...This vital memoir reveals a child's-eye view of the brutal impact of Nazism and the ravages of World War II on nonmilitary Germans. Hunt's is a precautionary reminder of what can happen when an ordinary society chooses a cult of personality over rational thought. Highly recommended for World War II and German history collections in all libraries.

One of the legacies the Nazis imposed on posterity has been a flood of memoirs, nearly all of them from victims lucky enough to survive the barbaric twelve years of the 'Thousand Year Reich.' But the memoirs of 'good Germans' are exceedingly rare. Hence Irmgard Hunt's reminiscences, drawing on her memories, and intelligently eked out with her interviews with relatives and friends, are particularly valuable as an intimate glimpse into the Hitler dictatorship from the perspective of a young girl (she was born in 1934). It is a supremely honest, attractively written book, unsparing about her parents' involvement (very low level) involvement with the regime, and her own awakening from the indoctrination she underwent in and out of school. It is the small details that would particularly touch a youngster mixed in with the major events, including her father's death at the front, that give the reader confidence that she is being authentic. An important book.

...Her parents, traumatized by the rampant unemployment and hyperinflation of the interwar years, saw in Hitler a hope for stability and regeneration. Despite the protestations of her staunchly anti-Nazi grandfather, Hunt's parents closed their eyes to the deepening depravity. Hunt's later recollections of life under occupation and her personal struggles to cope with the legacy of her parent's generation make this a poignant, valuable account.

An affecting, revealing memoir of girlhood in the heart of the Third Reich...Valuable firsthand look at daily life under Nazism as lived by "the average, law-abiding, middle-class German who helped sweep Hitler to power and then supported him to the end."

...Hunt's father was one of the first German soldiers (from Berchtesgaden) killed during the war. The older members of her family and others in the village had vastly differing reactions to Hitler. The author (who now lives in Washington, D.C.) remembers how some teachers said, "Heil Hitler," while others preferred more traditional greetings. ... readers who want a richly textured memoir of a German girl during WWII will find it here.