The Girl In The Bunker [Kindle Edition]

I stayed up till the small hours reading The Girl in the Bunker by Tracey Rosenberg. For the rest of the night my mind stayed firmly in the bunker. The story is seen through the eyes of 12 year old Helga Goebbels who believes she is being taken to see her Uncle Adolf so that she and her family can help him celebrate the success of his campaign. With a poet's eye for the tiny detail, Rosenberg paints a graphic and poignant picture of the life and atmosphere in Hitler's bunker as the Russians approach Berlin. What makes the story so compelling is Helga's sense of responsibility for the reputation and ultimately the safety of her family. When she realizes how she has been deceived she musters all her wits and also her little's brother's skills in order to plan their escape from an impossible situation. Puppies and glass vials of poison appear in the same scenes while the simultaneous care and neglect of Helga and her younger siblings by each other and by their parents make for an agonizing tale. Full of insight and empathy this is an extraordinary narrative.

No ham-handed references to Nazis exist in this book. The name of 'Hitler' is never even mentioned within its pages. And yet, I couldn't help but feel that this book, more so than any other I've ever read, really got to the heart of what happened in that bunker in the last days of the Third Reich, because it focuses on the people within those walls as human beings, real and tangible. The bunker is not just a place where Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels saw the end and killed themselves; it's about a desperate last gasp, angry, power-drunk, borderline insane people once so deluded, now disillusioned and finally confronted with their own utter failure and the loss of everything.

Helga, only twelve, is worried about her hair, she is repulsed by the food, she dreams about a tomorrow that would never be a reality, she yearns for her mother's love, she is intensely protective of her sisters. She begins the story innocent, believing that the war is nearly over and she will be the young heroine of the Third Reich. The ten days in the bunker are her awakening, all the growing up she will ever have before the inevitable and horrific ending. She is so desperate to live, no matter what, that I couldn't help but hope that she would, despite knowing of course how her story ends. Ultimately her downfall is her yearning for her mother's love, her desire to slip back into innocence again, to be a child again.

This story, which is subtly told and of course meticulously researched, will stay with you emotionally. The ending did not leave me in tears, but awe-struck, transfixed in horror on the last page, and finally I closed the book with a sigh.

This is the riveting account of the last days in Hitler's bunker, with the Russians at the door, and Goebbel's children believing they are being taken to victory celebrations. Helga Goebbels is the twelve-year-old daughter of the Nazi Party's head of propaganda Joseph Goebbels; her mother Magda obsessed with her loyalty to Hitler. Although Magda's eldest son by her first husband is a prisoner of war, she takes her five daughters and son by Goebbels with her to the bunker. Gradually, we learn of Helga's understanding that Germany have not won the war and that all is lost. Her parents are shown as sarcastic, self obsessed, uncaring and critical, although the children are loyal when loyalty is to a lost cause. Helmut, the only boy, is afraid of his father, the two eldest girls trying desperately to keep the younger children calm, but criticised despite their efforts, the younger girls bored and terrified in turns.

I have read quite a few books about the downfall of Berlin, including the biography by Hitler's secretary, and the author does a great job of recreating the harrowing and claustophobic sense of the world narrowing in the bunker and the feeling of everybody trying to desperately escape a sinking ship. Helga's worship of 'Uncle Adolf' is tested by the shambling wreck she is confronted with and the reality of a world gone mad, with adults no longer seeming to be in control, cause her to feel afraid as only a child can when the adult world falls apart around them. The unreality of the situation, the absurdity of parties while the bombs are falling, Eva flipping through photo albums and eating chocolates while the Russians approach and Magda's jealousy are shockingly evoked. This is a really a stunning book, well written, about a difficult subject but portrayed with great empathy.

For anyone interested in this period, I also highly recommend, Chocolate Cake With Hitler, which also has Helga Goebbels as the main character.