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Nazi Wives: The Women at the Top of Hitler's Germany
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 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.
281 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 1, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 423 reviews
August 14, 2024
This is a Non-Fiction book about Nazi Wives some of it is about before WWII, some of it is during WWII, and of course some of it takes place after WWII ended. I found this book very interesting, and I really love that there was some pictures of them. I read a ton of WWII books (Non-fiction and Historical Fiction) and this is not like any one I have read before. It is a heavy read, but I have to say it was so worth the read. I received an ARC of this book. This review is my own honest opinion about the book like all my reviews are.
October 16, 2020
This didn’t work for this me as an audible book I found the women blended together and I couldn’t tell one apart from the other. I think this would work much better in hard copy which I believe has photographs. I returned the book after 20%. I am not sure I will purchase a hard copy as I wasn’t keen on the format of account either and think it may have been slightly ambitious to include so many of the wives in the one book. I was interested in the lives of these women and how they were charmed by the monsters of the third Reich or indeed if they needed to be charmed in the first place.
If I come across a hard copy of this one at a later stage I may purchase it but not rushing out to buy it for now.
If I come across a hard copy of this one at a later stage I may purchase it but not rushing out to buy it for now.
October 21, 2020
This book is a heavy read, but a very interesting one. The key players in the Nazi regime -- we all know their names. Himmler, Bormann, Hess, Goering...the usual list. We all know their actions, their beliefs....their fates. Books, movies, television shows, documentaries, school lessons....we've learned all about the men that were Hitler's henchmen.
But how much do we know about their wives? The women who followed Hitler....the women who were married to these famous, horrific men? Most sources I have learned from over the years only focus on the men involved. I knew a little bit, but not a lot about the women and families behind those men. The only wife I was really familiar with was Magda Goebbels.
How were people so mesmerized and drawn to Hitler? It just astounds me. This entire circle of people knew there were millions of men, women and children being murdered....and they did....nothing. Planned it. Agreed with it. Carried it out. Fine-tuned it. Not a pang of conscience or morality in the bunch. They thought it was right. Wow.....it's just horrifying. This book brought so many new facts into the light for me, but it did nothing to calm my astonishment and horror at the events the Nazis brought about.
And, the women behind the men are just a culpable as their husbands. It still chills me clear to the bone when I think about Magda Goebbels poisoning her six children....having them injected with morphine and then administering cyanide to each of them....herself. And the rest of them.....their fates vary, but they all paid a price for their allegience to the Nazis.
Chilling, but enlightening read.
This is the first book by James Wyllie that I've read. It was well-written and obviously Wyllie did thorough research into the topic. I would definitely like to read more of his writing.
But how much do we know about their wives? The women who followed Hitler....the women who were married to these famous, horrific men? Most sources I have learned from over the years only focus on the men involved. I knew a little bit, but not a lot about the women and families behind those men. The only wife I was really familiar with was Magda Goebbels.
How were people so mesmerized and drawn to Hitler? It just astounds me. This entire circle of people knew there were millions of men, women and children being murdered....and they did....nothing. Planned it. Agreed with it. Carried it out. Fine-tuned it. Not a pang of conscience or morality in the bunch. They thought it was right. Wow.....it's just horrifying. This book brought so many new facts into the light for me, but it did nothing to calm my astonishment and horror at the events the Nazis brought about.
And, the women behind the men are just a culpable as their husbands. It still chills me clear to the bone when I think about Magda Goebbels poisoning her six children....having them injected with morphine and then administering cyanide to each of them....herself. And the rest of them.....their fates vary, but they all paid a price for their allegience to the Nazis.
Chilling, but enlightening read.
This is the first book by James Wyllie that I've read. It was well-written and obviously Wyllie did thorough research into the topic. I would definitely like to read more of his writing.
June 12, 2021
I don’t know why I read this book. My mistake.
First of all the book is confusing in the manner in which it is written – it does not deal with the women individually, they are all mixed in with each other as they and their husbands kowtow to Hitler, everyone having a gay old time. Each one vying to be “First Lady of the Reich”.
None of the women cared one whit where their wealth came from. They enjoyed it all to the fullest. They loved partying and reveled in their ill-gotten gains while the husbands devised the best way to kill people.
The women were no better than the husbands, in fact some of the wives were even more fervent Nazis than the husbands.
There is nothing fascinating about this book. None of these women get a pass from me.
I had to force myself to finish this obscene book.
First of all the book is confusing in the manner in which it is written – it does not deal with the women individually, they are all mixed in with each other as they and their husbands kowtow to Hitler, everyone having a gay old time. Each one vying to be “First Lady of the Reich”.
None of the women cared one whit where their wealth came from. They enjoyed it all to the fullest. They loved partying and reveled in their ill-gotten gains while the husbands devised the best way to kill people.
The women were no better than the husbands, in fact some of the wives were even more fervent Nazis than the husbands.
There is nothing fascinating about this book. None of these women get a pass from me.
I had to force myself to finish this obscene book.
August 29, 2020
I was glad to see that someone had done a book on the female main players around Hitler, instead of acting as if they didn’t exist. So I was happy to get a chance to read this ARC on the subject. I’ve read about different things involving World War II from many aspects, and this would be a new one to add. If you like books about this era, and would like one that’s a bit different, you may want to give this one a look over. It could end up on your TBR list.
There was a bit more intrigue than I would have imagined between the women, but they were very different and had different agendas at times too. And of course there was a lot going on at that time. Advance electronic review copy was provided by NetGalley, author James Wyllie, and publisher St. Martin's Press.
There was a bit more intrigue than I would have imagined between the women, but they were very different and had different agendas at times too. And of course there was a lot going on at that time. Advance electronic review copy was provided by NetGalley, author James Wyllie, and publisher St. Martin's Press.
July 22, 2022
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review:
–Rudyard Kipling, "The Female of the Species"
We're not supposed to notice things like this in the time of "Believe Women"...yes, of course, if they're telling the truth, but always, always LISTEN to women with open minds...but the women in this book were not exemplars of twenty-first century womanhood's new (!) course. They were awful, racist, anti-semitic, and deeply spoiled people, as one would expect.
Ilse, Carin, Emmy, Gerda, Eva, Margaret, Lina, and Magda married men who ran the worst, most heinous government of the twentieth century. They knew, either from direct evidence or from the unavoidable lessons of sheer propinquity, the kind of men they were married to, and they acquiesced at the minimum and ably assisted in other cases (thinking of Magda Goebbels most especially) in forming and maintaining the ethos of the Reich.
Not one of the women who survived WWII ever expressed regret or remorse for her, or her husband's, actions. These women were prototypical, stereotypical Mean Girls. They reveled in their luxurious lifestyle, they shut down whatever empathy they possessed when confronted with anything that challenged their world, and most especially in the case of Magda Goebbels (who went so far as to murder her children when defeat was inevitable) showed no obvious signs of possessing a conscience.
That made the read kind of revolting on some levels and deeply upsetting on others. I wasn't aware of the facts presented by Author Wyllie. In many ways I wish I still wasn't! But the truth is, the authorial choice to refer to the men by their surnames and the women only by their first names made teasing apart which horrible woman was attached to what vile man more complicated than it needed to be. This is also a function of the organizational principle used, that of dealing with the entire pack of wolves as a whole. I found myself flipping around, looking to connect (eg, Gerda Bormann's, the most often) strands. Gerda was far and away the woman I found least interesting, coming across to me as a Stepford wife without much to recommend her in either positive or negative ways.
All that said, the organizational longueurs are the source of the rating but the informational content earns the author and the book my recommendation. I'm glad someone has, at long last, foregrounded the role that women played in the Third Reich, at the highest levels, in setting, supporting, and even exemplifying the worst of an awful regime.
My Review:
When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail,
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
–Rudyard Kipling, "The Female of the Species"
We're not supposed to notice things like this in the time of "Believe Women"...yes, of course, if they're telling the truth, but always, always LISTEN to women with open minds...but the women in this book were not exemplars of twenty-first century womanhood's new (!) course. They were awful, racist, anti-semitic, and deeply spoiled people, as one would expect.
Ilse, Carin, Emmy, Gerda, Eva, Margaret, Lina, and Magda married men who ran the worst, most heinous government of the twentieth century. They knew, either from direct evidence or from the unavoidable lessons of sheer propinquity, the kind of men they were married to, and they acquiesced at the minimum and ably assisted in other cases (thinking of Magda Goebbels most especially) in forming and maintaining the ethos of the Reich.
