Hansi

You can imagine that finding an image like this one prompted me to find out more.

Hansi is the story of a young woman from Sudetenland who experiences the coming of the Nazi party to her homeland. She is given a free education and learns that there are scientific alternatives to learning that are not found in the Bible. Gosh, so far, so good. Hansi becomes very loyal to the Nazi party and actually never relents in her devotion until Hitler commits suicide.

Hansi is then sent to an East Germany labor camp run by the Russians. She soon learns that Russian soldiers rape women, but Hansi doesn’t get raped because she’s “too skinny.” Hansi then bribes a ferry pilot to guide her to West Germany and the American camp. She is told that Americans are “all bubble-gum chewing gangsters” but even that is better than remaining with the Russian rapists. Hansi finds the American camp and is indeed met by a solider chewing bubble-gum, however, Hansi learns that this soldier does not want to rape her because he is a good American and reads Archie comic books.

Well, after gaining entrance to the United States, Hansi becomes an elementary school teacher and ends up reunited with her long lost German boyfriend whom we now know didn’t die when his U-boat sank.

They get married, but "something was missing" in their lives. Luckily, the husband (obviously desperate and about to get kicked out) brings home a Bible. Soon Hansi decides, "I’m going to take God at his word," and becomes an American Christian, despite the presence of a hippy culture in America that obviously does not take pride in their country of abundant food supplies and saving accounts.

From one mind control unit to a really scary moment of Russian chaos to a better system of mind control.

Hansi the Girl Who Loved the Swastika was published by Spire Christian Comics in 1976, but her story is really not too far off the beam from what kids go through today. If you’re not a "Christian" in mainstream America—you are an outsider, and you don’t deserve to have blonde hair, blue eyes, a teaching job, and a good marriage. Well, I’m editorializing there just a bit, but why not—it is a free country, isn’t it?

"Hansi the Girl Who Loved the Swastika Review" by Bradley Mason Hamlin © 2007 Mystery Island Publications.