you know. Sometimes, even, they’re complex. I read Hitler's Niece when it came out a few years ago, and I thought it was pretty dry. Much of it sounded like the author was repeating what he had read in history books; he didn't dramatize the situations well. He did have one bit of dialogue that I found clever and memorable, but the rest of the book was pretty boring -- and this is coming from someone with a very high interest in Geli's life! Ron Hansen chose to explain Geli's death in his novel by having Hitler murder her. That's OK, given that this is fiction, but I don't think he did a good job of explaining Hitler's motivation to kill her. Hansen also had some really silly scenes, such as one where Goebbels reads to Geli right out of his diary. edition stiff wrappers Fine octavo 310pp., Novelised account of Hitler's relationship with Geli Rabaul. Later we’ll witness Hitler’s idea of love, but in the meanwhile we read in a state of queasy disbelief as the "man of destiny" gropes his niece who counts the number of times he’s reached second base. This is simultaneously prurient and grossly trivializing, as if history might have been different if only Hitler wasn’t sexually frustrated. Mr. Bukiet condemns me for "relegating the most virulent, violent pathology to a pathetic deviancy." I do not. Rather I point out those aspects of Hitler’s personality–jealousy, treachery, possessiveness, sexual perversity–that would have been immediately obvious and oppressive to his niece. I need to remind the reader that the majority of my novel concerns the years 1927 to 1931. We primarily know Adolf Hitler for the evils that had not yet happened. Geli could not have imagined her uncle, who held no public office and could not even vote, would ever become chancellor of Germany, let alone could she have foreseen the Röhm purge, Kristallnacht,world-wide war, or that six million Jews would be exterminated in the Holocaust. The pathological virulence and violence that Mr. Bukiet wants explained–or does not want; he’s not sure–would have been only hinted at in her uncle’s odious demands on his niece, and that is what I have sought to depict.

Hitlers Niece by Hansen Ron, First Edition - AbeBooks Hitlers Niece by Hansen Ron, First Edition - AbeBooks

This book is outrageous. It is disturbing, as it is supposed to be. This novel follows Hitler's early years and his perverted relationship with his niece that ultimately resulted in her death either by suicide or Hitler's hand. Hitler demands to know at all times where Geli is, what she is doing and with whom. He retains the freedom to see other mistresses—including Eva Braun—but keeps a tight leash on Geli, discouraging other suitors. Once Emil Maurice, Hitler’s good-looking Corsican chauffeur begins dating Geli, Hitler finds a pretext to dismiss him. “She is with me,” Hitler snarls when another man, Schirach, asks his permission to take out Geli on a date. (244) Many if not all these books are now a fixed and vital part of the Catholic literary landscape. So popular and important is Hansen as a writer that it’s fair to say that for many budding Catholic writers, Hansen titles invariably share shelf space with Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Spark, O’Connor, Percy and theother usual suspects. JO:Your most recent book, She Loves Me Notis a collection of short stories—a return to the form that began your writing career. Why did you decide to return to this form? Can you speak a little about the collection and why you see this time as propitious for a collection of short stories?Another Ron, Ron Rosenbaum, wrote a great book called Explaining Hitler which includes an extraordinary interview with Claude Lanzmann, director of Shoah. The irascible Frenchman launches into an apoplectic tirade about Hitler’s baby photos. These photos are an obscenity, he says. They should never have been published. All this analysis of Hitler’s life, his mind, his soul, it’s an abomination. Because psychohistory is a figleaf for revisionism. To explain is to understand is to justify. All right, so, don’t be giving Claude a copy of Hitler’s Niece for his birthday present. Because all the gruesome human Hitlers you’ve been previously spared are here! Look - jolly Hitler, jumping Hitler, jesting Hitler, joyful Hitler, happy Hitler, playful Hitler, cringing Hitler, oh no, surely not, no, he wouldn’t, yes yes it’s true - masturbating Hitler. They’re all here. Roll up. I’m sorry if I inadvertently implied that the two quotations Mr. Hansen notes occurred in proximity. The word "here" referred to the book, not the scene. Both, however, are examples of the prevailing tone in Hitler’s Niece, a novel he claims he wrote for purposes of "education." But if discretion is also a function of education, we may learn the wisdom of a phrase that’s recently entered the contemporary vernacular: "Don’t Go There." Hansen's Hitler is a mama's boy who likes to be coddled by women. He likes peanut butter sandwiches, has bad manners and worst taste (his country house features such wall decorations as a picture of "three jolly Hansen is the author of nine novels, including his most recent A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion(2011), one collection of short stories, Nebraska(1989), and a collection of essays, A Stay Against Confusion: Essays on Faith and Fiction(2001). A second collection of his short stories She Loves Me Notis slated for publication later this year. Wasn't there also a book out called Hitler & Geli ? Maybe it's just me, but i thought i saw a book with that title in the library once. Cheers.