Not one of the women who survived WWII ever expressed regret or remorse for her, or her husband's, actions. These women were prototypical, stereotypical Mean Girls. They reveled in their luxurious lifestyle, they shut down whatever empathy they possessed when confronted with anything that challenged their world, and most especially in the case of Magda Goebbels (who went so far as to murder her children when defeat was inevitable) showed no obvious signs of possessing a conscience.
That made the read kind of revolting on some levels and deeply upsetting on others. I wasn't aware of the facts presented by Author Wyllie. In many ways I wish I still wasn't! But the truth is, the authorial choice to refer to the men by their surnames and the women only by their first names made teasing apart which horrible woman was attached to what vile man more complicated than it needed to be. This is also a function of the organizational principle used, that of dealing with the entire pack of wolves as a whole. I found myself flipping around, looking to connect (eg, Gerda Bormann's, the most often) strands. Gerda was far and away the woman I found least interesting, coming across to me as a Stepford wife without much to recommend her in either positive or negative ways.
All that said, the organizational longueurs are the source of the rating but the informational content earns the author and the book my recommendation. I'm glad someone has, at long last, foregrounded the role that women played in the Third Reich, at the highest levels, in setting, supporting, and even exemplifying the worst of an awful regime.
April 5, 2021
A fascinating introduction to the wives of prominent Nazis and the women in Hitler's inner circle. This isn't greatly in depth but was perfect for my general interest, and offers a different angle on the well-known Nazi trajectory via the women, wives, love affairs and marriages of key men.
It is confusing at first that the women are referred to by their first names (Emmy, Magda), their husbands by their surnames. But the stories are extraordinary, from the wives who refuse to acknowledge what their husbands are doing, to those who were fervent Nazis in their own right, unrepentant till their deaths and untouched by the post-war denazification process.
Excellent audio book narration, with a subtle sense of irony.
It is confusing at first that the women are referred to by their first names (Emmy, Magda), their husbands by their surnames. But the stories are extraordinary, from the wives who refuse to acknowledge what their husbands are doing, to those who were fervent Nazis in their own right, unrepentant till their deaths and untouched by the post-war denazification process.
Excellent audio book narration, with a subtle sense of irony.
August 9, 2020
I have read many books on WWII and the Holocaust, but this was my first read dedicated to the wives and other women in the lives of the Nazi Inner Circle. I really enjoyed reading more about them and what they lived through as the wife of a Nazi. I had heard a good bit about Magda Goebbels and prior to this book, but the others were more illusive to me from my past readings. Anyone who is interested in WWII and learning more about those who were more or less, behind the scenes should read this book. I am giving this a solid 4 star review. Thank you to Netgalley, James Wyllie and the publisher for my opportunity to read this in exchange for a honest review.
August 6, 2020
I've read extensively on this period of history, but this book offers a different slant, and the author's thorough research was really enlightening. The wives and mistresses of the Nazi hierarchy are interesting in their own right. How much did each woman know? Did they support the horrifying acts committed by their husbands? Or were they just pleased with the power and money and chose to look the other way, claiming ignorance? Recommended for anyone interested in women's history or the study of World War II. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
October 29, 2020
NAZI WIVES
I think we tend to visualize Nazis as “monsters“. It’s even more terrifying when you understand that they are just people. Ilse, Carin, Emmy, Magda, Eva, Margaret, Lina, Gerda.
There’s something about this book that completely transports you back into the Nazi era in Germany during the 1930s and 40s. Maybe it’s the tiny and intimate details of these people’s lives; Nazi leaders and their wives, their families, their homes, estates, and castles. Maybe it’s the descriptions of Hitler’s intimate dinners and large parties at the Eagle’s Nest and the Berghof compound. And all the information about how these women met their husbands, became involved with Hitler, and how they viewed themselves in relation to the Nazi movement. Whatever it is, you feel like you are mingling amongst these people. And it’s really pretty creepy.
The amount of detail in this book is excellent. Idiosyncrasies regarding personal and mental health issues, beliefs in astrology, the occult, herbal remedies, spa retreats, and hospitalizations are plentiful. Relationships between the men and their wives and mistresses are also explored in detail. Who was in the Berghof clique and who wasn’t, and the changes in loyalties throughout the timespan. Although they lived luxurious lives and had a lot of wealth, many dealt with cheating husbands, having to have many babies, and being treated poorly and often left alone for long periods of time. There was a great deal of rivalry, catty behavior, and jealousy.
The book is set up and told chronologically, which is a positive in that you can understand the interactions amongst these people as time progresses. One thing that I found difficult was keeping track of the various people. I think it would’ve been helpful to have their last names used in addition to first names more often throughout the book. I found myself referring back many times to make sure I knew who was who.
Nazi Wives also includes many pictures and an extensive bibliography and notes. I felt that a lot of research went into the making of this book and it encourages me to learn more about these infamous women. Whether it is completely factual, I do not know. But it was enjoyable nonetheless.
I would like to thank NetGalley, James Wyllie, and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read and review this book.
October 6, 2020
This book is an interesting read. I have read a great deal about World War II and the events leading up to it, but never on the subjects that the author covered in this book. He provides biographies of the women at the top of Nazi Germany and not only their role with their husbands, between themselves and their relationship and interaction with Adolph Hitler. Among those covered are the wives of Goering, Himmler, Goebels and Bormann along with Eva Braun. Wyllie does a very good job of presenting an objective view of each. He also addresses what happens to each of them. This book will be of interest to those who want to learn more about World War II in Europe.
I received a free Kindle copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my nonfiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook page.
I received a free Kindle copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my nonfiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook page.
October 14, 2020
While somewhat disjointed as it tries to cover the lives of several women who had relatively little in common - although they generally came from the middle or upper-middle classes of pre-Nazi Germany - the book is quite interesting though more for the little tidbits and personal anecdotes, than the history per se; the pages also turn fairly fast and the pre/after Nazi period is well covered
Recommended
Recommended
February 9, 2021
Names like Hitler, Georing, Goebbels, Himmler, Hess, Bormann, Heydrich strike a chord of fear, disgust and evil in those who hear them spoken, to this day. These top-reigning Nazi figures were behind the persecution and murder of millions of people and will forever be clouded in a dark light. However, these men had lesser discussed but equally formidable figures standing beside them: their wives and mistresses with names like Carin, Emmy, Magda, Margaret, Linda, Gerda, Eva, and Ilse. Despite their softer gender; these women were not innocent or impervious of the actions of their leading men and in fact, in most cases, were devout Nazis and followers of Hitler even before meeting their partners. It is time, once and for all, to explore the lives and roles of the women in the Nazi Elite and James Wyllie strives to do just that in, “Nazi Wives: The Women at the Top of Hitler’s Germany”.
Wyllie’s thesis/inspiration for “Nazi Wives” is immediately captivating and this puts a lot of pressure on the text. Sadly, this isn’t met and the execution is bluntly: quite poor. Wyllie formats “Nazi Wives” to (somewhat) chronologically follow the lives of the wives and mistresses of Hitler, Himmler, Hess, Bormann, Goering and Goebbels (with the mention of other top Nazi officials) bouncing from one woman to another in order to showcase what each was respectively experiencing in the same time frame. Each wife/mistress is introduced with a brief background and scan of their Nazi beliefs before jumping into how/when they met the men that would change their – and everyone’s - lives.
The problem is that this layout is an utter mess and even though Wyllie is said to be an award-winning writer; clearly his editor is not and decided to furlough his or her editing job. “Nazi Wives” is confusing, choppy, disjointed, disorganized and difficult to keep up with (and to remember who is who). Not to mention, there is constant back-and-forth with dates i.e. a sentence will speak of events from one year with the next skipping years ahead and then back again. This weakens the text, makes the reading experience flimsy and fails to memorably educate on the subject at hand.
“Nazi Wives” also completely fails its mission to reveal and finally spotlight these Nazi female companions. Instead, Wyllie more so highlights their social calendars and constant entitled complaining (lots of complaining!) engaged by the wives/mistresses and their relation with major Nazi events. Yes, this perspective works to reveal some of the women’s personalities and characterizations by default; but the ladies are still somewhat a mystery and closed off. This may be a result of the absence of sufficient exhaustive records rather than at the fault of Wyllie’s own; but whatever the reason: it is cringe-worthy.
