Geli Raubal was Hitler's niece (daughter of his half-sister). He kept her under constant watch, like a prisoner, often wouldn't let her leave his apartment, and it's doubtful that the relationship was consensual

these rather perverse windows into 'the banality of evil' was born during the war, so he had no first hand knowledge, either.

I just find the pictures mesmerizing, in a train-wreck/car crash sort of way. The guy was just such a right bastard, and to see him on the veranda with his nicely pressed suit, and his cronies doing the Nazi high five and "Hail fellow, well met..." and the KIDS...he's always acting like the avuncular pater--it's extremely creepy; the ultimate in cognitive dissonance.

I guess we like our villains to breathe fire 24/7...but in real life, that miserable ass crapped and farted like the rest of us.

In part, he was fascinated by their innocence. I think also in part he probably had an emotional inability to bond with equals. People who dismiss him as a madman tend to overlook the quite rational way he went about turning his neuroses into public policy. Until the mid-30s, most people warning the world about Hitler were considered extremists. The world saw him as an exemplar of the German common man, a working class cure for the power-crazed culture of the stuck up Junkers who started The World War. I'm reading a book about FDR's first ambassador to Germany right now, Garden of the Beasts. Most of the American diplomatic corps were certain that, now that Hitler was in power in 1933, he'd become more responsible and start to curtail the efforts of his rank and file National Socialist followers to attack the Jews. More than a couple of the quotes include comments about how the Jews were kinda asking for it for the role they'd played in harming the German economy--I shit you not.

Crazy like a fox, for a time, anyway. He managed to suck in Lindbergh and the Duke of Windsor and his dreadful wife (not that they were bastions of intelligence, but still, you'd figure even a dullard having the benefit of a decent education would know better...) and a lot of people you'd just wouldn't expect to be such cheery racists...but that racism, it's a vicious thing. Indeed!

This book? http://www.amazon.com/In-Garden-Beasts-American-Hitlers/dp/030740885X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359824448&sr=8-1&keywords=garden+of+the+beasts

It looks REALLY good, actually--I think I may grab a copy!!

And he tries several times to get her WHAT?!!

An unfortunate choice of words.

I'm sure Blondi wasn't thrilled by that sort of attention ...!

Hitler, pants around his ankles, revealing sock garters no doubt, chasing his German shepherd around the room to the sound of Benny Hill's "Wacky Sax" theme song.

Ya gotta wonder who wrote the copy that accompanied those films...it's terribly choppy and disjointed, but I did find the images incredible--such good color, and surprisingly in focus, too.