Geli Raubal Historical Fiction - Axis History Forum

Hitler’s Nieceis a daring conceit, and I daren’t say that no author could–or should–write such a book, yet perhaps some questions ought not to be asked, even by a writer as skilled as Hansen. The only question I’d offer in response is: "Why did Hansen write it?" Condition: Fine. in glossy wraps. Advance Reader's Copy of this popular novel by the author of "Desperadoes" and "Atticus".No doubt such graphic scenes depicting Hitler as a sexual monster are meant to link a perverse sexual psychopathology with his abhorrent politics, but they end up distracting attention from Hitler's public crimes, crimes Consigning thousands of books to the status of irrelevancy is just the first of this intemperate review’s decrees. Writers interested in the science of the mind are also done in. Mr. Bukiet writes, "Psychology is the bane of the contemporary novel, because it cares more about mottives than actions or results." The first part of this sentence simply isn’t true: psychologists, after all, try toaffectactions and result. As for the second, I have difficulty in thinking of any authors of merit who are not at least implicitly concerned with the psychology of their characters. Without motivation and causality even Zane Grey would be without a plot.

Hitlers Niece, First Edition - AbeBooks Hitlers Niece, First Edition - AbeBooks

But, of course, the primary cause of Mr. Bukiet’s dyspepsia is that one of my characters is Adolf Hitler. I have dared to say that a tyrant, a monster, and evil incarnate was first of all a very ordinary man. In fact, the only thing extraordinary about him was the immensity of his hate. Well, the main event in this novel is the grisly pas-de-deux of young Geli and the not-quite-fuhrer-yet. There’s a strong and profoundly unhealthy titillation of the reader going on here, of dripping prurience, a literary leer in lederhosen. It is fiction which included many interesting, bizarre facts about Hitler, the hyptonic affect he had on people, the psychotic group of misfits with whom he surrounded himself, and the fact that he could have actually been the one to murder his niece who was supposedly the only woman he really loved. The report said that she committed suicide but there's also reason to believe otherwise. She watched his shadow shift shapes on the floor as he crossed to her. She shivered with cold. She felt the feather bed sag with his weight as he sat just beside her. ‘Aren’t you the randy harlot,’ he said with a smile. ‘To try to rush me like that.’This book also shares light into other head Nazis who at the time were not of any importance besides working for the Nazi Party. If you know your Nazi history and are familiar with some of the head Nazi's you will also see in the book of how they were before the Nazi Rise. Nazi's such as Hess, Himmler, Goring, Goebells, and others. German countryside, she looks to him, hoping he'll tell her he loves her. Instead he tries out a line of newly penned verse: "And high above the world," he says, "on the cold fastness of the Kehlstein, In an apparent effort to convey Geli's point of view, Hansen writes much of this novel from a deliberately naïve perspective. The problem with this approach is that Hitler and his Nazi henchmen emerge, in the first Isn’t it healthier (and more useful) to admit that the fiend who fathered the Holocaust could also tell a joke, buy a gift, and fall in love–as is, in fact, true? Otherwise we make Hitler seem entirely exceptional, and the history of even our century shows that he is not. In an ominous and censorious tone, Mr. Bukiet asks why I wrote Hitler’s Niece.The answer is straightforward: education about the past is our greatest defense against the insanities we are bound to meet in the future. JO:In the milieu of American Catholic writers (or would that be Catholic writers who are American?), where do you see yourself fitting in? For Flannery O’Connor, it was the gothic and grotesque of the South that made her stories hum. For Walker Percy it was the comic absurdity of the modern world—especially as it came South. For J.F. Powers it was the quotidian lives of Midwestern priests (mostly) and those they related to. What hook or hooks does Ron Hansen hang his fiction on?