My book is an intimate glimpse into a German childhood under the Third Reich in the small Bavarian village of Berchtesgaden. It is by no means meant as an apology on behalf of Germany, but the story of an ordinary family’s survival in insane times, and a remembrance of an era when a civilized nation’s moral compass broke down and a nation’s people went like sleepwalkers into disaster.

My story, written from my perspective as a child, offers a unique view on life during that time -- the rise and fall of Hitler. I lost my soldier father at age 6, was obligated to join the Hitler Youth at age 10, nearly betrayed my virulently anti-Nazi grandfather, and suffered through wartime deprivations and post-war demoralization, guilt and denial of the past until a new beginning was ushered in and West Germany became a strongly committed democracy. This book is illustrated with more than fifty photographs, many of them personal.

• How a dictatorial regime owns and co-opts its youth
• How patriotism and patriotic symbols are misused by national leaders
• How a people accepts racism, stereotyping of scapegoats, and by looking the other way, becomes an obedient, apathetic tool of a criminal fascist dictatorship.
• The meaning of loss
• Growing up in a female society
• Guilt and the means of resurrecting and saving a country’s soul