Nazi Wives
The Women at the Top of Hitler's Germany
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4.0 • 60 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Wyllie (coauthor, Codebreakers) delivers a chilling and richly detailed group portrait of the women who married Third Reich leaders Martin Bormann, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Reinhard Heydrich, and Heinrich Himmler. In 1920, Ilse Pr hl met decorated WWI veteran Hess at a student hostel near Munich, where their "platonic affair" became an "unbreakable bond" rooted in mutual admiration for Hitler. Gerda Buch was raised by "a rabidly Nazi father" before marrying Bormann, while Goering's first wife, Swedish countess Carin von Foch, considered Hitler a "mythical superhero from a Norse legend." Though the virtues of motherhood and family life were lauded by the women and the Nazi regime, Wyllie details plenty of internecine rivalries and scandals. Bormann, who "possessed a relentless and unrestrained libido," put Ilse Hess under surveillance after her husband flew to Scotland to try to negotiate peace; a "wild rumor" swirled that Mussolini was the true father of Goering's only child; and Lina Heydrich sabotaged Margaret Himmler's tea parties. The wives who survived the war, Wyllie notes, sought to "bury the past" or salvage their husbands' legacies by blaming others. Wyllie sets a brisk pace through colorful material drawn from primary and secondary sources, though it's sometimes difficult to keep track of the large cast. Still, this is an evenhanded and comprehensive account of an underexamined aspect of Nazi Germany.
Customer Reviews
A new history angle. Enjoyed but so many players a bit confusing
A new angle to history So many players sometimes confusing