Wyllie’s habit of using overly familiar, slang-style prose that sounds like that of a teenager; has absolutely no place in a historical text (this isn’t a blog!) and hugely diminishes the credibility of the piece. “Nazi Wives” simply falls apart at the seams.
On a positive note, however, “Nazi Wives” does well with highlighting the personalities of the male Nazi leaders giving insight into their possible mindsets and their views of women/how they treated their partners aside from what we already know about World War II and the Holocaust. The issue is that the book is entitled, “Nazi Wives” and not “Nazi Husbands”.
Much of “Nazi Wives” feels quite repetitive in that no fresh topics are broached in the duration of the text and the women are presented in identical manners throughout which adds to the lack of ‘stickiness’. The subject matter is watered down like the worst bartender’s cheap cocktail.
Interestingly, “Nazi Wives” is quite relatable for US readers as the ideologies, beliefs, actions and political strains of the Nazi party demonstrated within the text are quite in-line with what is happening in America in the 2020s making “Nazi Wives” relevant reading and truly emphasizes the, “History repeats itself” – mantra.
The strongest pages of "Nazi Wives” are by far the concluding chapters discussing the lives, suicides and legacies left by the Nazi females and their offspring/families after of the fall of Germany. At this point, “Nazi Wives” finally opens up some of the women’s psyches but, sadly, this is too little too late.
“Nazi Wives” is supplemented with a section of black-and-white, non-glossy photo plates, a section of Notes (not annotated) and a bibliography.
Wyllie’s “Nazi Wives” aims high with exceptionally intriguing ideas but misses its hypothesis and goal to detail these female partners for the first time in a portrait/biography vein. “Nazi Wives” is suggested for those readers interested in any feminist and social study of the Nazi regime – even if thin. Otherwise, for the average or novice reader, “Nazi Wives can be skipped.
Wyllie’s thesis/inspiration for “Nazi Wives” is immediately captivating and this puts a lot of pressure on the text. Sadly, this isn’t met and the execution is bluntly: quite poor. Wyllie formats “Nazi Wives” to (somewhat) chronologically follow the lives of the wives and mistresses of Hitler, Himmler, Hess, Bormann, Goering and Goebbels (with the mention of other top Nazi officials) bouncing from one woman to another in order to showcase what each was respectively experiencing in the same time frame. Each wife/mistress is introduced with a brief background and scan of their Nazi beliefs before jumping into how/when they met the men that would change their – and everyone’s - lives.
The problem is that this layout is an utter mess and even though Wyllie is said to be an award-winning writer; clearly his editor is not and decided to furlough his or her editing job. “Nazi Wives” is confusing, choppy, disjointed, disorganized and difficult to keep up with (and to remember who is who). Not to mention, there is constant back-and-forth with dates i.e. a sentence will speak of events from one year with the next skipping years ahead and then back again. This weakens the text, makes the reading experience flimsy and fails to memorably educate on the subject at hand.
“Nazi Wives” also completely fails its mission to reveal and finally spotlight these Nazi female companions. Instead, Wyllie more so highlights their social calendars and constant entitled complaining (lots of complaining!) engaged by the wives/mistresses and their relation with major Nazi events. Yes, this perspective works to reveal some of the women’s personalities and characterizations by default; but the ladies are still somewhat a mystery and closed off. This may be a result of the absence of sufficient exhaustive records rather than at the fault of Wyllie’s own; but whatever the reason: it is cringe-worthy.
Wyllie’s habit of using overly familiar, slang-style prose that sounds like that of a teenager; has absolutely no place in a historical text (this isn’t a blog!) and hugely diminishes the credibility of the piece. “Nazi Wives” simply falls apart at the seams.
On a positive note, however, “Nazi Wives” does well with highlighting the personalities of the male Nazi leaders giving insight into their possible mindsets and their views of women/how they treated their partners aside from what we already know about World War II and the Holocaust. The issue is that the book is entitled, “Nazi Wives” and not “Nazi Husbands”.
Much of “Nazi Wives” feels quite repetitive in that no fresh topics are broached in the duration of the text and the women are presented in identical manners throughout which adds to the lack of ‘stickiness’. The subject matter is watered down like the worst bartender’s cheap cocktail.
Interestingly, “Nazi Wives” is quite relatable for US readers as the ideologies, beliefs, actions and political strains of the Nazi party demonstrated within the text are quite in-line with what is happening in America in the 2020s making “Nazi Wives” relevant reading and truly emphasizes the, “History repeats itself” – mantra.
The strongest pages of "Nazi Wives” are by far the concluding chapters discussing the lives, suicides and legacies left by the Nazi females and their offspring/families after of the fall of Germany. At this point, “Nazi Wives” finally opens up some of the women’s psyches but, sadly, this is too little too late.
“Nazi Wives” is supplemented with a section of black-and-white, non-glossy photo plates, a section of Notes (not annotated) and a bibliography.
Wyllie’s “Nazi Wives” aims high with exceptionally intriguing ideas but misses its hypothesis and goal to detail these female partners for the first time in a portrait/biography vein. “Nazi Wives” is suggested for those readers interested in any feminist and social study of the Nazi regime – even if thin. Otherwise, for the average or novice reader, “Nazi Wives can be skipped.
May 16, 2025
An interesting book of the lives of the Nazi Wives.
Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, Hess and Borman the names we know as influencers of the
Third Reich. Less familiar are their wives.
Carin, Emmy, Magda, Margaret, Lina, Ilse and Gerda.
Carin a recently divorced woman met Goering and was taken by all of his adventures. She died young and Goering was never the same.
Emmy opened a rest home for retired actors. While in Berlin she visited Hospitals.
Magda was looking for a cause to follow, she was enamored with Hitler.
Margaret met Himmler on a train in 1927. She was just as prejudice as he was.
Lina pushed her husband into the Nazi ideals. Heydrich had only read spy novels.
Ilse met Hess in 1920 while at university. She and her son Wolf tried to free Hess.
Gerda was an ideal Nazi Wife having seven children. Hitler treated her with respect. She also welcomed her husband mistress into their home. In 1944 she worked in an armament factory.
Hitler thought of these wives and their children as his extended family.
Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, Hess and Borman the names we know as influencers of the
Third Reich. Less familiar are their wives.
Carin, Emmy, Magda, Margaret, Lina, Ilse and Gerda.
Carin a recently divorced woman met Goering and was taken by all of his adventures. She died young and Goering was never the same.
Emmy opened a rest home for retired actors. While in Berlin she visited Hospitals.
Magda was looking for a cause to follow, she was enamored with Hitler.
Margaret met Himmler on a train in 1927. She was just as prejudice as he was.
Lina pushed her husband into the Nazi ideals. Heydrich had only read spy novels.
Ilse met Hess in 1920 while at university. She and her son Wolf tried to free Hess.
Gerda was an ideal Nazi Wife having seven children. Hitler treated her with respect. She also welcomed her husband mistress into their home. In 1944 she worked in an armament factory.
Hitler thought of these wives and their children as his extended family.
February 16, 2025
Nevestelor liderilor nazişti s-au bucurat de numeroase privilegii şi de un stil de viaţă luxos pentru că Hitler le-a permis asta
Cartea le prezintă în detaliu pe aceste femei pentru prima dată, împletind cu talent poveştile lor cu anii de lupte, putere, declin şi distrugere până spre apusul postbelic caracterizat de negare şi autoamăgire.
Cartea le prezintă în detaliu pe aceste femei pentru prima dată, împletind cu talent poveştile lor cu anii de lupte, putere, declin şi distrugere până spre apusul postbelic caracterizat de negare şi autoamăgire.
February 23, 2025
Read for Book Club
I must admit that while reading many books set during WWII I never gave much thought to the wives and children, the family's, of the Nazi's.
When I started reading I knew that I would need a list of characters to help me keep everyone straight. After about a quarter of the way through the book I gave up on that because I was spending way too much time reverting back to see who was who and not enough time with the story.
I believe if each chapter was devoted to a character it would have been a much easier read.
I appreciated the author's insight into the daily public and private lives of the Nazi elite and Adolf Hitler's close inner circle no matter how gruesome some things were.
I definitely learned alot from this novel but I am relieved it's over.
I must admit that while reading many books set during WWII I never gave much thought to the wives and children, the family's, of the Nazi's.
When I started reading I knew that I would need a list of characters to help me keep everyone straight. After about a quarter of the way through the book I gave up on that because I was spending way too much time reverting back to see who was who and not enough time with the story.
I believe if each chapter was devoted to a character it would have been a much easier read.
