When Repetition Becomes History

On Harald Sandner’s research into the death of Geli Raubal, and what happens when repetition becomes accepted history.

By R. D. Kerr

Oliver Moody’s report on Harald Sandner’s research into the death of Geli Raubal leaves me looking forward to Sandner’s book when it appears in November.

The murder question will inevitably attract the headlines, but another line stayed with me. Sandner says of the accepted account: “For generations, people simply copied this version off each other.”

This is Adolf Hitler we are talking about, one of the most scrutinised figures of the twentieth century. The circumstances surrounding the death of his half-niece in his Munich apartment have been picked over for nearly a century. Yet Sandner’s return to the records raises serious questions about a chronology that has been repeated for generations.

None of this establishes that Hitler murdered Raubal. A weakened alibi is not proof of murder. What interests me more is what this might tell us about the history we inherit.

The events of 1931 are not yet entirely beyond living memory. Yet an account involving perhaps the most examined man of the age may have survived partly because one generation repeated another's account.

There is nothing unusual in historians building on the work of other historians; they could hardly work otherwise. The rest of us do much the same whenever we open a history book and trust that somebody has checked what came before.

But repetition is not corroboration.

If this can happen here, how many apparently settled details in less scrutinised corners of our recent history might look rather different if somebody went back to the records?

R. D. Kerr