I am pleased that Irmgard Hunt has chosen to give this account of her childhood story, On Hitler’s Mountain, for it adds much to our understanding of “how did it happen” (the infiltration of Nazi doctrine into the minds of ordinary Germans). Irmgard was raised in Berchtesgaden within sight of the Nazi fortress that Hitler built as his mountain refuge, the Eagles Nest. Irmgard tells us of her idyllic childhood in the beautiful part of Bavaria, and her story is full of little anecdotes which reveal so much about German family and social life in the 1930s – even to the extent of describing how she was once lifted on to the knee of the Fuhrer when he paused during a visit to his encampment. We read of her early years at school and the gradual Nazification of the instruction she received there, so that by her early teens she joined the League of German Maidens (the female branch of the Hitler Youth Movement).
Clearly some of her family and their friends were far from enamoured of Nazism, but in her home town, they were able to live lives which were fairly unaffected by the extremes of brown-shirt disruption and Jewish persecution. However, everyone in her community had a strong sense of German Nationalism and it is almost inevitable that the population rejoiced at the advances of the German army, and wept at their retreats. Nobody seemed to question the reason for Nazi agression, and the need to make Germany strong was a priority whatever the methods used to achieve it.
Irmgard Hunt describes the dark days towards the end of the war when the food and clothing because scarce and people began to realise that the war was being lost. We read of the fear that the Russians would reach Berchtesgaden before the Americans, and the obvious relief when American soliders drove into town on their tanks. Although the Americans were free with their gifts of chewing gum and chocolate, the programme of de-Nazification led to may problems for Irmgard’s relatives, who had to demonstrate that they were only minor players in the regime.
Irmgard emigrated to America after the war and married an American (thus her non-German surname), and now lives with a Jewish man. She feels strongly that democracy has to be defended all the time. She knows where the quest for a strong leader in time of social upheaval can lead and her writings are a warning to uphold democratic values at all costs.