I appreciated the author's insight into the daily public and private lives of the Nazi elite and Adolf Hitler's close inner circle no matter how gruesome some things were.
I definitely learned alot from this novel but I am relieved it's over.
October 27, 2020
This was unfortunately a miss for me. I'm really interested in Nazis because I think it's fascinating that a group of horrible people managed to come to power and convince others to exterminate people. Let's be clear - I said it was fascinating, not inspiring or worthy of idolatry.
We never hear much about the women in this hierarchy of madness so I thought this was a great premise for a book. However, it was kind of patchy, the women were often difficult to tell apart, and we never spent too long on one woman so I felt like I still didn't know any of them by the end of the book.
I did find some things interesting that I hadn't known before. For example, I had no clue that so many people connected to Hitler attempted suicide multiple times (and failed!). I also knew next to nothing about Geli so it peaked my interest to read some facts about her.
Unfortunately, the things that grabbed me in here simply weren't enough. I was bored throughout most of the book and realized that this is the kind of book that usually turns me off to nonfiction - lots of facts with no actual storytelling to weave together a cohesive narrative.
Overall, it was slog to get through with some interesting tidbits here and there.
We never hear much about the women in this hierarchy of madness so I thought this was a great premise for a book. However, it was kind of patchy, the women were often difficult to tell apart, and we never spent too long on one woman so I felt like I still didn't know any of them by the end of the book.
I did find some things interesting that I hadn't known before. For example, I had no clue that so many people connected to Hitler attempted suicide multiple times (and failed!). I also knew next to nothing about Geli so it peaked my interest to read some facts about her.
Unfortunately, the things that grabbed me in here simply weren't enough. I was bored throughout most of the book and realized that this is the kind of book that usually turns me off to nonfiction - lots of facts with no actual storytelling to weave together a cohesive narrative.
Overall, it was slog to get through with some interesting tidbits here and there.
Read
January 16, 2022Some books cannot be rated for goodreads.
Congratulations to the writer for his extraordinary work and for the subject of this book, there will never be enough to know the history of humanity and human nature.
Congratulations to the writer for his extraordinary work and for the subject of this book, there will never be enough to know the history of humanity and human nature.
January 3, 2021
Women of Nazi legacy
This is a captivating study of the personal lives of Hitler's henchmen and the women who shared their lives at the height of the second world war. This narrative history looks at the uncertainties and instabilities in the lives of the men discussed here: Hermann Goering, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, Rudolph Hess, Martin Bormann, and Hitler. How did these darkest and powerful figures handle their family lives? Because their wives gave them support, encouragement and direction, and most importantly stood by the Nazi ideology.
The Third Reich controlled every aspect of their officer’s lives that included who they had romantic relationships, who they married, and the family background of these women. Their family lives offer perceptions of Nazi rule and the psychology of its leaders. For example, Gerda Bormann, wife of Martin Bormann, was Hitler’s private secretary and an ideal Nazi wife. She had her blonde hair in a tress and wore traditional Bavarian dress and walked with gait and elegance of Julie Andrews of “The Sound of Music.” The Nazis believed their mission was to 'masculinize' life in Germany and women must play a supportive role that included not complaining about their husband’s infidelities. Gerda Bormann was programmed to obey her husband. She went on to suggest a contract be drawn up granting her husband’s mistress Manja Behrens the same rights as her. And even suggested a law to be passed that would entitle healthy men to have two wives. But behind the propaganda machinery, its leaders were involved in debauched affairs, three-way relationships and brutal mistreatment of their wives that would have shocked in today’s world.
Joseph Goebbels was another dirty dog in his personal life. He pursued director Leni Riefenstahl and stuck his hand under her dress while they were at an opera. He had an affair with Czech actress Lida Baarova and asked his wife Magda if his mistress can move in together in a three-way relationship. She reluctantly agreed, but progressively fed up with his behavior, she considered a divorce, but Hitler refused to permit that.
The book is quite narrative and sometimes gets boring to read. Readers interested in the history of Nazi Germany may find this interesting.
This is a captivating study of the personal lives of Hitler's henchmen and the women who shared their lives at the height of the second world war. This narrative history looks at the uncertainties and instabilities in the lives of the men discussed here: Hermann Goering, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, Rudolph Hess, Martin Bormann, and Hitler. How did these darkest and powerful figures handle their family lives? Because their wives gave them support, encouragement and direction, and most importantly stood by the Nazi ideology.
The Third Reich controlled every aspect of their officer’s lives that included who they had romantic relationships, who they married, and the family background of these women. Their family lives offer perceptions of Nazi rule and the psychology of its leaders. For example, Gerda Bormann, wife of Martin Bormann, was Hitler’s private secretary and an ideal Nazi wife. She had her blonde hair in a tress and wore traditional Bavarian dress and walked with gait and elegance of Julie Andrews of “The Sound of Music.” The Nazis believed their mission was to 'masculinize' life in Germany and women must play a supportive role that included not complaining about their husband’s infidelities. Gerda Bormann was programmed to obey her husband. She went on to suggest a contract be drawn up granting her husband’s mistress Manja Behrens the same rights as her. And even suggested a law to be passed that would entitle healthy men to have two wives. But behind the propaganda machinery, its leaders were involved in debauched affairs, three-way relationships and brutal mistreatment of their wives that would have shocked in today’s world.
Joseph Goebbels was another dirty dog in his personal life. He pursued director Leni Riefenstahl and stuck his hand under her dress while they were at an opera. He had an affair with Czech actress Lida Baarova and asked his wife Magda if his mistress can move in together in a three-way relationship. She reluctantly agreed, but progressively fed up with his behavior, she considered a divorce, but Hitler refused to permit that.
The book is quite narrative and sometimes gets boring to read. Readers interested in the history of Nazi Germany may find this interesting.
September 7, 2021
James Wylien "Hakaristirouvat" (Atena, 2020) kuvaa Eva Braunin, Magda Göbbelsin ja muiden natsi-Saksan merkittävimpien politiikkojen puolisoiden elämänvaiheita. Lopputulos on sulavasti ja kansantajuisesti kirjoitettu tietokirja, joka tarjosi niin vanhan kertausta kuin uutta tietoa elämästä kansallissosialistisessa järjestelmässä.
Naisten suhtautuminen kansallissosialismiin vaihteli innokkaasta passiivisempaan, mutta kaikki hyötyivät systeemistä enemmän tai vähemmän, eivätkä näin olleen olleet julkisesti innokkaita potkimaan tutkainta vastaan, vaikka saattoivat päiväkirjoihinsa kriittisiä ajatuksia kirjata. Sodan jälkeen moni myös uhriutui sekä pesi kätensä juutalaisvainoista ja muista sotarikoksista.
Puolisoidensa tavoin myös naiset kävivät omaa keskenäistä kilpailuaan paikasta auringossa, ja välillä touhu sai melko myrkyllisiäkin sävyjä. Lisäväriä kansallissosialistiseen saippuaoopperaan toivat häntäheikkimäisten politiikkojen rakastajattaret, jotka olisivat saaneet ainakin Göbbelsit eroamaan ilman Hitlerin väliintuloa. Gerda Bormann puolestaan hyväksyi miehensä suhteen näyttelijätär Manja Behrensiin ja pyrki pistämään pystyyn omalaatuista moniavioista talouttakin:
M. saa lapsen yhtenä vuonna, seuraavana vuonna minä, jotta sinulla olisi aina rinnallasi vaimo, joka pääsee liikkumaan. Sitten panemme kaikki lapset samaan taloon järven rannalle ja elämme yhdessä, ja se vaimoista, jolla ei sillä haavaa ole lasta, pystyy aina olemaan luonasi Obersalzbergissa tai Berliinissä. (s. 252)
Tähti Schmidtin käännöksessä pisti silmään Pomo-sanan käyttö Hitleristä puhuttaessa. En osaa varmuudella sanoa, mitä ilmausta on käytetty alkuperäistekstissä, mutta ehkä Führer olisi kuitenkin parempi suomentaa johtajaksi tai jättää tekstiin sellaisenaan.
Jos aihe kiinnostaa enemmän, niin kannattaa ottaa haltuun myös Terhi Rannelan romaani Frau ja Wendy Lowerin tietokirja Hitlerin raivottaret: Saksalaisnaisia natsien kuolemankentillä.
