Tochter des Reichs (Daughter of the Empire)

Chapter Twenty-Two Escape 3 April 1945 Maria Theresa Barracks Vienna Offensive   In this chapter, Bekka receives word from Otto to get out of Austria and go to Berlin, and tells Hilda to meet her at the Zoo at midnight. On the way from the Gestapo headquarters, she meets Sepp and Ursula; he gives her Rudi's Iron Cross First Class and tells her to go to Berlin. The girls walk from Vienna northwards to across the Danube, revealing the extent of their work with the resistance at last. They reach a farm where they stay in the barn, until disturbed by an escaped POW, a boy. Hiding in the woods nearby, they witness the takeover of the farm by Soviet troops. In Vienna, O5 resistance members are hung from lampposts with signs that they collaborated with the Bolsheviks. Von Shirach escapes the city and ends up with Sepp's army. The girls are barely keeping ahead of the Soviets as they move north towrds Berlin and Sepp moves his troops across the Danube. After two weeks, the girl...

  Chapter Seven Anschluss Vienna March 1938   In this chapter, Dr. von Schuschnigg meets with Hitler at the Berghof and is forced to sign an agreement allowing members of the Nazi party to engage in government under threat of war. Austria is invaded by the Nazis, Bekka is forcibly removed from her family and lodged with 'loyal' Austrian Nazis, Jews are dragged from their homes and sent to camps 'for their protection', and Bekka meets Sepp, Himmler, and Wolf at the celebrations and later tries to throw herself out of a window to escape the situation. Sophie and Fritz and family are sent to Prague; Erwein and Franz are captured by the Nazis and sent to the SS. We learn the desperate truth of Sepp's loyalty to Wolf, meet his mistress Ursula; Himmler maps out his Gestapo in Austria; Claus von Stauffenberg is critical of the SS; and Dietrich Bonhoeffer loses his position as a university lecturer for speaking out against the Nazis.  Contrary to what h...

 Chapter Six  Te Deum Laudamus Vienna March and April 1932 And April 1934   In this chapter, Bekka is confirmed and introduced to relics of her ancestors and beloved Sisi. Zita and Sophie decide that she should become a Carmelite nun. We learn of the troubles afflicting Austria after the Great War, the rise of Engebert Dollfuß, the problem of the Nazis within Austria, and the early push of Hitler to annex Austria (stated in Mein Kampf on the first page, as Otto notes.) In response to this a one-party Catholic State is devised in Austria with the aid of the Pope, and political dissidents - socialists, communists, and Nazis - are banned. Hitler takes power in Germany, and Otto is approached by a Hohenzollern cousin to meet with Hitler; fearing kidnap, he declines and narrowly avoids capture by the Gestapo when leaving Germany. While visiting the family in Vienna after meeting with Dollfuß about a constitutional monarchy, Otto enlists Bekka as his 'good will ambassador' af...