Dr. Andreas Heusler, Dr. Christian Hartmann (& family), Dr. Guido Treffler

I come asking uncomfortable questions, all of which are crucial to my novel-in-progress dealing with the Nazi years in Germany and Poland …

• Why did so many Germans support Hitler?
• What did Cardinal Faulhaber think when he retreated from his early positions opposing Hitler’s antisemitic programs?
• Did the German population realize what was happening at the death camps?

These questions have no easy answers, and real evidence to support any answer may be difficult or impossible to obtain, and, to say the least, controversial. Yet each of these professional historians and archivists were generous with their time, their opinions, and their reference to sources previously not known to me. I truly appreciate their interest in my work, and hope to call on each for further asssitance as my novel-in-progress moves along.

Dr. Andreas Heusler works at the Munich State Archives, where he is a leading expert on the Nazi years. He is also the author of a major article on the history of Jews in Munich contained in a publication of the new Munich Jewish Center.

Dr. Christian Hartmann works at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Contemporary History), currently as leader of a project to produce a new annotated edition of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”. In addition to providing historical perspectives, he, along with his wife and daughter, provided Pat and me with a wonderful Bavarian dinner at his home.

Dr. Guido Treffler works in the archive section of the Archdiocese of Munich, where he has responsibility for the archival records of Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, the Archbishop of Munich from 1921 to 1948, who was perhaps the dominant Catholic figure in Germany during the entire span of the Nazi years.