She was 17 when her half-uncle came into her life. Her mother, Angela, shared a father with Hitler.

It was 1925. It all started when he offered Angela a job as a housekeeper after her husband’s untimely death. She brought along her teenage daughter, Geli, a high-spirited young girl with an infectious charm.

Little did Geli know that she would be spending the next 6 years under the supervision of the man she called ‘Uncle Alf’, 19 years her senior. Time passed on. Hitler and Geli got closer.

4 years later, Angela was moved to a villa near Berchtesgaden while Geli was asked to live with Hitler in his Munich apartment. She made the shift. Not that she had any other option.

But there was something odd about the arrangement, if not suspicious.

Over the years, Geli became an inseparable part of Hitler’s life. She’d attend her uncle’s business meetings and parties, blending with his circle of officers, sometimes even flirting a little. They talked day and night as he listened to her innocent banter. She was his affectionate aide.

This went on for a while. One could say that Hitler accompanied her everywhere as well, such as the opera or the movies, except he acted more like a bodyguard. When he couldn’t go along with Geli, he’d send someone to watch over her. Gradually, the nature of their equation evolved.

Initially ‘fostering’ her as a father figure, Hitler soon turned into an obsessive, haunting presence. At her gullible and impressionable age, Geli was easily controlled and couldn’t openly object to her powerful oppressor’s actions.

Geli’s days of freedom and fun were long gone.

She was coaxed into bearing the depressing, cut-off routine of a prisoner. When her affair with a chauffeur was discovered, Hitler fired him. All her suitors were driven away. He then put an end to her social outings, not even letting her meet friends. Once a social butterfly and charged chatterbox, Geli now spent time mostly alone, hopeless and depressed.

It seemed like the Führer had fallen for an enchanting young girl who also happened to be his niece. He was desperately dependent on his ‘ward’. She was his drug, and he was addicted.

Apparently, Hitler was in love.

He felt for her like a cynical, wildly jealous and madly possessive lover, and it showed. His overbearing insecurity and dominance was already being discussed in hushed whispers. Was there a sick romance brewing behind the walls of their shared home?

At the time, Hitler was yet to become the world’s most feared tyrant. The Nazi party was on a steady rise and the scandal involving the leader posed as a dangerous threat to the party’s image. But Hitler ignored the warnings.

Now, Geli dreamed of becoming a singer someday and wanted to go to escape to Vienna to start afresh. She wanted to marry a man there and settle down. Many quarrels ensued between Hitler and Geli due to this.

Finally, one day, as Hitler was leaving for a meeting, Geli hung out of the window and yelled something to Hitler. He responded by saying, “No, for the last time, no.”

Later, Geli was found lying facedown on the floor, bloody, in a pool of a violent tragedy. There was a hole in her chest, with a lung blown to smithereens by a bullet from her uncle’s stolen pistol.

It has been almost 86 years since then. Geli was 23.

It was ruled a suicide, even though an enthusiastic letter about future plans to a friend was found, half-written, on her desk. There was no note. The cause was stated as “unsatisfied artistic achievement.” Curiously, her body was buried in a catholic cemetery, where suicide cases aren’t allowed. Some say she killed herself out of frustration while some believe she was murdered.

It’s also said that Hitler went into deep depression upon receiving the news and mourned by her grave. He sealed off her room and visited it every now and then. But Geli’s death didn’t slow down his political ambition, of course. Though it stirred up a great controversy, the matter was quickly covered up and erased from public memory. Hitler even issued statements dismissing all theories.

Whether Geli and Hitler’s relationship was sexual or not, no one can say with unflinching certainty, but there’s unquestionable evidence that the controversy holds true. There are testimonies about how Hitler made Geli perform gross kinky acts, including defecating and urinating on him. But be it consensual or forced, their bond was ugly in every way.

When Geli was born, Hitler was a bitter, struggling artist. When she died, he was on the brink of world-domination, a hateful tyrant who’d commit the most heinous genocide on Earth.

Was it all an unethical journey of love, a toxic bond of co-dependence or a silent crime of passion? No one knows. And no one ever will.

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