On Hitler's Mountain - A Picturesque Alpine Village In Bavaria

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/thereview.cfm?id=152006

2006-01-02

Irmgard Hunt spent her early years in Berchtesgaden. In 1934, Hunt's parents, who "praised Hitler for saving Germany", settled in the area. As a very young child, Hunt was taken to see the summit, the Obersalzberg, where Hitler had reconstructed a modest summer cottage into a massive luxury residence named "The Berghof". On that day she posed upon Hitler's knee for a photograph. Her childhood was played out against the backdrop of Nazi headquarters, separated only by a fence from the house where she lived. From the windows of their school, the children could glance up to the top of the mountain and view the Eagle's Nest, a 'fantasy building'.

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IRMGARD Hunt spent her formative years living in Berchtesgaden, a picturesque Alpine village in Bavaria that had long been a popular place for mountaineers to visit during the summer months. In 1934, Hunt's parents, who "praised Hitler for saving Germany", settled happily into their small cottage on the slopes of the Salzberg mountain, and as a very young child, Hunt was taken on foot to see the summit, the Obersalzberg, where Hitler had reconstructed a modest summer cottage into a massive luxury residence named "The Berghof".

On that day, the three-year-old made family history: she posed upon Hitler's knee for a photograph, a prized encounter with "the man I would one day consider a monster". The rest of her childhood was played out against the backdrop of Hitler's Nazi headquarters, separated only by a fence from the house where she lived. From the windows of their village school, the children could glance up to the top of the mountain and view the Eagle's Nest, a 'fantasy building' constructed by Hitler to impress foreign dignitaries - although Hitler, afraid of heights, spent most of the time at his retreat below.

Hunt writes in unremarkable, simple prose; this is a memoir that relies upon powerful subject matter rather than style. She relates, matter of factly, the story of a family bereaved, deceived and starved as they struggled to understand the legacy of the Third Reich and survive its terrible aftermath.

Through a child's eyes we learn of the pride and chilling naivety of those who entered the Hitler Youth: "The Hitler Youth, at least for us girls, seemed to be no more than an afternoon of fun, orderly activities that I could hardly associate, except for the marching perhaps, with military training." Hunt was proud of her white and blue uniform.

Hunt's mother was a devoted follower of Hitler, believing that he would provide her German family with a better future. It was not until 1945, when British warplanes bombed Hitler's mountain, that the horrific truth of his years in power began to unfold. First there was his hasty suicide in an underground bunker - hardly the action of a guiltless man - and then the emergence of leading Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials.

Stunned, thrown into poverty and virtual starvation, Hunt and her family were forced to loot Hitler's now-deserted properties. They buried bottles of champagne in a rubbish dump to hide them from the American soldiers who had taken over Berchtesgaden. They traded cigarettes for tiny amounts of food and queued for hours to get half a loaf of bread.

It took many years for the family to find security and make some sort of living again. Hunt's mother, to her daughter's shame, still admitted to a "vestigial suspicion of the Jews" as late as 1963.

This simple but thrilling tale of life in Hitler's shadow, seen through the eyes of a young German girl, offers the Second World War story from an unusual angle. Hunt's memoir reminds us that Hitler's web of tyranny and destruction reached even his own people, many of whom would never forget the harsh conditions of those post-wartime years. One of them was Irmgard Hunt, the little girl who lived next door.