Naisten suhtautuminen kansallissosialismiin vaihteli innokkaasta passiivisempaan, mutta kaikki hyötyivät systeemistä enemmän tai vähemmän, eivätkä näin olleen olleet julkisesti innokkaita potkimaan tutkainta vastaan, vaikka saattoivat päiväkirjoihinsa kriittisiä ajatuksia kirjata. Sodan jälkeen moni myös uhriutui sekä pesi kätensä juutalaisvainoista ja muista sotarikoksista.
Puolisoidensa tavoin myös naiset kävivät omaa keskenäistä kilpailuaan paikasta auringossa, ja välillä touhu sai melko myrkyllisiäkin sävyjä. Lisäväriä kansallissosialistiseen saippuaoopperaan toivat häntäheikkimäisten politiikkojen rakastajattaret, jotka olisivat saaneet ainakin Göbbelsit eroamaan ilman Hitlerin väliintuloa. Gerda Bormann puolestaan hyväksyi miehensä suhteen näyttelijätär Manja Behrensiin ja pyrki pistämään pystyyn omalaatuista moniavioista talouttakin:
M. saa lapsen yhtenä vuonna, seuraavana vuonna minä, jotta sinulla olisi aina rinnallasi vaimo, joka pääsee liikkumaan. Sitten panemme kaikki lapset samaan taloon järven rannalle ja elämme yhdessä, ja se vaimoista, jolla ei sillä haavaa ole lasta, pystyy aina olemaan luonasi Obersalzbergissa tai Berliinissä. (s. 252)
Tähti Schmidtin käännöksessä pisti silmään Pomo-sanan käyttö Hitleristä puhuttaessa. En osaa varmuudella sanoa, mitä ilmausta on käytetty alkuperäistekstissä, mutta ehkä Führer olisi kuitenkin parempi suomentaa johtajaksi tai jättää tekstiin sellaisenaan.
Jos aihe kiinnostaa enemmän, niin kannattaa ottaa haltuun myös Terhi Rannelan romaani Frau ja Wendy Lowerin tietokirja Hitlerin raivottaret: Saksalaisnaisia natsien kuolemankentillä.
November 23, 2020
http://www.bookwormblues.net/2020/11/...
A while ago, I read a book about Ravensbruck, a female concentration camp a bit outside of Berlin. It is, hands down, one of the best books about concentration camps I’ve read yet, being more a biography of the camp itself, and its many changes, than any specific people inside it (though it does follow specific people). Anyway, as part of this book, the author was talking about this little tiny town, situated on a lake, outside of the camp.
Now, a whole lot of the people who worked in this camp lived in that town, but more than that, Himmler, the guy who orchestrated the “Final Solution” had a mistress in that town. They ended up having two kids together. Whenever he would go tour Ravensbruck, he’d stay at her house for a while and for some reason, that fact kind of blew my mind. I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me until that point that these people had families, and children, and wives, and friends, and people they loved, but that book really got my mind churning on that fact. The idea of Himmler going home and eating a nice dinner with his mistress and their son and daughter after seeing all those people in the concentration camp really boggled my mind.
What kind of woman would be married to someone like that?
And yes, I know most of them claimed to not know much, but I really find that a bit hard to believe, especially after reading this book. Perhaps they didn’t know everything, but they knew enough. I mean, Lina Heydrich had people from concentration camps work in the gardens around her house, and when she couldn’t beat them hard enough, she’d have her SS guards do it for her. So yeah, they knew. They knew enough.
Margaret had seen press coverage about the death camps and knew her husband would be blamed; facing the prospect of having to account for his actions, she chose to plead ignorance, and told Stringer that she was ‘just a woman’ who ‘did not understand politics’
Anyway, so the whole idea of these women married to the men at the top of the Nazi food chain really burrowed under my skin and when I saw this book was coming out, I knew I had to read it. I wanted to sort of see into the minds of the people closest to those monsters at the top.
Nazi Wives covers the lives of a handful of women at the top of the government, starting with how they met their husbands, and the life from there. What surprised me, perhaps, is how little these women really had in common. Some of them were friends with each other, some of them really kept themselves on the periphery. Himmler’s wife was probably the most removed, her and her daughter living elsewhere, while her husband spent most of his time with his mistress, Hedwig. Their marriage, early on, didn’t work, but instead of getting a divorce, they decided to stay together for the sake of their kid, and their friendship seems to be quite firm, despite their failing romantic relationship.
Magda Goebbles was probably the wife I was most wanting to read about. I didn’t know, for example, that she was basically selected to be the Nazi Party’s “first woman” as it were, nor that her relationship with her womanizing husband was so miserable she was constantly threatening divorce, but Hitler refused to allow them to divorce and so they stayed together, always fighting, always circling the same issue. Goebbles had a long and evolved relationship with an actress at one point. He’d also bring his mistresses home, and Magda would change the locks on the house, or call them pretending to be someone else and tell them to meet her husband in some weird location, and the leave them waiting there, sometimes for hours, until she told her husband what she’d done.
For me there is no alternative. Our beautiful idea is being destroyed, and with it goes everything in life I knew to be fine, worthy of admiration, noble and good. Life will not be worth living in the world that will come after Hitler and National Socialism. Therefore, I have brought the children with me. They are too precious for the life that will come after us.
(Magda’s letter to her son from her first marriage telling him she was planning on suicide)
Eva Braun gets touched on a few times, though not much. She, when compared to the rest of the book, is probably the least interesting figure and I think highlighting her life so infrequently, kept her from overshadowing everyone else in the book. Out of everyone detailed here, I think Eva Braun might have known the least about what was going on than anyone. Kept in her bubble, I think she rarely had contact with the wider world and was rather happy to keep it that way. Her days were full of swimming in lakes and tea time and the like. Hitler was seldom there, and when he spoke to her, I got the idea that they spoke of things that were very unrelated to WWII. Furthermore, when everyone else was having things rationed, Eva Braun never had an issue getting hold of things like makeup, and new clothes (she wore three dresses a day), so I wonder, honestly, if she even realized rationing was happening to the average person. When she finally went into the bunker in Berlin with Hitler, she was absolutely shocked by what she had seen.
Nazi Wives isn’t just about their lives, though. There is a wider picture being painted regarding things that were happening in the broader world around them. When Heydrich is assassinated, for example, the author does a great job at painting just why he was where he was, and what was happening in the area at the time that led to his assassination, and how said death resulted in the horrible medical tests I read about in Ravensbruck (the book I cite at the start of this review).
I learned a lot about just what kind of iron control Hitler and his cronies had over the average person is surreal. Himmler had to research each person entering a marriage to make sure their genetic line was aryan enough. If divorce was requested, he had to approve it. If divorce was requested between people in the upper echelons of the government, Hitler had to directly approve it (which became the bane of the Goebbles’ relationship).
77 per cent of the SS leadership cadre were married, as opposed to around 44 per cent of fthe general population, and any SS man who wanted to leave his wife had to get Himmler’s permission; if they defied him, they were expelled from the SS.
Perhaps one small aside in this book that stuck to my bones was when Himmler took his wife and daughter to Dachau to see the garden, and both of them talked about how beautiful it is, and that really threw me through a loop. They went to a death camp, where people were literally dying all around them, but golly gee, wasn’t the garden beautiful. My cognitive dissonance when reading this aside was truly something to behold.
Gudrun wrote to her father after their visit and told him she’d seen ‘the large nursery, the mill, the bees’ and ‘how all the herbs were processed’, gushing about how ‘magnificent’ and ‘lovely’ it all was. For Margaret, the plantation was the end result of the plans she and her husband had nurtured in the early days of their relationship, the homeopathic nurse and the agriculture student who wanted their own small herb garden. To see their dream realised on such a grand scale must have been deeply gratifying. Not once did she stop to consider what it cost in human suffering: the back-breaking work, long hours, poor food rations, severe cold and outbreaks of deadly diseases.
Furthermore, the author discusses how each woman deals with the war a bit differently. Goering and his wife, for example, lived in a sort of fantasy world, which helped them escape from the realities of the war happening around them. A few of them tried to get Jewish friends out of the country, to safer locations. There were even instances were Himmler was called to make sure some of their Jewish friends went to “good camps” rather than the death camps (Himmler lied, but I’m sure none of us are shocked about that).
