–The first time I met Adolf Hitler, as you know, was at the 1938 Olympics when I gave him that bouquet of flowers! What a day that was! After that we went to visit him several times at Berchtesgarden. He would give me chocolates! And one time pickled walnuts! And I remember thinking to myself, someday when I grow up I want to be a Fuhrer, too! I even told my mother I wanted to change my name to Adolf! I was such a strange little girl! So precocious!

–But your parents named you Hillary instead.

–Yes, it was my mother’s idea. One day she just put down her newspaper like this, looked at me very sternly, and said, Trudy, I am going to change your name to Hillary, after the great English mountain climber so you will always climb the highest mountains in life!

–And my father said, wait! There is no Englishman named Hillary who is a famous mountain climber!

–And my mother replied, No not yet, Hans. But soon. Very soon! Himmler and the Waffen SS are creating him right now in a special genetics lab in Oslo. Frau Kammler told me so just this morning!

–Excuse me, Madam Secretary, but I’m a little confused. Assuming they had the technology, why would the Germans want to create an intrepid English mountain climber in the middle of the Second World War?

–Yes, I’ve asked myself that question many times. It is strange, isn’t it. Mother never said anything more about it, and to this day I have no idea what they were really up to! But that’s why they named me Hillary, after Sir Edmund Hillary who famously climbed Mount Everest several years after I was born.

–Edmund Hillary climbed Mount Everest in May, 1953.

–Yes.

–And you were born in October, 1947.

–That’s right.

–Then how did you meet Hitler?

–Well, don’t forget there was a war on, and things were different then! The Furher was a much different man in person. Nothing like what you saw in the newspapers. Very kind to children. And he loved little dogs!  And, of course, roller-blading in the mountains with Goering after the snow melted in the Spring!