Elisabeth, ein Hitlermädchen

At a rally on May 1st, they meet: the Berlin shoe saleswoman Elisabeth Weber and the SA man Erwin Dobbien, both of whom share a passion for the National Socialist movement. Their love begins to crack when Elisabeth becomes pregnant and Erwin advises her to have an abortion. Then, Elisabeth, along with other young women, including her colleague Gilda, is sent to a labor camp to make way for the "deserving front-line soldiers and family men" and to be educated "for service to the fatherland in the spirit of the Führer." Elisabeth's doubts about the party grow stronger there. When Gilda commits suicide, she initiates a rebellion. In her novel, first published in 1937 in the "Paris Daily Newspaper," Leitner draws on documentary material that she collected during her illegal research, as well as in her reports.