ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an analysis of Erika Summ's and Ingeborg Ochsenknecht's memoirs, and discusses the nature of these particular photographs, that is, photos taken by and/or included in memoirs of army auxiliaries and nurses, as well as the theoretical and ethical challenges posed by them. In both Summ's and Ochsenknecht's case, the willingness to support the Nazi regime was not motivated by fanaticism, aggression, or greed. Rather, it was rooted in their cropped vision, in the willingness to turn away and excise from their narratives and images all and any events that they might be compelled to disapprove of on moral grounds. Like many German World War II memoirists, Summ is acutely aware of German suffering, including the plight of the refugees, and this focus is plainly evident in the photographic record. The chapter argues that any model that conceives of World War II nurses and army auxiliaries as apolitical will be laden with significant blind spots.