For Emmy, all the roleplaying in which she indulged served to conceal the ugly truth of what Goering actually did for a living: his turbocharged Luftwaffe saw its first action in the Spanish Civil War fighting alongside Franco’s right-wing armies and was responsible for the flattening of the small town of Guernica. Henriette Hoffmann – who married Baldur von Schirach, the Hitler Youth leader, in 1932 – made a psychologically acute observation about Emmy’s flight into a fantasy world: ‘She would have been content if … the uniforms had been stage costumes, her palace the scenery, the noise of war the sound effects behind the scenes and her magnificent presents only props. She never wanted reality.’
I highlighted a ton of this book. A lot of information that I just didn’t know before. Small details that help paint a portrait of these women and the times they lived in. I don’t know what I went into this expecting, but none of them were innocent, and I think (again, this is just my personal opinion) the claims of ignorance after it was all over were lies. Himmler’s wife and daughter Gudrun, for example, remained loyal to his memory for the rest of their lives and when she saw the media reports after the war, she knew what would fall on her husband. Magda Goebbles murder of her children and subsequent suicide was detailed, as was Hitler’s and Eva’s. Then the Nuremburg trials after, and life after that was touched on, too.
There are two things to note that keep this book from getting five stars.
First, occasionally this book felt a bit scattered, and while I don’t think there was really any other way to go about it, I would have enjoyed a bit more depth in places and perhaps a bit more of a coherent narrative. I do think the book would have had to have been longer to accomplish that, but I also feel like it needed it to get the depth I was really looking for.
Secondly, there was a story in the book about how someone went to visit Hedwig (Himmler’s mistress outside of Ravensbruck) and she brought them inside to see a copy of Mein Kampf bound with human skin taken from the back of a Jew in Dachau, and a chair made out of human bones.
After tea, Hedwig invited them all to the attic to see something special: furniture made from human body parts. Gerda’s eldest son, Martin Adolf Bormann – who was home from school for the holidays – remembered how Hedwig ‘clinically and medically’ explained the process behind the construction of a chair ‘whose seat was a human pelvis and the legs were human legs – on human feet’. Hedwig also had copies of Mein Kampf bound with human skin that had been peeled off the backs of Dachau inmates. ‘Shocked and petrified’, Martin Adolf and his siblings went outside with their mother, who was ‘equally stricken’. Gerda told them that when Himmler tried to give Bormann a similarly unique edition of Mein Kampf he refused to take it; Gerda said it was ‘too much for him’.
Now, I read this and thought, “That’s something I’d like to research and read more about” and so I did, and I found absolutely no corroborating evidence anywhere that any of these things actually existed. It was one story, told by one person (and widely told, at that. The story is known.), and while his story never changed, arguments were presented in the things I read that if something like that had actually existed, more than one person would have known about it. So perhaps it did exist, and perhaps it didn’t. I found it rather questionable that something without firm evidence being portrayed as truth was rather… well, it should be noted. Perhaps that actually happened, and that chair and book actually existed, but if so, I found no evidence of it in my various searches, and it makes me wonder what other hearsay tidbits are in this book, presented as fact.
All in all, this was a very illuminating, disturbing read.
Recommended, especially if this sort of thing interests you.
4/5 stars
A while ago, I read a book about Ravensbruck, a female concentration camp a bit outside of Berlin. It is, hands down, one of the best books about concentration camps I’ve read yet, being more a biography of the camp itself, and its many changes, than any specific people inside it (though it does follow specific people). Anyway, as part of this book, the author was talking about this little tiny town, situated on a lake, outside of the camp.
Now, a whole lot of the people who worked in this camp lived in that town, but more than that, Himmler, the guy who orchestrated the “Final Solution” had a mistress in that town. They ended up having two kids together. Whenever he would go tour Ravensbruck, he’d stay at her house for a while and for some reason, that fact kind of blew my mind. I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me until that point that these people had families, and children, and wives, and friends, and people they loved, but that book really got my mind churning on that fact. The idea of Himmler going home and eating a nice dinner with his mistress and their son and daughter after seeing all those people in the concentration camp really boggled my mind.
What kind of woman would be married to someone like that?
And yes, I know most of them claimed to not know much, but I really find that a bit hard to believe, especially after reading this book. Perhaps they didn’t know everything, but they knew enough. I mean, Lina Heydrich had people from concentration camps work in the gardens around her house, and when she couldn’t beat them hard enough, she’d have her SS guards do it for her. So yeah, they knew. They knew enough.
Margaret had seen press coverage about the death camps and knew her husband would be blamed; facing the prospect of having to account for his actions, she chose to plead ignorance, and told Stringer that she was ‘just a woman’ who ‘did not understand politics’
Anyway, so the whole idea of these women married to the men at the top of the Nazi food chain really burrowed under my skin and when I saw this book was coming out, I knew I had to read it. I wanted to sort of see into the minds of the people closest to those monsters at the top.
Nazi Wives covers the lives of a handful of women at the top of the government, starting with how they met their husbands, and the life from there. What surprised me, perhaps, is how little these women really had in common. Some of them were friends with each other, some of them really kept themselves on the periphery. Himmler’s wife was probably the most removed, her and her daughter living elsewhere, while her husband spent most of his time with his mistress, Hedwig. Their marriage, early on, didn’t work, but instead of getting a divorce, they decided to stay together for the sake of their kid, and their friendship seems to be quite firm, despite their failing romantic relationship.
Magda Goebbles was probably the wife I was most wanting to read about. I didn’t know, for example, that she was basically selected to be the Nazi Party’s “first woman” as it were, nor that her relationship with her womanizing husband was so miserable she was constantly threatening divorce, but Hitler refused to allow them to divorce and so they stayed together, always fighting, always circling the same issue. Goebbles had a long and evolved relationship with an actress at one point. He’d also bring his mistresses home, and Magda would change the locks on the house, or call them pretending to be someone else and tell them to meet her husband in some weird location, and the leave them waiting there, sometimes for hours, until she told her husband what she’d done.
For me there is no alternative. Our beautiful idea is being destroyed, and with it goes everything in life I knew to be fine, worthy of admiration, noble and good. Life will not be worth living in the world that will come after Hitler and National Socialism. Therefore, I have brought the children with me. They are too precious for the life that will come after us.
(Magda’s letter to her son from her first marriage telling him she was planning on suicide)
Eva Braun gets touched on a few times, though not much. She, when compared to the rest of the book, is probably the least interesting figure and I think highlighting her life so infrequently, kept her from overshadowing everyone else in the book. Out of everyone detailed here, I think Eva Braun might have known the least about what was going on than anyone. Kept in her bubble, I think she rarely had contact with the wider world and was rather happy to keep it that way. Her days were full of swimming in lakes and tea time and the like. Hitler was seldom there, and when he spoke to her, I got the idea that they spoke of things that were very unrelated to WWII. Furthermore, when everyone else was having things rationed, Eva Braun never had an issue getting hold of things like makeup, and new clothes (she wore three dresses a day), so I wonder, honestly, if she even realized rationing was happening to the average person. When she finally went into the bunker in Berlin with Hitler, she was absolutely shocked by what she had seen.
Nazi Wives isn’t just about their lives, though. There is a wider picture being painted regarding things that were happening in the broader world around them. When Heydrich is assassinated, for example, the author does a great job at painting just why he was where he was, and what was happening in the area at the time that led to his assassination, and how said death resulted in the horrible medical tests I read about in Ravensbruck (the book I cite at the start of this review).
I learned a lot about just what kind of iron control Hitler and his cronies had over the average person is surreal. Himmler had to research each person entering a marriage to make sure their genetic line was aryan enough. If divorce was requested, he had to approve it. If divorce was requested between people in the upper echelons of the government, Hitler had to directly approve it (which became the bane of the Goebbles’ relationship).
77 per cent of the SS leadership cadre were married, as opposed to around 44 per cent of fthe general population, and any SS man who wanted to leave his wife had to get Himmler’s permission; if they defied him, they were expelled from the SS.
Perhaps one small aside in this book that stuck to my bones was when Himmler took his wife and daughter to Dachau to see the garden, and both of them talked about how beautiful it is, and that really threw me through a loop. They went to a death camp, where people were literally dying all around them, but golly gee, wasn’t the garden beautiful. My cognitive dissonance when reading this aside was truly something to behold.
Gudrun wrote to her father after their visit and told him she’d seen ‘the large nursery, the mill, the bees’ and ‘how all the herbs were processed’, gushing about how ‘magnificent’ and ‘lovely’ it all was. For Margaret, the plantation was the end result of the plans she and her husband had nurtured in the early days of their relationship, the homeopathic nurse and the agriculture student who wanted their own small herb garden. To see their dream realised on such a grand scale must have been deeply gratifying. Not once did she stop to consider what it cost in human suffering: the back-breaking work, long hours, poor food rations, severe cold and outbreaks of deadly diseases.
