Catholic Fiction

Reviewed by Debra Murphy

By virtue of his already classic Mariette in Ecstasy and Atticus, his two novels with Catholic themes, Ron Hansen must already be viewed as one of the great Catholic novelists writing in English. He’s also one of the few, judging by a recent interview in Sojourners, who doesn’t cringe at the description, bless him. Given my lifelong fascination with the history of the Nazi era, therefore, it was with a great deal of eagerness that I picked up his 1999 Hitler’s Niece : A Novel.

And I wasn’t disappointed—shocked, horrified, fascinated, disgusted, yes, often all at the same time, but hardly disappointed.

Since not all the facts surrounding the short life and violent death of Hitler’s niece, Angelica (”Geli”) Raubel can be known with certainty, the book must be categorized, strictly speaking, as a novel. “Creative non-fiction” might be a little closer to the truth, however, since much is known, and more information has come to light recently pointing to the probable accuracy of Hansen’s conclusion, which he shares with a growing number of historians, that Geli Raubel was not only sexually abused by her famous uncle, but ultimately murdered by him as well. Unfortunately, the event occurred in 1930, three years before Hitler’s rise to the Chancellorship of Germany, to be sure, but well after this evil genius and perfectly sick individual had already gained enough power to get such potentially damaging incidents tidied up by a whole army of slavish underlings. Alas, there was no brilliant (or at least sufficiently courageous) detective on this case to risk the wrath of the SA and SS, and catch his man. Had there been, the world might have been spared an expensive object lesson in the price ultimately paid when an entire country hands the Devil a blank check.

And I don’t use the D-word lightly. One of the surprising elements in this book was the light Hansen shines on the goofy occult, neo-pagan and anti-Catholic beliefs and practices of Hitler and his inner circle—something too often blown off by secular historians as of little importance. And yet it was in many ways the heart and soul of National Socialism, and certainly of Hitler’s otherwise inexplicable hold on so many, even well-educated individuals. As Jung once wrote, a religion can only be replaced by another religion, and in the case of the Nazis, they were not only providing Germany with a flashy new religion to replace a stale Christianity, but a new Aryan god to replace a too-Jewish Christ.

Caveat lector: This is at times a very difficult book to read. Hitler’s well-known sexual pathology raises the Ick-factor to an unusually high level in this book, but it is not in the least gratuitous. If Hansen feels it necessary to sketch in some of the darker shades in Der Fuehrer’s personal psychology, it is in the service of giving us a valuable and disturbingly three-dimensional portrait of a possessed and possessing individual.
Highly recommended.