Excerpt of On Hitler's Mountain by Irmgard Hunt
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This memoir is as much the story of my mother and my
grandparents -- all passed away -- as it is my own. Many details from their
lives and my babyhood came from Tante Emilie, ever cheerful, lucid, and full of
memories at age ninety-six. During recent visits in Berchtesgaden, still home
and summer home to my two sisters, I was greatly aided by long, frank
conversations with them, their families, and friends whom I have known since my
youth and who provided confirmations and a wealth of details. Old friends walked
the old trails and the Obersalzbergstrasse with me, passing houses and cottages
where we lived and played and where -- unrecognizably now -- the Nazi elite and
the S.S. had held sway.
Thanks to my sisters and my cousins in Selb, I had access to
family documents, marriage manuals, genealogical information required by the
Nazis, my father's military records, letters from my Pöhlmann
grandmother to her soldier husband written during World War I in the neat,
steep, spiky German script that she had learned in grade school and had not
practiced much since. To look at these letters was to hear the scratching of her
steel pen on the lined, white pad of paper, to know from the darker script where
she paused to dip her pen again into the black inkwell on the wobbly kitchen
table, to sense her pauses and her hurry to finish and return to her endless
chores. In addition, family photographs and documents from my mother's cupboard
drawers were unearthed. They included the diary she kept during World War II,
which, though terse, portrays the feelings and daily struggles of an average
German woman, widowed and alone with her children, and touches on the major
events of those years. The small accounting booklet she kept for eight years --
1930-1937 -- paints a poignant picture of an utterly frugal life in which every
pfenning was counted and tracked.
Throughout his years in power Hitler had remained enamored of
Berchtesgaden and made some of his most momentous decisions, such as the pact
with Stalin in 1939, on Obersalzberg. It was here that he received Chamberlain,
Mussolini, and even the duke of Windsor and his American wife, Wallis Warfield
Simpson. The conquest of Obersalzberg and the hoisting of the American flag by
the 101st Airborne Division on the mountain were a fitting, symbolic ending to
the war and the Third Reich.
Once the war ended and we were recovering from its anxieties and
privations, we slowly began to realize to what degree the Nazis had shaped our
minds and every detail of our daily lives, and the enormity of German guilt. I
also began to appreciate those people, like my grandfather, who had expressed
doubts, who had dared to be critical, and who, though basically powerless, had
made brave attempts at resistance. They made a huge difference in my readiness
to welcome the end of Hitler's reign and embrace new values despite the sadness
over our many sacrifices and losses. Even then I made up my mind always to be on
the lookout for signs -- however insidious and seemingly harmless -- of
dictatorships in the making and to resist politics that are exclusive,
intolerant, or based on ideological zealotry and that demand unquestioned faith
in one leader and a flag. I hope that young people everywhere learn to recognize
the danger signs and join me in the mission to prevent a recurrence of one of
history's most tragic chapters.
On Hitler's Knee
A shout went up and the crowd pushed forward. I grabbed my
mother's hand and stood frozen, waiting. Then she said, "There is Adolf
Hitler!" Indeed, here he was, outside his big rustic villa, the Berghof,
walking among us and shaking hands, looking jovial and relaxed. He strode in our
direction, and when he saw me, the perfect picture of a little German girl with
blond braids and blue eyes, dressed for a warm fall day in a blue dirndl dress
patterned with white hearts under a white pinafore, he crouched down, waved to
me, and said, "Komm nur her, mein Boppele" (Come here, my little
doll). Suddenly I felt scared and shy. I hid behind my mother's skirt until she
coaxed me firmly to approach him. He pulled me onto his knee while his
photographer prepared to take pictures. The strange man with the sharp, hypnotic
eyes and dark mustache held me stiffly, not at all like my father would have,
and I wanted to smile. Adolf Hitler, the great man they so admired, had singled
me out, and in their eyes I was a star. As the crowd applauded, I saw my
grandfather turn away and strike the air angrily with his cane.
The foregoing is excerpted from On Hitler’s
Mountain by Irmgard Hunt. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
used or reproduced without written permission from HarperCollins Publishers, 10
East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022