Furthermore, the author discusses how each woman deals with the war a bit differently. Goering and his wife, for example, lived in a sort of fantasy world, which helped them escape from the realities of the war happening around them. A few of them tried to get Jewish friends out of the country, to safer locations. There were even instances were Himmler was called to make sure some of their Jewish friends went to “good camps” rather than the death camps (Himmler lied, but I’m sure none of us are shocked about that).
For Emmy, all the roleplaying in which she indulged served to conceal the ugly truth of what Goering actually did for a living: his turbocharged Luftwaffe saw its first action in the Spanish Civil War fighting alongside Franco’s right-wing armies and was responsible for the flattening of the small town of Guernica. Henriette Hoffmann – who married Baldur von Schirach, the Hitler Youth leader, in 1932 – made a psychologically acute observation about Emmy’s flight into a fantasy world: ‘She would have been content if … the uniforms had been stage costumes, her palace the scenery, the noise of war the sound effects behind the scenes and her magnificent presents only props. She never wanted reality.’
I highlighted a ton of this book. A lot of information that I just didn’t know before. Small details that help paint a portrait of these women and the times they lived in. I don’t know what I went into this expecting, but none of them were innocent, and I think (again, this is just my personal opinion) the claims of ignorance after it was all over were lies. Himmler’s wife and daughter Gudrun, for example, remained loyal to his memory for the rest of their lives and when she saw the media reports after the war, she knew what would fall on her husband. Magda Goebbles murder of her children and subsequent suicide was detailed, as was Hitler’s and Eva’s. Then the Nuremburg trials after, and life after that was touched on, too.
There are two things to note that keep this book from getting five stars.
First, occasionally this book felt a bit scattered, and while I don’t think there was really any other way to go about it, I would have enjoyed a bit more depth in places and perhaps a bit more of a coherent narrative. I do think the book would have had to have been longer to accomplish that, but I also feel like it needed it to get the depth I was really looking for.
Secondly, there was a story in the book about how someone went to visit Hedwig (Himmler’s mistress outside of Ravensbruck) and she brought them inside to see a copy of Mein Kampf bound with human skin taken from the back of a Jew in Dachau, and a chair made out of human bones.
After tea, Hedwig invited them all to the attic to see something special: furniture made from human body parts. Gerda’s eldest son, Martin Adolf Bormann – who was home from school for the holidays – remembered how Hedwig ‘clinically and medically’ explained the process behind the construction of a chair ‘whose seat was a human pelvis and the legs were human legs – on human feet’. Hedwig also had copies of Mein Kampf bound with human skin that had been peeled off the backs of Dachau inmates. ‘Shocked and petrified’, Martin Adolf and his siblings went outside with their mother, who was ‘equally stricken’. Gerda told them that when Himmler tried to give Bormann a similarly unique edition of Mein Kampf he refused to take it; Gerda said it was ‘too much for him’.
Now, I read this and thought, “That’s something I’d like to research and read more about” and so I did, and I found absolutely no corroborating evidence anywhere that any of these things actually existed. It was one story, told by one person (and widely told, at that. The story is known.), and while his story never changed, arguments were presented in the things I read that if something like that had actually existed, more than one person would have known about it. So perhaps it did exist, and perhaps it didn’t. I found it rather questionable that something without firm evidence being portrayed as truth was rather… well, it should be noted. Perhaps that actually happened, and that chair and book actually existed, but if so, I found no evidence of it in my various searches, and it makes me wonder what other hearsay tidbits are in this book, presented as fact.
All in all, this was a very illuminating, disturbing read.
Recommended, especially if this sort of thing interests you.
4/5 stars
June 27, 2025
tl;dr real housewives of Nazi Germany meets "pride and prejudice"
More often than not, women are seen as nothing but bystanders or victims in history.
This group biography explores the lives of the women married to the most powerful men of the Third Reich—such as Magda Goebbels, Carin Göring, and Margarete Himmler.
Wyllie reveals how these women were not permissive bystanders but participants or enablers in the regime, enjoying privilege, power, and prestige while turning a blind eye—or even lending support—to atrocities.
Then the mythical "Mr. Darcy", the top Nazi wives had was entirely dependent on his goodwill… One false move was enough to ruin them; Hitler could reduce them to nothing with the wave of his hand.
With sharp prose and deeply researched details, the book dismantles the myth of apolitical “housewives,” showing how ideology, ambition, and complicity intertwined at the highest levels of Nazi society.
It’s a disturbing but vital look at how evil permeates not only through soldiers and statesmen, but through salons, nurseries, and marriages.
4/5 It's a tough read. The authors never gratuitous, and unsettling.
More often than not, women are seen as nothing but bystanders or victims in history.
This group biography explores the lives of the women married to the most powerful men of the Third Reich—such as Magda Goebbels, Carin Göring, and Margarete Himmler.
Wyllie reveals how these women were not permissive bystanders but participants or enablers in the regime, enjoying privilege, power, and prestige while turning a blind eye—or even lending support—to atrocities.
Then the mythical "Mr. Darcy", the top Nazi wives had was entirely dependent on his goodwill… One false move was enough to ruin them; Hitler could reduce them to nothing with the wave of his hand.
With sharp prose and deeply researched details, the book dismantles the myth of apolitical “housewives,” showing how ideology, ambition, and complicity intertwined at the highest levels of Nazi society.
It’s a disturbing but vital look at how evil permeates not only through soldiers and statesmen, but through salons, nurseries, and marriages.
4/5 It's a tough read. The authors never gratuitous, and unsettling.
September 15, 2020
This is a very well researched and interesting book.
I struggled to keep the names straight at first. I made a list of the major players, their wives and their jobs to help me connect the people and their actions.
It was eye opening to learn the wives were so involved in the SS. They loved being part of the Hitler clique! And what a strange fascination most of them had for Hitler!
Looking back, it’s easy to see how wrong they were, but that early group of Nazis chose their path without any doubts or hesitation. They were ruthless and determined to control the world with their elite race.
The wives were like mean girls in the popular group at school. They enjoyed their status, their power, their glamour and their connections. They were competitive and went to any lengths to remain in good standing with Hitler. They were also heartless in their opinions of the Jews and wanted them removed from Europe.
It’s obvious they knew the extent of their evil by the end of the war. Suicidal decisions were made knowing the world would view them as monsters. I’m glad the book continued through the Nuremberg trials and beyond with the stories of those who lived.
Advanced reader copy courtesy of the publishers at NetGalley for review.
I struggled to keep the names straight at first. I made a list of the major players, their wives and their jobs to help me connect the people and their actions.
It was eye opening to learn the wives were so involved in the SS. They loved being part of the Hitler clique! And what a strange fascination most of them had for Hitler!
Looking back, it’s easy to see how wrong they were, but that early group of Nazis chose their path without any doubts or hesitation. They were ruthless and determined to control the world with their elite race.
The wives were like mean girls in the popular group at school. They enjoyed their status, their power, their glamour and their connections. They were competitive and went to any lengths to remain in good standing with Hitler. They were also heartless in their opinions of the Jews and wanted them removed from Europe.
It’s obvious they knew the extent of their evil by the end of the war. Suicidal decisions were made knowing the world would view them as monsters. I’m glad the book continued through the Nuremberg trials and beyond with the stories of those who lived.
Advanced reader copy courtesy of the publishers at NetGalley for review.
July 22, 2023
Ogromny potencjał, ciekawie zapowiadająca się książka, no i jakieś takie wydało się nowe spojrzenie na 2WŚ. Niestety nie za bardzo to zagrało, ponieważ znowu kobieta w tytule, kobieta na okładce a w treści i tak głównie to co zawsze czyli mężczyźni.
October 18, 2020
I received a free publisher's advance review copy, via Netgalley.
This is a group bio of:
Emmy, wife of Hermann Goering
Ilse, wife of Rudolf Hess
Magda, wife of Josef Goebbels
Margaret, wife of Heinrich Himmler
Gerda, wife of Martin Bormann
Lina, wife of Reinhard Heydrich
What’s ultimately infuriating and sickening is that these are not women who ended up being married to the wrong men. With the exception of Emmy Goering, these women were strongly antisemitic and enthusiastic Nazis, some joining the party before their husbands. Even after the war, when all was known about the horrors committed by the Nazis, they were still faithful to their husbands and to Nazism. The worst of them, Lina Heydrich, spent the rest of her life aiding former SS men. So much for any thoughts of women being tender hearted.
