[The following is taken from a memoir of Irmgard A. Hunt, who grew up in the mountains under Hitler’s Eagles Nest during the Second World War.]
Occasionally the German compulsion for order would gain the upper hand, even during these disorderly final days of the Third Reich in Berchtesgaden. It turned out that the S.S. had stored up on the mountain thousands of yards of black and gray-green uniform cloth, white-and-blue checkered cotton used for barrack curtains and bedding, and hundreds of pairs of high black boots.
Herr Jakob, the Landrat (administrator) of the larger Berchtesgaden area, was often at odds with the Party leadership and had persuaded the S.S. commandant on Obersalzberg to forgo the policy of blowing up all the goods and instead give the whole lot to the mayor of Salzberg for orderly and equitable distribution among the population. As the Allies’ tanks rolled toward Berchtesgaden, my mother and other women on the war-duty rolls were asked to report to the yard of the Salzberg grade school to help distribute fabric and boots to local and refugee families.
On a worn, wooden table the women measured and cut the cloth off the heavy bales, using scissors they had been asked to bring. After waiting in line, every family received about six meters of each fabric, along with one pair of S.S. boots per adult. The adults were of course all women, and most of them had to stuff paper into the toes of the larger men’s boots.
That summer and for years to come everybody had dresses made from the sturdy blue-and-white curtain and bedding material; for years we wore coats, suits, ski pants, and parkas of black or grayish green uniform cloth and tall, black boots that were eventually downgraded to serve for garden, field, and stable work.
I sometimes wondered what the Americans thought of all the women in this town wearing identical dirndl dresses along with those knee-high boots. Wearing German uniform cloth was actually forbidden, but no one ever questioned my drab green ski pants and matching parka with the hood that Mutti [German: Mom] had lined with some red checkered flannel fabric.
Source:
Hunt, Irmgard A. “War Comes to Berchtesgaden.” On Hitler’s Mountain: Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2005. 201. Print.
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