Women in Nazi Germany, Part 2
Professor Nash tells us about wives and lovers of leading Nazis, women who participated in Nazi crimes, and women who worked against the Nazi regime. We look at everyone from Eva Braun, Hitler’s partner, to Sophie Scholl, one of the leaders of the White Rose resistance to the Nazi state. This episode shows that German women as a whole were a representative slice of Nazi ideology and practice, as well as opposition to Nazism. Episode 562.
—-
Buzzkill Bookshelf
James Wyllie, Nazi Wives
Nazi Wives is a fascinating look at the personal lives, psychological profiles, and marriages of the wives of officers in Hitler’s inner circle.
Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, Hess, Bormann―names synonymous with power and influence in the Third Reich. Perhaps less familiar are Carin, Emmy, Magda, Margaret, Lina, Ilse and Gerda…
These are the women behind the infamous men―complex individuals with distinctive personalities who were captivated by Hitler and whose everyday lives were governed by Nazi ideology. Throughout the rise and fall of Nazism these women loved and lost, raised families and quarreled with their husbands and each other, all the while jostling for position with the Fuhrer himself. Until now, they have been treated as minor characters, their significance ignored, as if they were unaware of their husbands’ murderous acts, despite the evidence that was all around them: the stolen art on their walls, the slave labor in their homes, and the produce grown in concentration camps on their tables.
James Wyllie’s Nazi Wives explores these women in detail for the first time, skillfully interweaving their stories through years of struggle, power, decline and destruction into the post-war twilight of denial and delusion.
Wendy Lower, Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields
Lower, drawing on twenty years of archival research and fieldwork, presents startling evidence that these women were more than “desk murderers” or comforters of murderous German men: they went on “shopping sprees” and romantic outings to the Jewish ghettos; they were present at killing-field picnics, not only providing refreshment but also shooting Jews. And Lower uncovers the stories of SS wives with children of their own whose brutality is as chilling as any in history.
Hitler’s Furies challenges our deepest beliefs: women can be as brutal as men, and the evidence can be hidden for seventy years.
“Disquieting . . . Earlier books about the Holocaust have offered up poster girls of brutality and atrocity . . . [Lower’s] insight is to track more mundane lives, and to argue for a vastly wider complicity.” — New York Times
“An unsettling but significant contribution to our understanding of how nationalism, and specifically conceptions of loyalty, are normalized, reinforced, and regulated.” — Los Angeles Review of Books
“Compelling . . . Lower brings to the forefront an unexplored aspect of the Holocaust.” — Washington Post