Like their husbands, these women jockeyed for positions of power in Hitler’s circle, and didn’t hesitate to stab each other in the back. They shared the delusion of Aryan superiority and were fine and dandy with turning non-Aryans into slaves and corpses. They enjoyed the privileged lives they led and didn’t care—or even welcomed—the costs to others.
Despite their being moral monsters in similar ways, they were individuals and Wyllie takes us through each one’s story. Though it’s occasionally hard to remember who is who, it’s an interesting read that includes information not previously available, in particular about the Himmlers’ marriage.
A worthwhile addition to scholarship about the personalities at the pinnacle of the Third Reich.
This is a group bio of:
Emmy, wife of Hermann Goering
Ilse, wife of Rudolf Hess
Magda, wife of Josef Goebbels
Margaret, wife of Heinrich Himmler
Gerda, wife of Martin Bormann
Lina, wife of Reinhard Heydrich
What’s ultimately infuriating and sickening is that these are not women who ended up being married to the wrong men. With the exception of Emmy Goering, these women were strongly antisemitic and enthusiastic Nazis, some joining the party before their husbands. Even after the war, when all was known about the horrors committed by the Nazis, they were still faithful to their husbands and to Nazism. The worst of them, Lina Heydrich, spent the rest of her life aiding former SS men. So much for any thoughts of women being tender hearted.
Like their husbands, these women jockeyed for positions of power in Hitler’s circle, and didn’t hesitate to stab each other in the back. They shared the delusion of Aryan superiority and were fine and dandy with turning non-Aryans into slaves and corpses. They enjoyed the privileged lives they led and didn’t care—or even welcomed—the costs to others.
Despite their being moral monsters in similar ways, they were individuals and Wyllie takes us through each one’s story. Though it’s occasionally hard to remember who is who, it’s an interesting read that includes information not previously available, in particular about the Himmlers’ marriage.
A worthwhile addition to scholarship about the personalities at the pinnacle of the Third Reich.
October 25, 2020
Nazi Wives // by James Wyllie
I've always found it important to learn about your country's history, especially the dark parts, rather than living in denial about it, so I try to read books about Germany, and especially the 2nd World War, regularly. Nazi Wives stood out to me when I first saw it because it looked at the events from a different angle that I hadn't previously learned from. It was interesting to read about, though rather dry in some places. This seemed to be a well-researched book (an extensive list of sources is available at the back of the book) and I liked that we were able to see what happened to the women after the end of the war as well. The pictures and many quotes from diaries as well as the descriptions of how women like Hitler and Himmler interacted with the leading Nazis' children was in stark contrast to the depictions we usually see of them. It made them more human and real than you sometimes think of historical figures, which made me very uncomfortable at times.
I was impressed with how nonjudgmental Wyllie was able to talk about the women and their actions, though - as another reviewer pointed out - he gives us plenty of reasons for us to be judgmental ourselves. I was blown away at how convinced of their righteousness several of these women still were post war! But I guess I shouldn't be too surprised after reading that one of them still believed they were on the side of Good and that Jews were Absolute Evil when she literally just said she was "stricken" after seeing the book Mein Kampf bound in human skin. I read this book much more slowly than I usually would one of its size because of its heavy subject. As a regular reader of books about this time period, you tend to think that you've read about the most disturbing parts of that war already but every book continues to surprise me (negatively) with the disgusting acts that were done to people.
I do have to say that I kept this book at 3 stars because it did not feel like its true focus was on the women. There was a lot of focus on the men, which of course is hard to avoid, but I feel that this book would have been better off named and marketed differently. Something alluding to the leading Nazi marriages or families would have been more fitting in my opinion.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
I've always found it important to learn about your country's history, especially the dark parts, rather than living in denial about it, so I try to read books about Germany, and especially the 2nd World War, regularly. Nazi Wives stood out to me when I first saw it because it looked at the events from a different angle that I hadn't previously learned from. It was interesting to read about, though rather dry in some places. This seemed to be a well-researched book (an extensive list of sources is available at the back of the book) and I liked that we were able to see what happened to the women after the end of the war as well. The pictures and many quotes from diaries as well as the descriptions of how women like Hitler and Himmler interacted with the leading Nazis' children was in stark contrast to the depictions we usually see of them. It made them more human and real than you sometimes think of historical figures, which made me very uncomfortable at times.
I was impressed with how nonjudgmental Wyllie was able to talk about the women and their actions, though - as another reviewer pointed out - he gives us plenty of reasons for us to be judgmental ourselves. I was blown away at how convinced of their righteousness several of these women still were post war! But I guess I shouldn't be too surprised after reading that one of them still believed they were on the side of Good and that Jews were Absolute Evil when she literally just said she was "stricken" after seeing the book Mein Kampf bound in human skin. I read this book much more slowly than I usually would one of its size because of its heavy subject. As a regular reader of books about this time period, you tend to think that you've read about the most disturbing parts of that war already but every book continues to surprise me (negatively) with the disgusting acts that were done to people.
I do have to say that I kept this book at 3 stars because it did not feel like its true focus was on the women. There was a lot of focus on the men, which of course is hard to avoid, but I feel that this book would have been better off named and marketed differently. Something alluding to the leading Nazi marriages or families would have been more fitting in my opinion.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
September 16, 2022
Tre stelline per la nutrita bibliografia e, di conseguenza, sicuramente, l'accurata ricerca.
Sarebbero state due per il mio apprezzamento , però , perché :
- lo sfondo storico è appena accennato , giustamente il titolo è" Le mogli .... ", però forse uno sforzo in più avrebbe potuto farlo ;
- le vite delle, appunto, mogli, potrebbero essere interessanti, ma quello che non mi è piaciuto ( al di là della mancanza di foto, una per coppia, almeno , vabbè avevo l'ebook ...)
è che si susseguono senza interruzione .
Mi spiego , a volte perdevo il filo perché l'autore salta da una moglie all'altra , e , dal momento che le cita sempre e solamente per nome, talvolta andavo in confusione tra Magda, Margaret etc. ( mi sono scritta i nomi con i cognomi su un foglietto ) chi è la moglie di chi ?
Forse un mio problema, forse non abbastanza concentrata, non lo so.
Mi dispiace perché immagino che J.Wyllie ci abbia messo molto impegno, ma non posso dare un giudizio più positivo.
Sarebbero state due per il mio apprezzamento , però , perché :
- lo sfondo storico è appena accennato , giustamente il titolo è" Le mogli .... ", però forse uno sforzo in più avrebbe potuto farlo ;
- le vite delle, appunto, mogli, potrebbero essere interessanti, ma quello che non mi è piaciuto ( al di là della mancanza di foto, una per coppia, almeno , vabbè avevo l'ebook ...)
è che si susseguono senza interruzione .
Mi spiego , a volte perdevo il filo perché l'autore salta da una moglie all'altra , e , dal momento che le cita sempre e solamente per nome, talvolta andavo in confusione tra Magda, Margaret etc. ( mi sono scritta i nomi con i cognomi su un foglietto ) chi è la moglie di chi ?
Forse un mio problema, forse non abbastanza concentrata, non lo so.
Mi dispiace perché immagino che J.Wyllie ci abbia messo molto impegno, ma non posso dare un giudizio più positivo.
December 10, 2019
Though the title had me worried it’s a good look at the women within the heart of the Hitler regime.
July 25, 2020
Their stories are fascinating and forgotten. Gerda Borman, Martin's wife was 19 when she married and had 10 children before dying in an Italian prison at age 37.
December 4, 2023
An interesting study of the personalities and stories of those women's lives.
Definitely worth reading for everyone interested in the topic (Nazis, IIWW, etc.)
The book unmasked many legends and propaganda.
And most of all, it showed humans. James Wyllie didn't justify anyone, yet he didn't demonize them either. The facts spoke for themself.
My suggestion: Read the paper copy or ebook (not an audiobook) otherwise you can get confused (like me) because the author jumps between characters.
Definitely worth reading for everyone interested in the topic (Nazis, IIWW, etc.)
The book unmasked many legends and propaganda.
And most of all, it showed humans. James Wyllie didn't justify anyone, yet he didn't demonize them either. The facts spoke for themself.
My suggestion: Read the paper copy or ebook (not an audiobook) otherwise you can get confused (like me) because the author jumps between characters.
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