[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.And in fact Hitler tells us in Mein Kampf that his father was the son of a poor villager with nothing but a hut to his name.Hitler's ancestors came from a rugged countryside on the Danube much like our mountain regions.When we say Heil Hitler! we are saying Hail Hut Dweller! and are thus greeting ourselves, born as we were in mountain huts.The Hitler flag is thus a hut-dweller's flag, and we can only agree with the enemy propaganda that labels this war Hitler's war: it is the war of us hut dwellers.In his last speech, which was broadcast over the radio and printed in the Völkischer Beobachter, Hanke abandoned all pretense at making military sense of the defense of the Breslau Fortress, taking instead an existentialist stance:The reason for it is that we have jettisoned all the ballast we have been dragging through our lives and falsely calling culture when it was in fact nothing but cheap civilization.We often believed that by destroying this external backdrop to our day-to-day existence we would be destroying ourselves.That is not true.Tens of thousands of men and women in the Breslau Fortress have learned that they can take leave of everything they regarded as an integral part of their existence—their homes, their heirlooms, their goods and chattels, a thousand trifles they have always clung to—and hold up perfectly well.When we spoke earlier of total war, we meant what we said, but only now do we know what waging total war truly involves.My historian friend also included an eyewitness report describing Hanke's bunker: a broad carpet protected by runners led down into a broad passageway—it too covered with runners—flanked by functional offices and with a narrow passageway leading to a modern kitchen, showers and toilets, bedrooms, and another, more modest kitchen for the personnel.Hanke's room stood at the very end; it was large, brightly lit by concealed lights, and furnished with heavy furniture and valuable paintings and rugs.Here the Hanke who enjoyed surrounding himself with beautiful women by day would hold “boisterous parties attended again by beautiful women, elegantly dressed, women as charming and enticing as the models in peacetime fashion magazines.Where did they come from in this chaos? Nobody knows: the ones who did know went down with Breslau.”16MY MOTHER RETIRED in the summer of 1989, and I gave her a week in the canton of Ticino as a retirement gift.When I was a child, she told me of a trip she had taken there, of the slow, quiet funicular that runs from Locarno to the pilgrimage church with its view of the blue lake, of the tables and chairs along the Ascona shore and the piano music wafting out of the hotels, of a boat trip around islands with enchanted gardens and heavily wooded valleys where wolves still howled.I would not have been surprised if she had turned the offer down, but she accepted.The relationship between single mothers and only sons has a bit of the married couple to it.This does not make it a happy one: it can be just as loveless and aggressive, just as much of a power struggle as a marriage.As in marriage, though in its own way, there is no third party or parties—no father, no siblings—to drain off the tension that inevitably arises in so intimate an association.The tension does not truly dissipate until the son leaves the mother, and often the dissipation takes the form of a nonrelationship much like that of a divorced couple.It may also turn into a lively, intimate, tension-free relationship, and after years of going through the motions with my mother—seldom making trouble and always a bit bored—I was looking forward to our week together as a promise of better things to come.And in fact we enjoyed what we did and saw.Mother was so involved that there were times when I could have sworn the dismissive, derisive look on her face had disappeared.We talked over her plans for the years ahead and my dream of starting a publishing venture of my own—she with unfeigned interest in my questions and I with unfeigned interest in hers
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]