Daughter of the Reich

 

Louise Fein, “Daughter of the Reich,” Harper Collins (Large Print), 2020, 655 pp.

The setting of the book against the backdrop of the Nazi regime is a perfect vehicle for delivering an understanding of what it was like to grow up in a Nazi household in the 1930s.  Living in the US today makes it hard to miss the parallels of the 1930s society to today and how we are in danger of losing our democracy and becoming an authoritarian state.  

As the dutiful daughter of this high-ranking Nazi officer, Hetty Heinrich is looking forward to play her part in the glorious Thousand Year Reich. But she never imagines that all she believes and knows will come into stark conflict because of her friendship with Walter, a Jewish friend.  Hetty finds she doesn't know whom she can trust and where she can turn, especially when she discovers that someone has been watching her.

Realizing she is taking a huge risk—but unable to resist the intense attraction she has for Walter—she embarks on a secret love affair with him. But as the rising tide of anti-Semitism threatens to engulf them, Hetty and Walter will be forced to take extreme measures.

Hetty Heinrich's family have just moved into a beautiful house in Leipzig. Hetty's father is a busy man, Hetty, her mother and her brother Karl don’t question what the head of the household is up to, he works hard for their family and very long days.

Hetty attends school at the local gymnasium, here she’s taught what every teenage German girl needs to know, the curriculum has been changed and it’s all about making Germany great again and they're being brainwashed.

Hetty starts to have doubts, she may be a spoiled teenage girl, but she can’t understand why Jewish people are being treated so badly and she knows some nice Jewish families. Hetty almost drowned when she was eight, her brother’s best friend Walter saved her and he is Jewish. But Karl, cuts all ties with Walter and shunns his childhood friend who is no longer welcome at their house. Hetty also learns the shocking truth about her father’s job working for the SS and how he obtained the house the family is living in.

The brown shirts start targeting innocent Jewish people, including children and older people. Their property is taken from them, they are bashed in the street, publicly humiliated and charged a fortune to get a passport to leave the country.

Hetty has major issues with what her father wants her to do, she hopes to finish school and dreams of being a doctor, she doesn’t want to be used as a German brood mare and she has fallen in love with Walter, he is of course Jewish and every time they meet they risk being arrested.