'Nazi Germany is a dangerous place for a girl with a stammer - and although her father tries to keep her safe, Ingrid can't help feeling like she's let him down. But in the air, soaring high as she pilots her beloved glider planes, Ingrid is free and incredibly talented. When she gets the chance to fly in a propaganda tour alongside her hero, Germany's daring female test pilot Hanna Reitsch, Ingrid leaps at the chance. But through Hanna, she will learn some dangerous truths about Germany's secret missions and the plans that could change the course of the war to secure victory for the Nazi regime. When everything is at stake, Ingrid must decide where her loyalties lie ...'
Writing a children's book set in Nazi Germany is no easy feat. You want a book that kids will understand, one that will be close to the truth of how things were, yet I imagine there is a sense of wanting to hide some of the less favourable aspects for fear of disturbing the readers. I remember that my childhood books never touched upon this area of history, so was not only surprised that The Last Hawk was completely set within Germany, but also didn't try to shy away from presenting the less savoury sides of what the Nazi Party were doing.
The story follows Ingrid Hartman, a young woman living in the small mountain town of Ulmenhain. Her father is the education administrator for the area, and as such has to deal with a number of Nazi officials, people whom he's trying to keep away from his daughter. He's doing this because Ingrid has a stutter. This might not seem like much, but Ingrid and her family are fiercely aware that this could very well put her life at risk. Right at the beginning of the book Ingrid acknowledges to the reader that before her mother died she saw first hand the cruelty of the Nazi's, of how she was ordered to stop caring for the children at the Youth Hospital, children who weren't learning fast enough for the Nazi's to consider them 'normal'. Eventually these children were taken away, along with others from the town, such as the mayor's deaf son, and that soon after people in the town received massages that these children had all died of pneumonia.
Straight away the book has told children about the horrible eugenics of Nazi Germany, of how the Nazi's would take children from their families and kill them. Okay, there's no mention of the concentration camps and the exterminations at this point, but the characters make a point of showing how suspicious it all is, how these death notices for pneumonia all happened at the same time. They know the Nazi's are lying about what's really happening; and they know that Ingrid could very well be taken away too.
This seems to become more of a possibility when a Nazi official labels Ingrid as a 'disgrace to Germany' for failing to act the way he expected. With this fear hanging over her that she could be taken Ingrid pushes herself to be seen as useful to the Nazi's. Luckily, Ingrid is an accomplished glider pilot, and has been helping out at the local flying school. She uses this as an opportunity to secure a position as a trainee instructor so that she can be seen as a patriotic and useful member of society, hoping that it will keep her safe.
Eventually her work at the school seems to pay off when she attracts the attention of Hanna Reitsch, a famous and beloved female pilot. Hanna recruits Ingrid into helping with her work, to join her in putting on glider displays for young pilots to encourage them to do their part for the war effort. At first Ingrid is over the moon about this, not only is she getting the chance to prove without a doubt that she's doing some good work for her country, but she'll get to fly with one of her heroes. And at first it is a dream come true for her, but things begin to sour when she learns that Hanna is trying to recruit young pilots for a suicide programme, and when her childhood friend, a recon pilot named Emil, begins to talk about camps where people are forced to work as slaves, and thousands are killed every day in gas chambers.
I was pretty invested in this story from very early on, in part thanks to the previously mentioned acknowledgement of Ingrid's stutter and her possible targeting by the Nazi's had me caring about her character with very little work having been done; possibly due in some part to me knowing that as a queer, transgender, disabled woman I myself would be one of the first marched into the gas chambers. I cared about Ingrid because I understood how much danger she was in, and knowing that she wasn't a real life character like Hanna Reitsch meant that she never felt safe, that the book really could end with her being taken away by the Nazi's and that had me worried throughout.
However, the book hooked me even more when Ingrid began to learn more about what was really going on in her country, when she learned that her hero was not only happy to recruit young men to blow themselves up, but was proud of it. She saw the ugly, hidden side of Nazi Germany first hand, saw how a woman she idolised was doing something awful; and then she began to hear about the death camps. The sudden shift of Ingrid feeling proud of what she was doing, of feeling happy in her role, to suddenly understanding that she was helping a regime that was monstrous was such a shift, one that made the book a lot more interesting.
I was honestly shocked that the book made it so clear how dangerous and deadly Nazi Germany was, and used that level of peril in its narrative, but I'm so glad it did. There's no point in hiding away from these things, even in a children's book. It's important to acknowledge the awful things the Nazi's did, especially in a time where fascism and Nazi's are on the rise once again.
The Last Hawk was an amazing read, a book with more depth, character growth, and peril than I was expecting. It's a book that's designed for younger readers yes, but one that I honestly believe that readers of all ages will enjoy, and that a lot of people should read.
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