Alfons Heck

Alfons Heck is both A Child of Hitler's author and protagonist. As protagonist, Alfons is born in 1928 in the town of Wittlich, Germany where he grows up for four years under the Weimar Republic, the government that collapses as the Nazis take over German politics. With the Nazis in power, Hitler quickly sets up youth propaganda organizations united as the Hitler Youth. It is Alfons's time in the Hitler Youth that is covered in the book. A Child of Hitler primarily focuses on Alfons's life between ages 10, in 1938, and 17, in 1945, at the end of World War II.

While much of the book covers Alfons's history, perhaps the most important feature of Alfons's story is the transformation of his psychology. As a little boy up to age 5, Alfons has a relatively normal childhood for a German boy in the early 1930s, but once Hitler comes to power, things...