Newly uncovered archival documents raised questions over the circumstances surrounding the 1931 death of Adolf Hitler’s half-niece, Angela “Geli” Raubal, whose death was officially ruled a suicide.
Raubal, 23, was found with a gunshot wound to her chest in Hitler’s Munich apartment in September 1931. The pistol used belonged to Hitler, who had maintained a close and reportedly controlling relationship with Raubal.
The accepted account had held that Raubal’s body was discovered on September 19, 1931, after Hitler had already left Munich for Nuremberg.
However, German historian Harold Sandner uncovered an entry in Munich’s official death register that gave the date and time of the discovery of Raubal’s body as 10:15 a.m. on September 18, according to a CNN report.
Two death notices found in the archives also reportedly listed September 18 as the date.
Possible cover-up by police?
If the records were authentic, they would have placed Raubal’s death roughly 24 hours earlier than previously believed and would have placed Hitler in Munich when her body was discovered.
Official records showed that Hitler did not leave Munich for Nuremberg until the afternoon of September 18.
Sandner suggested that the conflicting records could have pointed to a possible cover-up by police officials sympathetic to the Nazi Party. His findings were first reported by German news outlet Der Spiegel and were due to be detailed in his forthcoming book, The Death of Angela ‘Geli’ Raubal: Suicide or Foul Play?
Thomas Weber, a historian of Nazi Germany at the University of Aberdeen, told CNN that Sandner had shown him the documents and that he considered the findings credible.
Weber said he had initially approached the findings with skepticism but concluded that the documents appeared to seriously challenge the established chronology of Raubal’s death.
“Assuming that the photocopies of the documents that Sandner shared with me are authentic – and I have no reason to doubt that – it seems clear that Raubal died a day earlier than we all have assumed over the last almost one hundred years, and thus that Hitler was still in Munich when she died,” Weber told CNN.
Weber added that the existence of three newly uncovered documents listing September 18 made a simple clerical error less likely.
However, Weber stopped short of concluding that Hitler had killed Raubal.
He said the Nazi Party could have had other reasons to conceal details surrounding her death. At the time, the party was seeking broader support from the political right, while Hitler was trying to present himself as a respectable political figure.
Weber said a scandal surrounding Raubal’s death could have damaged that effort.
Raubal’s relationship with Hitler
Raubal was the daughter of Hitler’s half-sister, Angela Hammitzsch, and had lived close to Hitler for several years while her mother worked as his housekeeper.
She moved into Hitler’s Munich apartment in 1929.
Historians had long debated the nature of Hitler’s relationship with Raubal. Some had described Hitler as deeply attached to her and controlling of her personal life, while claims that their relationship had become sexual remained disputed.
Shortly before her death, Hitler and Raubal were believed to have argued over her plans to leave Munich and travel to Vienna to study music.
The established account had held that Raubal was found dead in a locked room after Hitler had already left Munich. The newly uncovered documents would have changed that chronology by placing Hitler in the city when her body was reportedly discovered.
The documents did not establish how Raubal died or prove that Hitler had been responsible for her death.
They instead challenged a key part of the chronology surrounding the case and renewed questions about what had happened inside Hitler’s Munich apartment in September 1931.
