The Swastika and the Edelweiss

De: Rabbit Warren

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Have you ever visited an Austrian ski resort and wondered how the village would have been like during the days of the Nazis? Well, here is a novel that does just that . . .

Based on carefully researched facts of his adopted country during the Fatherland Front and Anschluss eras of the 1930s, dark fiction author Rabbit Warren has skillfully weaved a gripping story about a time that most Austrians would sooner forget.

Erich Schilling is only ten years old when he sees his first Nazi swastika emblazoned on the side of a mountain above his Tyrolean village, Gletschberg am Brenner. His dream is to be like his Uncle Max, who is a ski instructor and mountain guide at the only hotel in the village, the “Berghof”. The hotel is owned by the Nazi sympathetic mayor, Herr Kratzkopf, whilst his son is the psychopathic bully Slimey Stefan.

After the so-called “Battle of Hitler´s Birthday” at the “Berghof”, the local Nazis begin to harass the village, in spite of Erich´s father, the second chief of police and war hero, repeatedly locking their ringleader, Slimey Stefan, in the local jail.

Things are only made worse when Erich manages to humiliate Slimey in a brutal boxing tournament, so that Erich´s mother later finds her Gluehwein stall vandalized. It is only then that she reveals to her family why the Kratzkopfs may hate them so much, with Slimey Stefan finally managing to reap revenge on them all when the Anschluss arrives in 1938.

Part family drama, part tragic coming-of-age tale, part adventure story set in the beautiful mountains of the Tyrol as Erich finally tries to escape from the horrors of the Nazis, this highly emotive novel is also packed with historic background information on a country that was literally torn between Naziism and anti-Naziism.