Hitlers Daughter

There are two stories in this book. First, there's the story about Mark and Anna, and Ben and Little Tracey who while away the time they spend waiting at the school bus stop by telling each other stories. Second, there's the story that Anna tells about Hitler's daughter, Heidi.

Did Hitler really have a daughter? No, it's pretty clear that he did not. So this is fiction. But by the end of the book you may be left wondering about the possibility, just like Mark in this story.

Anna tells the story of Heidi who is the unacknowledged daughter of Adolf Hitler. She is not acknowledged in public, but she is provided for by her father. She lives in isolation with a governess, Fraulein Gelber, and knows very little of the real political situation in Germany during the war. She receives very occasional visits from her father, whom she addresses as Duffi.

Now, this story is related very slowly over a period of a few days, so Mark, who begins to be drawn into the story, has time to consider the implications of the tale that Anna is telling him. He begins to wonder how it might really feel to be the child of someone wholly evil. Put simply, does that make the child evil too? No, of course not, but what can the child do about it? And how could the child continue to love someone who has committed a gross crime? These are difficult questions to answer:

The thought pestered him all through afternoon school.

People should do what they thought was right. But what if what you thought was right, was wrong?

Doing what everyone else did was no help either. If there was one thing that all that Hitler stuff showed, it was that most of a whole country could be wrong.

Had everyone back then really thought about things? Had