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elusivek
On Hitler's Mountain: Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi ChildhoodIrmgard A. Hunt
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Growing up in the beautiful mountains of Berchtesgaden -- just steps from Adolf Hitler's alpine retreat -- Irmgard Hunt had a seemingly happy, simple childhood. In her powerful, illuminating, and sometimes frightening memoir, Hunt recounts a youth lived under an evil but persuasive leader. As she grew older, the harsh reality of war -- and a few brave adults who opposed the Nazi regime -- aroused in her skepticism of National Socialist ideology and the Nazi propaganda she was taught to believe in.
In May 1945, an eleven-year-old Hunt watched American troops occupy Hitler's mountain retreat, signaling the end of the Nazi dictatorship and World War II. As the Nazi crimes began to be accounted for, many Germans tried to deny the truth of what had occurred; Hunt, in contrast, was determined to know and face the facts of her country's criminal past.
On Hitler's Mountain is more than a memoir -- it is a portrait of a nation that lost its moral compass. It is a provocative story of a family and a community in a period and location in history that, though it is fast becoming remote to us, has important resonance for our own time.
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I'm feeling neutral about this book. Where I disliked the way it was written (sporadic references in German, with an immediate translation in English, but then after the same word pops up again without translation... and yes, I've already forgotten what it meant). In the first half of the book, the author kept jumping from calling her mom Mutti to her name (I forgot) and made it a little hard to follow.
Just as how there are parts I disliked the book, there are also elements that I liked a lot. This is a different view of the time of the war. Despite all the anti-Semitism and the propaganda of "making life better for Germans/Aryans" the general population also suffered. I'm not saying I like the suffering. It's just that a lot of focus has been put in the Jew stories, and well, this is war. I don't think life was rosy for the German population at that time. This showed that yes, people had a hard time too.
I'm impressed that her Mom, despite buying into Hitler's propaganda, was steadfast in not believing the whole "Jews are vermin" thing. The Mom forbade the kid to read that nation-published health book (stating Jews had blah blah blah problems and diseases), and also forbade her to tag along the other kids to bad-mouth the import workers.
And that is what makes me even more curious about why the people of Germany at that time bought Hitler so much. I know he is a good speaker, but there must have been a time when, I don't know, things just proved to be too much, and yet, they still believed him...
