No Escape
58 years after Hitler's demise, controversy continues to reign. Attitudes towards Hitler among his contemporaries and their descendants range from adulation to hatred. They are influenced by ideological stance, personal memories, guilt, and denial. Born into a German middle class family, John Koch remembers the world around him from Hitler's ascent to power to the end of World War II, which John Koch experienced as a soldier and a prisoner of war. He reports on the horrific post-war years and the birth of a democratic Germany. From hundreds of remembered events, discussions, arguments, and episodes of risk and danger, John Koch creates a mosaic that blends into a composite picture of a country hurtling towards the twelve years of Hitler's dictatorship over Germany and much of Europe. John Koch was blessed with growing up in a family that saw Hitler as the destroyer of Germany. It was a Germany from which there was NO ESCAPE until Hitler's suicide. At a time when the history of Hitler and his Third Reich is once more questioned, revised, or romanticized, John Koch presents his reminiscences as an autobiographical narrative that serves the reader well in understanding what happened i