On Hitler's Mountain

In her memoir, On Hitler’s Mountain (2005), Holocaust survivor Irmgard Hunt looks back at her childhood as a German citizen during World War II and her family’s efforts to evade persecution by the Nazi regime. Born in 1934, once Hitler had already gained control of Germany, she grew up in a mountain town called the Berchtesgaden near Hitler’s Eagle Nest compound. Though she was not Jewish – in fact, she was considered as Aryan as one could be – Hunt faced extensive brainwashing efforts under the Nazi party’s rule. Hunt argues throughout her memoir that Hitler used propaganda and intimidation campaigns to exploit the innocence and ignorance of German youth to tighten his grip on the political world and sow the seeds of his evil ideology in future generations. Hunt utilizes her own memories as well as primary sources from literature, music, tradition, and media to explicate how deeply Hitler’s regime penetrated into German consciousness.

Hunt begins her memoir by describing her early childhood, one that she characterizes as unexceptional. Though her family’s home in Berchtesgaden was near the infamous Obersalzberg, which housed Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest, it was a town so stereotypically German that it was almost banal. Hunt suggests that her ordinary town, ironically, had the perfect conditions for becoming a vessel for Hitler’s reign of terror. It was relatively poor, and like the rest of Germany, was politically unstable due to the legacies of the Weimar Republic and Treaty of Versailles. These factors led the people of Berchtesgaden to look for a strong new leader different from previous ones. Hunt’s own family eagerly awaited such a figure. Her grandfather, a cabinet maker, was only able to find work making coffins, and her mother foraged for scraps of food left over by her employer. Hunt believes that her family was weakened by their inability to feel their own dignity.



When Hitler rose to power, he promised to restore dignity to the people of Germany. He also promised a utopian vision of prosperity and national unity that loomed in stark contrast to the real conditions of the suffering Germans. In return, the German people promised Hitler a dedication to the narrative of German supremacy over Europe and the world. Part of this included the imperative for Lebensraum, or “living space,” a euphemism for the active annexation of other sovereign territories by wielding deadly military force against their innocent citizens.

Hunt argues that once the Germans had relinquished their grasp on reality, staking their future on Hitler’s vision, they were virtually unable to retract their bid. The Nazi regime quickly gained control of every part of German life, regulating even the country’s vernacular language. Jews began to vanish, in addition to people belonging to other marginalized or potentially “problematic” groups, including the disabled and politically deviant. People began hearing stories about trains that arrived from Russia or other parts of Europe to take hordes of innocents to concentration camps. For Hunt’s family, the most notorious camp was Buchenwald, one of the largest camps near Weimar, Germany. Her parents joined the Nazis, and her father was eventually killed in France. Her mother remained a Nazi throughout the war, never expressing doubt about the goodness of Hitler’s regime, and believing that his ends always justified the “necessary” atrocities it committed along the way. Hunt suggests that this pathological selfishness was an epidemic that preceded Hitler’s emergence, but also paints Hitler as a man who knew how to stoke its flames.

Despite the overwhelming acceptance of the Nazis in Hunt’s hometown, she writes that there were also signs of resistance and hope. Her family’s neighbors, the Reitlechners and Moisens, refused to join the Nazis, as well as a friend of her mother, Tante Emilie. Hunt’s grandfather was an almost heroic member of the resistance, and barely evaded being sent to a camp after Hunt nearly revealed his identity to the Nazis. Tragically, only after World War II ended did Hunt learn about the extent of the Nazi’s atrocities, mainly through press about the Nuremberg Trials. She expresses shame that her parents so fervently affirmed and empowered Hitler’s rule. Though the Nazis managed to convince Hunt herself, in childhood, that they were righteous, her memoir enacts a rebuke of their propaganda and brainwashing initiatives. On Hitler’s Mountain shows that even the exploited, disillusioned, and naive can learn to become moral individuals and fight against the injustices they see.