The Demi-Monde: Winter, by Rod Rees

The Demi-Monde: Winter, by Rod Rees.  William Morrow, 2010.  517 pp.  978-0-06-207034-0.

... in which a young woman is enlisted to save the US President's daughter, who is trapped in a virtual world populated by Nazis, terrorists, and various villains from world history.

The Demi-Monde: Winter is the first book in a series involving a virtual reality (the Demi-Monde), set in 2018.  This virtual world was created to simulate urban warfare scenarios for US soldiers in training, and the programmers populated the world with "dupes", virtual duplicates of real-life people, famous and otherwise.  The computer world's technology is set to be comparable to the technology available in Victorian times.  The most prominent people populating the Demi-Monde are some the worst people to ever live, including Reinhard Heydrich (one of Hitler's right-hand men), Lavrentii Beria (Stalin's chief of police), Tomas de Torquemada (a prominent figure in the Catholic Church's Spanish Inquisition), and plenty of others.  The catch?  The people in the Demi-Monde don't know that they're not real; all they know is that living in the Demi-Monde is hell.  Unfortunately for the real-life humans who are spending time in this computer simulation, if you die in the computer, then you die in real life.  Somehow, the US President's daughter Norma has been lured into the Demi-Monde, and is being held captive by Heydrich and his lackeys.  The US Army recruits a young woman, Ella Thomas, to infiltrate the Demi-Monde and bring Norma out safely.  However, the rulers of the Demi-Monde have a bigger plan for Norma and all of the residents of the computer world.

On Hitler's Mountain, by Irmgard A. Hunt

On Hitler’s Mountain: Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood, by Irmgard A. Hunt.  Harper Perennial, 2005.  278 pp.  978-0-06-053218-5.

… in which the author describes her life in Berchtesgaden, Germany, during the years of Hitler’s regime.

When it comes to memoirs relating to WWII history, the selection seems to be largely dominated by Holocaust survivors or by writing from the Pacific side of the war.  For me, at least, it was easy to forget about the general population of Germany, since most of the attention goes to the Nazis or to the people who suffered under them.  Irmgard Hunt, the author of this memoir, was born in 1934, the year after Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany.  She was born in Berchtesgaden, a town in southeastern Germany that is infamous as being Hitler's home and his base of operations.  Irmgard was born to parents who had both suffered greatly in the difficult years following WWI.  Because of their difficulties in their youth, Irmgard's parents were both easily persuaded to vote for Hitler in 1933, and to support him in the following years.  Because of her proximity to Hitler's home, Irmgard was always aware of Hitler's presence; once, when she was a small child, she even sat on his knee when he spotted her at a parade.  As Germany eventually found itself at war with the Allies, Irmgard's happy early childhood changed.  Her father was called away to war, and was killed in France.  Irmgard goes on to describe what it was like being an everyday German during the war, during the years of rationing and air raids and increasing Nazi brutality directed at Irmgard's family and friends.