PROBLEMAS ECONÓMICOS Y CONFLICTO SOCIAL STASIS

In contrast to the other texts Hunt’s narrative has a clear political message directed to the American reader as an “interview” on the website and a “conversation” included separately at the end of the US edition of the book indicate.28 In both, Hunt problematizes the concept of patriotism and warns of its exploitation for political purposes by dictators. She claims in the interview that her “family’s experiences, actions and thoughts during the twenties and their acceptance of the ensuing fascism would offer warnings for the present times when democracy, even in this country, seems vulnerable and under attack” (Hunt, [n.d]). Although

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silence is not prominently thematized in the text itself Hunt notes that “average Germans” remained silent after the war, a silence she tells the reader she and the world had condoned and “perhaps even insisted on” (ibid.). Not unlike Maria Ritter in the next chapter, she believed Germans had “forfeited the right to talk about [their] pain and losses in the face of the suffering inflicted by Germany on others” (ibid.) In the interview she claims she later broke her silence at the insistence of friends and her son, who is a historian (ibid.). Hunt’s memoir appeared during a time when others had broken their silence as well, as the proliferation of non-canonical memory texts published in Germany indicates (Heinlein, 2010; Rothe, 2011). Aside from a message to her readers warning of dictatorships and the negative side of patriotism, of the four texts in this study Hunt pays the most attention to details concerning everyday life under National Socialism, thereby providing a glimpse into a world with which many American readers were not previously acquainted. Indeed one reader notes that: “I have often wondered how the ordinary people lived under Nazi rule […] It opened my eyes as to how easily something so evil can take over ordinary decent peoples [sic] lives.” (donna m, 2015)

The front cover of the US edition of the memoir features a striking archival photograph of a blonde girl (not the author), together with other children enthusiastically raising their arms in the Hitler salute, to reinforce the narrator’s description of the ideological socialization of the protagonist in her development as a “true Nazi child” (p. 83). It differs from the front covers of the other memoirs in this study because of its prominent focus on a group of children but also from the UK and German editions of the text that feature family photographs. The photograph on the cover is the first interpretive clue to the text and serves to emphasize the focus of the narrative on the ideological socialization of German children under National Socialism. It clearly mirrors and reinforces Hunt’s claim in the narrative that:

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“Hitler and the Swastika flag aroused fervent Vaterlandsliebe (love of the fatherland) in Germans, including, at times, myself as a child” (conversation, p. 5, emphasis in original). The photograph situates the text within the collective history of the Kriegskinder as the last witnesses whose memories of the Second World War reflect contemporary discourse on German victimhood (Stargardt, 2006, 2007, 2013; Bode, 2011; Heinlein, 2014; Müller, Pinfold and Wölfel, 2016, p. 425). Similar to Powell’s narrative, the title refers to “overcoming the legacy of a Nazi childhood,” again indicating a confessional agenda. However, while it is a confession not only to personal guilt and that of Germans generally for supporting Nazi ideology the narrative concurrently shifts to a testimony to wider victimization by ‘the Nazis’ and Hitler who is demonized throughout the text. Thus, my detailed analysis of the text will delineate a more complex story than the title suggests.

The publisher’s description on the back of the book casts Hunt as “a girl who grew up a Nazi not really even knowing what that meant.” This invites an empathetic reading based on the vulnerability of children to ideological manipulation by the regime. Hunt is characterized as a girl who had a “seemingly happy, simple childhood” in the “beautiful mountains of Berchtesgaden” near Hitler’s compound. The author is then depicted as a young girl “under an evil but persuasive leader,” a girl who later became sceptical of the Nazi ideology and the “Nazi propaganda” through the actions of a “few brave adults.” She is described as having been “determined to know and face the facts of her country’s criminal past” in contrast to many who she claims “tried to deny the truth of what had occurred.” According to the description, the text is a “portrait of a nation that had lost its moral compass,” something which has “resonance in our own time.” These two descriptions claim a contemporary relevance for the narrative and mirror Hunt’s professed agenda to warn “young people” of future dictatorships (p. 4).

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Together with the photograph, the other paratextual information on the book cover signal the socio-political value of the text based on the “promise of didacticism” (Douglas, 2010, p. 61).29 Indeed, a review in the Library Journal in 2005 responds to such a promise; it emphasizes the memoir’s worth and deems it “vital” because it reveals the “brutal impact of World War II on nonmilitary Germans” (Farris, 2005). It highly recommends the text for “World War II and German history collections in all libraries” (Farris, 2005). An endorsement by Peter Gay, who also wrote his own memoir of his youth as an assimilated Jew in Germany in the early years of National Socialism, is included on the front cover which serves to reinforce the author’s warning to young people to be aware of “ideological zealotry” (p. 4). Gay deems Hunt’s narrative “supremely honest” which carries weight as an assessment by a Jewish German and serves to assure the potential reader that the narrator’s retrospective account has credibility.

In addition to their use in the paratext, photographs are also strategically embedded throughout to authenticate the narrative, reinforce descriptions of events, and also to give colour to the biographies of the family. They are included in chapters four through six which describe how Nazi ideology had pervaded daily life in Berchtesgaden. Photographs of the beautiful scenery of the area are juxtaposed with images of Hitler, the Berghof, SS barracks and swastika-lined streets of Berchtesgaden to emphasize the defilement of the area by the Nazi presence on the mountain, which the narrator maintains had permeated all aspects of people’s lives. A photograph of Hitler gazing down from the Obersalzberg with the caption “A brooding Hitler walking on Obersalzberg” most prominently encapsulates this (pp. 68-69). Part three discusses the war, her father’s death, her school years, the BDM and the surrender of Germany. It features photographs of her father, his funeral, the family, girls in BDM uniforms, the ruins of Hitler’s compound, and the arrival of U.S. troops. The last part of the

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narrative includes photographs of the Nazi criminals on trial in Nuremberg in 1946 to reinforce the narrator’s focus on the “fanatical” Nazi “other” as opposed to the “ordinary citizens” she mentions early in the preface (p. 2). The rhetorical function of various photographs will be discussed in individual sections of this chapter.

3.2 German Stories and the American Audience: a “mixed bag” and the Theme of