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A Child of Hitler: Germany in the Days When God Wore a Swastika
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About A Child Of Hitler: Germany In The Days When God
Product Description In this starkly candid account of one boy's indoctrination into the Hitler Youth, we see a side of Nazism that has been little recorded. This autobiographical account is a rare glimpse at World War II from a German boy's viewpoint. Review "A marvelous story that needs to be told" -- Baltimore Sun, 1985"It is a complicated, lingering history that Heck carries with him." -- Boston Globe March 29, 1985 "Necessary for a full understanding of World War II" -- Detroit Free Press 1985 "This is savagely good yarn. As good in many respects as Erich Maria Remarque's ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT as a social history of common people in uncommon times." -- Los Angeles Times March 7, 1985 From the Publisher The book,and its sequel, "The Burden of Hitler's Legay," is a unique inside view into the methods of youth indoctrination. The author is the only former high-ranking Hitler Youth leader who writes and speaks openly about his adolescent fascination with Adolf Hitler. The book is the basis for the 1991 HBO documentary "Heil Hitler: Confessions of a Hitler Youth." Alfons Heck is the narrator and subject of the film, for which he won an "Emmy" and a "Peabody," as well as other awards. The BBC also used the book in 1988 as source material for its documentary "The Fatal Attraction of Adolf Hitler," in which the author is featured. That film is frequently aired on A&E's "Biograph" series, as well as on the "History Channel." Heck is also the co-author of the award-winning young adult book "Parallel Journeys," the account of his life as described in "A Child of Hitler," but in contrast to that of his former lecture partner, Helen Waterford, a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz. The late Helen Waterford and Alfons Heck gave joint lectures to hundreds of schools across the United States for nearly ten years. Heck still continues to give lectures at schools and universities. In 1999, he gave the keynote speech during the Holocaust Awareness Week at the University of Colorado at Boulder, based on his book. From the Author As this century, perhaps the bloodiest in history, comes to a close, most eye witnesses to the epochal event of the Nazi era have already died. I may be the only German still alive who met Adolf Hitler as a teenager and writes and speaks about it publicly. Although I was a former high-ranking, even fanatic, member of the Hitler Youth, the honest account of my life in "A Child of Hitler" serves neither as a glorification nor a white-wash of the Nazi era, but primarly as a warning. It's quite easy to incite hatred, especially in the young, and that's the basic message of the book, as well as that of my lectures. Nothing is more satisfying to than to talk to students and motivate them to study history as the key to their own future. About the Author Alfons Heck was born in Wittlich, a small town in the Rhineland of Germany in 1928, and raised on a prosperous farm. When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, he was immediately exposed to incessant Nazi racial propaganda, beginning in elementary school. Heck joined the junior branch of the Hitler Youth, the "Jungvolk" at the age of ten. Although he was an altar boy, he became a fanatic member of the Hitler Youth after he had been selected to attend the last Nazi Party Rally of the Third Reich at Nuremberg in 1938, where he fell under the spell of Hitler when he saw him in person. During the war he was a member of the elite "Flying Hitler Youth, and although he was still in high school, he was accepted as a future officer cadet of the Luftwaffe. By 1944, he was a top-rated sailplane pilot looking forward to a career as a pilot. But after the Allied invasion of June 6, 1944, he was instead sent to the Siegfried Line as a Hitler Youth captain (Gefolgschaftsfuehrer). He rose quickly to the command of 3,000 Hitler Youth engaged in the fortification of the "Westwall" (Siegfried Line) defenses. He met Adolf Hitler at a conference shortly before t
